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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Multivitamin Supplements: Why They Are Essential to Your Health

By Hien Chung

Multivitamin supplements can be a good way to get the vitamins you need, especially if your own diet doesn't give you all the nutrients you need. That said, of course, multivitamin supplements can't do everything and won't replace the benefits of a healthy diet in general; they will simply fill in gaps for those times when you just can't quite eat right.

Multivitamin supplements often include minerals. Some of the minerals that people are prone to be deficient in are iron, magnesium, zinc, and calcium. Multivitamin supplements contain many different kinds of vitamins, including the ones listed here.

Vitamin A is found in most multivitamin supplements. It's rare to be deficient in vitamin A unless you are elderly. However, vitamin A is necessary for your immune system to function at its best, and it is sometimes recommended to prevent certain types of birth defects or to prevent bone loss. However, vitamin A can be toxic in large doses, so it should never be taken to excess.

Beta-carotene is an antioxidant that is present in many multivitamin supplements; it can help increase white blood cells, and improve your immune system function. Vitamin A and beta-carotene both work to keep your eyes healthy.

Folic acid is an especially important nutrient during pregnancy and is included in prenatal multivitamin supplements. If you are deficient in folic acid during pregnancy, your baby can have a low birth weight and will also be at increased risk of neural tube defects, such as spina bifida.

B vitamins, too, are important to good health, and most are usually found in multivitamin supplements. Folic acid is among the B vitamins, with pyridoxine another. B12 and pyridoxine are important to control levels of homocysteine in the blood; high levels of homocysteine can cause strokes, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Vitamin B12 can also fight memory loss, anemia, and heart disease. Thiamine, or B1, is important for optimal brain function. Niacin, also called vitamin B3, helps prevent the disease pellagra. It's relatively rare to get pellagra, but this niacin-deficient disease can cause inflamed mucous membranes, scaly sores on the skin, mental confusion and diarrhea.

Vitamin C strengthens your immune system and is an antioxidant. It helps keep your skin healthy, and aids in wound healing and in the prevention of scars.

Adequate amounts of vitamin D are essential to making sure you absorb enough of the mineral calcium. If you don't get enough vitamin D, you can have fractures, bone loss, and can experience a disease called rickets. This can cause severe bone pain to occur. Vitamin D can be manufactured in the body if you get enough exposure to sunlight, but it's often necessary in multivitamin supplements because today, many people don't get enough sunlight. In addition, the deficiency is very painful and detrimental. However, it can be toxic in large amounts, so don't overdo.

Vitamin K, too, is another important vitamin, and its deficiency can cause osteoporosis (brittle bones), easy bruising, and bleeding.

Along with vitamin D and vitamin K, calcium is a mineral found in many multivitamin supplements. It is necessary for building and maintaining adequate bone mass. Consuming enough calcium reduces the risk of bone fractures in older people.

Multivitamin supplements can provide more than 100% of the recommended daily allowance of some vitamins, but in most cases, it's not safe to consume very large amounts of any vitamin or mineral by itself. The levels included in multivitamins are usually safe, but if you take too many supplements in individual form and too much of them, extremely large doses could be unsafe.

Although in theory it's possible to get everything you need from your diet, it's rare to get enough vitamins and minerals every day from your diet, in adequate amounts. There are lots of multivitamin supplements available, and it's important that you do some research to determine the best one for you. Monitor yourself carefully if you do decide to start taking multivitamin supplements, since any side effects may be detrimental; stop taking them if you do experience side effects and see if the side effects go away. If you do experience side effects, ask your doctor to recommend a multivitamin supplement for you.

About a dozen vitamins are recognized as important to consume in recommended quantities. If you shortchange yourself on any of them, you can get symptoms of vitamin deficiency. Multivitamin supplements do a very good job of filling any nutritional gaps in your diet, but they are no substitute for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, with regular exercise and a healthy diet included. - 17273

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