Multi vitamins help fill gaps that may exist in a person’s diet. Vitamins and minerals perform thousands of functions in the body. Without adequate levels and the right balance of nutrients the body cannot function properly and things begin to break down.
Even in ideal diets, which by the way very few people really follow, they are often depleted of certain vitamins and minerals. These vital nutrients can be lost or destroyed during harvesting, transportation, processing, freezing or cooking through simple exposure to oxygen. All the vitamins and key minerals are essential to health.
A multiple vitamin can be thought of as an insurance policy than ensures all of them are obtained, regardless of diet or lifestyle. Pretty much everyone can benefit from using a good quality one.
“But Vitamins Are A Waste of Money”
My response to this is: No. Soda, fast food, cigarettes, booze and so many more things are a waste of money. Everybody spends $4-$9 a day insuring their automobile and hardly ever use that insurance, but you don’t want to spend .15-.20 cents a day to insure your health??? Personally, that statement blows my mind especially considering the obesity and health problems we have in this country today. Your body should be more important than your car, you only get one in this lifetime – take care of it!
What Can Vitamins & Mineral Supplements Do For Me?
For starters, all the different B vitamins support many different functions including: Playing enzymatic roles for converting foods and carbs into energy, controlling homecystein levels and LDL (bad) cholesterol for a healthy heart and others support hair, skin and nails just to name a few.
Minerals like chromium help to control blood glucose levels. Magnesium supports muscles and nerve function. Zinc plays a big role with natural resistance (immune system) as well as helping to control estrogen conversion from testosterone (fellas). Of course we know calcium supports our bones too.
Let’s not forget about all the antioxidants found in a quality multi and what they can do for your body. They help slow down oxidation and reduce free radicals for starters. Chemical reactions occur in the body when we are digesting, breathing, producing energy, exercising, dealing with stress, fighting off infection, encountering pollutants, toxins or radiation, smoke or alcohol. Many of these reactions involve oxygen, which can lead to oxidative stress known as oxidation.
Free radicals are unstable molecules produced continuously in the body as a result of chemical reactions such as oxidation. Free radicals damage, mutate and destroy healthy cells by taking electrons from them in an effort to try to stabilize their own charge. Antioxidants help to fight this. An example of an antioxidant like say, vitamin C doing this is the apple test. If you were to cut an apple in half and sprinkle some vitamin C powder over one half and leave the other half alone and then come back in an hour, you would notice the half that was left alone (no vitamin C) would be browned up quite a bit versus the half that had the antioxidant sprinkled on it due to the vitamin C neutralizing and slowing down the oxidation process. Again, oxidation is happening in our body all the time and these can help slow the aging process down not to mention give a boost to our immune system.
I would strongly suggest to take advantage of modern science and its understanding of health and wellness for our bodies to counteract our exposure to all the bad things in our modern, overly populated and fast paced world full of unhealthy things for us. It doesn’t cost that much and your health is worth it I promise you.
Stay healthy my friends,
Roger Bowman, CPT
Roger Bowman 