Do You Really Need VItamin Supplements?

The variety of edible items and foods should be enough to meet our needs for minerals and vitamins. Foods contain varying combinations and amounts of essential nutrients. Foods contain some other nutrients such as fiber, healthy fats, and protein.

All of these essential nutrients are required by the body for its overall wellbeing and optimal functioning. On the contrary, vitamins and other supplements aren’t associated with much evidence that proves their worth as to their nutritional benefits.

Registered dietitians and health care experts believe these supplements do exactly what their name suggests and therefore, they aren’t manufactured to replace what we call natural healthy diets. Vitamin supplements only provide specific nutrients in concentrated amounts.

However, these products are thought to have their uses for people with vitamin and nutrient deficiencies. People who don’t have an adequate intake of nutrients may also benefit from these supplements. Here’s a list of instances where taking vitamin supplements might help.

• Breastfeeding and pregnant women
• Infants that are partially or exclusively breastfed
• Children and adults who have nutritional deficiencies confirmed by diagnosis
• People who have certain health conditions that cause nutrient malabsorption
• People with bariatric surgery or gastric bypass
• Children and adults who have restricted access to different foods
• Some vegetarians and vegans

Among the different nutrient deficiencies, vitamin D is a common one because getting vitamin D as much as you need from the diet alone is difficult. While our body can receive vitamin D from direct exposure to the sunlight, more than one billion people across the world suffer from vitamin D deficiencies.

For most people, some lifestyle choices and inherent conditions are responsible including wearing sunscreen frequently, having darker skin, staying too much time indoors, and living far south or north of the equator. All these may result in them being deficient in this vitamin.

Older adults face difficulties synthesizing whatever intake of vitamin D they get due to their biological changes, especially in the skin which occurs naturally with age. Consequently, you’ll see more recommendations for vitamin D supplements than for others.

What Are the Common Vitamins and Supplements?

Supplements often come marketed as products to be taken orally. They can be labelled as a “dietary ingredient,” in a wide variety of antioxidants, herbs, minerals, vitamins, botanicals, enzymes, probiotics, amino acids, and other nutrients.

You’ll find them in various forms such as dietary supplements, capsules, tinctures, gummies, liquids, and powders. Regardless of these forms, they’re advertised to provide an efficient way for people to boost their mental and physical health.

What Are the Possible Interactions?

As you’re concerned about vitamin supplements, you should be aware of the potential interactions that may occur as you take them with little to no knowledge.

Some ingredients used in these supplements may leave negative consequences to those who take them. The likelihood of these interactions is pretty strong when the supplements are taken alongside some medications, other types of supplements, alcohol, and foods.

Vitamin E supplements can be considered as an example. These supplements are linked to an increased risk of bleeding in people who take blood-thinning medications at the same time. Calcium supplements may interfere with the effectiveness of certain antibiotics as they may reduce the amount of iron being absorbed from other supplements and regular diets.

Again, some supplements are known to have unintended effects on the accuracy of certain lab results. The FDA warns that vitamin B7 supplements or others containing biotin may lower levels of troponin (an essential biomarker) falsely in the lab results which may lead to inaccurate diagnosis of heart attacks.

Supplements that use botanicals and herbs may be particularly harmful as some of them have been reported to cause negative interactions with some medications. In addition, scientists have not been able to conduct adequate research on some herbs to confirm whether or not they have side effects or interactions.

Although no prestigious authorities have provided any idea that supports the true effectiveness of vitamin supplements, some manufacturers including Life’s Fortune Vitamins have managed to earn respect of the medical community by keeping their products free of potentially harmful ingredients, herbs, or botanicals.

But there’s still a lot to be careful about since the FDA hasn’t published reviews of these supplements. So, you should meet your trusted health care professional or physician and talk about the supplements at length before actually buying and starting to use them.