What You Should Consider When Choosing a Multivitamin
Do
you know more than 37% of people in India take a daily multivitamin? Multivitamin acts as a nutritional gap-filling
that you might not get from your diet alone. Multivitamins are dietary
supplements that have a number of vitamins and minerals filled up into one
pill. These contain nutrients that are essential for our bodies to work in a proper
way, even though the best way to get these nutrients is through food. Remember,
multivitamins should be taken to supplement your diet not to replace healthy
eating. You might need a daily multivitamin if you are:
·
Vegetarian or vegan
·
Pregnant or trying to get pregnant
·
Lactose intolerant
·
Eating unbalanced meals
·
Not getting enough sleep
·
Not eating nutrient-dense foods
·
Diagnosed with certain medical conditions
·
Breastfeeding
·
Using alcohol or tobacco regularly
If
you think that you need to pile up on some missing nutrients, here is what you
should consider when it comes to choosing the right multivitamin for you.
1. Gender and age: The first thing you should consider
while choosing multivitamins is your gender and age, since many companies have
created specific supplements for men and women across multiple generations.
Ultimately, males and females require different nutrients during different
stages of life.
For
instance, it is recommended to pregnant females or could become pregnant to
take prenatal supplements that contain at least 400 micrograms of folic acid. ,
a supplement for menopausal women should contain vitamin D and calcium to help
against osteoporosis.
As
age is also the most important factor in considering the multivitamin, so
always check the labels to see if a multivitamin is specifically designed for
your age group and gender.
2. Your diet: It is suggested to people to always
assess their eating patterns and identify any nutrients they are at the most
risk of falling short on. Vegan individuals may consume less-than-adequate
amounts of vitamin B2, vitamin B12, and vitamin D, which are mostly found in
animal sources. On the contrary, do you get enough fruits and veggies in your
diet? According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), only
13% of adults eat the recommended daily fruit intake, while only 9% consume
enough vegetables. This may lead to insufficient levels of essential vitamins
A, vitamin C, vitamin E, minerals, calcium, and magnesium.
3. Added ingredients: Finally, you choose to pick up a
multivitamin that contains plant-based or animal-based ingredients, instead of
synthetic multivitamins. This is called as food-based supplements.
Food-based
vitamins typically include additional antioxidants and adapt gens which offer
additional health benefits. If you are considering your sugar intake, you
should avoid gummy multivitamins; instead, you can take these supplements in
the form of capsules, tablets, liquid, and powder. And forego supplement is
made up of other fillers, such as preservatives as well as artificial coloring,
flavors, and sweeteners.
4. Daily value of ingredients: Always choose a multivitamin that
has 100% of the daily value of most of its ingredients. While some nutrients,
such as calcium, cannot be included in a multivitamin at 100% - if it was, the
multivitamin will be too large to swallow. Magnesium and potassium levels are
also kept low to avoid drug-nutrient interactions, so we need to take these
nutrients primarily through our diet.
5. USP seal: Last but not least you should look
for the USP seal of approval. It means that the multivitamin has the recommended daily allowance
for amounts of nutrients. The seal assures that the ingredients and the
indicated amounts are accurate and safe. These multivitamin supplements are
tested and do not contain harmful heavy metals and pesticides.
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