Are Multivitamin Supplements Really Essential to Your Health?

Are multivitamin supplements really necessary? In fact, yes; that's especially true if your diet is deficient and doesn't provide adequate nutrition, because they'll fill in the nutritional gaps your diet doesn't provide. That doesn't mean you can eat unhealthily all the time and get away with it, but multivitamin supplements can give you nutritional support if your diet is less than optimal.

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 one of the vitamins multivitamins supplements usually contain. It's relatively rare to be deficient in vitamin A, unless you are older. You need vitamin A to have your immune system function at its best, and it's also important to prevent certain types of birth defects and bone loss. However, it can be toxic in large doses, so avoid overuse.

Beta-carotene is another supplement found in multivitamin supplements. It functions as an antioxidant and can also increase white blood cell count; it also boosts your immunity. Beta-carotene and vitamin A also are important to eye health.

Folic acid is an especially important supplement to take during pregnancy, and is included in most prenatal multivitamin supplements. If you are deficient in folic acid while you're pregnant, your baby could be born with low birth weight or 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 boosts the immune system and is an antioxidant, and also helps keep skin healthy; it also helps to heal wounds and prevent scar formation.

Vitamin D is essential to proper absorption of the mineral calcium. A deficiency of vitamin D can lead to bone loss, fractures, and a disease called rickets, which can result in severe bone pain. Though vitamin D can be manufactured by the human body from exposure to sunlight, it is included in multivitamin supplements too because the deficiency can be so painful. However, that doesn't mean that you should take mega doses of it.

Some multivitamin supplements also contain vitamin K. Vitamin K deficiency can lead to bleeding, easy bruising, and brittle bones, or osteoporosis.

Calcium is among the mega minerals that are important to good health, and is found in many multivitamin supplements. Along with vitamin D and vitamin K, it's necessary to your diet in order to maintain adequate bone mass. You need enough calcium in your diet or through multivitamin supplements for good health, and it also reduces the risk of fracture in bones for 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.

There are about a dozen recognized vitamins that humans are recommended to consume in certain quantities. A long term shortage in any of them can cause symptoms of vitamin deficiency. While multivitamin supplements can do a great job of preventing vitamin deficiencies, they're not a substitute for a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Taking multivitamin supplements over a period of time will enhance your body's general health condition. Visit http://www.discount-vitamins-and-supplements.com for a huge collection of multivitamin supplements products available at your fingertips.