What Happens to Your Body When You Start Taking Vitamins?
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Many families regard vitamin supplements as a necessity, while other families seldom think of them at all. Those who use vitamin supplements quickly emphasize their importance and remind others that they should be doing the same.
Vitamin supplements are great for some people, but they certainly aren’t magic. Everyone needs vitamins and minerals for healthy functioning, and supplements can be a tool for helping families reach their nutritional needs if diet alone isn’t sufficient.
Before you run out and buy a bunch of supplements for your family, you need to know what happens to your body when you start taking vitamins. There are plenty of excellent benefits to taking daily vitamins, but these benefits won’t apply to everyone in the same way.
Should Everyone Take a Vitamin Every Day?
Although it may seem like taking a complete multivitamin every day is a great way to improve your health, it isn’t necessary for most people. Depending on what you eat and how you eat, it’s likely that you’re getting a significant portion of your daily recommended value of most vitamins and nutrients through your diet.
Multivitamins are most helpful for people with food allergies or intolerances, vitamin deficiencies, limited diets, food aversions, and absorption issues. They’re intended to help people reach their nutritional goals rather than replace the nutrition they could otherwise safely receive through a healthy diet.
For people with specific deficiencies, like a vitamin B12 deficiency, using a concentrated form of vitamin B12 is all that’s necessary to resolve the deficit. They wouldn’t necessarily need a multivitamin.
If you’re wondering if you or your children would benefit from using a daily multivitamin, you should talk to your health care provider. In most cases, it doesn’t hurt to incorporate a gentle and appropriate multivitamin supplement into your family’s wellness routine, especially if no one can agree on what fruits and vegetables are edible.
What Happens to Your Body When You Start Taking Vitamins?
If your family doctor agrees that adding a vitamin supplement into your daily wellness routine is a good idea, here are some of the benefits (and a few mild side effects) you may encounter. Side effects are very rare if you’re taking vitamins appropriately.
Energy Levels Remain Stable Throughout the Day
Many vitamins, particularly B vitamins, are extremely important for metabolic health. They help to convert food into usable energy, and they help the body to manufacture red blood cells that send oxygen throughout your body. The end result is stable energy levels.
Many people use vitamin supplements specifically for this purpose. Many energy-boosting drinks incorporate these B vitamins as a part of their energizing blend.
If you find that you’re slow to rise for breakfast, sluggish after lunch, you really need a nap around dinner, make sure you’re getting enough B vitamins. Over time, they may help to counteract your low energy levels.
Mental Clarity May Improve
Vitamins are just as essential for your brain as they are for the rest of your body. When your body gets an adequate amount of vitamins, you may feel more alert. As a part of the role vitamins play in boosting energy production, they also can help to diminish mental fatigue.
These symptoms aren’t very common, but for those who live with them, they can have noticeable effects. Many vitamin and mineral deficiencies can make it hard to concentrate, learn, or remember. Even if you don’t have a deficiency, it’s important to get enough of your daily vitamins and minerals to prevent a negative impact on your mental clarity.
Your Immune System Is Fortified
Your immune system works very hard to keep your body healthy. It’s constantly at work warding off bacterial invaders and helping your body manage bad germs. It’s constantly creating new cells, and those cells need energy to properly fulfill their functions before they complete their lifespan and are replaced by more cells.
There’s a lot happening, and your body is relying on your choices to keep the process going. Proper hygiene and avoiding germs are important for preventing your immune system from becoming overwhelmed by bad germs. The other part of the process is giving your body what it needs to fulfill those functions.
Although vitamin C is most widely recognized as an essential vitamin for your immune system, it’s far from the only vitamin your immune system requires for optimal function. Vitamin B6, folate, and zinc also play crucial roles in keeping you healthy.
You’ll Fill Gaps in Your Diet
Multivitamins are beneficial for people who cannot or do not eat certain foods. People with flexible diets generally receive a lot of what they need from meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products. If you have allergies or intolerances to specific foods or if you live a lifestyle that does not incorporate these foods, you’ll be missing the vitamins and minerals they have to offer.
As a result, you may develop mild key vitamins and minerals deficiencies. Many plant-based foods often contain the same vitamins and minerals, but they contain substantially less. It would be very difficult to meet your daily requirement through plants alone, especially if you don’t eat very large portions at every meal.
You May Experience Some Side Effects
Some vitamins are water-soluble, which means your body needs to replenish them every day. If you know your day is going to be busy and you’re unlikely to eat as well as you should, preemptively taking a multivitamin can help your body to avoid interruptions to its processes.
Other vitamins are fat-soluble. If your body is unable to use every last bit, it stores the rest for later. If you don’t get enough vitamin A, E, D, or K on a particular day but you had plenty throughout the rest of the week, your body simply took what it needed from its stores.
There’s no need to supplement or build these stores.
Not everyone needs a multivitamin supplement. If you’re already very close to meeting your body’s needs of many vitamins and minerals and you take a supplement with more than your entire daily value of that vitamin or mineral, your body has no use for the excess. This can sometimes lead to nausea or gastrointestinal cramping.
That’s why it’s so important to speak with a doctor before introducing vitamins or other supplements into your daily routine. There’s no purpose for oversupplying your body.
Helps Children Grow and Thrive
Although vitamins and minerals are crucially important to people at all stages of life, they’re especially important for children. Children need vitamins and minerals to grow and develop properly. Deficiencies in early childhood can have negative health consequences that can last a lifetime.
Since children can’t comfortably eat adult-sized portions, it’s essential to pack as much nutrition as possible into a small diet. Although children are often asking for unhealthy foods, special snacks, and treats, filling up on nutritionally empty foods can leave little room for the fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins they need to meet their daily requirements.
This is the same reason that multivitamins are helpful for picky eaters of all ages. Even if you can safely eat a particular food, you may not want to.
Most children and young people will outgrow food aversions, particularly once they understand the nutritional importance of a particular food. If you’re a grown adult that still hides your peas in your napkin, a multivitamin supplement may work to your advantage.
Finding the Right Vitamin Supplement for Children
After you speak to your child’s pediatrician about vitamin and mineral concerns, the pediatrician will be able to advise you on the matter of vitamin supplementation and ingredients. If the pediatrician agrees it’s a good idea to add some more vitamins and minerals into your child’s wellness plan, choose a multivitamin formulated for children.
Hiya’s Kids Daily Multivitamin is vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and eco-friendly. Our multivitamin is formulated with artificial colors and flavors, sugar, and gummy additives. Our chewables are naturally sweetened with monk fruit and flavored with real fruit extract. They don’t resemble candy because vitamins shouldn’t resemble candy.
Our multivitamin was formulated under the advice of pediatricians who noticed that many children, especially picky eaters, were falling a little short of their nutritional goals. While you should always work to introduce your child to new foods and teach them the importance of nutrition, Hiya is here to fill in the gaps until they’re ready to finish their salad.
Sources
Choosing a Vitamin and Mineral Supplement | Michigan Medicine
8 Vitamins & Minerals You Need for a Healthy Immune System | Health Essentials | Cleveland Clinic
Vitamin D deficiency in childhood: old lessons and current challenges | Degruyter
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