Multivitamins are essential for modern women to compensate the deficiencies of their optimum nutritional requirements that their daily diet should provide. With the ever growing change in nutritional needs and the dearth of healthy food choices more than 40 much needed nutrients are absent in even the best diet charts including folic acid, calcium, iron, vitamin D, and magnesium.
Healthy Diet Vs Multivitamins –
Although maintaining a healthy diet chart is the primary source of nutrients and multivitamins should not be confused as a substitute of healthy food, it is essential to make sure that women should have a healthy lifestyle. These multivitamins are nutritional back-ups that can complete dietary needs of modern women.
While some doubt the benefitting effect of the daily consumption of multivitamins statistics show that at the same time more and more women are adopting multivitamins as a part of their daily diets to bridge their nutrient gaps. This bridging prevents not just chronic conditions but several other health risks like birth defects, osteoporosis etc.
There are several options of multivitamins in the market today and it could be tricky to choose your multivitamins. Here are eight steps to decide what kind of multivitamins you would require:
- The first and the most important step is that you should always seek a doctor’s advice and/or consult a dietician.
- You should evaluate your regular diet. Whether you survive on a balanced diet of fruits and vegetables or a diet consisting of fat and sugar should be your primary concern.
- Every woman has different vitamin needs that depend upon their age, weight, and health. Find out which band of each of these categories you belong to. For example certain multivitamin supplements are specially formulated for women in the child-bearing years which are ideal for women of 18 to 50 years. These include more iron and folic acid to help prevent birth defects in women capable of becoming pregnant
- Research and consider the ability of absorption of not just the vitamins but also the forms of them available in the market. You have to know the best practices of consuming different vitamins. Vitamin D supplement is the best possible choice for women above 50 years of age since the absorption ability of their body slows down considerably for selected nutrients like calcium, vitamins B6 and B12 and the need for iron too drops after menopause.
- Read the labels carefully and choose according to your needs only after understanding thoroughly what is being said on the labels prior to your purchase.
- Check for the daily value (DV) each multivitamin contains and choose the one that will provide you with the nutrients that you are least expected to receive from your regular diet.
- Since all multivitamins are not suitable for everyone and are broadly formulated to compensate different nutrients in different people you should always be on the lookout for that little extra. Choose something that provides you with additional general nutrients like antioxidants or prenatal vitamins etc.
- Do not go on a binge. Try and avoid vitamins that provide you with more than a 100% of daily recommended values and can result in toxic build up if consumed in high doses.
Choosing a multivitamin even with the above guidelines can prove to be an ordeal for most of us because of the wide range of products that are available in the market today.
The availability of these nutrients apart from its basic sources in a healthy diet is easy and is suggested for scot free consumption by women. They are tested for latest safety and efficacy research for optimal doses as supplements too. However it is recommended to always consult a doctor before considering it. This would prevent you from not just making a random choice of what you think is right, but also give you an exact knowledge of the dose and duration.
