Why Would You Take a Multivitamin?

What exactly is a multivitamin? Why would someone need to take a multivitamin? What are the differences between the different multivitamins? These questions and many other are going to be my focus here. Because I think that it's important for people to know the health benefits of multivitamins and also to how to choose which one is best for them.

A multivitamin is a food supplement that contains all of the essential vitamins and minerals that our body needs to operate at its optimal potential. To truly accurate when I am speaking here about a multivitamin in truth I am talking about a multi vitamin and mineral supplement.

In my opinion everyone should take a multivitamin. I take two every day and so do my wife and my sons. I look at it like super fuel for our biological engines. A lot of people have asked me in the past. What do I need a multivitamin for when I eat food? Well that is a good question and the answer is not so simple.

For starters our bodies need a very large range of different vitamins and minerals to keep us functioning at our maximum potential. And in order to get the full list we need to be eating a large variety of different foods. Please don't mistake variety for quantity because it's not how much you eat, but what you eat.

The recommended daily intake of fresh fruits and vegetables is seven cups. Now most people are not eating seven cups of fresh fruits and vegetables a day. There for these people would benefit from supplementing their diet with a multivitamin.

Also a lot of our foods are not whole. Rice is the classic example of vitamin deficiency do to consumption of food not in its whole form. For those who don't know the story I will tell you it in short. It was when white rice became popular and replaced brown rice. People who had a diet that was made up largely of rice started to suffer from a sickness known as Beriberi. Beriberi in the end was found not to be a sickness at all but a thiamin or vitamin B1 deficiency. This was because the thiamin in the rise was being removed during the polishing process.

So because of this fact, that a lot of the foods that make up our diet are processed and not whole. It is a good idea to take a multivitamin.

One important question to mention when talking about multivitamins or any vitamin really is how much does the body need. When you look a vitamin, or even nutritional information on food labels. What you see written there in the RDA, the recommended daily allowance. But the RDA is the bare minimum that the body needs to function. The new standard for supplements is the ODA. ODA stands for optimal daily allowance and that is what I look for when I go out to buy a multivitamin.

My current multi vitamin and mineral supplement of choice is the GNC brand Mega Men supplement. What I really love about this supplement is that it has 50 mg of B complex in each pill. To read more about why B complex is good for you take a look at my previous post on B complex. Another good multivitamin that I have taken in the past is the Sulgar brand Multimale supplement. I personally think that it's a good idea to switch brands of multivitamins every half a year or so. The reason for this is because today most of the good quality multi supplements have antioxidant and healthy herbal formulas in them as well. I think that is good to get as many different kinds of these herbs as you can. By changing your multi every six months or even four months you increase the variety of health promoting substances you put into your body.

So if you are not eating seven cups a day a fresh fruits and vegetables. If you don't eat only whole and non processed foods. If you want to give your body a boost of good health every day. Go out and get yourself a good multivitamin.