What Should We Know When Purchasing A Vitamin And Mineral Supplement ?
You know supplements can be expensive. It depends on the kind of vitamins and minerals you are talking about.Vitamins break down into water soluble and fat-soluble. Typically there is more concern with the fat soluble vitamins (A,D, E & K) because they are not excreted from your body, unlike the water soluble vitamins like B and C, the excess will get flushed but with the fat soluble vitamins the excess is retained in your body.That can get to be a problem if you are for some strange reason taking excessive amounts of let’s say vitamin D for example.
There is no official figure for how much vitamin D you need, but it should be somewhere in the vicinity of 5 mcg – 10 mcg at the most. For those who don’t get exposure to sunlight, you can get vitamin D in cod-liver oil but be careful not to consume more than 20mcg’s.Vitamin D is toxic at very low levels, so having too much in your system can be dangerous.It comes down to someone not having information to fall back on and they just do it because they are naïve. It may start out as a doubling of the recommended daily allowance and they think,“well I’m not seeing any results, so I will triple it.” Some of the vitamin companies that manufacture these are no help because they will introduce products into the marketplace with one capsule delivering a mega dose.
It just gets to be like a power struggle even with the manufacturers of those products. People will think that if a little bit in a tablet is good then more will be better. People often think in dollar terms, how much can we get for this amount, if I can get more vitamin for the same or similar amount of money, then that’s better – right. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth.
There are very well documented cases of vitamin overdoses and the consequences of taking too much of one vitamin or mineral.You just have to be careful. Most supplements if you will look on the labels will tell you how much to take.When you look at the labels, look at what percentage of the RDI (recommended daily intake) of each vitamin or mineral is included in the supplement. If you see 100% beside one of those vitamins or minerals then you know that taking that supplement will provide 100% for that particular vitamin or mineral. If you intend to eat that day as well as take the supplement, you could be over-dosing yourself on that particular vitamin or mineral.Or, if it says 150% or 500% then it is supplying 5 times more of the nutrient than you really need. And all those levels are based on typical values in our society. On an individual basis there may be a person who needs more than that or someone who might need even less than that. That’s when it becomes difficult to know if you are getting the right amount of nutrients. This is where it comes back to getting variety in your diet and eating according to your lifestyle. People who have an active lifestyle generally eat more than those who don’t, their body is ensuring that it gets enough energy, vitamins and minerals to be able to carry out it’s normal functioning.
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