Choosing the Right Nutritional Supplement

With so many different types of vitamins and supplements out there, it can be difficult to know which is the best nutritional supplement or combination of supplements for you. You don’t want to take too many or the wrong kind or you’ll just be wasting your money and harming your health.

Is Your Favorite Nutritional Supplement Safe?

If you’re a health-conscious person, chances are, you take at least one nutritional supplement each day. That’s great. Adding a dietary supplement can help fill in those inevitable nutritional gaps. However, the vitamin you rely on could be secretly causing the health problems you’re trying to prevent.

It may surprise you to know that many popular store-bought supplements are created in a lab. This means they are nothing but a concoction of chemicals filled with dangerous preservatives and additives. If you’re not sure if you’re dietary supplement stacks up, take a look at the inactive ingredients it contains.

Preservatives, sweeteners, additives, colors, binders, and filling agents disguise themselves under names like ‘sodium benzoate’, ‘silicon dioxide’, and ‘methylparaben’ and can do serious damage to your health. For example, parabens have been scientifically-proven to be carcinogenic to humans.

Even the Best Dietary Supplement Can’t Replace a Healthy Diet

When choosing a nutritional supplement, opt for vitamins derived from whole-food sources, instead of synthetics. Synthetic vitamins cannot be easily absorbed by your body and may cause your immune system to overreact in an attempt to protect you from that. After all, that’s what your immune system is designed to do; protect you from foreign invaders.

Just remember, even the best dietary supplement cannot replace a healthy diet. When you eat a diet heavy with processed foods like burgers, fries, candy, donuts, chips, snack cakes, and soda, you’re putting yourself at risk for autoimmune disease, diabetes, heart disease, mental health problems, and obesity. One or two vitamins cannot undo this damage so be sure to eat a diet rich in whole, nutritious foods.

Choosing the Right Dietary Supplement for You

• Children

Even when we feed our children wholesome, nutritious foods, there can still be unintentional nutritional gaps as we all know, not all children have the patience to finish a meal. A whole food children’s multivitamin can be the foundation for good health. For children with digestive issues, a children’s probiotic can work wonders.

• Women

Pre-menopausal women need special nutrition in their child-bearing years. A whole-food multivitamin containing magnesium, calcium, vitamin D, and folic acid is best. Women with anemia can benefit from a multivitamin containing iron and women who are concerned with the health of their immune systems can get a much-needed boost from adding vitamin D. For post-menopausal women, a female hormone support formula containing chaste berry and licorice root can be a healthy natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy.

• Men

Men need solid nutrition in order to remain strong, healthy, and emotionally balanced. Adding a whole-food multivitamin can help improve overall health and wellbeing. Men who are concerned with their prostate health can benefit from adding a prostate support formula containing zinc, saw palmetto, and inflammation-fighting nettles root extract.

Adding a nutritional supplement or two to your diet can boost your energy, fight inflammation, and keep your immune system strong. Be sure to choose whole food supplements and you’ll get it right every time.