Supplements and vitamins can help immensely in the battle for health during the winter months. Making sure you get all of the good nutrients to build up your immune system, energy centres, bone health and the other benefits are vital to greater wellbeing. So what are the essential vitamins you need?
- Multi-Vitamin
- Vitamin D
- Omega 3
- Calcium
We admit, the world of vitamin and supplement goodness can be confusing, with a different supplement for everything and anything, it can be hard to narrow your choices and choose the best ones for you, so we have looked into the top 4 vitamins that can help everyone across the board and provide a good starting point for you to start looking into what you may need a little boost of…
Multi-Vitamin
A daily multivitamin can work wonders for you and your health. Multivitamins usually contain 100% of your daily intake of the most vital vitamins for your body including vitamin A, C, D, E and K, plus potassium, zinc and iron.
Taking an essential multivitamin will not only mean you don’t have to take multiple tablets every day with multiple tablets; but in addition, multivitamins will ensure that you get the most essential vitamins when you need them. Subsequently, if this changes the next day, again this can be easily boosted, providing the flexibility that your body needs.
Main benefit: Boosts levels of all vitamins throughout the body
Potential To fight: Fatigue and low energy
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is essential for helping to absorb calcium and maintaining or improving bone health. The human body produces its own vitamin D when it is exposed to sunlight, however, living in the UK and the precautions now taken against sunlight to help prevent skin cancer, means that we often don’t get enough of it. It’s almost impossible to consume your daily vitamin D recommended daily intake through food alone, meaning vitamin D supplements are key!
Vitamin D can help fight the symptoms of depression, although scientists are not exactly sure how this happens, they do know that those suffering depression have been found to be deficient in vitamin D. When this group began taking vitamin D tablets, this helped to alleviate the symptoms. Vitamin D has also been found to reduce the risk of diabetes by improving the body’s sensitivity to insulin.
We recommend Vitamin D3 Gold as this is the form of vitamin d that we produce in the human body when we are exposed to sunlight.
Daily intake: 400IU
Main benefit: Improves bone health and happiness!
Potential to fight: Diabetes and Depression
Omega 3
Omega 3 is an essential fatty acid. With the trend towards personal health often ruling out all fat, some may be cutting out one of the most important fats!
Omega 3 has been shown to improve heart health, nourish the brain and improve mental performance and help lubricate your joints, thus is often given to those suffering from multiple sclerosis. It is possible to get sufficient amounts of Omega 3 through your diet, however you’d have to eat 6 tins of tuna to be getting your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of omega 3. The main source of omega 3 comes from food such as fish, walnuts, and flaxseeds.
Supplements will ensure you get the essential vitamins and fatty acids that will help your body. We recommend daily intakes as the perfect source of this as this helps to increase the intake of antioxidants and omega 3.
Daily intake: 600mg
Main benefit: Heart, brain and joint health
Potential to fight: Multiple Sclerosis
Calcium
Calcium is crucial in maintaining or improving adequate bone health, our bodies need calcium for this exact reason. The most common source of calcium is dairy products like milk, yoghurt and cheese. However, if these aren’t to your taste, you can also get calcium from kale and canned sardines.
It is important to mix the essential vitamins from these foods with supplements to ensure you reach your recommended daily allowance (RDA). Calcium supplements are a concentrated source of calcium that when combined with vitamin D (to help the body absorb the calcium) can help improve bone health, heart rhythm and muscle function.
Daily intake: 500mg
Main benefit: Improve bone health
Potential to fight: Osteoporosis
Conclusion
These essential vitamins and supplements are just a selection of the many available but are some of the most popular products that can have a positive effect on many areas of the body at once.
Have Your Say: If you know more essential vitamins that you take, please share them with us. We would love to hear what you take or eat in the day to live a healthy life.