subject: Vitamin Mineral Supplements: How To Choose The Right Kind Of Supplements [print this page] Precisely because there are so many brands to choose from, it's not at all surprising to find people scratching their heads as to what kind of vitamins they should buy - whether they should go for the tablet, liquid or sublingual (under the tongue) forms of vitamins. However, how much you can benefit from supplementation doesn't just depend on the kind of vitamin supplements you buy, but also on a host of other factors as well.
Read on for some tips on choosing the right kind of vitamin supplements:
1. Do you have a medical condition?
If you notice, there are different vitamins for pregnant women, recovering patients, and children. Each of these types of vitamins are especially formulated to cater to the needs of their intended consumers. For example, vitamins for pregnant women are enriched with folate for the baby. Check with your doctor on which type of vitamins would be best for you.
2. Check for absorbability Some brands of vitamins are actually notorious among nurses in the United States because go out the way they came in - the tablet practically intact and with the brand still visible. Ideally, you should be eating enough fruits, vegetables and grains to be healthy. But in today's ever busy world, this rarely happens, and so we need to supplement.
However, most vitamin and mineral supplements have a molecular structure that is totally different from the vitamins and minerals found in natural foods. This is the big reason why most of the nutrition found in vitamin supplements simply pass through our intestines and out of the body's system.
Arguably, the best type of vitamin and mineral supplements are the chelated types. Chelated minerals are coated with amino acids that make it easy for them to pass through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream.
3. Check for trace co-factor mineral content
Many vitamins actually need a mineral co-factor to work properly inside the body. For example,Vitamin A is actually poisonous if you don't take Vitamin B12 along with it.
Another example of a co-factor mineral at work is the trace mineral Zinc.
Zinc is important for the processing of carbohydrate, fat, and protein. It is also important for DNA and RNA replication. Without zinc, Vitamin A would be useless in maintaining healthy eyesight,
On the other hand, without magnesium, calcium won't be able to do its job of maintaining healthy bones and teeth. For your information around 70% of the magnesium inside the body is stored in the bones and teeth.
