What Vitamins Do I Need

Folic Acid Supplement In Pregnancy

If you’re pregnant, trying for a baby or could get pregnant, it’s recommended that you take a 400 microgram folic acid supplement every day until you’re 12 weeks pregnant. Folic acid supplements need to be taken before you get pregnant, so start taking them before you stop using contraception or if there’s a chance you might get pregnant.

Folic acid can help to prevent neural tube defects such as spina bifida.

Find out more about vitamins, supplements and nutrition in pregnancy.

Interactingin Good Ways And Bad

Many micronutrients interact. Vitamin D enables your body to pluck calcium from food sources passing through your digestive tract rather than harvesting it from your bones. Vitamin C helps you absorb iron.

The interplay of micronutrients isnt always cooperative, however. For example, vitamin C blocks your bodys ability to assimilate the essential mineral copper. And even a minor overload of the mineral manganese can worsen iron deficiency.

What Vitamins And Minerals Are Important For Womens Health

All vitamins and minerals are important for good health. Vitamins and minerals often work together in your body. Its usually best to get your vitamins and minerals from many different types of food in all of the food groups. Fill your plate with fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains, and a variety of protein foods to build a healthy plate.

Why its important

• Helps your body make blood cells and the DNA for new cells
• Helps prevent certain birth defects called neural tube defects, which happen in the first three months of pregnancy
• Helps prevent premature births and low birth weight

Who may need it

All women who might get pregnant or are pregnant need to get 400800 mcg of folic acid each day from either dietary supplements or fortified foods like many breakfast cereals.1 Nearly half, or 45%, of all pregnancies in the United States are not planned,2 so its important to make sure you are getting enough folic acid even if youre not planning on getting pregnant right now.

Where to find it in food

Spinach and other dark green leafy vegetables, oranges and pure orange juice, nuts, beans, chicken, lean beef, whole grains, and cereals with added folic acid

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What Else Can I Answer

To answer your first few questions:

What do you think about ? Im not a big supplement guy at all, so I may not have a strong opinion on your particular brand. Im gonna give a big shout out to my friend Sol Orwell over at Examine.com, who has done some of the most extensive research on supplements I have EVER seen.

What supplements do you take Steve? BCAA , Whey Protein occasionally, Butter Oil/Fermented Cod Liver Oil .

What supplements does Staci take? BCAA , Whey Protein, ZMA, and a multi-vitamin . She also takes fish oil if she doesnt eat a lot of fish that week, but tries to get as much from her diet as possible.

PHEW!

Okay so this is a monster of a post, and a lot to get through. Let me know what further questions you have on this topic. Ill do my best to chime in, understanding that I dont know your particular health situation, Im not a doctor, and Im not even wearing any pants right now.

ONE FINAL THING: Im going to guess that youre looking to take supplements because youre interested in getting bigger, stronger, and leaner. I can tell you that supplements make up less than 5% of the equation, and will only work if youre ALSO eating a great diet and training correctly.

If youve spent time in a gym and arent getting results, you might not have a plan in place that works for your body type, lifestyle, and physiology which might be why youre reading this article in the first place to get results sooner!

Now, go eat some broccoli!

-Steve

Asking Better Questions For Better Answers

Figuring out what we need means exploring the often overlooked details of our lifestyle and diet. Thats when it become more important than ever to ask better questions. Care/of has done just that. Theyve designed a revealing 5-minute quiz that delves into your diet and lifestyle habits to uncover the exact supplements you should be taking. Starting with the basics about your health, youre asked questions about your goals, any specific health concerns, your exercise habits, your stress level, your sleepeven whether you prefer large or small pills. With this quiz, you end up getting answers that are right for you not just the issue or concern youre trying to address. As a result, some of the questions in this quiz just might surprise you.

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Why Do Vegans Need To Take Supplements

If you follow a nutritionally dense, health-promoting whole foods plant-based diet, you are already getting the majority of the micronutrients your body needs to thrive. In fact, vegan diets tend to contain higher levels of potassium, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E, and manganese compared to conventional diets.

At the same time, there are a few key nutrients that aren’t easily found in a plant-based diet, plus poorly planned vegan diets can contain lower levels of essential nutrients.

What The Numbers Mean

Many of the terms you see on labels or supplement web sites can help you understand how much of the vitamin or mineral you should take. For example, here are some guidelines set up by the Institute of Medicine:

The RDA and the AI are the amounts of a vitamin or mineral you need to keep healthy and stay well-nourished. They’re tailored to women, men, and specific age groups.

The UL is the maximum amount of daily vitamins and minerals that you can safely take without risk of an overdose or serious side effects. For certain nutrients, the higher you go above the UL, the greater the chance you’ll have problems.

The DV is the only measurement you’ll find on food and supplement labels. That’s because space is limited, and there’s a need for one single reference number. That number is the amount of a vitamin or nutrient that you should get for top health from a diet of 2,000 calories a day. The DV is sometimes the same as the RDA.

Although the details may be different, remember that the RDA and DV are both set up to help you get the nutrients you need to prevent disease and avoid problems caused by lack of nutrition.

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What Vitamins And Supplements Should I Take

Curious about what vitamins and supplements you should take to best suit your needs? Learn how the HUM vitamin quiz can narrow down the right options for you.

So, youre committed to optimize your health and learned that supplements can help you do just that. In fact, even the healthiest eaters could use an extra nutritive boost.

Above all, its important to understand which vitamins you really need. We knowit can get overwhelming with so many options on the market.

To simplify the process, HUM CEO and co-founder Walter Faulstroh joined forces with leading nutrition researchers to develop our smart-match vitamin quiz. Keep reading for a closer look at how and why it works.

Why Do We Need Vitamins

Vitamins are crucial for many processes in our body, from boosting the immune system, to aiding a healthy metabolism. Each vitamin has its own benefits:

• Vitamins B2 and A are important vitamins for healthy skin and eyes. You can find these in leafy vegetables, bread and cereals 2
• B-vitamins are part of enzymes that ensure a good metabolism and energy metabolism. They are also important for the development of red blood cells.1
• Vitamin B11 supplements are often advised for pregnant, because it is plays an important role in the development of unborn children. After birth, children and teenagers are still encouraged to continue the consumption of B11 to support their growth. This vitamin is present in foods like green vegetables and citrus fruits.3
• Vitamin C is a key antioxidant that supports your immune system functions. Thats why it is often advised to eat a lot of fruit and veggies, because those are the only foods that naturally contain vitamin C. Mainly citrus fruit, kale and red pepper are high in vitamin C, but there are many other kinds of fruit and vegetables that will also help to increase your energy and immunity.2
• Vitamin B12 is important for a good functioning of the nerve system. It is, however, only present in meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, and milk products. Seeing as B12 is not found in plant-based foods, vegans are often advised to take supplements to make sure they also get the recommended amount of B12.2

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Carefully Assess Your Diet Based On Widely

The US Food and Drug Administration sets a Recommended Daily Intake for the essential nutrients to help people manage their nutrition.

The RDI is simply how much of each nutrient is needed each day for healthy adults. It is typically measured and listed using one of three different units: milligrams , micrograms , or international units . The nutrition labels on foods will list the nutrients they contain, as well as the percentage of your RDI for each particular nutrient.

This information is helpful to ensure that you are not consuming too much or too little of any nutrient in a given day.

One way to figure out what vitamins and supplements to take is to look carefully at the nutritional value of all the foods in your diet and see how close you come to the RDI recommended by the FDA for each essential vitamin and mineral.

If you have a diet thats particularly low or high in certain foods, you could be getting too much or too little of certain nutrients. For example, vitamin B12 is commonly found in non-vegetarian food sources, so if youre a vegetarian, you may be getting less than the RDI of that vitamin.

If the RDI represents the low end of the amount you need for a particular nutrient, then the UL represents the high end. It is only advisable to begin taking a supplement if you are confident that you are not presently meeting the RDI and unlikely to exceed the UL.

Ready to start your personalized routine?

Is There Really Any Benefit To Multivitamins

Half of all American adultsincluding 70 percent of those age 65 and oldertake a multivitamin or another vitamin or mineral supplement regularly. The total price tag exceeds $12 billion per yearmoney that Johns Hopkins nutrition experts say might be better spent on nutrient-packed foods like fruit, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products.

In an editorial in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine titled Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements, Johns Hopkins researchers reviewed evidence about supplements, including three very recent studies:

• An analysis of research involving 450,000 people, which found that multivitamins did not reduce risk for heart disease or cancer.
• A study that tracked the mental functioning and multivitamin use of 5,947 men for 12 years found that multivitamins did not reduce risk for mental declines such as memory loss or slowed-down thinking.
• A study of 1,708 heart attack survivors who took a high-dose multivitamin or placebo for up to 55 months. Rates of later heart attacks, heart surgeries and deaths were similar in the two groups.

Will a Daily Vitamin Help Keep Your Heart Healthy?

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When Should You Use A Quiz

Honestly, you should avoid any self-prescribed vitamin or micronutrition supplement. That is because excessive use of such products/tablets might cause more harm than good. So, taking an online quiz should be your last optionand you should always prioritize consulting a doctor first.

But an online test would come in handy if you are curious to know what micronutrition to take. Here are the three most common reasons why people take a Quiz.

When You Are About To Get Or Already Are Pregnant

Studies prove that an unborn child might suffer health issues in the future if faced with vitamin deficiency before birth. That is why experts advise prospect moms to consume nutrition-rich food and take supplementary medicine if necessary. So, taking an online quiz could help pregnant women to get to know their needs better.

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The Role Of Vitamins And Minerals

The body has thousands of chemical reactions going on in each cell, every second of the day. The cells continually process the proteins, fats and carbohydrates from food.

Vitamins and minerals are essential parts of those chemical reactions. Without them, essential body functions couldn’t take place, but you only need very small amounts of them. Most people can get all the vitamins and minerals they need from a healthy diet.

How The Hum Vitamin Quiz Works

Informed by science, clinical research, and advanced product-matching technology, our quiz can be your best ally to create a personalized supplement routine.

We wanted to ensure that each of our customers will ultimately achieve their health and wellness goals, Walter says. It took us some time, as we wanted not only scientifically validated questions, but also a quiz that you could complete in under five minutes.

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Vegan Vitamin Brands Requirements

3rd party testing

Bias can be dangerous, especially when it comes to medicine and nutrition.

When looking for the perfect multivitamin or nutrient supplement, you should make sure the brand carries out independent 3rd party testing for all its products for added safety.

Non-Toxic Fillers

Most supplements brands on the market will fill their products with unnecessary, possibly toxic bulking ingredients that make the products cheaper to produce. When choosing a supplement, make sure fillers are kept to a minimum, and steer clear of controversial ingredients like magnesium silicate and titanium dioxide!

Vegan Capsules

Lastly, make sure that the supplement capsules are free from hidden animal products like gelatin, animal glycerol, and carmine.

When To See A Doctor

The symptoms of vitamin deficiency vary. Some deficiencies have no symptoms at all. In general, if you have any of these symptoms, you should contact your doctor:

• You are losing your hair.
• You feel weak.
• You are often tired, even when you get plenty of sleep.
• You have cracks in the corners of your mouth.
• You have acne-like bumps on your cheeks, upper arms, thighs, and buttocks.
• Your vision is getting worse, especially at night.
• You have dry eyes.
• You are having panic attacks.
• You have tingling or numbness in your hands and feet.
• Your gums bleed.

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Vitamin A For Vision And A Good Immune System

“Vitamin A is important for maintaining good vision,” Kooi says. “It is also known as the anti-infective vitamin because of its role in supporting activities of the immune system.”

What you need to know about vitamin A:

• The recommended daily intake of vitamin A is 3,000 IU.
• Too much vitamin A can cause nausea and vomiting and result in weak bones.
• Vitamin A deficiency is rare in the United States you should get plenty as long as you eat your fruits and vegetables. It may be in your multivitamin, but you should not need any additional supplements.

“The best nutrition sources for vitamin A are carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, apricots, cantaloupe, broccoli, eggs, milk, and cod liver oil,” says Kooi.

Why Free Radicals May Be Harmful

Free radicals are a natural byproduct of energy metabolism and are also generated by ultraviolet rays, tobacco smoke, and air pollution. They lack a full complement of electrons, which makes them unstable, so they steal electrons from other molecules, damaging those molecules in the process.

Free radicals have a well-deserved reputation for causing cellular damage. But they can be helpful, too. When immune system cells muster to fight intruders, the oxygen they use spins off an army of free radicals that destroys viruses, bacteria, and damaged body cells in an oxidative burst. Vitamin C can then disarm the free radicals.

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A Closer Look At Trace Minerals

A thimble could easily contain the distillation of all the trace minerals normally found in your body. Yet their contributions are just as essential as those of major minerals such as calcium and phosphorus, which each account for more than a pound of your body weight.

Trace minerals

Trace minerals carry out a diverse set of tasks. Here are a few examples:

• Iron is best known for ferrying oxygen throughout the body.
• Fluoride strengthens bones and wards off tooth decay.
• Zinc helps blood clot, is essential for taste and smell, and bolsters the immune response.
• Copper helps form several enzymes, one of which assists with iron metabolism and the creation of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood.

The other trace minerals perform equally vital jobs, such as helping to block damage to body cells and forming parts of key enzymes or enhancing their activity.

Vitamins And Chronic Disease

In developed countries like Australia, vitamin deficiency is rare, but the inadequate intake of some vitamins, as a result of an unhealthy diet, is not so rare and has been linked to a number of chronic diseases. These include cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis.

There is ongoing research to study the effects of taking vitamin supplements to prevent chronic disease, and evidence around nutrition and diet is constantly changing. It is important that you consult with your doctor before taking vitamin supplements in high doses.

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Frequently Asked Questionsexpand All

• Birth defects, especially neural tube defects