If you only ever take one supplement, it should probably be a multivitamin. Multivitamins are formulated to deliver a range of essential vitamins and minerals to the body. All of these vitamins and minerals have key roles to play in keeping the body healthy and properly functioning, and would otherwise need to be obtained from either a variety of individual supplements, or a very wide variety of food sources.
The average person can benefit greatly by taking a standard multivitamin, although people with particular needs or known deficiencies may want to look for more specific formulations. In general, you should search for a multivitamin that includes vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, and vitamin D, as well as magnesium, iron, calcium, and iodine. Maintaining adequate levels of these nutrients has a powerful effect on overall health.
Because all the nutrients found in multivitamins play some important role in the body, it would be nearly impossible to list all the different diseases and conditions that can be potentially countered by taking one. The specifics depend on which nutrients are in the multivitamin’s formulation and the levels of those nutrients already in your body. Overall, taking these supplements will reduce your risk of many chronic diseases and cause you to recover more quickly from diseases. They also support healthy immune and cardiovascular function and healthy development of the brain, hair, eyes, and teeth.
Regularly taking a multivitamin can even reduce hunger and aid in weight loss, since the body becomes hungry when it is lacking in certain nutrients. Multivitamins may also slow age-related damage to DNA, increase memory, and prevent cancer and heart disease.
Multivitamins are much more convenient and cost-effective than trying to take the vitamins and minerals on their own as individual supplements. They are also simpler than trying to get all of these nutrients purely through diet, which is a surprisingly complicated task.
