Dietary Supplements are taking more and more shelf space in the stores and they’re also available all over the internet. There are different kinds of supplements. There is the vitamin dietary supplement and there are mineral supplements and herbal supplements. Let’s look at the vitamin dietary supplement to see when these may be necessary.
Let’s first look at a couple of the fat soluble vitamins. These are vitamin A, D, E and K. Since they are fat soluble, they are stored in the body until they are needed.
Vitamin A has a huge job to do for our bodies. It helps our immune system fight infection, it’s important for bone growth and it is important to the health of our vision and skin. We ingest vitamin A when we consume milk, eggs and cereal fortified with vitamin A. It can also be found in liver, cheese and certain produce.
Vitamin A deficiency is rarely seen in the United States but in developing countries replete with malnourished children, there is widespread blindness and infection as a result of a lack of Vitamin A. Vitamin A toxicity can happen when there is a buildup of vitamin A, which rarely occurs through dietary intake but more commonly through the use of supplements as excess vitamin A is stored in the liver. This can cause birth defects and central nervous system disorders. It can also cause liver damage and surprisingly, osteoporosis.
A vitamin dietary supplement may not always be the answer we are looking for. It’s important to understand what role the different vitamins play in our overall health and to understand how much of each of the vitamins our bodies need. If we truly need a vitamin dietary supplement, it becomes something of value to our health but it can also be detrimental to our health to take too much of a good thing.
Some medical conditions make it difficult for our bodies to absorb certain vitamins so a vitamin dietary supplement certainly has an important role to play when it is truly needed.
Vitamin K is another important vitamin for our bodies as it aids in the clotting of the blood. A deficiency in this vitamin can be very dangerous as it can lead to bleeding and even hemorrhaging. Yet this is another vitamin that we can get enough of in our daily diet without resorting to taking a vitamin dietary supplement.
Another thing to consider: Our bodies can stand 500 times the RDA of vitamin K as long as it comes from food yet that is not the case for synthetic vitamin K. We can reach toxic levels by taking too much of this vitamin dietary supplement.
We can consult with our physicians to be sure we are getting enough of the vitamins that we need and to see if we might need a vitamin dietary supplement.
