Were you a “Flintstone Kid,” chewing on your multivitamins each day before heading off to school? Maybe you loved the taste and hated to grow up and find out that not all vitamins are so fruity and delicious? Maybe you’ve even wondered if multi vitamins are really necessary for adults.

Although the answer to whether or not you need a multi-vitamin is complicated, multivitamins remain the best-selling nutritional supplement. For natural health experts, they tend to be a center of well-being and then you can additional supplements, tailored to specific concerns, to your regimen as well. Multivitamins are meant to supplement your diet, which may lack nutrition. For example, if you avoid dairy, then you would want to get additional calcium from your multivitamin. Studies have found that people that take vitamins tend to have a lower risk of serious diseases. However, these findings have not always translated in clinical trials.

When you look at clinical trials, there’s not a lot of cause and effect that shows that taking multivitamins actually have a lot of health benefits. But there is also a lot of variation in multivitamin formulations and what vitamins and minerals they include and exclude.

For the most part, you can’t really overdose on multivitamins, so they can’t adversely affect your health. However, some minerals are only needed in trace amounts and taking too much can actually interfere with the absorption of other nutrients.

If you’re over a certain age, pregnant or planning to become pregnant, or breastfeeding, then a multi-vitamin is typically recommended. Certain diets, including vegetarian or weight loss plans also encourage the incorporation of a multivitamin so that you get nutrients that you may be missing. Smokers and drinkers can also benefit from a multi vitamin to replace nutrients that may otherwise be lost.

It is best to get all your nutrients from food sources, so taking a multivitamin doesn’t replace a diet of burgers and pizza. But it can augment an otherwise healthy diet.

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