3 Questions to Ask About Vitamins

3 Questions to Ask About Vitamins

As a kid, your mother told you to take your Flintstone vitamins with dinner. As an adult, vitamins can still have certain advantages, even if the way people take them has changed. Multivitamins are out and omega-3 fatty acids are in, according to a survey from 2016. The survey also found that 52 percent of Americans report taking some kind of dietary supplement. If you’re part of the 48 percent that isn’t and want to change that, then you can start by asking the questions below.

What’s My Diet Like?

It’s a good idea to ask your doctor about taking vitamins, but don’t be surprised if he or she responds by asking about your diet first. That’s because many people can get the nutrients they need by eating a well-balanced diet. For instance, foods like tofu and spinach are packed with iron, and you need iron to keep your body running properly.

If you try to put more iron into your diet and still come up short, that’s OK. Women, in particular, are more likely than men to have iron deficiency issues, and you can add an iron supplement if your diet isn’t getting you where you need to be. It’s not OK, though, to eat an incredibly poor diet and then try and take a few vitamins to cancel everything out. “Canceling everything out” is not a good health strategy in general. All the supplements in the world won’t make up for doing things like having donuts for breakfast seven days a week.

Where Will I Get My Vitamins?

Unfortunately, the dietary supplement industry is populated by a lot of people who want to scam you more than they want to make you into a healthier, happier person. You can’t just grab the first bottle of vitamins from the shelf and assume they’re good enough. Experts say you need to look for certain clues that tell you whether or not a vitamin is what it claims to be. One of those clues can be found by looking for the percentage in the supplement’s main ingredient.

When you get a prescription filled at your neighborhood drug store, you can be confident that the drug was carefully tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But vitamins are not regulated by the FDA. They don’t have to prove anything to the government first. That makes it all the more important that consumers research their supplement manufacturer to ensure everything is on the up and up. If a company cares about its customers, then it should have no problem being transparent about the way it makes its products.

Am I Expecting Miracles?

Hey, did you know that vitamins can help you live to be 150 years old? No? That’s because they can’t, and you should be suspicious of any vitamin bottle that makes outrageous claims. Vitamins aren’t going to magically solve every single health problem you have. That’s a dangerous belief for several reasons.

For one thing, it gives people false hope. It can also make them double up on vitamins because they figure if one vitamin does a little good, then two will do a lot of good. Something like Vitamin D toxicity is rare but not unheard of, so take only the recommended dose. If you’ve got something like Seasonal Affective Disorder and the Vitamin D isn’t working like you hoped, that’s frustrating, but doubling or tripling your dosage is not the answer.

Instead, talk to your doctor about other ways to fight seasonal depression. That may mean trying to exercise more, or buying a SAD lamp, or even going on antidepressants until spring. Remember that dietary supplements are called supplements for a reason: They’re supposed to be a side dish rather than the main course.