Are Multivitamins Good For You?

You can ask any two doctors if it is good for you to take multivitamins and both of them will probably give you different answers. While one doctor may say that it is not necessary to take a multivitamin if you eat a healthy, well-balanced diet, the other doctor may say that multivitamin supplements are vital to good health. In any case, they will not tell you that you shouldn’t take them.

According to Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the program in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson and renowned author, he believes that although the best source of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals, etc.) is in the foods we eat, there are some essential vitamins that would be impossible to get enough of through dietary intake. Among those vitamins are vitamins D and E in particular. He recommends that we take a good multivitamin daily along with an antioxidant supplement.

Also, if you run into a doctor that tells you that you shouldn’t be supplementing with a multivitamin and that you should try, instead, to eat a healthy diet, consider this. If it were so easy to get the nutrients we need to maintain good health, why do obstetricians prescribe prenatal vitamins to pregnant women and why do geriatric specialists routinely prescribe vitamin therapy to seniors?

Supplementing with a good, high quality multivitamin provides nutrients and trace minerals that the body isn’t able to get in adequate amounts from the foods we eat. If you were to eat adequate amounts of food to provide those micronutrients, we’d have to take a diet pill to get rid of the excess weight! A good multivitamin is much healthier.