There are certain vitamins and minerals that your body needs in order to function properly and stay healthy. Ideally you would get all the vitamins that you need from food but it’s very hard to eat a diet that includes the right amounts of all the vitamins and minerals that you need. When you add in other factors like diets, stress eating, restaurant food, and other things that impact how often you eat and what you eat it can be even tougher to try and get all the nutrients your body needs from food.
In order to stay healthy and to get the vitamins and minerals that are missing from your daily diet you need to take vitamins and minerals as supplements. These supplements don’t replace the need for food but they can make sure that your body gets the bare minimum amount of vitamins that it needs to function everyday so that you have enough energy and mental clarity to get through your day.
When you don’t get enough vitamins and minerals you will be able to tell because you will feel sluggish and sick. You may get very tired, or you may just lose interest in life in general. If you take too many of one particular type of vitamin you might become physically sick. If you normally don’t eat a very well balanced diet and you start to notice yourself becoming weaker and more tired it’s a safe bet that a lack of vitamins and minerals is to blame. If you start taking a high quality multivitamin and eating a better diet you will probably feel good again in no time.
In addition to keeping you healthy and keeping your body running properly vitamins and minerals can do a lot of other things for the body. Vitamins and minerals can fight aging, help your skin and hair, help you stave off age-related illnesses and impairments, and even help you fight disease. Vitamins and certain types of herbal supplements can even help you manage chronic conditions like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other long term conditions that can make life uncomfortable and difficult.
Some cultures believe that vitamins and supplements can be used as medicine and that the body can heal itself when it is given the right amounts of vitamins and supplements to use as fuel so that prescription medicines aren’t needed. While there is still a lot of debate about that topic there is some evidence to show that the body can heal itself of serious diseases under the right circumstances without the intervention of Western medicine.
Because vitamins and minerals are so essential to staying healthy people that have vitamin deficiencies can suffer from all kinds of health problems ranging from slowed growth process in children to malnutrition and even starvation in older people. Vitamin deficiencies are no laughing matter, and can happen to anyone.
