Healthy Lifestyle
Vitamin and Mineral Supplements for you

Why take vitamin and mineral supplements?
For healthy people, supplements may help prevent vitamin and mineral deficiencies when the diet does not provide all necessary nutrients. They can also supply amounts of nutrients larger than the diet can provide. Larger amounts of some nutrients may help to protect against future disease.
People may consume diets that are deficient in one or more nutrients for a variety of reasons. The diet often supplies less than adequate amounts of several essential vitamins and minerals. Recent nutrition surveys in the U.S. have found large numbers of people consume too little calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and, possibly, copper and manganese.
Weight-loss, pure vegetarian, macrobiotic, and several other diets can also place some people at risk of deficiencies that vary with the type of diet. Certain groups of people are at especially high risk of dietary deficiencies. Studies have found that elderly people living in their own homes often have dietary deficiencies of vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, calcium, and zinc, and occasionally of vitamin B1 and vitamin B2. Premenopausal women have been found often to consume low amounts of calcium, iron, vitamin A, and vitamin C.