For those who are not sure what dietary supplements are, for better explanation this can include vitamins, herbs, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, etcetera. You can find them in a variety of forms: capsules, traditional pills, energy bars, powders, drinks and so on. Among most popular supplements in the market nowadays are vitamins, minerals, such as iron and calcium; Echinacea, garlic, probiotics, fish oil, glucosamine, among others.
Benefits of taking supplements
If your diet is not as nutritious as it should be, you might want to take supplements that will provide you with all those important nutrients. Nevertheless, don’t count that supplements will replace you the variety of foods essential for your health.
First of all, remember that the best source of vitamins is food, not plastic and glass jars. If you don’t have any disease, do not suffer from overweight, fatigue or insomnia, eat diversely, but do not overeat, make exercises, spend a lot of time in the Sun and in fresh air, then most likely you don’t need synthetic vitamins.
Side effects
Most of the supplements include quite active components, which have strong effect. Therefore you should consider the possibility of unpredictable side effects. This particularly happens when it comes to a new product.
Side effects may also happen when people take the supplements instead of prescribed medicines or when they combine too many of them together. Some of the supplements, for example, can increase the risk of bleeding or can affect the person’s response to anesthesia. Also, they can interrelate with other prescribed drugs in unpredictable way.
Take into account that some of the ingredients that are included into dietary supplements are also added nowadays to some foods, for example, some cereals and energy beverages. This means that you may get more of these nutrients than you think, and it may be some kind of dangerous thing that will provoke side effects.
During pregnancy or nursing, you should be very careful about taking supplements. Besides, be very cautious about giving them to a child. That is explained by the fact that most dietary supplements have not been well studied for these age groups.
