Taking Supplements for Optimal Nutrition

There is little doubt that in the land of plenty, finding enough to eat is not a problem for most Americans. In fact many have the luxury of being able to consider various ways to maximize their nutritional needs not to mention a desert or two along the way.

The USDA Dietary Guidelines give us a good road map to maximize our dietary needs and help protect against chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables is one way to help optimize your diet. Consuming whole grain foods is another. Unfortunately, too many American's simply aren't following the guidelines.

Dietary supplements are intended as useful additions and not as substitutes for a good diet. They are another means of helping optimize your healthy diet.

So what role should supplements play in your life? Since most people fail to get recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals from their usual diets, a multivitamin can help provide insurance against nutritional gaps. Unless you get three or four servings of dairy products every day, you are very likely to be short in calcium intake, and a calcium supplement can help meet that shortfall.

The American Heart Association recommends consuming at least two servings per week of fish, especially fatty fish such as salmon, which contain polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids that are beneficial for heart health. Since most Americans are not fish eaters, another way to optimize omega-3 intake is to take a fish oil supplement.

The U.S. Public Health Service recommends that women of child-bearing age get 400 micrograms of folic acid (a B vitamin), so that if they become pregnant they have a very low risk of having a baby with a neural tube birth defect such as spina bifida. Look for a multivitamin that will provide this amount of folic acid.

Some nutrients such as vitamin C are very easy to get in a healthy diet, and yet a large fraction of the population falls short. If you eat as many fruits and vegetables as the Dietary Guidelines recommend, you will probably get 200 mg or more of vitamin C — more than twice the recommended daily allowances (RDA) for adults. If you don't eat lots of fruits and vegetables, a vitamin C supplement can help optimize your intake of this vital nutrient, and an optimal intake should be considered to be 200 mg or more, not just the RDA.

Other nutrients like vitamin E are not concentrated in any particular foods and therefore are difficult to get in adequate amounts. National surveys show that over 90% of Americans fail to get recommended amounts of vitamin E. Observational studies of tens of thousands of people showed that men and women who took a vitamin E supplement of 200 IU or more for at least 2 years had a reduced risk of heart disease. This is many times the RDA of vitamin E, but not an unreasonably high amount. Might it be an optimal amount? Clinical studies have been mixed, but most of them have been done in people who already had heart disease — possibly a whole different scenario from the use of vitamin E in preventing disease in the first place.

The bottom line is that you might want to consider many ways of optimizing your diet in order to improve your overall wellness. Eating healthier foods, avoiding excess calories, striving to maintain your ideal weight, and using dietary supplements judiciously to optimize nutrient intake are all sensible approaches. All have an important role to play in a healthier lifestyle.