If you wash down your daily multivitamin with a green juice every morning, you might be patting yourself on the back for being healthy—but are you actually getting too much of a good thing? If you’re eating a relatively nutritious diet, the truth is, your multivitamin isn’t doing you much good.
Ideally, our bodies absorb all the nutrients they need from the food we eat—but let’s face it, you probably don’t have a perfect diet every single day. If your diet is really unhealthy, a multivitamin may be in order, but most of us are getting the majority of our essential nutrients from food. So unless you’re chasing your Big Mac with a chocolate milkshake for every meal, popping a multivitamin is kind of redundant.
Instead, supplement only the nutrients you aren’t receiving on a daily basis. Let’s break down which five vitamins and minerals you need to supplement in your life and why you should kick your multivitamin habit, stat.
1. Magnesium
Magnesium is at the top of our list for a reason. An essential mineral to the human body, magnesium helps with more than 300 enzymatic processes and it’s integral to DNA and RNA, so it’s kind of a big deal. Bad news: the majority of us don’t get enough magnesium in our daily diets and that can lead to headaches, muscle cramps, nausea, metabolic syndrome, migraines, PMS, and heart attacks. Yes, pretty much everything you don’t want to happen to you. So take magnesium nightly before bed (and it will help you get a good night’s sleep) for optimal benefits.
Eat: Kale, spinach, and swiss chard are all high in magnesium, but you’d need to eat almost 50 cups of raw spinach to get your daily value of magnesium. Supplement with about 300-400 mg per day.
2. Vitamin C
It’s your go-to vitamin when you’re feeling sick, but vitamin C is good for more than just kicking the common cold. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that fights free radicals in the body and it’s beneficial for tissue formation. If you’re an athlete, Vitamin C can help you repair from your workouts and if you’re a stress case, vitamin C can help stabilize your cortisol levels, so you’ll feel less stressed and tired after a rough day at work. Best taken on an empty stomach, start your day with this powerful supplement.
Eat: Papaya, broccoli, bell peppers, brussels sprouts, and strawberries all offer you more than 100 percent of your daily intake of vitamin C. If you’re watching your daily sugar consumption and don’t want to eat too much fruit, training everyday, or feel a cold coming on take 65-90 mg a day.
