Health & Fitness

Doctor's Orders: Take Your Vitamins

Doctor's Orders: Take Your Vitamins

Do you take vitamins or nutritional supplements?

Are you consistent about it... making sure to take your supplements every day, as part of your regular health routine?

Your doctor is certainly hoping so!

Your family health practitioner loves to find ways to keep you in excellent health. They want you looking good, feeling great, able to ward off illness, and full of positive energy.

As a vital part of that objective, your doctor wants you to fuel your body with all the nutrients it needs, on a consistent basis.

And supplementing is an important part of an effective overall health plan.

In fact, it's one of at least five key health practices you'll find the most energetic people you know using every day.

Your healthiest friends watch what they eat, and they exercise regularly. They drink plenty of water, and they get enough sleep.

And they make sure to take good supplements that supply the vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy.

Doctors Orders: Take Your Vitamins

Why Supplements Are Important

There's no getting around the fact that the Standard American Diet (SAD, some people call it) isn't what it was just a couple of generations ago.

Grandma and Grandpa ate a lot more fresh, unprocessed food than we even have access to today.

Vegetables grown in the earth, rather than manufactured in profit-oriented growing facilities.

Meat from free-range animals, instead of animals who've been pumped full of chemicals to make them grow faster and fatter.

And breads baked from grains grown organically... rather than foamy "bread products" so common in the supermarket these days.

They had candy... but not as much, and not of the kind mass-produced (and filled with additives) today.

They had chips, cookies, and other treats... but, well, you get the idea. The treats Grandma and Grandpa ate were made from simpler, more natural ingredients than the things we get nowadays.

There was no "fast food" in the earlier half of the last century, either.

Here's the bottom line: just by virtue of the fact that food used to be better, people used to be able to fuel their bodies better using only the food they ate.

We're not so lucky these days.

Much of what our bodies need to be healthy and energetic - to help us live longer and stronger lives - has been processed out of a lot of the food that's available to us.

So we need to supplement, to provide our bodies what's missing from the SAD.

Doctors Orders: Take Your Vitamins

Start With A Simple Multi-Vitamin

You don't need to immediately begin taking every pill and powder being advertised today (even if you could afford to do so).

Start with one multi-vitamin... and develop a habit of consistency in making sure to take it every day.

Check with your family health provider, and get their direction on the best all-around multi-vitamin for your body's particular needs.

Over time, if you need other specific supplementation, your doctor will be happy to advise you further.

Even if you "eat right," you probably need at least a bit of supplementation. Of course, you don't want to use your daily vitamin pill as a substitute for a strong nutritional approach. But since you probably aren't getting everything you need to be "the healthiest you" from even the best diet, take your doctor's advice... and take your vitamins.

This is a guest post written by Anthony Cerullo. He is working at Founders Family Medicine and Urgent Care in Castle Rock as one of the urgent care providers.

Doctor's Orders: Take Your Vitamins
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