As anyone who reads my articles can attest, I am a big fan of vitamins and supplements.

I believe that when they are taken as designed, as a supplement to a healthy lifestyle, they have a positive effect on our health.

People get in trouble when they take vitamins and supplements as a replacement for a healthy lifestyle. I have heard the mindset of “I don’t have to exercise or watch what I eat since I take vitamins.” This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The Truth About Vitamins & Supplements

Vitamins are designed to supplement a healthy diet. They are great for making sure that you are getting the adequate amount of vitamins, minerals and nutrients to sustain your body, repair your body down to the cellular level, and a great way to get extra anti-oxidants.

Anti-oxidants are positively charged particles that destroy free radicals. Free radicals are negatively particles that can disrupt your body on a cellular level and create inflammation. The overall effect of free radicals is that they cause the body to age quicker than it would without them. They cause the body to break down quicker as well.

The vitamins I recommend are a good multi vitamin and fish or flax seed oil. The fish or flax seed oil has omega 3 fatty acids which help reduce inflammation. A good multi-vitamin will have all of the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that your body needs.

If you are taking a good multi vitamin then you don’t have to worry about the fad vitamins that come out every few years and that everyone should take. A good multi-vitamin will have all of the vitamins that your body needs.

Fad or Faux?

Recently a study came out of California which concluded that vitamin supplementation did not affect mortality. The researchers looked at nearly 14,000 residents of a California retirement community for over 3 decades. An analysis of the findings found that taking vitamins did not extend their lifespan.

Considering how I feel about multi-vitamin supplementation, I decided to delve into this study to see if I could figure out how they came to that conclusion.

The researchers started looking at the residents intake of vitamins A,C and E in the early 1980s. Since then supplementation did not make a difference with when they died.

“Neither dietary nor supplemental intake of vitamin A or vitamin C nor supplemental intake of vitamin E was significantly associated with mortality,” the authors wrote.

Reading this statement made me feel better. Vitamins A and E were fad vitamins a few decades ago. Everyone in medicine and health care were recommending these vitamins for all patients. Researchers later found out that vitamin E in large doses can be cancer causing.

That is why it is better to take a good multi vitamin. Not something that you find at your local drug store or mini mart. Go to a health food store. Order them from the Pain Free Lifestyle website.

B complex specifically, in multi-vitamins, is a few different vitamins all lumped in together. These vitamins are full of anti-oxidants and will do more for your overall health than any other vitamin.

The residents weren’t taking B complex. The vitamins they were taking probably helped to prevent some colds and some types of sicknesses, but couldn’t prevent mortality.

Be smart about how you eat and the vitamins that you take. That is the Pain Free Way.