Take your Vitamins

When we don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, we miss essential nutrients, which can lower our risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other health conditions. Taking vitamins on a daily basis is like an insurance policy, a daily guarantee to ensure your body gets what it needs. It can never replace the shortfalls that happen when you don’t get what you need through food, but it certainly adds a great deal when combined with a good nutrition plan. The two, in particular, that I never go without and I strongly advise you to do the same are Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D3.

Vitamin B12 is thought to be one of the leading nutrient deficiencies in the world. Mainly found in animal products, Vitamin B12 is the performs several jobs in the body which are essentially for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Like the other B vitamins, B12 helps with the conversion of food into energy, which makes it a great metabolic booster.

1. Improve Energy Levels – Vitamin B12 benefits your metabolism because it’s needed to convert carbohydrates into useable glucose in the body. Glucose from carbohydrate foods is used as a form of energy, so this is the reason why people with vitamin B12 deficiencies often experience fatigue. You’ll be able to workout harder for longer!
2. Metabolise Proteins – One of the main features of Vitamin B12 is that it plays an active role in protein metabolism, which trickles over into several areas of the body. The ability to process more food leads to an increase in calories burn.
3. Healthy Skin & Hair – Vitamin B12 is essential for healthy skin, hair and nails because it plays a major part in cell reproduction. Vitamin B12 benefits skin health by reducing redness, dryness, inflammation and acne blemishes. It can also reduce hair breakage and help nails to become stronger.

Vitamin D3 is sometimes referred to as the “sunshine vitamin” because it’s produced in your skin in response to sunlight. Sun exposure on bare skin for 5-10 minutes 2-3 times per week allows the body the ability to produce sufficient vitamin D, but vitamin D has a half-life of only two weeks, meaning that stores can run low, especially in the cooler months. Getting a sufficient amount of vitamin D is important for:

1. Healthy Bones – Vitamin D plays a substantial role in the regulation of calcium and maintenance of phosphorus levels in the blood, two factors that are extremely important for maintaining healthy bones.
2. Immune system support – The cold and flu are two of the most common illnesses that have plagued humanity for centuries, and we still haven’t been able to figure out how to beat them. Usually, illness occurs when the immune system, our main line of defence, isn’t functioning properly. Vitamin D is stimulates the production of powerful peptides in white blood cells, protecting the lungs from infection.
3. Nutrition for your Brain – Getting enough vitamin D is important for your neurological health and research has been building over the last few years around the link between Alzheimer’s disease and vitamin D deficiency.