What Happens If My Body Doesn't Have Enough Vitamins?

When you see information about vitamins, you often see the word 'essential' right before 'vitamins'. Have you ever wondered why? It's actually quite simple. Our bodies require vitamins and minerals to function at optimum efficiency. It's interesting, then, that our bodies are incapable of producing most vitamins and minerals for themselves. Instead we have to source these necessary vitamins and minerals from outside sources.

Vitamins occur naturally in many of the foods we at, as they are organic compounds. You can also get vitamins in the form of a vitamin supplement. A staggering thirteen vitamins are considered necessary to perform crucial functions in the body such as provide protection against infection and diseases, helping the body grow, helping the body's metabolism and the removal of waste products.

The body uses vitamins a little like building blocks. It puts all the different blocks together in different combinations to produce the hormones and enzymes that control things such as heart rate, glucose levels, blood pressure and other chemical reactions.

Can I Have Too Many Vitamins?

Over the years, guidelines for the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of each vitamin and mineral have been formulated. These take into account a person's age, gender, and current state of health. A pregnant woman, for example, needs a certain combination of vitamins in order to protect the fetus from birth defects. An adult man requires different types and amounts of vitamins to an adult woman. Also, the nutritional requirements of children, teenagers and the elderly are quite different.

Food basically acts like fuel for your body. If you give your body the best type of fuel it will be able to perform at optimum levels. Give it dirty or bad fuel, and you'll begin to notice a decline in performance levels.

What Happens If I Don't Have Enough Vitamins?

Vitamin deficiencies tend to grow over time, so the first signs may be hardly noticeable. However, down the road they can lead to serious health issues. Not enough people eat a nutritionally balanced diet nowadays. It's common for adults to have very poor eating habits. Healthy, natural foods have been replaced by processed foods, high fat foods, fast food and restaurant food.

Unfortunately we can't take a look inside our body and see what exactly is going wrong in there thanks to our poor dietary habits. Most people don't even think about what they're eating until they start to put on excess weight and it becomes very noticeable. Excess weight is often one of the later signs, and by the time you notice the extra weight, there could already be serious trouble brewing inside.

A lack of Vitamin C can lead to tiredness, weakness, sore muscles and bleeding gums. If you're low on Vitamin D, you can end up with weak or possible even deformed bones. Not enough Vitamin E can cause the destruction of vital red blood cells. In extreme cases vitamin deficiencies can even lead to death.

If you're concerned you may be lacking some essential vitamins thanks to bad eating habits, than a vitamin supplement can be a good way to fill the gaps. The only way to know for sure if your body isn't getting enough vitamins is to have a blood test. Generally, though, if you think you might not be getting enough vitamins, you're probably right. Try a daily multivitamin supplement and you might just be surprised at how much better you feel overall.

Food Supplements for Bodybuilding: Multivitamins

For anyone interested in food supplements will become a way of life. Most will start using protein powder and other supplements designed to improve performance and build muscle faster, but the role of multivitamins as essential food supplements for bodybuilding is often underestimated.

Determining the usefulness of a multivitamin comes down to how the human body works and what each vitamin in the pill does for the body. Everything inside the human body works off of chemical reactions powered by enzymes. In order to do their job, enzymes must change shape which requires the assistance of a co-enzyme. The most valuable vitamins serve as co-enzymes, which is why the human body needs them to function properly.

From this you can see the most valuable role of vitamins and minerals for bodybuilders. They assist the chemical reactions that must take place for results to be achieved. Food supplements for bodybuilding help boost the metabolic rate while allowing the body to build muscle at a faster rate.

If you want to keep those chemical reactions firing along effectively, you will need adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals essential to building muscle. For anyone exerting themselves through intense workouts, food supplements should include all of these vitamins:

1. Biotin: helps the body process amino acids and increases energy levels.

2. Vitamin A: helps form new muscle tissue and to produce glycogen for storing carbohydrates.

3. Vitamin B1 (Thiamine): Helps in the production of hemoglobin and the processing of protein through the body.

4. Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin): Essential to the fat burning process.

5. Vitamin B3 (Niacin): Increases vasodilation which makes muscles appear fuller.

6. Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine): helps the body process the larger amounts of protein consumed by bodybuilders.

7. Vitamin B12 (Cobalamin): coordinates functioning of the brain and muscle tissue for more effective muscle building.

8. Vitamin C: a strong antioxidant that stops free radicals from damaging cells, boosts the production of collagen for firmer joints, and helps produce steroid hormones. Also helps with the absorption of iron.

9. Vitamin D: helps synthesize the most usable forms of energy for the body (ATP) and aids the absorption of calcium and phosphorus. This results in stronger bones and healthier joints.

10. Vitamin E: antioxidant helps flush free radicals from the body for healthier cells.

All of these vitamins are needed for healthy body functioning, but they need to be restored in a bodybuilder through the use of food supplements. A supplement will help restore nutrients lost during intense strength training workouts while helping the body digest the larger amount of nutrients consumed in a high-calorie weightlifting diet.

Inadequate supplies of even one little vitamin can wreck havoc inside the body and slow down your muscle-building results.

Just keep in mind that not all multivitamins are the same. Some compress the vitamins with too much heat and destroy many of the vitamins in the process. Others do not use the best sources or forms of the vitamins and are harder for your body to absorb.

Every process of the body can be improved with the use of high quality food supplements for bodybuilding. That includes everything from the amount of energy you have to power through workouts to how fast you are able to build muscle and how full your muscles appear.