preview

Is It Necessary to Take Vitamin Supplements? Essay

Decent Essays

Introduction:

In M2 we have been set the question ‘What are vitamins – and who needs them’? Vitamins are essential substances that cannot be manufactured by the body. We need small amounts of vitamins for growth and development. Without vitamins the body cannot survive.

Plenty of foods naturally contain vitamins. Some popular foods, such ass breakfast cereals, are protected with vitamins and minerals. But there are some people who are very particular and do not like to eat a lot of foods. Those people do not gain all the vitamins they need therefore they wont be healthy. Also, young baby’s can only eat certain amounts of food, this means that they are not receiving all the vitamins either, and they will need to take supplements to …show more content…

(Jeni Worden, www.netdoctor.co.uk, 2010)

Benefits and limitations:

The Benefits of vitamin C are:

Protection against…
-Immune system deficiencies
-Cardiovascular disease
-Prenatal health problems
-Eye disease
-Skin wrinkling
- Scurvy
- And many others

“A recent study published in Seminars in Preventive and Alternative Medicine that looked at over 100 studies over 10 years revealed a growing list of benefits of vitamin C” (Kathleen M. Zelman, 2010).

The Limitations of vitamin C are:

As with other nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, over intake or overdose of vitamin C can become damage to our health. Toxicity of vitamin C can cause nausea, diarrhoea, fatigue, insomnia, flashes or rashes, kidney stones, etc. The amount of vitamin C cannot be higher than 3000mg/day “Actually 2000mg/day is considered to be high for adults” (Ly Pham, 2011).

Vitamin C should be taken in through diets, fruits and vegetables so that it can have its best effects and is good for our health. Vitamin C supplements are only used as addition if our bodies do not have enough Vitamin C.

The role of vitamin C in preventing cold is not totally proved, and in fact some researchers found no links between vitamin C and its cold-fighting potential. Therefore, do not fall under the misapprehension of taking too much vitamin C when you have a cold or flu since you can be overdosed and suffer from vitamin C

Get Access