Thumper wrote:I drink a $hit ton of water a day, eat a decent diet, and take a multi plus extra B's and C's. What would you suggest adding diet wise?
Without running a full blood panel and hair analysis on you it's mostly (educated) guesswork.
However, most multi vitamin formulas fall short on the essential minerals and electrolytes. Mind you. They have some. And some is way better than none. For example, my multi-vitamin has 25% of the daily recommended amount for magnesium. That's a good start. My diet is probably not quite as good as yours. But, if you are eating a lot of green leafy vegetables, an ounce or two of almonds every day, and good lean proteins such as salmon, chicken, and lean beef you are probably getting about 50% of the daily recommended amount from your diet. That still leaves approximately 10-30% of your daily intake of magnesium you are not getting by eating right and taking a multi-vitamin with a decent amount of magnesium in it.
Repeat the above paragraph for potassium, zinc, manganese, calcium, and etc. The numbers will vary slightly but it's mostly close to the same. The average multi-vitamin/multi-mineral formula has about 10-25% of the RDI for most minerals and electrolytes. A good diet will add about 25-50% per day. A great diet will cover 75% or more of the RDI. I haven't meant anyone who has a great diet except maybe an Olympic athlete or a professional athlete. And even they take supplements.
Frankly, I don't get too wrapped up in trying to supplement every single trace mineral. I focus on the primary ones such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and in a minor way sodium chloride.
My solution for me was to take a good multi-vitamin/multi-mineral formula and then take an additional supplement for calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Sodium chloride usually takes care of itself unless you are doing something that excretes a shit ton of it like hard physical labor, running a lot, environmental stressors such as being out in 100 plus degree weather for hours at a time, or taking a diuretic.
I also take extra B and C vitamins. It's a shit ton of vitamins but I compensate for a crappy diet.
Here are a couple of links so you can get an idea of why I say even a good diet might not be enough.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/Health_Informati ... takes.aspx https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK5 ... objectonly https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magne ... fessional/