Using supplements as insurance

Healthy people who eat a nutritious diet still may want to use supplements tomake sure they’re getting adequate nutrition. Plenty of recent research supports
their choice.


Protecting against disease

Taking supplements may reduce the likelihood of some types of cancer and
other diseases. After analyzing data from a survey of 871 men and women, epidemiologists
at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center found that people
taking a daily multivitamin for more than ten years were 50 percent less likely
to develop colon cancer. In addition, selenium supplements seem to reduce
the risk of prostate cancer, and vitamin C seems to lower the risk of cataracts.


Supplementing aging appetites

As you grow older, your appetite may decline and your sense of taste and
smell may falter. If food no longer tastes as good as it once did, if you have to
eat alone all the time and don’t enjoy cooking for one, or if dentures make
chewing difficult, you may not be taking in all the foods that you need to get
the nutrients you require. Dietary supplements to the rescue!
If you’re so rushed that you literally never get to eat a full, balanced meal,
you may benefit from supplements regardless of your age.


Meeting a woman’s special needs

And what about women? At various stages of their reproductive lives, they,
too, benefit from supplements-as-insurance:

before menopause: Women, who lose iron each month through menstrual
bleeding, rarely get sufficient amounts of iron from a typical American diet
providing fewer than 2,000 calories a day. For them, and for women who
are often on a diet to lose weight, iron supplements may be the only practical
answer.
Iron is a mineral element, so it may be called “iron” or “elemental iron”
on the label. Iron pills contain a compound of elemental iron (“ferrous”
or “ferric,” from ferrum, the Latin word for iron), plus an ingredient such
as a sulfur derivative or lactic acid to enable your body to use the iron.
On the label, the combination reads “ferrous sulfate” or “ferrous lactate.”
Different iron compounds dissolve at different rates in your stomach,yielding different amounts of elemental iron, so supplement labels usually
list the iron this way: Ferrous sulfate 325 mg/Elemental iron 65 mg.
Translation? This pill has 325 milligrams of ferrous sulfate, yielding 65
milligrams plain old iron. Sometimes the label omits the first part and
simply says: Iron 65 mg.
If your doctor says, “Take one 325-milligram pill a day,” she means 325
milligrams iron compound, not plain elemental iron.


During pregnancy and lactation: Women who are pregnant or nursing
often need supplements to provide the nutrients they need to build new
maternal and fetal tissue or to produce nutritious breast milk. In addition,
supplements of the B vitamin folate now are known to decrease a
woman’s risk of giving birth to a child with a neural tube defect (a defect
of the spinal cord and column).
Never self-prescribe supplements while you’re pregnant. Large amounts
of some nutrients may actually be hazardous for your baby. For example,
taking megadoses of vitamin A while you’re pregnant can increase
the risk of birth defects.


Through adulthood: True, women older than 19 can get the calcium
they require (1,000 milligrams/day) from four 8-ounce glasses of nonfat
skim milk a day, three 8-ounce containers of yogurt made with nonfat
milk, 22 ounces of canned salmon (with the soft edible bones; no, you
definitely should not eat the hard bones in fresh salmon!), or any combination
of the above. However, expecting women to do this nutritional
balancing act every single day may be unrealistic. The simple alternative
is calcium supplements.