Most of us eat foods that will keep us alive, yet they don’t enable our immune systems to thrive! Whether you eat a Paleo, keto, Autoimmune, vegan, vegetarian, SAD (Standard American Diet) or whole food diet, it’s a challenge to consume enough nutrient-rich foods to nourish your body. Even with a daily visit to your favorite juice bar to chug a green smoothie, your body is probably not getting all the vitamins and minerals you need. So the question is, can food replace a multivitamin like The Myers Way® Multi

Regardless of your age and gender, for optimal health, it’s critical to get the full spectrum of nutrients that your body requires. This includes vitamins A, C, and E, iron, riboflavin, zinc, magnesium, and B6, to name just a few. To mitigate the nutrient deficiencies in our diets, I recommend virtually everyone take a high-quality multivitamin. 

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Where and How are Vitamins and Minerals Stored and Used?

Your body needs around 30 key vitamins and minerals, often called micronutrients, on a daily basis to maintain all your bodily functions. You cannot make these on your own. There are two types of vitamins: those that dissolve in water and those that dissolve in fat.

Water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C, beta carotene, folic acid (B9), and other B vitamins must be consumed daily, as they cannot be stored by your body. Any excess is eliminated in your urine. Vitamin B12 is the only water-soluble vitamin stored in the liver. Water-soluble vitamins enable your body to:

  • Produce and release energy 
  • Build proteins and cells 
  • Make collagen 

Your body can store excess fat-soluble vitamins in your liver and fatty tissues. However, although these vitamins can be stored in your body, I recommend consuming them daily, as most of us do not have adequate stores of nutrients. These include vitamins A, D, E and K. Fat-soluble vitamins allow your body to: 

  • Build strong bones 
  • Maintain healthy vision
  • Protect the body serving as antioxidants
  • Interact favorably with other vitamins, facilitating absorption 

Minerals are also stored in your body, such as calcium in your bones. Your body absorbs the minerals it needs and excretes the excess. Your body stores minerals primarily for structure and metabolism, whereas vitamins are stored for nutrient reserves. Minerals play a pivotal role in your body as well. 

  • Sodium, chloride, and potassium: Help maintain water balance 
  • Calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium: Support bone health 
  • Sulfur: Integral in forming healthy hair, skin, and nails

How do They Interact and Balance Each Other?

Micronutrient absorption in your body is a delicate balance. Vitamins and minerals often interact in positive ways, working in unison for proper absorption. Vitamin D, for example, promotes proper calcium intake in your body from food, rather than depleting the stores in your bones.  Vitamin C encourages proper iron intake. 

Vitamins and minerals can also interfere with each other, blocking absorption. Too much manganese can deplete iron stores, and excessive vitamin C can inhibit copper absorption. Excess phosphorus can inhibit magnesium intake. 

Complications can occur if your sodium levels are too high. Your body attempts to eliminate any surplus of sodium. However, calcium binds with excess sodium, so you’ll lose much-needed calcium along with the excess sodium. 1

It is truly a complicated equation to ensure you are getting the proper amounts of vitamins and minerals. I’ve taken the guesswork out of the solution with my physician-formulated multivitamin

Why You Can’t Rely on Food Alone

Simply put, we aren’t eating the same produce our grandparents ate. Our food just does not contain the same amount of nutrients it contained prior to the 1950s. Modern agriculture has shifted its focus to mass production and pest resistance, resulting in depleted soils, and the “dilution effect,” which is the state of decreased minerals in plants. 

I recommend eating a diet of locally produced organic fruits and veggies grown from heirloom seeds, such as those often found at farmers’ markets. I also recommend eating only free-range chicken, grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish. Of course, limiting poor food choices, such as fast food and sugary desserts, is essential too!  

Selecting the Right Multivitamin

The importance of multivitamins cannot be overstated. Selecting the right multivitamin is critical as these micronutrients are essential for your cells and organs to function properly. They support your body’s optimal growth and development and are vital for the health of your immune system. 

Ensuring you get at least the minimum of each vitamin and mineral in the dietary guidelines for Americans is critical to optimizing your immune system and overall health, including supporting your body’s response to fatigue, mood imbalances, thyroid dysfunction, and heart disease, among other issues.2

The USRDA (recommended daily allowance) has set guidelines for adult Americans.3 This is created, in turn, from an Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) which represents an intake amount that will meet the needs of about 50 percent of the population. This is not necessarily the optimal amount for anyone. Plus, not all vitamins are created. Your body needs the appropriate levels of vitamins and minerals — enough yet not too much, as too much can be bad for you in some cases.

After years of searching for a multivitamin that contained all of the essential nutrients at the levels your body actually needs and not finding one, I decided to formulate my own. The Myers Way® multivitamin is made with pharmaceutical-grade nutrients at optimal levels.

Your body prefers nutrients in certain forms over others. There’s a big difference between cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin, and your body is partial to one over the other. When I custom formulated my multivitamin, I poured over a decade of research into selecting the nutrient forms that work best with your body. This means methylated B vitamins, chelated minerals, vitamin D as cholecalciferol, and much more.

I made sure each ingredient is in the most bioavailable forms so that they are readily absorbed by your body. Multivitamin absorption is the single most important factor in a supplement. If your body can’t process the vitamins you take, they’re useless.

Further, I specially designed my multivitamin to support those of us with autoimmune and thyroid issues, although it’s perfect for anyone looking to build a foundation for optimal health. 

With optimal levels of thyroid-supporting minerals such as zinc, selenium, and iodine, alongside antioxidants like vitamins C and E and other free radical scavengers, no other multi on the market does more to support your thyroid! It is also completely free of common inflammatory and toxic ingredients and does not contain gluten, wheat, dairy, corn, soy, GMOs, yeast, or artificial sweeteners.

Whether you’re hooked on junk food — and I certainly hope you’ll work on developing healthy eating patterns! — or are already optimizing your diet, The Myers Way® Multivitamin is the perfect addition to your daily regimen.

For more information

After years of suffering from thyroid dysfunction, Robb Wolf tried going Paleo to help relieve and reverse his condition. That decision turned into a lifestyle, and he now speaks to others about how to balance a Paleo diet with appropriate exercise to support optimal thyroid function.

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