There are important components of food that are needed for good health in our bodies. These include vitamins and minerals. A variety of them are required in little quantities in order to maintain health and balance in your body. Vitamins are necessary in the body because they help in the growth and development of your nails, hair and muscles. To ensure that the heart, nervous system, sight and digestive system work well, you have to take adequate vitamins. When children are growing up for example, they need enough vitamins and minerals to prevent rickets and poor sight.

Basically, you get vitamins from eating a balanced diet of all major groups of foods. These foods include kales, carrots, collards greens, papayas, spinach and butter among others. However, if your body is short of enough vitamins, then vitamins can be taken as supplements. Vitamins supplements are supposed to be used only as a top-up when you are not able to get a substitute for a healthy eating.

Thankfully, over the years, our bodies have never really fallen short of ways to regain them, even from a mere bask in the sun. Though they may be given in copious amounts, these supplements are not to be taken as a properly balanced diet that has nothing to do with other foods. Far from it, they get the name supplements because they double whatever minerals your normal food intake gives you. As your doctor or nutritionist will tell you, it follows then that a rigorous adherence to all mealtimes and diet tables should be observed, and these should be taken with the supplements.

Mineral loss – You should never go bashing your grocery supplies shop owner for giving you flat vegetables. It could be your body that tends to use them up faster than your intake, or is unable to break them down and send them to all the needful parts of your anatomy. The minerals could also disappear during your preparation of the food. You could be over cooking them and literally killing off the minerals with your cooking devices.

The next time your doctor recommends supplements, ask him how to space them out, let him point out which ones give what minerals and the ones that could be easily substituted with a meal like grains, fruits or a common nutritious vegetable like spinach before shoving the pills into your bag wearing a hopeless face.

So if the doctor truly does write you a diet list next time, be sure to give him a warm hug and write him a thank you note with the check, because he wants you better, not just your money.