Vitamins For Women: Which Ones Are Best?

More and more women in America and Canada are deciding to take charge of their own health.  They are cutting back on the amounts of food they eat, and eating higher quality foods, much of it organic.  They’re taking up regular exercise in an effort to keep their weight under control as well as to reach new levels of fitness.  Women tend to be far more interested in health matters than men, on the whole, and they’re the biggest buyers of health and diet related books, of which thousands are released every year.  They also tend to be far more likely than me to use vitamin supplements to enhance their health.  Which raises the question - what are the best vitamins for women?

Well, in many ways, women and men have the same needs when it comes to vitamin intake, although women will generally require a smaller amount of a particular vitamin compared to how much a man needs.  We’re all human beings, and while men and women are different in a great number of ways, we’re also extremely similar in many ways, and so it follows that we pretty much need the same vitamins no matter our gender.  But there are a couple vitamins women should pay particular attention to, and make sure they’re getting enough in their diet.

The first one is folic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B9.  This is especially important for women who are pregnant, or hoping or expecting to get pregnant in the near future.  Because lack of this vitamin can cause very serious birth defects, and because no one can be 100 percent certain when she’ll get pregnant, all women of childbearing age should closely monitor their folic acid intake, and if they’re not getting enough from foods like leafy green vegetable and orange juice, they should use a folic acid supplement.

And when it comes to vitamins for women, the other really important one is vitamin D.  More and more research is being done with vitamin D, and researchers are discovering some very surprising things about just how critical it is for fighting cancer, for example.  But it’s also important for women because when the body doesn’t have enough, it can’t absorb calcium, which can lead to osteoporosis, a common and dangerous condition in older women.

All of us, male or female, need all kinds of vitamins, but folic acid and vitamin D are two of the most important vitamins for women.