I’ve been thinking a lot more about diet in my old age. During my career I rarely took vitamins. I always thought the best way to get good nutrition is through healthy food. I eat pretty well but looking back I think I could have benefited from taking some sort of vitamin supplement. It’s very difficult to get all the nutrition all the time from food and vitamins aren’t very expensive so there’s nothing really to lose when adding some vitamin supplement to a diet.
I’m no expert but this is a very interesting subject. If you are training full-time say over 20 hours per week and taking in around 5000 cal per day (double the average person) do you need double the amount of all vitamins and nutrients. My critical mind would say that for some nutrients it would be less than double but for others could easily be double. So it’s a bit of a puzzle to know which vitamins and minerals are too low in one’s diet and would take a lot of research personal research to figure that out but a good multi vitamin would cover most of the diet deficits and the excess would just be excreted anyway.
One danger I think about when taking nutritional supplements is that one may eat less healthy food thinking that they’re getting enough nutrients from the vitamins. That’s definitely a bad idea because the best way to get nutrients in the best mix and quantities is from healthy food. So vitamins should definitely not be an excuse to be less diligent with diet.
I’ve also heard the argument that fruits and veggies have less nutrients then they used to because of less minerals in the soil and because they are grown to last long trips of shipping before getting to your grocery store. This could be true but I haven’t read enough on it to know but it’s another reason to supplement with vitamins.
I’m not giving specific advice about it but here is what I take these days and the result. I take a multivitamin for the reasons I listed above. In the winter months when my shadow is always longer than my height I take vitamin D every day. We don’t get vitamin D from the sun at all in the winter especially up here in Sweden so that’s a key one. There are many doctors who call the ‘cold/flu season’ the ‘vitamin D deficiency season’ I take a multi a fish oil and magnesium before I go to sleep and it seems to help and reduce muscle cramps as well. I’ve experimented a little with natural testosterone boosters as testosterone production drop quite a lot in your 40’s.
I’ve noticed a little increase explosivity from gym training but it’s hard to tell if the vitamins have helped because I rarely did explosive training in my career so it could be that doing this type of training more often stimulates testosterone production on it’s own. I haven’t been properly sick in years since a one week Covid sickness back in 2020. I didn’t get sick often before I implemented vitamins but the past years I can often feel a sore throat coming on but get over it before it sets in or if it sets in it’s a very minor cold and I just need to rest a few days from intense training and it goes over.
That’s my two cents and experience on taking vitamins. If you’re not exercising 90min per week and sleeping 7-8 hours those things will enhance your health significantly and should take priority over vitamins of course but if you have a healthy lifestyle but are still getting sick fairly often and want to feel a little better give vitamins a shot – especially if you are training hard to compete at something.
