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   Hope springs eternal with vitamin supplements. They offer the possibility of better health with little to no effort—a big bonus in today's time-stressed world.
   Vitamin and mineral supplements can be an important tool for good health-particularly if you fall into the category of having "extra nutritional needs." But, before you decide to pop a pill, or two, or three, there are a few qualifiers you should know about.

•    Supplements are of little help if you make poor food choices.
  No matter how many pills you take, they can never replace the nutritional value of eating healthful foods. Foods such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables contain many health-promoting benefits that pills cannot deliver including fiber and phytochemicals. Researchers are just starting to identify many phytochemicals which are believed to have potent disease-fighting capabilities.
• Too much of a good thing can be bad. Many nutrients work together in the body. Consider the complementary relationship of vitamin D and calcium or vitamin C and iron. Balance is important. Too much of one vitamin can affect how another is absorbed or used by the body. Unless told differently by your doctor, a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement that provides close to 100 percent of the Daily Value for several nutrients should do the trick. There is probably not a benefit in taking of super-charged supplements that give you well-over 100 percent of the Daily Value for listed nutrients. Excessive amounts of some vitamins and minerals can also seriously harm your health.
•    A USP stamp of approval on a supplement is important. USP stands for U.S. Pharmacopeia. It is an independent, nonprofit organization that tests how well supplements dissolve in the body. If a supplement does not dissolve well-and many out there don't-the nutrients in the pill essentially pass right through you.
•    Natural supplements usually have little benefit over synthetic ones. Synthetic vitamins are usually identical in structure to natural vitamins and, therefore, are utilized by your body in essentially the same way. However, one exception is vitamin E. Its natural form, called "d-tocopherol," is better absorbed by your body than the synthetic form "d, l-alpha-tocopherol."
•    Supplements are better absorbed when taken with a meal. Eating stimulates the production of stomach acid, which, in turn, helps dissolve the supplement you swallow. Given that vitamins and minerals work together in the body, the nutrients provided from the meal will also enhance the absorption and use of the nutrients in a supplement.

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