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Are Vitamin Supplements Essential for Helping Your Kids Grow?


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You’ve likely heard that vitamins are important for helping your kids grow and to stay healthy, but have you ever learned why that is?

Understanding the benefit of vitamins and how they work can help you remember to ensure that your children are getting good sources of vitamins every single day.

There are several different bonuses to taking vitamins, like muscle development, higher energy levels, and immune system support to help keep them free from illness.

While vitamin supplements are not necessarily a requirement for every kid, they may be needed if your child doesn’t eat a balanced diet or has specific nutritional needs.

We’ll explain what situations will necessitate the need for extra vitamin supplements and why you’ll need vitamins to keep your kids healthy!

Every Kid Needs Vitamins

Before we start, it’s important to understand the difference between vitamins and vitamin supplementation.

It is easy to confuse the two, but vitamins are the minerals and nutrients contained in the foods that are needed to help keep a body healthy. Vitamin supplementation is the physical vitamin capsules that can be taken to help supplement the lack of adequate vitamin intake.

Every human needs vitamins to stay alive and keep their body healthy. This is particularly important for children because they need vitamins to help them grow and keep those growing bodies strong.

Is Supplementation Required?

Vitamins are natural and are consumed just by eating food, but some people think that kids need to take a daily gummy or chewable to meet their vitamin requirements. Some children indeed need a daily multivitamin, but this isn’t the case for your average kid.

Healthy children with a balanced diet will not need vitamin supplementation to keep them lively. The typical child’s diet will naturally contain all the vitamins needed to keep them growing strong.

However, this does depend on what your child’s diet consists of. They need to eat a good balance of fruits and vegetables, protein, grains, and dairy. It is also important that this diet is free of excess added sugar and saturated fats.

While your average kid’s diet will meet all of these needs, there are still many children in the country that do not have healthy, balanced diets.

Eating a lot of fast food, junk food, candy, or failing to eat altogether will result in inadequate vitamin intake. In this scenario, vitamin supplementation is still not helpful because it places a bandaid on the issue rather than addressing the root cause, which is a poor diet.

What Kids Need Vitamin Supplementation?

In actuality, children should be receiving most or all of their vitamin needs through their diet. You should not use vitamin supplements as a replacement for a healthy diet because this inhibits their growth and can lead to health problems down the line.

There are a few situations where kids do need vitamin supplementation, like when they have dietary restrictions, food allergies, or have genetic nutritional deficiency issues. In these scenarios, vitamin supplementation is a must just so that they meet their vitamin needs.

In many cases, vitamin supplements are a good idea to incorporate as an extra way of keeping your kids healthy. Vitamins can be toxic in high concentrations, so it’s a good idea to consult your pediatrician before starting the use of any multivitamins.

Which Vitamins Are Most Important?

There are four main vitamins that kids need to stay healthy. This includes Vitamin A, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D.

Some of these vitamins contribute to the same goals. Vitamin A, C, and D all help to promote good teeth. Vitamin A and D also contribute towards strong bones.

Beyond this, they all have separate benefits that lead to a healthy child. Here are the advantages not yet mentioned that each vitamin will provide:

  • Vitamin A - Forms and keeps skin, soft tissues, and mucous membranes safe.
  • Vitamin B12 - Regulates metabolism, the central nervous system, and creates red blood cells.
  • Vitamin C - Critical for immune system support, healing wounds, and iron absorption.
  • Vitamin D - Necessary for the body to absorb calcium (for strong bones and muscle contraction).

These certainly are not all of the vitamins they need, but these are the four most important to focus on.

What Happens When Children Don’t Get Vitamins?

It is also important to understand the consequences of children not getting enough vitamins so you know how crucial it is that they meet their daily needs.

The lack of vitamins is known as vitamin deficiency. There are many different causes for this, but the result is still the same.

Children failing to get adequate vitamin intake have delays in physical and cognitive development. As a result, they tend to have more health issues and get illnesses much easier.

If these issues are not addressed during childhood, they will carry through into adulthood. This is particularly concerning because it often leads to chronic health issues and may result in a shorter lifespan.

It is important to know that the habits children learn during their youth they often tend to continue as an adult. They simply may not understand the importance of vitamins because they didn’t “need” them to survive when they were younger, so why would they need them now?

This thinking is flawed, but it is because they don’t know any better and were not equipped with the knowledge (or vitamins) to keep them healthy.

It is incredibly scary how impactful the lack of vitamins can be for a growing child, so they must get their necessary intake daily.

Despite your best efforts, you may have a kid that is a picky eater, don’t have the means to eat healthy, or are on a restricted diet. In these situations, you should undoubtedly use vitamin supplementation to keep them healthy because the impact of long-term vitamin deficiency is severe.

Closing Thoughts

While a healthy diet is the best way for your kids to get all their vitamins, sometimes the need for supplementation is a good idea to ensure that all needs are being met.

The most important thing for your child is that they are getting the vitamins they need, regardless of the source. Every child needs several vitamins daily and supplementation is a great way to help meet these needs.

Due to poor diet, allergies, malnutrition, many other causes, the lack of vitamins will make it difficult for your child to grow big and strong.

Not every kid needs vitamin supplements, but in most scenarios, they are not harmful and are a great way to give your child some added nutritional support.

Consult your pediatrician before starting the use of one and you’ll be doing your child a life-long favor of keeping them healthy and instilling good nutritional habits!

This is a submitted post.

 

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