There is so much information out there about what a Multi-Vitamin should contain, there’s all different types and being New Zealander’s we need a Multi-Vitamin that is going to suit our specific needs. This means that it is very important that we choose carefully when we are looking at taking a Multi-Vitamin supplement and believe me, there are so many out there! When I was looking through my shop to review the different types today I found that I had 18 different Multi-Vitamins. It’s no wonder that people get so confused and don’t know which one to choose.

So what is a Multivitamin?

Generally a Multi-Vitamin is a B Complex that also contains trace elements such as Zinc and Selenium, hopefully the trace elements that are missing in our soils because particularly in New Zealand we have some very specific ones these are Zinc, Selenium and Boron. So we would hope for here in New Zealand that any Multi-Vitamin would contain those key nutrients or elements.

A lot of people when they come in asking for a Multi-Vitamin they ask me "Has it got a lot of Calcium and Magnesium in it?" Ill tell you now that there is no way that a good multi-Vitamin supplement is going to give you enough calcium and magnesium. As I said above a Multi-Vitamin is basically a B complex with trace elements in it so if you need Calcium and Magnesium which most of us do then you need to choose an individual supplement that will provide you with the proper amounts of those.

Now lets have a look at some of the Multi-Vitamins that we stock here at healthyonline. We will start with our absolute best and work our way down.

So my absolute Roles Royce Multivitamin is the "Mutli 100". I love this Mutli-Vitamin and I recommend it to all the people that want an impact type Mutli because I really only want to take one supplement. I recommend this particularly to all my hard working stressed out business guys particularly who really aren’t into taking supplements or say have not taken a supplement before and are feeling really stressed or hammered and are not able to really handle it throughout the day and need an impact type Multi and that is what the Multi 100 is.

It comes from America and are produced by a really good brand "Country Life", this product is different to any Multi-Vitamin that I have but the reason I like this is because it is a "time release" Multi-Vitamin. So what that means is the B vitamins are released more slowly throughout the day and we have to remember that Multi- Vitamins are water soluble so we don’t store them in our body so when we take a supplement that has B Vitamins our body grabs onto those B Vitamins and we pretty much Urinate out the rest of them, But with this one because it’s time release it’s released more slowly throughout the whole day. How they do that is they get the nutrients and put a layer of cellulose coating around a certain amount of nutrients, then another layer and another layer of Cellulose coating so your bodies just breaking down a small amount of those nutrients at once. So in this Multi-Vitamin we have 100mgs of each of your main B Vitamins. Now if you read our earlier article on Centrum you’ll remember that Centrum in one tablet contains only about 1.7mgs of B Vitamins, this has 100 so it’s pretty different. This is my favourite but not something that you would want to take at night time because you would not sleep.

This is our main Multi-Vitamin and my own formulation the "Multi-Vite" obviously I really like this but still the "Country Life Multi-100" is the superior product.

When I formulated the Multi-Vite I took into consideration the soil depletion here in New Zealand. With our low levels of Zinc, Selenium and Boron I made sure I added as much of these as Med Safe would legally allow me to.

In this Multi-Vite I have 25mgs of the major Multi-Vitamins compared to the 100 in the "Multi-100", We have 50 Micro-grams of Selenium and 10mgs of Zinc. So this is a good supplement for both men and women and it is important also to remember that if you are a women, No Multi-Vitamin is really going to give you enough Iron. Iron levels need to be independently evaluated, so if you have low Iron you will not get it from taking a Multi-Vitamin just like the Calcium and Magnesium supplement you need to take a separate supplement if you are low in Iron. That is the reason that we don’t generally put Iron into Multi-Vitamins, so that both Men and Women can take it because a lot of men have high Iron and for that reason I would never recommend a man take an Iron supplement unless they had had a test that specifically showed that they had low Iron, this is the same for Women as well but particularly in a Man. This supplement should be taken just once a day for the best results.

Then there are two more Mutli-Vitamins that I have both of which are New Zealand products. These come in capsules. Again I like them being from a New Zealand because you would expect that they wil have taken into consideration our soil depletion here in New Zealand. These products here are fairly similar with there B Vitamins both containing around 25-50mgs of B Vitamins so these are going to be pretty impact type products for all those energy producing nutrients.

My next Multi-Vitamin is very specialised with the name "The Daily One". We sell quite a lot of this and I recommend this supplement to quite a few people. The Multi-Vitamin is very different to a lot of Multi-Vitamins that I stock mainly because it contains 200 Micro-Grams of selenium. We all hear about selenium and how important it is for our immune system, thyroid health and Prostate health here in New Zealand. 200 Micro-grams is a huge whack and really is enough to produce any type of therapeutic action in your body.

Another good thing about this Multi is that it has a lot of Chromium in it whereas many of the other Multi-Vitamins really have a lot of Chromium. In one of these capsules it has 200 Micro-Grams of Chromium which is really great for helping with carbohydrate metabolism and sugar cravings, so if your one of those people that really crave for sugar the "Daily One" may be the Multi-Vitamin that will be the better choice for you. This supplement has a good amount of B Vitamins that vary from 25mgs to about 50mgs for some of them so again with this supplement you are going to get a good whack of B Vitamins.

Now just quickly I really need to mention this. A lot of people ask me about "Berocca" telling me that they take Berocca and do not need to take a Multi for that reason. I want to make this clear to you now that Berocca is not a Multi-Vitamin Berocca is a "B Vitamin" and we do not recommend Berocca. The reason why we do not recommend Berocca at all is that it contains Aspartame and we don’t recommend anything that contains Aspartame.

It is really important to be aware when you are looking at a Multivitamin that you need to read the label properly. Don’t just read the information on the front of it that is just telling you a statement, have a look at the actual ingredients on the back so you know what it is really that you are getting. What I find is that a lot of information is very misleading or even deceptive.

In this next Multi-Vitamin the "V-2000" This supplement is very popular from Solgar and it is a good Vitamin. It’s very important to be aware that when you are reading the nutrients that are being provided to you as it specifically states on the label that these nutrients are what are contained in taking 2 of these tablets, not one but two. So to get the 10 or 20mgs of B Vitamins contained in the V-2000 you must take two tablets. It is the same as the next product that I stock.

This product called Vitalize 1-MV I really do like and it is a very good B-Vitamin that is made here in New Zealand but the ingredients are based on "eight captules" not one but "Eight" so again it is very important to read the label and read the dosage instructions so you know how many the company are actually telling you to take.

Finally I want to take a look at Usana not because I stock the product but because a customer specifically asked me to do a comparison between the USANA nutrients and the other nutrients that we have. I will be writing in a later article specifically on USANAs products and I do have some information that can be viewed specifically about it here. Again the most important thing to realise with a supplement like this is that the amount of nutrients are not based on taking just one tablet they are based on taking 3 of the "Mega Antioxidant" and 3 of the "MultiMineral" so 6 in total to provide you with the amount of nutrients that are listed on the label. Just so you know in taking one of these tablets you get 7mgs of Zinc and only 8 micro-grams of selenium. Early you will have read that with the ‘Daily One’ we were getting 200 micro-grams of Selenium. With the Multi-Vite we were getting 50 Micro-grams of Selenium so compare these with just 8 Micro-grams in the USANA Essentials.

If you have specific needs say like you are pregnant or you have cardio-vascular problems there are specific Multi-Vitamin supplements out there for you. I will be writing soon specifically about the pregnancy Multi’s that are available because this is so important. You want to know that you are feeding your feeding your baby properly as well as getting enough nutrients so you can actually function properly yourself.