4 Benefits of Food Supplements for Active Lifestyles
Working out or exercising is very important to incorporate into your everyday life, especially if you’re working from home and trying to have a work-life balance. It helps increase your energy levels, strengthen the heart and lungs, maintain a healthy weight, and lower the risk of developing chronic diseases. Furthermore, sports and wellness activities help improve your mood and reduce your stress.
However, while you’re keeping an active lifestyle, you also have to ensure your nutritional needs are met to be healthy. Besides eating nutrient-dense foods, you should also take food supplements to ensure you fill the nutritional gaps in your current diet. Always bring some anywhere with you. For instance, if you’re doing golf every weekend, do not forget to include food supplements in your golf bag essentials.
Types of Food Supplements
According to the FDA, food supplements, also known as dietary supplements, are here to “add to or supplement the diet” you already have. In other words, they help you meet your nutritional needs, especially when your food intake doesn’t give enough nutrients. And even though they’re marketed as a dietary supplement, they’re still considered as a medicine to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent various diseases.
Supplements are ingested and can be in the form of tablets, capsules, powders, soft gels, bars, gel caps, gummies, and liquid. Below are the common food supplements:
- Vitamins (like vitamins B, C, D, and biotin or a mixture of everything called multivitamins)
- Minerals (like calcium, magnesium, and iron).
- Herbs or Botanicals (like Acai, Turmeric, and Echinacea)
- Botanical compounds (like curcumin and caffeine)
- Amino acids (like Lysine, Glutamine, and Tryptophan)
- Probiotics or live bacteria
- Fatty acids and protein
- Body-building supplements
Benefits of Food Supplements for Active Lifestyles
There are many benefits food supplements can provide to people having a very active lifestyle. Here are a few of them:
Improves Energy Levels And Stamina
Active lifestyles often require more energy and better stamina than sedentary lifestyles. Therefore, more than the nutrition you get from food intake, taking food supplements is essential to keep up with this lifestyle. A multivitamin or mineral supplement can give the body additional energy and help maintain the healthy metabolism you need in your daily exercises.
In addition, certain supplements such as omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, and iron can improve your stamina and energy levels for optimum performance during reps. And if you drink certain herbs like ginseng, you can reduce the fatigue you can get from a demanding workout.
Strengthens the Immune System
Just like the reason behind exercising, take supplements as a preventive measure for health problems. They can help strengthen your immune system. Certain supplements have vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that can help boost the body’s natural defense system, avoiding the risk of infection and diseases.
In addition, probiotics can help replenish the body’s natural bacterial balance, further strengthening your immune system. By simply adding supplements to your workout routine, you can stay healthy and active for longer.
Helps in Recovery
Supplements can help your body recover from physical stress in various ways, from promoting faster muscle recovery after exercise to accelerating the healing process after an injury. For instance, vitamin C helps in the body’s production of the collagen required for tissue healing. Omega-3 Fatty also helps reduce exercise-induced muscle soreness and lowers inflammation. On the other hand, amino acids (specifically BCAA and Beta-alanine) and Nitrate can help with muscle recovery.
Beyond those, supplements will replace lost electrolytes to reduce fatigue and provide essential antioxidants to protect the body from oxidative damage caused by an intense workout. In other words, they can give your body enough nutrition so that you can easily bounce back.
Improves Mental Health
While exercising can improve mental health, we cannot still neglect the fact that some people become active as a coping mechanism. That makes them so obsessed with working out that they’ve forgotten how to stay healthy while doing it. Thus, supporting your mental health through a healthy diet and supplements is essential.
Vitamin B has a reputation for elevating mood. It reduces your stress and improves your focus and alertness. Deficiency of this vitamin, specifically thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), and B12, among others, may cause anxiety, irritability, and depression. Thus, incorporating vitamin B supplements can help you.
But besides food supplements with vitamin B, you can also take various types of CBD, like CBD capsules. These can further improve your overall wellness to support your active lifestyle.
Benefits of Food Supplements the Bottom Line
Maintaining an active lifestyle can be challenging, especially when it comes to nutrition. If you’re always on the go, you might miss eating healthy meals you need to meet the nutritional requirements of your body.
Luckily, food supplements offer a great way to support your active lifestyle. They can provide the essential vitamins and minerals your body needs to stay energized, strengthen your immune system, recover faster, and improve your mental health. So, start incorporating food supplements into your diet now to enjoy a healthier active lifestyle.