How Eye Vitamins Work

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, making changes for your health is often at the top of the list. For many of us, that means adding a vitamin to our daily regimen. At Rebuild Your Vision, we are always advocating that you take vitamins for your eye health. But why? How do eye vitamins work?

Knowing about how your vitamins impact your body is important. It will help you know which vitamins you should be taking and may even motivate you to take them more regularly. So, here’s a little breakdown and explanation of how eye vitamins work for you. That way, when your friend, spouse, or child asks you why they should keep taking their vitamins, you’ll have an answer for them as well!

General Vitamin Info and How Eye Vitamins Work

You could think of vitamins as the maintenance crew for your body. When your home needs maintenance, you call in the landscapers, handymen, or house cleaners. Vitamins do the same kinds of work inside our bodies.

Vitamins, like our bodies, are carbon-based. They are molecular compounds that our bodies cannot produce, but we need to live healthy lives. Since our bodies cannot produce vitamins, we need to get them from foods or supplements. When life was slower paced, people had more time to cook and got all the vitamins they needed from the foods they ate.

Today, most parents must work to keep up with our expensive lifestyles. More people are turning to supplements because they just don’t have the time to prepare dishes that contain all the vitamins they need. Or, maybe your child is going through a phase where they won’t eat fruit or vegetables. There’s also the fact that many of our young adults just don’t know how to cook. Parents used to teach this skill to their children, but with both parents often working today, there’s less time to pass down this skill. This is why supplements become all the more important.

Why Do Most Supplements Contain Both Vitamins and Minerals?

Minerals, like vitamins, cannot be produced by your body. Minerals come from the earth or water. Plants absorb minerals from the earth and we, in turn, absorb them from the plants when we eat them. The plants we are talking about include vegetables and leafy greens. Although, animals get vitamins and minerals from other plants as well.

Our fast-paced lives make it difficult to eat enough of the vegetables and greens we need to supply our daily minerals. Trying to get all the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need from food would be difficult. We would be eating three large meals a day as well as several healthy snacks.

In most families today, we are lucky if we sit down and share even one meal a day. In many cases, our schedules just don’t match well enough for more than that. While many prepared foods have vitamins and minerals added to them, we still can’t be sure that we are getting all that our bodies really need.

Some minerals we need only very small amounts of, while others require larger amounts daily. Researchers now know that there are over 17 vitamins and minerals that our bodies need in order to stay healthy.

Should We Be Taking Vitamins Every Day?

Some of the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need cannot be stored. When we take a supplement, some of the vitamins will be used immediately by the body. Others will be stored in fat cells and others still will be flushed from the body.

You may be wondering why you can’t just take a pill containing the vitamins that can’t be stored. The problem is that you have no way of knowing how much of the stored vitamins and minerals your body has on hand.

Are you wondering why you can’t just take one dose per week? Some vitamins are dangerous if taken in too large a quantity at one time. Vitamin and mineral supplements are designed to provide what your body needs every day for optimal health.

If I Feel Better, Can I Stop Taking Daily Vitamins?

Of course you can, we’re not your mom, and we can’t make you take your vitamins. However, without the right daily dose of vitamins and minerals, your body will not be able to get its work done. You’ll benefit the most from adding vitamins to your regimen if you take them consistently.

Vitamins and minerals have many jobs to take care of throughout your body. If you fail to supply the vitamins and minerals, those tasks do not get done, or get done poorly. And like my mother always used to say, “You feel good for a reason… so don’t fix it if it doesn’t need to be fixed.”

You may still feel fine for a few days after stopping your vitamins. But without a daily dose, you may begin to catch colds more often, feel tired faster, or simply not feel good. These are some of the early signs that your body is not getting the support it needs. Even if you begin taking your vitamins again, it may take several days for you to feel good again.

Is It Better to Take Vitamins in the Morning or at Night?

Now that you know how eye vitamins work, you may be wondering if there’s an optimal time to take them. Some of the minerals, like calcium, work better during the night while you’re sleeping. It’s good to take a calcium and magnesium combo before you go to bed, as these vitamins also promote relaxation and deeper sleep. However, you can choose to take a daily vitamin at either time. Whatever works out best for you with your schedule is great. The important thing is that you remember to take them. If it’s easier for you to take them before bed rather than in the mornings, that’s fine.

Read the label and decide what works best for you. Some daily vitamins recommend that you take them with food or before or after eating. If your mornings are hectic, consider taking them with a snack before bedtime instead.