Hot Health Tip #1: Take a B Complex

This post begins a series of quick health tips that can make a big difference in how you feel and perform. The goal with these tips is that they shouldn’t have a high cost to your time or finances, but they should have a high impact on your life. The first tip I’d like to share is to take a quality vitamin B complex.

B vitamins are naturally occurring in foods like fish, meat, eggs, beans, and leafy greens, but according to the Harvard school of Public Health, only a fraction of U.S. adults get the recommended daily intake of all B vitamins from their diets alone. And due to the increasingly more stressful lifestyles we live, we also deplete the B vitamins we do consume faster than ever. 

The B complex actually refers to a collection of 8 different vitamins. They all do different things, but for the purpose of keeping this post short, I’ll refer to them as a whole from now on.

I take a B complex because I notice an increase in my mood and ability to focus, but B vitamins are most valued for their ability to help turn your food into energy, maintain a healthy metabolism, support nerve and liver function, and improve skin and eye health. They have also become well known for helping fetal development during pregnancy. 

A deficiency in B vitamins can lead to chronic fatigue, anemia, poor memory, mood disorders, sleeping problems and even weight gain. 

B vitamins are also essential for red blood cell production and forming the protective barriers around your nerves. 

A good B complex should only run you about 10 to 15 dollars for a 2 month supply. You can find them for less, but I recommend buying an activated form, which costs a little more and is well worth the higher price tag. Many of us do not easily activate B vitamins into their usable forms, which leads to them being eliminated from our bodies before we’ve had a chance to use them. The container they come in will sometimes state that they are “activated” or “methylated,” but not always. One easy way to check is to read the back. They always state which form of each vitamin is used in the supplement. Make sure it says methylcobalamin for B-12 and folate or methylfolate for B-9.