A Bodybuilders Buying Guide To Multivitamin Supplements

Get the most out of your health and wellness with a great multivitamin.

Bodybuilders often find it difficult to consume the optimum levels of vitamins and minerals that they need to be in peak shape from their diet alone. This becomes even harder to do in times where you are cutting to lose fat or lowering your intake in order to prep for a competition. Thankfully, the best way to handle this problem is with a multivitamin supplement, a great tool to pump you with those valuable vitamins and minerals so you only see the best gains.

While it is always better to get your nutrients from whole foods, giving yourself a fighting chance by taking a multivitamin supplement will help you meet your daily needs and is a great way to ensure you don’t become deficient in anything. It can be easy to miss a meal or simply skip one because you think you are fine. But you aren’t just missing a meal. You are missing the opportunity for all those nutrients that you need most to stay healthy inside and out of the gym.

We’ve put together a bodybuilders buying guide to multivitamin supplements so you can better tackle all of those nutrient needs. Knowing what to look for and how best to find it can be a great way to see all those gains you need most. Plus, it alleviates the headache for you trying to figure out exactly what you need.

Benefits Of Taking Multivitamins As A Bodybuilder

By taking a multivitamin as a bodybuilder, you will work to provide yourself with numerous benefits. Everything from maximizing training and performance, to enhance energy levels, to staying healthier overall will all be improved as you pump your body with those valuable nutrients. Benefits of taking a multivitamin as a bodybuilder include:

• Maintain muscle: Work to keep on that hard earned muscle to improve training, performance, and your shredded aesthetic.
• Assist with a healthy diet: Get those essential nutrients into your body that you may miss with whole foods.
• Boost energy: Allow yourself the proper energy to reduce fatigue without the need for stimulants.
• Increase cognitive function: Promote better mood, stimulate brain functions, and work to reduce anxiety and stress.
• Enhance immunity: Give your immune system a boost by providing for tons of nutrients that help fight off illnesses.

What Should I Look For In A Bodybuilding Multivitamin?

So now you have a good idea of some of the most important vitamins that you should look for inside your multivitamin, what else should you be considering when deciding on a product?

Well, the first thing you should look for is the range of micronutrients in the products. Ideally, you will find one that covers all 25+ of the essentials that your body needs. This means that you will be meeting every nutrient need that your body has. A lot of those vitamins actually work really well together, and in synergy, they prove even more useful than they do on their own.

Next, you should look if there are any interesting additional ingredients not found in other products. Things like creatine or Omega-3s could be a nice addition and could help sway your decision. Plus, you want to make sure the essentials are included or else it just wouldn’t be worth it.

Finally, consider the brand and its reputation. You want to be sure the people you are buying from are looking out for your best interest. Price and price per serving can affect this greatly and knowing you aren’t spending a fortune on a worthless product is important.

Key Vitamins & Minerals

There is a range of different nutrients that your body needs. Here are the most useful ones that you should not miss out on if you want to really give yourself a solid baseline to perform from. The best multivitamins for bodybuilding should include:

B-Vitamins

There are eight different vitamins inside the B-Complex:

• B1 – thiamin
• B2 – riboflavin
• B3 – niacin
• B5 – pantothenic acid
• B6 – pyridoxine
• B5 – pantothenic acid
• B6 – pyridoxine
• B7 – biotin
• B9 – folic acid
• B12 – cobalamin

These vitamins are vital for aiding tissue repairs and for turning your carbohydrates into energy. They also help deliver oxygen to the muscles in use throughout your body and protect your central nervous system (1). B-Vitamins are perhaps the most important out of all of the vitamins for these reasons.

If you are a vegan, you are particularly at risk of having low levels of B12 and B6 due to the fact that these vitamins are normally found inside dairy and meat products. This means it is more important for vegans to ensure that they are getting the right levels of B-vitamins. A multivitamin is a great way to do this.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is a very strong antioxidant and can massively bolster your immune system (2). If you are working out hard and causing stress to your muscles, vitamin c is extremely important as it helps keep your tissue and joints in good condition.

Vitamin D

Most people obtain the majority of their Vitamin-D from the sun. It increases your energy levels, reduces inflammation of the muscles (3), and is key to keeping the calcium levels of your bones at a high level in order to keep them strong.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is another vitamin that protects your immune system. This is due to its high antioxidant properties. It also ensures that your arteries and skin stay healthy.

Magnesium

Magnesium plays an extremely crucial role in delivering oxygenated blood to muscles. Without adequate levels of magnesium, you will be susceptible to cramps and low endurance levels. It also aids your brain in regulating metabolism and hormone levels (4).

Calcium

Calcium helps your body keep its bones strong and healthy. It also boosts metabolism and promotes a healthy hormone balance.

Zinc

Zinc boosts muscle repair, boosts your immune system, and keeps testosterone levels and production where they should be (5).

Electrolytes

You lose huge amounts of electrolytes through your sweat when you work out hard. This makes replenishing them very important. Sodium, potassium, and chloride all regulate blood pressure and pH levels and will stop you from cramping.

Of course, there are others, but these are some key ones to look for as they will greatly assist with all areas of you training, health, and performance.

When Is Best to Take Multivitamins

We often get asked when the best time to take a multivitamin is. There isn’t a real answer here, either. There are arguments for and against taking your vitamins on an empty stomach, for example. Yes, they may absorb faster, but for some people, they may cause discomfort, and for those people, it is better to take your multivitamin with a meal. If you really struggle with pills, you might want to look at getting a chewable gummy vitamin or a powder that you can mix into water.

Recommended Daily Allowance

Another thing you should look at is how high the individual ingredients score is compared to the RDA. Sometimes products can be really expensive as they contain 300–500 percent of your RDA for a certain mineral. Obviously, this is pointless and is a waste of your money.

The same could be true if the product contains ingredients that are very low compared to your RDA; there is no point if all of the ingredients are under 20-30% of your RDA after all.

Multivitamins Effectiveness & Overall Worth

Your body requires nearly 30 different vitamins and minerals in order to run at optimum levels. Every single one has a role in your body’s functions. If you stick to a routine and take your multivitamin every single day, you will see a massive improvement if you are normally deficient in certain vitamins.

Remember, however, that taking multivitamins is a way to enhance your diet, not replace it. Don’t think that just because you are taking a multivitamin, that you can eat unhealthily. Multivitamins are especially useful for those with joint and muscle pains as they include huge levels of antioxidants that can lower inflammation in those problem areas.

Multivitamins Side Effects & Risks

For the majority of people, multivitamins are perfectly safe to take. There are those out there that have a particularly sensitive stomach, however, and for these, there may be some discomfort or nausea, especially if taken without food.

The only time when vitamins can become dangerous is if they are taken in a dosage way higher than the recommended one. Always take the recommended dosage on the bottle to avoid this. You should also be wary of mixing multivitamins with medication such as Ad-cal or other concentrated vitamin medications.

If you take any prescription medicines, ask your doctor if it’s safe to take a multivitamin.

Best Multivitamin For Bodybuilding

There are more multivitamins on the market then you can count and finding one that is worth the money and that comes highly recommended is hard. But they are out there and we have a great choice for you. The best bodybuilding multivitamin will provide for all the above benefits and then some as you seek the best for your gains.

National Bodybuilding Co. Bodybuilders Multivitamin

National Bodybuilding Co. Bodybuilders Multivitamin stands out to us because it is designed by bodybuilding experts and provides the perfect iron-hard foundations for you to build an amazing physique upon. You get a strengthened immune and central nervous system that is protected from stress. This is particularly useful for those that train hard or work in a caloric deficit. Inside, you get all of the vitamins mentioned above, as well as a number of extra ingredients that make this an extremely attractive multivitamin.

Selenium

Selenium is one of the most potent antioxidants that there is (6). It negates free radicals in your body, preventing inflammation of the brain and muscles. This means you recover faster and put less strain on your central nervous system.

Copper

Copper competes with zinc to be absorbed into the body. By adding copper, this helps balance out your zinc levels and increases red cell function.

Male Support Blend

Perhaps the most interesting addition to this multivitamin is the male support blend. This includes Lutein and Lycopene, which are both huge antioxidants as well as Stinging Nettle Extract, which is known to boost male hormone levels and vitality.

National Bodybuilding Co is known for its no-bs, high-quality approach to supplements, and this multivitamin does just that. It contains everything you need and doesn’t fluff the ingredient list with a bunch of things you just don’t need.

Other Supplements Bodybuilders Should Consider

When it comes to your bodybuilding goals, it can be challenging to optimize all that hard work, but the help of other supplements can be a game changer for all your needs. For those looking to optimize growth and recovery, definitely consider a protein powder for this will pump you with that valuable protein for only the best gains. Creatine can increase strength and size while also improving blood flow so you only get the best out of every workout. And for those looking to increase their energy levels and provide for muscle pumps, a pre-workout is exactly what you need for that pre-workout success.

Wrap Up

Hopefully, this complete bodybuilders buying guide to multivitamins answered any questions you have about multivitamins. Multivitamins are the perfect tool to help you bridge the gap that you cannot quite reach by diet alone. If you are struggling to eat a balanced and varied diet that contains all of the minerals and vitamins that you need, then a good multivitamin could be the answer to your problems.

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References

1. Baltrusch, S. (2021). “The Role of Neurotropic B Vitamins in Nerve Regeneration”. (source)
2. Carr, A.; et al. (2017). “Vitamin C and Immune Function”. (source)
3. Mousa, A.; et al. (2016). “Effect of vitamin D supplementation on inflammation: protocol for a systematic review”. (source)
4. Vormann, J. (2003). “Magnesium: nutrition and metabolism”. (source)
5. Prasad, A.; et al. (1996). “Zinc status and serum testosterone levels of healthy adults”. (source)
6. Tinggi, U. (2008). “Selenium: its role as antioxidant in human health”. (source)