Endurance sports nutrition advice on supplementation

Taking a daily multivitamin/multimineral supplement is a personal choice for each endurance athlete. It certainly is not a necessity just because you might happen to be in 10K training, marathon training, or triathlon training. That’s because a balanced diet high in fruits, vegetables, and mostly unprocessed foods should provide you with the vitamins and minerals you need to stay healthy.

Yet, while it is within the power of each of us to get our vitamins and minerals from our diet, few of us actually do. Particular vitamin and mineral deficiencies are very common in our society, even among athletes who tend to make some effort to control their diet quality. While athletes who have one or more of these common deficiencies would always be best advised to improve their diet, a multivitamin/multimineral supplement can benefit their health and performance while they try to eat better. Here are just a few things to think about if you find yourself shopping for a multi:

• Consider a “real food” multi. These are supplements that contain extracts from real foods and/or vitamins and minerals in the forms found in real foods instead of individual, stripped-down vitamins and minerals, which the body actually treats as foreign chemicals.

• Choose supplements with minerals in chelated form. This means the minerals are attached to proteins, just as they are in real foods, which aids absorption.

• Pick a formulation with enzymes. Certain enzymes help your body absorb vitamins and minerals.

• Eat with your supplement. Take your chosen vitamin and mineral supplement with a meal. This, too, will aid absorption.

• Be careful with iron. Consult your doctor and have your iron levels checked before supplementing with iron. Because iron-deficiency is relatively common in endurance athletes, and especially female runners, many take iron supplements as a form of insurance against deficiencies. But this may lead to iron overload, which can have serious health effects. A recent Swiss study found iron overload in 15 percent of the male participants in the Zurich Marathon.