Becoming aware of the best vitamins that help you to feel comfortable and active during the menopause is clearly something that every woman should know about before they get to this stage of life. Menopause can be comfortable and easy if you take the right vitamins to support yourself.
However, it’s not as easy as just taking what you feel is right for you. Instead, there’s a need to carry out some research first to make sure that you are indeed giving your body everything it needs to help it cope with what is a stressful time for it. You have to think beyond taking vitamins for tiredness and lack of energy.
So, out of the vast number of different vitamins and minerals on the market, which ones are the most effective vitamins for menopause relief?
How to Choose Vitamins for Menopause.
The menopause is different for each and every woman. Yes, everyone will share the same list of symptoms and women can be empathetic to one another as they understand what the other is going through, but that’s where the similarities end.
Instead, the severity of the symptoms, along with the combination, will vary for each woman. The aches and pains, the strange sensations, the fatigue or restlessness is unique to each individual woman. From the point of taking vitamins for menopause, what it all means is that each woman has to understand her symptoms and which vitamins are best suited for dealing with that.
However, there are several options that we feel would benefit the majority of individuals.
Vitamin E.
Vitamin E is one vitamin that you want to be focusing on.[1] Not only is it an antioxidant, but it will also then help reduce inflammation within the body. Also, Vitamin E has been linked to being able to reduce stress in the body, and stress has been linked to cell damage with this increasing your risk of gaining weight, depression and heart disease. Overall, this is something that can be highly beneficial to you.
Vitamin A.
Vitamin A appears in a number of different fruits and vegetables as well as in meat products. However, you may still be lacking in this vitamin which is important for being able to maintain healthy bones. You can often identify it in fruit and vegetables due to it being created from beta-carotene which gives things an orange color.[2] The important thing with Vitamin A is to not exceed the recommended amount as too much can be toxic, so taking a good supplement where everything is clearly laid out is key.
Vitamin B12.
Vitamin B12 is required for our body for a number of reasons including bone health, creating red blood cells, to help our brain and also our DNA. In other words, it’s kind of a big deal and is one of those vitamins for tiredness and lack of energy that you need to take.[3]
The problem is that we lose our ability to absorb B12 as we age. This leads to us developing a number of symptoms that are further exacerbated by the menopause. These symptoms include fatigue, depression, losing our appetite, confusion and even issues with our balance. If you are already feeling drained from menopause, then having a deficiency in this vitamin is not going to help.
Vitamin B6.
Vitamin B6 has this amazing ability to help our brain produce serotonin, which is a chemical used in our brain to transmit signals. Serotonin is also known to help regulate our mood, and a drop in the production levels is closely associated to the development of depression. During menopause, the levels of serotonin being produced will also decrease with this then contributing to the shifts in mood and feelings of being low. Taking this vitamin may then result in an improvement in feelings of being depressed as well as offering an increase in energy.[4]
Vitamin D.
We get Vitamin D from sunlight but it’s quite common for people to have a deficiency in this vitamin, and that can create problems during menopause. A decrease in this vitamin can then increase the chances of you developing problems with your bones and you may become more prone to fractures if you fall or even osteoporosis.[5]
Calcium.
Even though is not a vitamin as such, we feel that due to the role it plays with Vitamin D in protecting your bones that it deserves a mention at this point. In order to offer the best protection, you need both Vitamin D and calcium to work in tandem with one another, and that is why you will often see them combined in the same supplement. Everyone knows that you need calcium for your bones, and yet Vitamin D must be included to make sure that everything is absorbed by your body as it should be. If you are worried about your skeleton both during and after the menopause, then this is something that needs to be on your list.
Omega-3.
There’s a wealth of research that indicates Omega-3 is capable of reducing a number of the side effects associated with going through the menopause.[6] First, people are generally aware of how Omega-3 can improve your mood as it is used to alleviate the symptoms of depression. This then ties in with a reduction in the feelings of fatigue, a drop in energy levels and just feeling rather poorly. By taking this, you will develop a greater clarity of thought while it has also been linked to improving your joints which then leads to better mobility.
The 7 supplements mentioned above are not the only ones that you should be thinking of taking during this stage in your life, but we do believe that they are the main ones that need to be on your list. Taking these different vitamins will improve not only the symptoms that you experience but also your quality of life as you move through a stressful and difficult period.
However, be careful with the quantities that you take and stick with quality supplements at all times rather than just grabbing any kind of vitamin that you see. You want to make sure that they are manufactured to a high level and have quality ingredients as that will then make it easier for your body to use the vitamins as it sees appropriate.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17664882
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052643
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257642/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4161099/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4764124/
[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195360/