How Long Should Someone Take Dietary Supplements?

Customers are often confused on how long they should be taking supplements; in fact, this is a common question that pops up often. In order to get the full benefits of taking dietary supplements, you should be taking them daily and on an continuous basis. However, after about six months, it’s recommended to take a two week break. This is because you don’t want your body to rely solely on supplements and become dependent on them.

This is why it’s so important to eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly and live a healthy lifestyle. Some people still take supplements yet continue eating junk food and following other bad habits.

While it is true that the requirements for essential nutrients will vary slightly from person to person, the so-called ‘healthy foods’ we read about in the media may still lack vital nutrients because of intensive farming methods, insecticide rich soils, GM produce and other factors.

With this in mind, it’s important to ‘listen’ to your body and only consider taking the two week break at least six months after you start feeling better. For some people, this may even take up to a year from when they first started taking their supplements...for others, it may only take a few weeks or three months.

‘Listening’ to your body essentially means setting aside a week or two to focus on the following:

• How you’re feeling overall in terms of general health and wellbeing…
• Noticing any changes to your bio-rhythms (sleep patterns etc)…
• How many of your ‘health goals’ have you achieved and which ones still need more attention…

Develop a clear plan of how you want to achieve these goals (including any new ones that you want to tick off).

It’s important to remember that there is no silver bullet to good health. It’s rather a fluid and ever-changing journey that can be successfully enjoyed by breaking down your goals into smaller ‘bricks’. Each brick can therefore be laid every day, thereby achieving each mini-goal that makes up your main goal within a realistic time frame.

By adopting this approach to good health, you’ll also be able to adapt and compensate for the inevitable changes that occur throughout any journey. Instead of becoming a victim to change, you’ll be able to conquer it, simply by planning and putting in place the patterns of success you need to achieve your goals…both now and in the future.

Following a good healthy balanced lifestyle is the framework behind every health-based goal or objective. Supplements are the extra tools that may help support you throughout your wellness journey. If you ignore common sense and try set health goals while continuing to keep bad lifestyle habits, no supplement on earth will magically boost your health.

It all starts with you, your commitment to stick to your intended health goals and becoming more aware of ‘listening’ to what your body is telling you so you can make the necessary adjustments as and when changes occur.