Have you ever noticed that the nicest, fastest, and most expensive sports cars are all designed to resemble the female body? If you had to pin the male essence into a vehicle, it would likely be the beat-up old pickup truck, scratches, dents, rust, and all. The inner workings of our bodies are strikingly similar to this vehicle analogy, where the female body, which is capable of giving life, is a delicate ecosystem that all must run in exquisite balance for everything to be working as it should.

The male body, much like the old pickup truck, is pretty simple: you can fill it with cheap gas, change the oil once in a while and wash it occasionally, and everything runs just fine - low maintenance. Because of this, men who take multivitamins often have no issue just picking up the generic men’s multivitamin from any retailer or grocery store that has them. For women, we have to be a little bit more discerning to ensure we are getting the right fuel to keep our bodies running perfectly. 

Why is it important for women to take supplements daily?

In a perfect world, we would each get our eight hours of sleep every night, and never eat anything except whole food, super nutritious, delicious, and sugar-free foods. Oh, and we’d never be under any stress at all, never touch a drop of wine, and our kids and husbands would be saints whose lives revolved around cherishing their Queen.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a world. There may be a woman or two who you follow on Instagram or Facebook who works very hard to paint the illusion that she does, but believe me, she does not. It’s all a fairy tale. And no matter how hard we wish, manifest, or hope that our dream life will one day find us, we do have to spend our time in reality and make the best with what we have. 

It’s the women who keep the world running, after all, so we can’t afford to spend too much time outside of the occasional trashy romance novel keeping our heads in the clouds. We have work to do, households to keep on track, and things to accomplish.

As mentioned above, women’s bodies are far more intricate in many ways than men's are, as our bodies are built to be able to foster an entirely new life within them. This means that our bodies expect a time where our resources have to be ready to sustain not just us, but a growing new life within them. And this applies to far more than just our reproductive systems. 

The female bone structure has to be prepared to provide support to carry a large amount of new weight during pregnancy, meaning that our bones have to be able to suddenly provide more support for a relatively brief period of our lives than at any other time. Our body’s natural defenses have to be prepared to repel not only any microbes or diseases that may harm us but also a young, new body that doesn’t have an immune system of its own yet.

Our bodies have to begin producing milk to feed this new life, and our heart & lungs have to be prepared to divert precious oxygen from our lungs and circulatory system to an entirely new system as it begins to form within our uterus. Whether you plan on having children in your life or not, the female body is built to be able to do all of these things, which is why there are entire medical practices built around the intricacies of female health, and the closest male equivalent is a urologist.

This makes women’s health supplements a crucial part of any female’s life, as the modern diet often does not provide all of the necessary nutrients and probiotics that a woman needs to keep her ecosystem thriving and running in optimal condition. If you’ve already had or raised children, you know better than most that there is a significant period while raising toddlers that time constraints turn your diet into an unhealthy supply of “whatever I can scarf down in 30 seconds” or leftovers that the toddler didn’t finish.

We all tell ourselves that we won’t be that mom, but our toddlers don’t seem to agree with that goal.

Perhaps you’re an upwardly mobile working professional, doing everything that you can to break through the glass ceiling of the corporate world and become the next Sheryl Sandberg or Oprah. You have an inner drive that tells you that you have to work twice as hard as your male counterparts, which leads to a lot of late nights, takeout, and microwaved meals as you push to meet your professional life goals.

The right women’s supplements provide a sort of cheat code for those times when we don’t have the time, resources, or ability to eat right. If we choose the correct ones, we have the ability to ensure that our bodies are getting the correct amounts of micronutrients, probiotics, vitamins, and minerals that we need for our bodies to be able to perform to their best abilities, no matter what our actual meals consist of.

The reason that women have to take female-specific multivitamins is that the female body requires certain vitamins and minerals in greater amounts than men. Some examples of those are:

Folic Acid / Folate (Vitamin B9)

As nearly half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned (45%), any woman who may get pregnant needs to be getting between 400-800mcg of folic acid every day. This vitamin helps your body make blood cells, the DNA for new cells, helps prevent certain birth defects that happen in the first trimester of pregnancy, and helps prevent premature births and low birth rates.

Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 is one that is needed throughout a woman’s life, for different reasons at different life stages. This vitamin is well known for helping with energy levels, but it also helps your body to make red blood cells and helps your neurons work correctly (if your ability to think clearly is important to you). 

For pregnant women, Vitamin B12 is extremely important for the baby’s proper development. As Vitamin B12 is typically found in diets containing animal products, this supplement is also crucial to women who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. Women over the age of 50 should also be very conscious of their B12 intake, as our bodies cannot absorb B12 from the diet as well at that age as we did when we were younger, so we need to ensure we are getting enough of it from external sources (like a good women’s supplement).

Vitamin D

The fact that there are many different types of milk available with added Vitamin D in them should give you a hint about how important this vitamin is. Consumed along with calcium, Vitamin D helps to build strong bones and prevent osteoporosis, which is a far greater threat to women over childbearing age than it is for men. Vitamin D also helps to reduce inflammation in your cells and helps to strengthen the immune system.

Calcium

Many Americans are under the impression that they can get all of the calcium they need from drinking milk, but this is often not the case. Given the popularity of non-dairy substitutes for milk now, it is very important that women take care of their calcium, either through women’s supplements or another form. One of the reasons osteoporosis is such a threat to women is that your body will take calcium from your bones if you don’t have enough of it in your diet, which weakens your bones and can cause osteoporosis.

Girls aged 9-18 need to be getting at least 1,300mg of calcium per day, adult women need to be taking at least 1,000mg of calcium per day, and post-menopausal women need to be taking at least 1,200mg of calcium per day.

Iron

Iron is important to have in a woman’s diet or a women’s multivitamin because it helps your body to build healthy blood cells that carry oxygen in your body. If you’ve ever noticed that blood has a significant iron smell to it, this is why. It also helps the female body to make certain hormones and connective tissues. During pregnancy, there is a hormone called Relaxin that is released which actually lubricates and changes much of your joints and connective tissues, preparing your body for childbirth. Ensuring that everything is as strong as it can be in your body to prepare for that is extremely important. 

Because the blood is so rich in iron, women will lose a significant amount of it during their menstrual periods. Have you ever had a craving for steak or beef during this time every month? That’s because your body is craving a replacement for the iron that it is losing! Pregnant women also need to pay close attention to their iron intake, as their bodies are creating an entirely new blood supply for the baby growing inside of them.

Women aged 19-50 need at least 18mg of iron in their diets per day, pregnant women need at least 27mg per day, and women aged 51 and older need to be taking at least 8mg of iron per day.

Best Women's Health Supplements

Below is a list of supplements every woman should be consuming. 

Probiotics

Perhaps the most intricate part of the female body is that of her vaginal flora & fauna. There are over 50 different types of microbes that live in a woman’s vagina, with many of these being lactobacilli. Lactobacilli are “good” bacteria, which help keep the pH levels of her vagina within a certain range, preventing the “bad” bacteria or microbes from growing or festering. To keep this delicate balance running in perfect harmony, it’s a good idea for women to take daily probiotics, which will help these good bacteria stay healthy and fight off any bad ones. We recommend Green Vibrance by Vibrant Health, which contains 25 billion CFUs of probiotics from 12 different strains shown to be especially good for women’s health.

L-Glutamine

L-Glutamine is often only thought of as a supplement for gym junkies, but recent research has shown that it provides many benefits outside of making your muscles grow. L-Glutamine can help keep your immune system strong, provide for good intestinal health and prevent leaky gut, keep your brain running smoothly as a precursor to your neurotransmitters, and also benefits both your heart and metabolic health. For women to add more L-Glutamine to their daily intake, we suggest Digestive Vibrance from Vibrant Health, which can add 700mg of L-Glutamine to your diet to help all of the above running just as it should.

Spirulina

Spirulina was considered a superfood by the Aztecs and was popularized in our modern culture when NASA began studying it as a potential food source for their trips to mars. A true superfood, spirulina contains antioxidant & anti-inflammatory properties, can reduce your cholesterol levels, and even has anti-cancer properties. For women looking to add this potent superfood to their daily diet, we suggest Green Vibrance from Vibrant Health, which contains 600mg of certified organic spirulina.

Get it All in One Place 

A woman’s body is her temple and may be called upon one day to be the temple for a newly-forming life (by surprise, in 45% of cases). As such, it is imperative that women keep their bodies running in optimal condition, as your state of health at the time of pregnancy could very well determine the future health of your son or daughter.

 

Even if you do not plan on ever being a mother, your state of health runs far more of your life than just the way you look in a pair of jeans. Good health can make your skin, hair, nails, energy levels, digestion, and just about every other part of your life run as it should. We’ve suggested several products above by Vibrant Health for women looking to supercharge their healthy lives, because of all the companies and women’s supplements that we reviewed, they are by far the best.

Green Vibrance contains all of the necessary vitamins and minerals for a balanced daily diet, with many additional benefits such as spirulina, wheatgrass, probiotics, L-glutamine, and others. If you are looking for a way to add more protein to your diet, they even have a product called Maximum Vibrance that provides 20g of plant-based protein on top of all of the benefits listed above.

And even better than these benefits, Vibrant Health products are certified Non-GMO, vegan friendly, and are gluten, soy, and dairy-free. If you are looking for a way to keep your body in the best condition possible, Vibrant Health offers a simple, daily product that women can add to their diet to get everything that they need.