If you want to give your health a mega-boost, popping a multivitamin is the first basic step in the right direction. Easy enough, right? You’ll just drop in to the local health food store or pharmacy and pick one up. But the dozens of brands garnishing colorful labels and lofty promises to be the ultimate supplement can leave you overwhelmed and confused. Is any one brand as good as the next? How do you know which is really best for you? Here are some tips to turn you into a nutrient-smart shopper and help you choose the optimal multivitamin for your needs.

 The Basics – What All Good Multi’s Should Have

Even if you have the most health-conscious whole foods diet, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs on a daily basis to function optimally from diet alone. Stress, environmental pollution, pesticides in foods, mineral depleted soil, and other unhealthy by-products of twentieth century living interfere with the nutritional quality of our foods and burn up our nutrient stores at supersonic speed. The purpose of a multi-vitamin-and-mineral complex is, at the very least, to provide the bare essentials of vitamins and minerals to protect you from deficiency, and at the very best, to provide optimal amounts to improve health and prevent disease.

The first thing to check out in a multi-vitamin/mineral is whether it offers a complete range of vitamins and minerals – most do, but many don’t. Vitamins that should be included in any good multi are all of the B-vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, folic acid and biotin), vitamin A, beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin E and vitamin K. The minerals should include calcium, potassium, magnesium, chromium, as well as trace minerals zinc, iron, selenium, boron, copper, iodine, manganese, molybdenum, silica and vanadium. Lots of formulations skimp on the trace minerals or leave them out all together. Considering their essential role in women’s health like bone formation and hormone production, you definitely want a multi that’s got them. Besides the basic vitamins and minerals, some perks that set the better multi’s apart include the accessory B-vitamins (choline, inositol and PABA), bioflavonoids (like quercitin and rutin), extra antioxidants (like mixed carotenes and glutathione), vegetable extracts, and lipotropic factors (like cysteine and methionine).

 Does One A Day Keep the Doctor Away?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just swish down one pill with a single gulp of water and get everything you need for your health each day? It sounds too good to be true because it is. According to Dr. Michael Wald, nutritional director of Advanced Medicine of Mt. Kisco, "One-a-day multivitamins like Centrum or Theragram are just too low dose to have a significant health-improving impact. You just can’t get everything you need in a single pill." The metaphor he frequently uses is that a one-a-day supplement is like the minimum wage – it may give you just enough to get by but it’s insufficient to allow for a great quality of life. High quality multi-vitamin/mineral complexes are more potent than the standard so-so multi – and the right dose translates to between two and six pills a day.

The sample vitamin label in the sidebar lists the ideal vitamin and mineral dose ranges you want to be on the lookout for when you’re shopping for a good brand. These doses are mostly above the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI formerly RDA) levels and for good reason. RDI’s are the very minimum quantity of a vitamin or mineral recommended to prevent severe deficiency syndromes like scurvy and rickets. These fall far short of the optimal therapeutic doses needed to create health. For instance, the RDA for vitamin B6 is 2.0 mg/day. A health-promoting dose of B6 to support energy production, menstrual and hormone health is in the range of 25 to 100 mg/day – big difference! You only need 30 I.U. of vitamin E per day according to the RDI’s, but hundreds of scientific studies have shown that 200 – 800 I.U. of this powerful antioxidant is required to lower cholesterol, protect heart health and fight cancer. Let’s not even get started on how ridiculous the RDI of 60 mg per day of vitamin C is for health-promotion.

 When You Need More (Or Less) Than What’s In Your Multi

Even the best multivitamin can’t guarantee ideal doses of all nutrients. Supplementing with extra vitamin C (1000 mg – 3000mg), calcium (800-1200 mg/day) and magnesium (500-1,000 mg/day) is a smart move for women to get an optimal daily dose. If you’re pregnant or planning to be, you’ll need to up your intake of folic acid to total 800 mcg/day and iron to 30 mg/day, and cut your vitamin A intake to under 5,000 I.U./day. But beware of standard prescripition and over-the-counter prenatal multi’s that are abhorrently low in B-vitamins and other vital nutrients, and often have excessive amounts of constipating iron (often as much as 60 mg/day). Other extras: any therapeutic vitamins, minerals or herbs to address your specific individual health needs.

 A Lesson in Reading Labels

Now that you have an idea of what you want in your multivitamin, let’s talk about what you don’t want and should cautiously read labels to avoid. Additives such as sugar, artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, plasticizers are not only unessential but also compromise your health. Corn, yeast, wheat and dairy are major food allergens that are commonly used in poorer quality brands. Look for products that state on their labels that they are "hypoallergenic" or "free of corn, yeast, preservatives, etc…." Another item to be wary of : the ingredient used to coat tablets. Less desirable multivitamin tablets get their sheen from nasty petroleum-based waxes or shellac (you read right). Better quality brands use vegetable glazes instead, like cellulose or vegetable glycerin, and state that on the label.

You may not be a designer fashion type of person, but when it comes to choosing supplements name does matter and you get what you pay for. The generic $3-for-300-pills brands on Costco shelves are sure to be inferior in quality to well-respected brands health food store brands like Solgar, Schiff and Nature’s Way, or professional supplement lines available through health practitioners that are usually the highest quality available. "The minerals provided in generic and one-a-day brands are usually the cheapest and least absorbable forms, like chromium chloride and zinc oxide," says Dr. Wald. "Instead of using the effective natural form of vitamin E (d-alpha-tocopherol), poor quality brands use less absorbable synthetic vitamin E or mixtures of synthetic and as little as 5% natural E so that they can claim on their label to contain natural vitamin E." See the sidebar for a sampling of the best forms of nutrients to look for in a good multi.

Another noteworthy label item is whether the supplement is in tablet, capsule or liquid form. In general, capsules and liquids are more easily broken down and digested. Tablets tend to be less well absorbed since they are densely compressed to mold them into their final shape and extend shelf life. If you have a weak digestive system, stick with capsules or liquids. Whichever you choose, taking your multivitamin with food is the best way to maximize its digestibility and avoid stomach upset. It’s also smart to divide your intake between several meals instead of taking them at one shot. For example, a three-a-day can be taken one with each meal. Since B-vitamins are energy-boosting avoid taking your multi too close to bedtime.