Daily Vitamin & Mineral Dosage Guide: Optimal Intake for Health

Daily Recommendations for Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements

Daily Recommendations for Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements

Vitamins and supplements can be beneficial to your health, but the number of choices available today can be overwhelming. Use the guide below to see the optimum daily dosage of many vitamins, minerals and supplements.

Vitamin A

More than 2,500 IU is too much (unless you have an eye condition called wet macular degeneration).

Vitamin B

Get at least the daily value (DV) of all the Bs plus a little more than daily value of these Bs:

B1 (thiamin) 25 mg.

B2 (riboflavin) 25 mg.

B3 (niacin) At least 30 mg, and you can take lots more after speaking with your doctor if you have elevated lousy cholesterol or trigylcerides.

B5 (pantothenic acid) 300 mg.

B6 (pyridoxine) 4 mg.

B9 (folic acid or folate) 400 mcg.

B12 (cyanocobalamin) 800 mcg.

Vitamin C

800 mg or 50 mg twice a day if you're taking a statin drug.

Vitamin D

800 IU if under age sixty; 1,000 if sixty or over.

Vitamin E

400 IU in the form of mixed tocopherols. Reduce to 100 IU from supplements if you're taking a statin drug.

Vitamin K

You should get enough in normal diet.

Mineral and Supplement Recommendations

Get a daily value of all the usual suspects in your multivitamin plus these in higher quantity:

Calcium

This comes from many sources, so total all of them up and get at least 1,600 total mg for women, 1,200 mg for men.

Magnesium

400 mg.

Selenium

200 mcg.

Zinc

15 mg.

Potassium

4 servings of fruit, plus a normal diet should do it.

Lycopene

10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week (400 micrograms).

Lutein

A leafy green vegetable a day (40 micrograms).

Quercetin

Hefty portions of onion, garlic, celery, or lemon juice in addition to the above at least once a day.

Acetyl-L-carnitine

1,500 milligrams (while this comes in dehydrated beef protein, that's not so appetizing, so we recommend the supplement).

Omega-3

Either 1 gram of distilled fish oil or 6 walnuts, preferably twenty-five to thirty minutes before lunch and before dinner, or 2 ounces of fatty fish a day, or 400 mg of DHA.

Cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon a day.

Red Pepper

The more capsaicin, the better for appetite suppression.

Tumeric

As much as you want.

Coenzyme Q10

200 milligrams day (if on a statin) or for all over age sixty.

Aspirin

162 milligrams a day (check with your doctor) with two glasses of warm water.

Coffee and Green Tea

2 or more cups of each.

Alpha-lipoic acid

200 milligrams.

Probiotics

2 billion cells of healthy bowel bacteria like bacillus coagulans.

Excerpted from "YOU: Staying Young" by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Copyright © 2007 by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Oz Works LLC, f/s/o Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.