Visit your local supermarket, drugstore or health food store and you will find rows upon rows of vitamins and supplements. Each is minutely measured giving you the RDAs, DVs, IUs, milligrams and so on. It’s enough information to make your head swim!

Some studies suggest that specific vitamin and mineral supplements can help reduce your risk of heart disease by 30 to 40 percent and even slow the progress of the disease according to Jeffrey Blumberg, M.D. associate director and chief of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the U.D. Department of

Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in

Boston. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain over the counter.

Vitamins are also credited with boosting the immune system and it is believed that older people who take vitamin and mineral supplements do have stronger immune systems.

Generally speaking, the immune system begins to decline around age 50 and by age 60 may already be seriously compromised. The belief is that if your immune system can’t protect you, the door is thrown wide open for cancer and other serious diseases to waltz right in.

So, the answer is yes, supplements can help but don’t expect them to work miracles. You can’t continue to do the steak and eggs or burger and fries thing and think that popping a pill will be a cure-all because it isn’t!

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