Have you ever had that feeling of being a little bit under the weather but you are not quite sure why? Sometimes feeling lethargic and, well, a little bit ‘ugh’ can be an indication that you are simply not getting the nutrients you need to keep your body and brain operating at maximum capacity.

One of the most common mineral deficiencies amongst otherwise healthy people is iron. Which is why we have combined a full multivitamin, containing all 13 known vitamins, with iron, to create our Holland and Barrett Multivitamins and Iron supplement.

This one-a-day tablet has been formulated to help you get the nutrients you need most for health and vitality.

Why iron is important

Iron plays a crucial role in carrying oxygen throughout the body, binding to haemoglobin to transport red blood cells from the lungs to other cells. The amount of iron we need depends largely on age and sex, with women in particular finding that their iron requirements tend towards fluctuation depending on a variety of factors, including monthly periods, pregnancy and menopause.

When we do not get enough iron, one of the first symptoms we might experience is a feeling of exhaustion. A deficiency can also cause weakness.

Vitamins for energy

Iron is not the only nutrient that has a significant impact on your energy levels. When you are short on get-up-and-go, a lack of almost any vitamin could be to blame.

B vitamins (of which there are five in total) are especially important for energy, converting consumed food into usable sources of energy through something often referred to as our ‘energy yielding metabolism’. When you are not getting enough of just about any vitamin you might well experience tiredness and fatigue.

In fact, these symptoms are usually the first to appear, preceding a full-blown deficiency. For that reason, taking a multivitamin with iron can be a sensible first stop if you begin to experience unexplained exhaustion.

Nutrients that work together

If you have ever been diagnosed with iron deficiency anaemia or low iron levels, you may also have experienced difficulty in recovering healthy levels of this crucial mineral. This is often due to the link between iron and other vitamins. You see, improving iron levels is not always as simple as taking an iron supplement and hoping for the best.

Iron actually requires other nutrients to help absorption, with vitamin C of particular importance. Therefore, adding a multivitamin complex to your iron supplement when an iron deficiency strikes, helps your body to not only gain a valuable injection of iron but also conditions to support its absorption, getting that iron to exactly where it needs to be and helping supporting energy yielding metabolism.