The Best Supplements For Runners

Whether you’re trying to achieve a personal best or race a new distance, running is a sport that can take its toll on your body if you don’t have the appropriate fuel. A healthy, balanced diet is what will support your body, making hitting your goal pace and mileage possible. The best supplements for marathon runners, however, will be slightly different.

However, many runners who eat a healthy and well-rounded diet may still be lacking in a few key nutrients that may support your exercise. Supplements aren’t a substitute for a healthy diet, but they can help in achieving greater performance results.

Do runners need supplements?

The obvious question is: do you need supplements to be the best runner you can be? Absolutely not. Supplements are designed to simply be what their name implies – supplementation to your daily intake, in case you aren’t getting enough nutrients through your diet. It’s entirely possible to get the required daily intake of any nutrient through diet alone.

That being said, runners might not eat the perfect diet all the time. Many factors, like family, stress or work, can lead us to deficiencies in critical vitamins and minerals, all of which can have an impact on our performance.

Tips for taking supplements for runners

Get your vitamins and nutrients from food. Support your dietary intake with supplements, and don’t rely on them. This will ensure you absorb as much as possible.
Maximise your sleep. Don’t take supplements to give you energy, look at your sleeping patterns and make sure you’re getting as much as you need. A good night’s sleep should be the bases of every run, and lack of sleep can throw your energy levels out of whack.
Buy good supplements from a reputable seller – such as Nutri Advanced, trusted by professionals.

What are the best supplements for runners?

There are a variety of different supplements that runners can take to keep their vitamins in balance.

Iron

Low iron levels in runners is one of the most common reasons for poor results. Lost both in sweat and the GI tract, runners can find themselves losing more iron than they replace through their everyday diet. Iron is found in most multivitamins, so taking a daily multivitamin should supplement you with all the iron you need. However, if you feel like you may be iron deficient, it’s worth checking this with a doctor – then, you may need to take a separate iron supplement.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamins for runners, it’s needed for bone health and muscle function and has a role in the production and normal function of many hormones. Vitamin D also offers support to your immune system, and helps your body to absorb calcium – another great supplement for runners. Vitamin D levels tend to decrease during the winter, due to the reduction in the intensity and duration of sunlight on the skin. As such, particularly during the colder months of the year, you should take a vitamin D supplement.

Calcium

Calcium is perhaps one of the most important micronutrients for runners. It’s the most abundant mineral in the body, and critical in the structural forming of bones and teeth. Adequate calcium intake is something that should be focussed on by runners, to ensure maximum bone health and minimise the risk of injury.

Probiotics

Probiotics have plenty of benefits, including supporting gut health. And, since much of the immune system is located in the gut, it’s a good idea to support your gut health where possible. A healthy gut is ground zero for overall health, and is especially important for endurance athletes such as runners who need strong guts to go the distance.

Magnesium

Magnesium plays an integral role in many different reactions in the body, helping to transport calcium and potassium across cell membranes. It can help to support muscle relaxation, due to its due to its relationship with calcium. Calcium causes muscles to contract while magnesium helps your muscles relax. Therefore it’s the ideal supplement to aid running performance and recovery.

Vitamin B12

This is part of the Vitamin B complex, and is required for energy production in cells, brain function and the production of DNA and proteins. It’s produced by beneficial gut bacteria, as well as consumed in the diet. B12 is found naturally only in animal products, but foods such as breakfast cereals, milk, yoghurt and nutritional yeast are fortified with B12. Taking a B12 supplement can help to meet your daily requirements and provide you with enough energy to complete your runs.

Zinc

Zinc plays a role in the production of more than 300 different enzymes in the body. Enzymes are a class of biological proteins, helping to catalyse a variety of different chemical reactions. Therefore, having sufficient zinc availability ensures that all of the necessary enzymes involved in facilitating key reactions in the body are abundant and available. This can help to support recovery from your runs.

FAQ

How long does the process take?

Our R&D process usually takes around 12-18 months, but can take up to 2 years with lots of to-ing- and fro-ing to get the formula just right.

How do you test the safety profile?

Our formulas are created based on the latest research and scientific understanding. Only those ingredients known to be safe through historical use and clinical research are selected for use in our products.

What’s the difference between your supplements and food grown or food source supplements?

Many of our formulas contain natural extracts from food or plant sources, such as curcumin, ginger, artichoke, berberbine, ashwagandha, milk thistle and broccoli to name just a few. Other examples include calcium from algae and vitamin K2 from chickpeas. Many of our supplements also contain nutrients known as “nature-identical” – manufactured to be a perfect replica of the same nutrient found in food, an identical structure with optimal purity and absorption. Unlike “food grown” supplements, our formulas are backed by real science, allowing us to include higher, more therapeutic levels of nutrients, as well as botanicals, in the forms known to be better assimilated by the body, and are standardised for consistency across our range.

Why do you have additional ingredients in your products?

Often it’s necessary to include additional ingredients in our products to make them effective. These are also known as excipients, and include ingredients such as anti-caking agents which stop lumps from forming in powders, flow agents which help with the manufacturing process, or coating ingredients used to help make the tablet easy to swallow. Whatever the product, we aim to use as few excipients as possible, from the safest, most natural sources available. Over the last few months we have been busy working through our entire product range to see where we can make changes to the additional ingredients we use, reducing the number of excipients or even switching to “pure-fill” capsules (where no excipients are used at all), and you will see these changes filtering through over the next year. With complex formulations containing lots of ingredients, this process is a tricky one, but we are committed to making improvements to our products where we can. For more information on the excipients we use, click here

Do you have Certificates of Analysis for all of your products?

Products are sent to us with Certificates of Analysis or Certificates of Compliance which we hold on file here at Nutri Advanced. We also hold extensive information on the ingredients and allergen status of our products – so if you have a question about our products, please do call our customer service team. We are always happy to help!

Are your products manufactured to GMP standards?

GMP means “Good Manufacturing Practice”. GMP describes the minimum standard that a medicines manufacturer must meet in their production processes, and ensures that products are of a consistently high quality, are appropriate for their intended use and meet any authorisation requirements. Food supplements are not medicines, and so are not required to be manufactured in GMP-certified facilities, but by using suppliers who are manufacturing to GMP standards, we are happy that our products are being made to the highest quality. We ourselves at Nutri Advanced hold a Wholesale Dealers Authorisation, meaning we are certified to GDP – “Good Distribution Practice”. GDP ensures that the quality and integrity of products are maintained throughout the supply chain.