Take multi's at mealtime

The best time to take your vitamins is during or after a meal, when your stomach's digestive enzymes will help metabolize the nutrients more quickly. Any fat in the meal--even as little as a teaspoon--will help you absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Yet if your multi contains iron, don't take it along with a calcium supplement: the minerals could interfere with each other's absorption.

Pop the multivitamin at breakfast and the calcium at bedtime. If you take 1,000 mg of calcium a day, however, divide your doses into 500 mg, taking one dose between lunch and dinner and the next at bedtime, since your body can't absorb more than that at one time.

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