Vitamins may be the nutritional superheroes everyone talks about, but minerals deserve an equal share of the spotlight. They play a key role in muscle strength and flexibility, bone density, and heart and lung health, research shows. That makes them especially important for fit women who exercise regularly, says Liz Applegate, Ph.D., the director of sports nutrition at the University of California, Davis.
What’s more, studies report that activities like cardio and strength training can actually drain your stores of minerals. “Zinc and magnesium are lost through sweat during exercise,” says Kim Larson, R.D.N., a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And endurance training may deplete calcium, according to a study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
That’s a big problem, since most of…