Vitamins -Minerals Info
The supplement market has been dominated by
vitamins for years but vitamins and amino acids are useless
without minerals because all enzyme activities involve minerals.
Minerals are needed to maintain the delicate cellular fluid
balance, to form bone and blood cells, to provide for
electrochemical nerve activity and to regulate muscle tone and
activity. This includes key organ muscles like the heart,
stomach and liver.
Minerals are primarily stored in bone and
muscle tissue so toxicity is a possibility. Toxicity risks
increase when one isolated mineral is ingested without any
supportive cofactor nutrients. Such situations of mineral
toxicity are quite rare, because toxic levels accumulate only if
massive overdoses persist for a prolonged period of time.
Learn how vitamins and minerals affect your body and your
health.
Vitamins
Vitamins are micronutrients that are essential to life and
healthy living. They are natural substances found in living
things such as plants. Vitamins must be obtained from
foods or supplements as they cannot usually be produced by the
body. Everyone should be aware, failing to get the necessary
amounts of specific vitamins can cause deficiency states that
are unhealthy and even dangerous. Getting your vitamins from
whole foods is preferred since our body will recognize nutrients
from whole foods more readily than synthetic vitamins.
Governmental regulation of vitamin
supplements
Most countries place dietary supplements in a
special category under the general umbrella of
"foods," not drugs. This necessitates that the
manufacturer, and not the government, be
responsible for ensuring that its dietary
supplement products are safe before they are
marketed. Unlike drug products that must
implicitly be proven safe and effective for
their intended use before marketing, there are
often no provisions to "approve" dietary
supplements for safety or effectiveness before
they reach the consumer. Also unlike drug
products, manufacturers and distributors of
dietary supplements are not generally required
to report any claims of injuries or illnesses
that may be related to the use of their products Some
manufacturers of vitamin supplements claim that
there are no side effects, and few, if any,
provide warning labels. In reality, side effects
have been reported from supplements containing
close to 1 RDA of B-complex vitamins. More
troublesome, some of these reports demonstrated
that people can take daily supplements for
months or even years before the side effects
emerge.
Minerals
Minerals are found in plants. Plants get minerals from the
soil — soil gets minerals from water washing over rocks. For
vitamins to do their job, they require minerals. Minerals must
also be obtained from food or supplements.
Dietary minerals are the chemical elements required by living
organisms, other than the four elements Carbon, Hydrogen,
Nitrogen, and Oxygen which are ubiquitous in organic molecules.
They can be either bulk minerals (required in relatively large
amounts) or trace minerals (required only in very small
amounts).
These can be naturally occurring in food or added in elemental
or mineral form, such as calcium carbonate or sodium chloride.
Some of these additives come from natural sources such as ground
oyster shells. Sometimes minerals are added to the diet
separately from food, as vitamin and mineral supplements and in
dirt eating, called pica or geophagy.
Appropriate intake levels of each dietary mineral must be
sustained to maintain physical health. Excessive intake of a
dietary mineral may either lead to illness directly or
indirectly because of the competitive nature between mineral
levels in the body.
Where do vitamins and minerals go in the body?
Vitamins and minerals go from your stomach to your
intestines. They then go through a very complex allocation
system whereby the body distributes certain vitamins and
minerals to parts of your body based on its own priority system.
If a nutrient is needed in a certain organ that the body deems
more important, it will take the nutrient from a less important
organ, and allocate it to a more important organ. It basically
robs Peter to pay Paul. That’s why it is critical to maintain
proper vitamin & mineral levels.
Vitamins and Minerals in your body should not be viewed
independently. They are a cooperative network of nutrients that
work together. When any nutrients are missing it throws the
entire network of nutrients out of balance and can cause a
negative affect on the body.
How Do Vitamins and Minerals leave the
body?
Vitamins and Minerals are processed and used by the body. As
they perform their bodily function, they use themselves up in
the process. This is especially true with the most critical
disease fighting anti-oxidants.
Even when you are thinking about stuff is using vitamins and
minerals in the body. Exercise and stress will use up a lot
vitamins and minerals. Substances like drugs, alcohol, coffee,
tea and sodas increase the discharge of urine and washes
vitamins and minerals out of the body. This can create vitamin
and mineral deficiencies that can create major health problems.
Tobacco and alcohol can inhibit the absorption of vitamins and
minerals or accelerate the loss of them.
Vitamin & Mineral
supplementation is necessary for the following reasons:
1. Crop nutrient losses — Decades of
agriculture have overworked and depleted soils of minerals
necessary to be in our foods.
2. Poor digestion — Eating too much or too
quickly and stress can cause indigestion. Indigestion reduces
absorption of vitamins and minerals.
3. Over-cooking — Can easily destroy
valuable food nutrients.
4. Microwave cooking — Some studies suggest
that microwave cooking alters the nutritional structure of food.
5. Food storage — Length of storage and
freezing deplete the nutritional value of most foods.
6. Food selection — Eating a too limited
range of different food groups will result in nutrient
deficiencies.
7. Food omission — Allergies to foods,
crash dieting and poorly designed vegetarian diets omit
significant dietary sources of nutrients.
8. Environmental factors Herbicides and
Pesticides are used on crops, leaving them with lower
nutritional value.
9. Antibiotics — Antibiotics interfere with
the intake of essential nutrients.
10. Poor lifestyle habits — Smoking,
alcohol and caffeine can inhibit the absorption of vitamins and
minerals or accelerate the loss of nutrients.
11. Stress — Be it physical or emotional,
can increase the body’s requirement of vitamins and minerals.
12. Out of balance —The level of each
vitamin and mineral in the body has an effect on others, so if
one is out of balance (missing all are adversely effected. With
antioxidants, one is not nearly as strong as several combined as
each greatly enhances the power of the others.
13. Nutrient variance —There are
substantial differences between one fruit or vegetable and
another. One tomato can have 10 times more nutritional value
than another - which tomato did you eat?
More information about: Vitamins and
Minerals
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