Why Take Supplements and Why They Matter For Healthy Aging and Wellness
Many people take supplements, vitamins, and minerals daily, while others do not. Learn what vitamins and minerals are and why you may want to consider taking them, especially as you age. A lack of essential nutrients can lead to health issues because your body needs these nutrients to grow and develop. Eating healthy can give you some major vitamins and minerals; is it enough?
What Are Vitamins and Minerals?
Vitamins: They are natural substances found in living things such as plants. The body can not produce most vitamins and must obtain them from food or supplements.
Minerals: Minerals are also found in plants. Plants obtain their minerals from the soil, which receives minerals from the water washing over rocks. Vitamins need Minerals to do their job, and minerals must also be obtained from food or supplements because they are not produced by our bodies.
Antioxidants: Specific Vitamins or Minerals that protect body cells from the damaging effects of Free Radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules produced from stress, pollution, smoking, UV exposure, inflammation, and normal metabolic processes and are considered to be the primary cause of aging and disease.
Where Do We Get Vitamins and Minerals?
Vitamins and Minerals are obtained from fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and spices, or when we take a vitamin/mineral supplement. Some vitamins are also obtained by eating meat since most animals eat plant food.
Supplements: Vitamins and Minerals that have been extracted from a plant or created in a laboratory and put into a form (liquid, capsule, tablet) that we can take for our body to ingest.
Supplement quality can vary significantly. Being uneducated about supplements puts you, the consumer, at risk from two sides.
1. Consumers know they should probably supplement, but don’t feel confident in selecting an effective supplement and feel like they could be wasting their time, money, and health. Quality is important.
2. Consumers are given bad advice or are uninformed about supplementing and sacrificing their health and wellness. Work with someone knowledgeable about products and their health benefits.
How Your Body Absorbs Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamins and Minerals go from your stomach to your intestines, which is why gut health is so important. If your gut isn’t healthy, your stomach acid is low, or your enzyme production has declined due to aging, you may not be absorbing the nutrients you need.
The absorption process is a complex allocation system where the body distributes specific vitamins and minerals to parts of the body based on its priority system. If your body feels a specific organ needs a nutrient more than another, it will take that vitamin or mineral from one organ and give it to the other—sort of a “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” action. You can’t view vitamins and minerals in your body as independent substances, but rather as a network of nutrients working together. If your body lacks one nutrient, it can throw off your entire network!
Vitamins and minerals are “used” by the body. As they perform their function, they often use themselves up in the process, which is the case with most of the crucial disease-fighting antioxidants. Thinking even requires vitamins and minerals. Exercise and stress use a lot of vitamins and minerals
“A deficiency of a vitamin or mineral will cause a body part to malfunction
and eventually break down – and, like dominoes, other body parts will follow.”
James F. Balch, M.D. – Prescription for Nutritional Healing
Why Supplement Needs Increase After 40
After 40, several factors reduce your body’s ability to get what it needs from the food you eat. Stomach acid production declines, impairing the absorption of key nutrients such as B12, iron, calcium, and magnesium. Digestive enzyme output decreases, making it harder to break down food efficiently. The gut microbiome changes, further reducing nutrient absorption. Chronic stress, medications, and poor diet deplete nutrients faster than they can be replaced. This is why adults over 40 often need more targeted nutritional support, not because they are eating worse, but because their bodies are absorbing less.
Why You Should Take Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamins and minerals are vital nutrients required for bodily functions and the prevention of disease. There is the argument, “I can get everything I need from food.” The question to that argument is, “Are you?” Research has consistently shown that most people do not receive the nutritional requirements set forth by the RDA through diet alone. If you are interested in high-quality supplements, learn more about Nature’s Sunshine.
“Insufficient vitamin intake is apparently a cause of chronic diseases.
Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone.
Pending strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized trials,
it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements.”
American Medical Association
Information Reference: Health Awareness Foundation
Where to Buy High-Quality Supplements
Although the Internet can be a valuable research tool, it can also be a place where misleading marketing and poor-quality products are common. In your search for high-quality supplements, you might be tempted to purchase cheap products or those sold overseas. Neither is a good idea, however. In many cases, you get what you pay for, meaning a cheap supplement likely contains poor-quality ingredients. Shop instead at reputable Websites, health stores, or purchase products approved by a trusted healthcare professional or adviser. Wherever you shop, always buy products from a reputable manufacturer.
Choosing a Brand
With so many supplements spanning the shelves, it might be difficult to choose a brand. It’s best to buy from a long-standing company, one that has had a chance to prove its brand, like Nature’s Sunshine Products. Newer and less popular brands may sell diluted herbs, made from cheap herbal extracts. Supplements might also contain contaminants and drugs not listed on the label, which can interfere with medications and have a dangerous outcome.
Selecting Your Supplements
Finding the best supplements is about finding quality products that are most suitable for you. As you age, your body changes, as do your health and nutritional needs. Older adults who use multiple medications and have chronic health conditions are at greater risk for nutrient-drug interactions and toxicity while using supplements. And those who consume fortified foods, such as breakfast cereals, may be taking in too much folic acid if they also use a supplement. Menopausal women might fare better with a supplement geared for that stage of life. Those who desire to lose weight might choose a supplement with green tea extracts or other stimulant herbs. When selecting a high-quality supplement, consider your health needs as well as your health goals. You may want to try our Brilliant Body Health Analyzer, which is free, to help you select which supplements may be suited for you.
Supporting your body with high-quality supplements is one piece of a larger foundation. Start building that foundation with The Healthy Habits Challenge or explore Nature’s Sunshine Supplements for targeted nutritional support.
References:
“Fitness”; The Truth About Nutrition Supplements; Richard Laliberte; “American Journal of Public Health”; Multivitamin–Mineral Supplements in the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program: Not a One-Size-Fits-All Quick Fix; Melissa Ventura Marra, PhD, RD, et al.; December 2007; “Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology”; The Quality of Commercially Available Nutraceutical Supplements and Food Sources; Lockwood GB; January 2011;