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. 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 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 can come from or are caused by smoking, sunlight (ultraviolet rays), stress, exercise, etc, and are considered to be the primary cause of aging and disease.
Where do we get Vitamins and Minerals?
Where do we get Supplements – 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.
There are ineffective and effective supplements. 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 We Absorb Them
Vitamins and Minerals go from your stomach to your intestines. They then go through 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 dominos, other body parts will follow.”
James F. Balch, M.D.
Prescription for Nutritional Healing
Why should you 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?” In a large 26,000-person study, it was concluded that not one person received the nutritional requirements set forth by the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance). 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 evident of effectiveness from randomized trials,
it appears prudent for all adult to take vitamins supplements.”
American Medial Association
Information Reference: Health Awareness Foundation