Vitamin Supplements

Now you know how to read the labels and find out if a particular supplement contains what you need, here’s how to turn your nutrient needs into a supplement programme.

Theoretically, you could take a mega-mega-multi that has everything you could possibly need in it. The trouble is, this would be enormous, impossible to swallow and no doubt give you a lot more than you need of some nutrients. The other extreme is to take one supplement for each vitamin, exactly matching your requirements — but you’d end up with handfuls of pills. Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding Your Digestive System

Knowing how your digestive system works will clear up, right at the start, some of the more common confusions about how, when, and where nutrients operate.

Mouth and OesophagusDigestion begins in the mouth with the grinding of food and admixture of saliva. An enzyme called ptyalin in the saliva already begins to split starches into simple sugars. The food is then forced to the back of the mouth and into the oesophagus, or gullet. Here is where peristalsis begins. This is a kneading “milking” constriction and relaxation of muscles that propels material through the digestive system. To prevent back-flow of materials, and to time the release of proper enzymes — since one enzyme cannot do another enzyme’s work — the digestive tract is equipped with valves at important junctions. Read the rest of this entry »

Vanadium

FACTS:

Inhibits the formation of cholesterol in blood vessels. No dietary allowance set.

WHAT IT CAN Do FOR You:

Aid in preventing heart attacks.

DEFICIENCY DISEASE:

None known.

BEST NATURAL SOURCES:

Fish.

SUPPLEMENTS:

Not available.

TOXICITY:

Can easily be toxic if taken in synthetic form.

PERSONAL ADVICE:

This is not one of the minerals that needs to be supplemented. A good fish dinner will supply you with the vanadium you need. Read the rest of this entry »

Kelp

This amazing seaweed contains more vitamins and minerals than any other food. To be more specific, kelp has vitamin B2, niacin, choline, carotene, and algenic acid, as well as twenty-three minerals which range as follows:

Plus traces of: barium, boron, chromium, lithium, nickel,silver, titanium, vanadium, aluminium, strontium, and silicon. Because of its natural iodine content, kelp has a normalising effect on the thyroid gland. In other words, thin people with thyroid trouble can gain weight by using kelp and obese people can lose weight with it. Read the rest of this entry »