Vitamin Supplements

Vitamin D is not like other vitamins. Because the body can manufacture this nutrient, in fact, vitamin D fails to meet the classic definition of a vitamin. Vitamin D is manufactured in the skin, with ultraviolet light driving the process. With regular exposure to sunlight, most people can manufacture enough of this vitamin to meet all of their needs. People who do not get enough year-round exposure, however, may require dietary D as well. Certain groups, including older people, have difficulty producing vitamin D themselves and may also require dietary D.

While rickets, a disease caused by a vitamin D deficiency, has been around for thousands of years, our knowledge of the vitamin itself has a relatively short history. It was first isolated and synthesized. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamin D is the joker in the pack. It masquerades as a vitamin but follows none of the rules. To begin with we don’t need it in the diet because we can make it ourselves, and secondly it doesn’t work as a coenzyme in the way that most of the other vitamins do. Vitamin D is formed from a group of chemicals which are known as sterols and react to sunlight and radiation to form the active vitamin. All animals including man possess these sterols and they are found close to the surface of the skin. When sunlight reaches the body it changes the structure of these sterols, and they are absorbed into the bloodstream as cholecalciferol and pass to the liver. Further changes occur here and the new products are transported to the kidney. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two distinct schools of thought about vitamin E and they can be divided between those who are concerned with the known facts and findings about the vitamin, and the others who prefer to promote its more attractive, but as yet unproven, qualities. If you study an academic text on the subject you will find that vitamin E is a true vitamin and is essential in our diet. Few of us are likely to go short of it or suffer any form of deficiency disease and the only exceptions are premature babies, and people who cannot digest and absorb any fat. Compare these facts with those presented in praise of vitamin E and you will find a very different story. It seems that vitamin E is a magic ingredient which will ensure health and happiness, improved sex life and eternal youth. It is hard to believe we are discussing the same substance, and inevitably we are faced with the problem of who to believe, and we need to know why there is such a discrepancy between the scientist’s evidence and the layman’s approach. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamin F [Unsaturated Fatty Acids — Linoleic, Linolenic and Arachidonic]

FACTS:

Fat soluble, made up of unsaturated fatty acids obtained from foods.

Measured in milligrams [mg.].

No RDA has been established, but the National Research Council has suggested that at least 1 percent of total calories should include essential unsaturated fatty acids.

Unsaturated fat helps burn saturated fat, with intake balanced two to one.

Twelve teaspoons sunflower seeds or eighteen pecan halves can furnish a day’s complete supply. Read the rest of this entry »

Niacin [Nicotinic Acid, Niacinamide, Nicotinamide]

FACTS:

Water soluble and a member of the B-complex family, known as B3.

Usually measured in milligrams [mg].

Using the amino acid tryptophan, the body can manufacture its own niacin.

A person whose body is deficient in B₁, B2, and B6 will not be able to produce niacin from tryptophan. Read the rest of this entry »

Selenium

FACTS:

Vitamin E and selenium are synergistic. This means that the two together are stronger than the sum of the equal parts.

Both vitamin E and selenium are antioxidants, preventing or at least slowing down aging and hardening of tissues through oxidation.

Males appear to have a greater need for selenium. Almost half their body’s supply concentrates in the testicles and portions of the seminal ducts adjacent to the prostate gland. Also, selenium is lost in the semen. Read the rest of this entry »

Tissue salts are inorganic mineral components of your body’s tissues. They are also known as Schuessler biochemical cell salts, after Dr. W.H. Schuessler, who isolated them in the late nineteenth century. Dr. Schuessler found that if the body was deficient in any of these salts, illness occurred, and that if the deficiency was corrected, the body could heal itself. In other words, tissue salts are not a cure, but merely a remedy.

The twelve tissue salts are:

Fluoride of lime [calc. fluor.] — Part of all the connective tissues in your body. An imbalance can be the cause of varicose veins, late dentition, muscle tendon strain, carbuncles, and cracked skin. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamins for Healthy Skin

What you look like on the outside depends a lot on what you do for yourself on the inside. And as far as you skin is concerned, vitamins and proper nutrition are essential.

To look your best, make sure you’re getting 55 to 65 g. of protein a day. Drink eight glasses of water daily [herbal teas can count for a few of them], and keep your milk and yoghurt consumption restricted to the nonfat variety. Keep away from chocolate, nuts, dried fruids, fried foods, cola drinks, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, and excessive salt. Also, do not use sugar. Small amounts of honey or blackstrap molasses will sweeten just as well and you’ll look better for it.

A good start toward healthy, glowing skin is a daily protein drink. It can be taken in place of any meal, but it makes an especially good breakfast. Read the rest of this entry »

In pursuit of your natural weight, optimum health is of extreme importance.

Having a body plagued by pain, allergies and food intolerances is not merely debilitating, it also tends to limit ones choices. And the unwise choices are, of course, eating indiscriminately and unwisely and succumbing to lethargy and inactivity

In this respect the ‘forgotten nutrient‘ is sulphur, or MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), a natural substance present in food and in the human body. Sulphur has a long tradition of healing and throughout history physicians have prescribed visits to mineral hot springs, rich in sulphur, to their infirm patients. Recently MSM surfaced once more as the number one natural pain-relieving nutrient - without side-effects - to be taken as a dietary supplement. Physicians are using it with phenomenal success to control pain caused by:

• degenerative wear-and-tear arthritis as well as rheumatoid arthritis
• chronic back pain
• chronic headaches
• muscle pain fibromyalgia
• tendonitis and bursitis
• carpal tunnel syndrome
• post-traumatic pain and inflammation
• heartburn

As a result of the changes in our eating patterns and cultivation methods of fresh produce, our bodies have developed a sulphur (MSM) deficiency. It often manifests in brittle nails and hair, cold and hot spots all over the body and hard, dry patches of skin on the torso. This deficiency could also be a forerunner of any of the painful diseases mentioned above. Read the rest of this entry »