Vitamin Supplements

Phytochemical

Plants are a rich source of nutrition, but everything that is found in plants is not necessarily a nutrient.

Nutrients are things that our bodies need to grow and function correctly. If you think of a person’s body as a chessboard, nutrients are the chess pieces that are needed to play the game. Sometimes, however, the plants also contain some substance_s that are not chess pieces, although they can influence the game.

Many plants contain chemicals that, just like prescription medicines, have a modifying effect on the body’s processes. About 25% of prescription medicines come from plants. Aspirin, for example, comes from the bark of a type of willow tree, but is a chemically purified and modified form of the original salicylate. Read the rest of this entry »

Who benefits from supplements?

The answer is simple: Everyone. Many of my colleagues will probably want to burn me at the stake for this but there is enough evidence to prove that most people today do not eat a balanced enough diet to get all the vitamins they need. In addition, the fast pace, stress and pollution of modern society result in a greater need for vitamins and other nutrients. Read the rest of this entry »

They keep hormones in check

These essential fats also help to control the sex hormones in both men and women. In adolescents, they help to alleviate the hormone fluctuations so common during puberty, and thus prevent against outbreaks of acne, mood swings, and even ‘growing pains’. In adults, they help to stimulate fertility, decrease the severity of pre-menstrual syndrome and regulate menstrual cycles. In menopausal women, they alleviate mood swings and depression, and make this rather rocky ride a little easier to cope with.

They indirectly help to improve insulin resistance

For this reason they are used in fat loss programmes. Read the rest of this entry »

Before you decide that you need to take vitamin supplements or change the way you eat, you should know where you stand and how much improvement you really need. To help you analyze your current diet, we’ve developed a system you can use to calculate your approximate vitamin C intake. Following is a list of vitamin C food sources, arranged according to the percentage of our Optimal Daily Allowance of vitamin C contained in them. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Before you decide that you need to take vitamin supplements or change the way you eat, you should know where you stand and how much improvement you really need. In fact, most people get all of the vitamin K they need through diet alone.

To help you analyze your current diet, we’ve developed a system you can use to calculate your approximate vitamin K intake. Following is a list of vitamin K food sources, arranged according to the percentage of our Optimal Daily Allowance of vitamin K contained in them. Since 1 cup of raw carrots contains 17.81 mcg of vitamin K and the ODA for vitamin K is 80 mcg, we’ve listed carrots in the 20 Percent category. (We have erred on the conservative side when rounding off percentages.) Read the rest of this entry »

How Much Calcium Do You Need?

Not everyone agrees with the formal RDAs for calcium. A National Institutes of Health consensus panel on osteoporosis has advised that women consume more calcium than recommended in the RDAs-1,500 mg in the years after menopause if they are not taking supplemental estrogen. The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends 1,000 mg per day for postmenopausal women who are not on estrogen replacement therapy.

Optimal Daily Allowance

Although the RDAs call for only 800 mg of calcium for men and women over the age of 25 (with an increase to 1,200 mg for pregnant and lactating women), we recommend a daily intake of 1,500 mg for everyone. Women clearly need more calcium to help protect them against osteoporosis, even if they are postmenopausal and on hormonal replacement therapy (which can also help protect their bones). Read the rest of this entry »

Iron Overdose Toxicity

If your health is generally good, you run little risk of experiencing side effects from high doses of iron (up to 75 mg per day), either in your diet or in supplements. People with an inherited disease called hemochromatosis are at risk, however. The intestines of people with this condition fail to regulate iron absorption properly, so the body tends to accumulate and store too much of the mineral. The extra iron can damage the body’s most critical organs (including the liver, heart, and spleen) and bone marrow, causing serious problems like cirrhosis and irregular heart rhythms. Hemochromatosis tends to affect men more than women. Although this disease is rare, it can be deadly. Read the rest of this entry »

Toxicity

Zinc does not generally cause toxic symptoms, except in very large amounts—such as 2 g or more taken at one time, or less (but still a lot) taken regularly over several weeks. By taking as little as two times the RDA of zinc over a period of months, for example, you can interfere with the status of copper in your body.

If you do have too much zinc in your body, you could experience vomiting and diarrhea, and have a decreased HDL (”good”) cholesterol level. More serious problems include anemia and an impaired immune function. Very high zinc intake-10 to 30 times the RDA for prolonged periods—can interfere with your immune system (as can levels that are too low). Read the rest of this entry »

There are always a number of conflicting opinions about the use and usefulness of vitamins in improving athletic performance. Trials in this country have shown that there is no difference in results between athletes taking vitamins as supplements and those who rely on a healthy diet to supply all they need. Most athletes have enormous personal discipline and they apply this to their eating habits as well as to their training. They choose the diet that is right for them and then they stick to it.

If an athlete does decide to try vitamins it is not always easy to find out which are considered best, or why they are best; and there are always plenty of myths and old wives’ tales to contend with. Read the rest of this entry »