Vitamin Supplements

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 »

Food supplements are here to stay and can give you a kick-start when you need it, but the utter confusion they sometimes cause does more harm than good

One of the fastest growing sections of the health industry is that of vitamin preparations. However, there is still a great deal of ignorance among both the public and health workers as to their desirability and meaningful use. The budget that most people have for “luxuries” like vitamins and health literature is limited. Read the rest of this entry »

Science is finally beginning to acknowledge that food truly is our best medicine. Fresh fruits and vegetables contain an abundance of vitamins and minerals, as well as a variety of beneficial natural substances that protect the cells from changes that lead to cancer, heart disease, and other degenerative diseases. Fruits and vegetables are also nature’s most potent cleansing foods. The high soluble fiber content of fresh produce helps to cleanse the intestinal tract and also helps to reduce levels of harmful LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream. Because of their rich mineral content, fruits and vegetables help to restore the blood to a healthy alkaline balance. Many fruits and vegetables have gentle diuretic or laxative properties, as well. Following are some examples of fruits and vegetables with powerful cleansing and healing properties. Read the rest of this entry »

Pantothenic acid gets its name from the Greek word pantos, which means “everywhere.” That’s an indication of just how prevalent this B vitamin is in plants and animals. At least a small amount of pantothenic acid is present in most of the foods we eat.

Once you consume pantothenic acid, your body changes most of this B vitamin into a substance called coenzyme A, which is required to convert carbohydrates, fats, and some proteins into energy. Pantothenic acid is also necessary for the body to produce hormones and to form hemoglobin and a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many different vitamins, all having their own particular function to carry out. Research workers in many lands are searching for the answers. Just when they think the final answer is at hand, a whole new vista opens before them. Vitamins are close to the secret of life itself.

Contrary to what many may think, a vitamin is not a food. If you ate vitamins and nothing else, you would starve to death. Nor do they provide energy to build up worn-out tissues. Then why are they so important? Because without them no life could exist in either plants or animals. They are the catalysts, or “go-betweens,” that bring about all the innumerable chemical reactions within the body. Read the rest of this entry »

In the ‘thirties the idea of such a list was very novel but it soon had a chance of being put to the test. With the coming of World War II and the rationing of food this type of information was very valuable. Vitamins were made available to mothers and babies, and the basic rations for everyone in this country included sufficient food for good health. Vitamins were added to margarine, bread and flour, and although food was limited and the diet was often monotonous we had all the food we needed and were healthier at the end of six years of war than we had ever been before.

Vitamins had proved their point. We believed in them, and the way was open for a new and thriving business. Health food shops sprang up in the ‘fifties and chemists started to sell an increasingly large range of vitamin preparations. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of vitamins as solo performers is very recent. They were not named until 1912 and did not enter the English dictionary until 1934 but their role in disease dates back some thousands of years. Early Egyptian records show that ox liver was used in the treatment of eye complaints; Hippocrates, ‘the Father of Medicine’, prescribed sensible diets in the treatment of illness; and in the Middle Ages when scurvy was the plague of sailors on long sea voyages, the cure was found in fresh fruit and vegetables, particularly citrus fruits. Today, we know that liver is a rich source of vitamin A and oranges and lemons supply vitamin C, and it is these factors which produce the cure, but in those days sickness and health belonged to religion and folklore as much as to the art of the healer. If a remedy worked and restored the sufferer to good health that was enough, and thanks were given to God and the doctor. Only a few scientists wondered why something had ‘worked’ and were prepared to search further for an answer. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a popular belief that B vitamins are ‘good for the nerves‘. In fact this is rather an upside-down statement and it would be better to say that lack of vitamin B is bad for the nerves. In health our nerves function very efficiently. They take information from outside our body to the brain and we know if something is hot or cold, red or green, sweet or sour. This information travels along ingoing (afferent) nerves to the brain which sifts the evidence and decides on a plan of action, i.e. to take the hand away from the hot water. It sends messages back along outgoing (efferent) nerves to the muscles concerned, and the hand is pulled away from the heat. We take much of this basic behaviour for granted but the reactions involved are many and complicated. Read the rest of this entry »

If we go back to the distinction between living and nonliving material we can list many of the functions of the human body that make us different from inanimate objects. We can breathe, eat, drink, reproduce, maintain a constant body temperature and move around from place to place. All these things are accomplished by expending energy and this, in turn, comes from the way we make use of our food. The change from the food on our table to the raw materials and energy needed by the body to sustain life occurs in a sequence of chemical reactions which are called metabolic processes. First, we need to break down our food during digestion to smaller and smaller units so that they can be absorbed across the lining of the intestines and into the bloodstream. These units can then be used to build bone and tissues and replace used or damaged cells, or they can be broken down further and used as fuel to produce heat and energy. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a time, not so long ago, when people refused to believe in vitamins because they could not see them. We still cannot ’see’ them, in the strict sense of the word, but nowadays we treat them as one of the wonders of the twentieth century. The truth is that vitamins are not new. They have been in our food since the beginning of time. The only difference between then and now is that we have learned, it:^, the last seventy years, to isolate, analyse, extract and re-create them. We can put them back into our food, or manufacture them for use in medicines, cosmetics and cattle food. Finally, we can package and sell them without prescription as tablets, tonics and wonder foods. Read the rest of this entry »