Supplements: Navigating in the Labyrinth

Vitamins and minerals are a vital necessity for many biological processes that take place in our bodies, including growth, digestion, mental alertness and resistance to infection. They enable our bodies to use carbohydrates, fats and proteins and speed up chemical reactions.

These nutrients are not optional for health—they are at the very foundation of it.

The nutrients we need should come through our food supply. However, many of the foods we eat are processed and have very few nutrients. Cooking, storage practices, our toxic environment and soils depleted of essential nutrients cause our foods to be stripped of their natural nutritional content. As a result, even if we eat well, it’s almost impossible to get the right amounts of vitamins and minerals we need from food alone.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away”?

Sounds good, but ...

Unfortunately nowadays, influences never before known before affect the quality of the food and your capability of absorbing the nutrients from that food.

As you may know, the nutrient content of food depends on the soil's nutrient content.

Studies continue to show that the food source is low in vitamins and minerals due to the soil being deficient in vitamins and minerals.

Then add to that that you mostly cook your food which then further destroys the valuable vitamins, minerals and enzymes.

Studies continue to show that our food source is low in vitamins and minerals due to the soil being deficient in vitamins and minerals.

As a matter of fact not everybody is able to buy organic fruit and vegetables. Plus with your hectic and stressful lifestyle it is difficult to take care of your nutrition.

In fact there is one more factor to add though - stress.

No matter what source of stress you are exposed to, the body proceeds thought systemic stress response that increases the level of cortisol and leads to many stress related health hazards.

Chronic stress and constantly elevated cortisol levels damage 100% of your body systems and depletes your already insufficient nutritional supplies.

However nutritional science shows that a wide variety of dietary and herbal ingredients can instead to assist the body in mounting an adaptive response to stress and help to minimize or control some of the systemic effects of stress.

For many of you the logical solution to manage stress may be the use of certain health supplements to help to control the body’s excessive exposure to cortisol.

Where to start?

Multivitamin

Taking a general multivitamin and mineral supplements is a good idea for anybody who is under stress - in fact the first line of defiance appears in the form of comprehensive multivitamin/multimineral supplements.

Entire stress response is influenced to a large degree by your intake of vitamins, minerals ad other nutrients.

Alongside with reducing stress, there are countless studies showing that by simply increasing your vitamin and mineral intake you can promote :

- mental clarity,

- weight loss,

- boost your immunity,

- prevent cancer and other degenerative diseases,

- combat depression,

- lower blood pressure,

- reduce cravings,

- increase energy levels,

- improve sleep,

- regulate digestion.

There are many different combinations to promote certain functions of the body however it is good to consider a high quality, high dose multivitamin as a solid foundation to begin with.

TIP - Choose those that offer balanced blend of the key vitamins and minerals the body needs during the stress response, such as B-complex vitamins, chromium, magnesium, calcium, zinc, copper, iron and vitamin C.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is one of the most important antioxidants. It is important to know that Vitamin C is not produced by the body.

The therapeutic properties of Vitamin C are plenty. They include very high anti-septic and anti-bacterial properties, aiding in the prevention of cataracts and helping to lower cholesterol.

Recent studies demonstrate that vitamin C reduce both the physical and psychological effects of stresson people. ( Click here to read Vitamin C: Stress Booster)

Vitamin C is a great antidote for neutralizing free radicals that will cause premature aging.

High doses of Vitamin C is effective as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of cancer.

Essential Fatty Acids

Essential fatty acids or EFA’s cannot be made by the body and we therefore need to get them from the food we eat.

There are two ways of meeting your essential fat requirements: one is from the diet, either by eating a heaped tablespoon of ground seeds every day, having a tablespoon of special cold-pressed seed oils and/or eating fish three times a week; the other is to supplement concentrated oils.

For omega 3 this means either flax seed oil capsules  or the more concentrated  Omega 3 fish  oil capsules providing EPA and DHA.