Your Nutritional Safety Net: Why You Need to Take Supplements

You need nutrient supplements because it is very unlikely that you can get all the nutrition you need from your diet. When you are symptomatic or ill, it is a sure deal that your diet alone cannot handle the job. Over and over again we are all told that if a well balanced diet is consumed, vitamins and other supplements are unnecessary. However, this is not true for a number of reasons:

It is nearly impossible to eat a diet that provides for all your nutritional needs. Most people seem to be too busy to be careful about what they eat and prepare fresh, wholesome meals at all times. It is all too human to eat the same limited number of meals over and over, which means that some nutrients are substantially missing from our diets. Processing and refining robs our food of much of its vital fiber and nutrient content. For instance, the vitamin assay on a package label: that RDA percentage is often based on analysis of that food when it is fresh and on the assumption that it has been carefully handled. It does not take into consideration the toll exacted by the canning or refining process or any other short comings in growing and shipping. The actual RDAs of two different specimens of exactly the same food item can vary considerably depending on:

1. time of they year they were picked

2.total sun exposure during growing season

3.age of the orange when bought and consumed

4.distance between orange trees in the orchard

5.amount of rainfall and wind during growing season

all the processes involved in the growing of oranges to their processing not only destroy many of the vitamins, enzymes ,trace minerals and flavor factors, and much of the fiber but also introduce chemicals and additives that interfere with utilization of other nutrients in the body.

A poor diet is not the only reason a person may be malnourished. Even if we manage to eat only highly nutritious foods, we may not digest or absorb those foods properly. There are millions of people who do not digest food well and do not absorb al they digest and consequently become poorly nourished-even on a so called well balanced diet. The result is low blood and tissue levels of nutrients.

Our high-stress lives often demand higher levels of nutrition than our diets provide. Excess stress increases the need for certain nutrients particularly vitamins C, A, E, the b vitamins, the minerals calcium and magnesium, and the amino acid typtophan. Lack of such nutrients during stress throws us into vicious cycle in which our ability to handless strength is weakened increasing impact on the tissues and organs. Consequently, decreased nutrient utilization, malabsorption, and /or deactivation which further weaken already impaired ability to handle stress effectively results.

Illness and diseases increase the nutritional demands on the body. Illness has at least 3 effects on the body's vitamin levels:

1.Certain nutrients 'stress' nutrients are used in greater quantity during an illness. Thus, the body needs an additional boost at such times.

2.Many illnesses such as cancer and AIDS also decrease the body's absorption of nutrients from the digestive tract and increase loss in the urine, making it more difficult to get vitamins from into the system. A relative deficiency in any one nutrient in the body will often impair the absorption and utilization of other nutrients.

3.Medication prescribed by doctors to combat illnesses can often affect vitamin absorption. Drug induced folic acid deficiency is the most frequent form of the deficiency associated with pharmacological agents:

-Aspirin can interfere with folic acid utilization

-anticonvulsants prevent absorption vitamin B12 and folic acid.

-Birth control pills can impair folic acid use and increase loss through urine.

-Mineral oil, used as laxative, can result in malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, K and Beta carotene.

-Certain antibiotics can interfere with synthesis of vitamin K and some B vitamins.

-Potassium chloride, used to prevent potassium depletion in people taking water pills (diuretics), can cause loss of vitamin B12 .

- Cochicine, used to treat gouty arthritis, results in malabsorption of vitamin B12 and Beta carotene.

-Drugs used to lower blood cholesterol level e.g. cholestyramine, can result in malabsorption and deficiencies of fat-soluble vitamins.

-Hydrazine drugs e.g. IHN, can cause excess loss of vitamin B6 through the urine.

-Alcohol, anticonvulsants, tetracycline, birth control pills, and aspirin all can produce vitamin C depletion in body tissues.

-Chlorine in drinking water deactivates vitamin C.

4. Environmental hazards places additional nutrient needs on our bodies. For example, inclement temperatures, sunshine, fluorescent lighting, noise, pollen, dust and mold to chemicals from commercial and industrial pollution. The pollutants act as oxidizing agents to the fats in the diet and body. Thus, alter the way oxygen is used in the body, preventing oxygen-bound chemical substance from interacting as they should. Instead, they create chemical imbalances that cause immune-system impairment and cellular damage.

5.Daily exercise and fitness plus extra nutritional stress on the body. The nutrient needs of an active person differ greatly from those of some one who leads a sedentary life. The muscles,tendons,ligaments,heart,blood,immune system, and endocrine glands (especially adrenals) need extra nutritional support if exercise is to produce its full benefits and not end up instead exceeding one's threshold to stress, leading to injury ,infection or exhaustion especially on the heart, lungs and immune system