Nutritional Supplements – Do You Benefit From Nutrition Supplements

Vitams, B vitamins, vitamin C, essential fatty acids, efas, omega 3, amino acids, omega 6, mineral supplements, nutritional deficiency herbs, phytonutrients; To supplement or not to supplement, that is the question.

Audio Introduction

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Like a house made of wood and brick, food is the raw material your body is made from.   
  
From head to toe, inside and out, including your muscles, tendons, ligaments, veins, arteries, bones, blood, hormones, cells and molecules, your physical body is made from the raw material you make available through what you eat and drink. 

What looks like Bob, Sue or YOU on the outside is like a complex biochemical processing and manufacturing plant on the inside.  Your body works non stop 24 hours a day repairing itself, cleansing itself, and vigilantly making blood, bone, tissue, hormones, and so on.

Macro nutrients, protein, carbohydrate and fat and essential nutrients like vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids, are the raw material your body needs to work properly so you can be happy, healthy and feel great.  Like any manufacturing process, if you use poor quality material or run out of good raw material alltogether, quality suffers.  

The primary product of your personal biochemical manufacturing plant IS YOUR OWN GOOD HEALTH. 

If your health is less than excellent then one thing you can do to improve quality control inside your personal health-producing manufacturing plant is make sure you’re getting the high quality raw materials you need to be healthy and feel good. 

Your Health Depends On Having A Continuous Supply Of Essential Nutrients

An essential nutrient is a nutrient that your body does not make and that you can’t  be healthy without. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_nutrient)

About 45 essential nutrients are required for overall good health. Get them and your body has the raw material it needs to function properly. Without them problems begin to occur.

Avoid The Trap Of Being Overfed And Undernourished!

Malnutrition has nothing to do with how much you eat or how much you weigh. 

It is entirely possible to eat three times a day or be overweight and be seriously nutritionally deficient.    In fact, nutrient deficienies are the primary force behind food cravings and  excessive hunger.

Not getting enough of any essential nutrient over time is the very definition of nutritional deficiency.  

Being short on essential nutrients and expecting your body to run right and be healthy is like asking a chef to prepare a fabulous meal, but not providing the main ingredients.  

Nutritional deficiencies, depending on duration, affect people in different ways, all negative. For example, scurvy (lack of vitamin C), pellagra (lack of vitamin B3), beriberi (lack of vitamin B1), and soft bones (lack of vitamin D), are all common deficiency diseases.

• Deficiency diseases like scurvy, pellagra, and beriberi are hard to miss, but what about sub-clinical deficiency states.
• A less severe example of vitamin C deficiency is tissue weakness, including bleeding and receding gums.
• A sub-clinical deficiency of zinc slows down wound healing and a sub-clinical deficiency of vitamin A results in proneness to infection and poor skin condition.  Do you know anyone who suffers with that?

Nutritional deficiencies lower your body’s ability to withstand stress and, if uncorrected, result in diseases of deterioration. Frequently deterioration is slow and insidious, doing great damage before a problem is even recognized.

• Prolonged shortages of essential minerals used in hormone and cell production results in your body "robbing" minerals from your bones, organs, and muscles; this obviously weakens them and makes you more susceptible to stress, injury and disease.

A deficiency in essential fatty acids affects your health the way having no money in your checking account would affect your ability to pay your bills. 

One of the most widespread and almost universally unrecognized nutritional deficiencies negatively affecting millions of people is a deficiency in the essential fatty acids (EFAs).

• Essential fatty acids are involved with numerous functions of your body including oxygen transport. The ability of oxygen to move throughout the body affects your energy level and your resistance to viruses, fungi, and bacteria.  If you’re deficient in EFAs each one of the trillion or so cells in your body is just a little out of breath. 
• EFA deficiency symptoms include eczema-like skin eruptions, slow organ deterioration, circulatory problems, impairment of vision and learning ability, arthritis-like conditions, high blood pressure, heart problems, mental deterioration, immune dysfunction and much, much more.

EFAs play a crucial role in regulating your appetite.

Constant hunger and food addictions to sweets and carbohydrates are a sure sign of EFA deficiency. Supplying the missing EFAs will eliminate these food cravings, increase energy, and make it easy to normalize weight with the proper diet.

Certain Kinds Of Supplementation Would Benefit Almost Everyone

Unfortunately some essential nutrients are in such short supply in our food that it is practically impossible to get what you need on a regular basis through diet alone.

Deficiency symptoms are easy to recognize if you know what to look for and the symptoms are EVERYWHERE.

Over 60% of all Americans are overweight and ractically 100% of all overweight people suffer with food cravings, constant hunger, fatigue, high blood pressure and several other problems.  

Would it suprise you to discover that each of these problems are clear symptoms of an EFA deficiency. (Two Nobel Prizes has been awarded for research on the importance of EFAs.)

Virtually everyone would instantly benefit from EFA supplementation regardless of age, sex, or present physical condition.

What About Essential Minerals

ESSINTIAL = IMPORTANT

Cement and steel are essential to a tall building’s foundation.  What would happen if the builders used only 75% of the right amount?  

• What if a bridge had only 87.21% of the steel it needed for proper structural support? 
• What would eventually happen if a tire on a commercial aircraft had only 91% of rubber it needed to function up to code because the factory was a just little short on rubber the day that tire was made?

What do you suppose might happen to a pancreas or a liver or an immune system or a heart if it was put under extra stress and didn’t have the essential nutrients needed to funciton optimally?  That’s a bridge I don’t want to stand on.  What about you?

In addition to EFAs, nine of the essential minerals are, for all intents and purposes, gone from the soil, which means they are gone from the food, which means you are simply not getting them unless you are supplementing. Without these nine minerals, you are in a deficiency situation regardless of how much food you consume.  And remember, prolonged deficiencies ALWAYS lead to reduced function and eventually disease.

Given this situation, supplementation with a highly bioavailable mineral formulation containing the proper amounts of the nine essential minerals sounds like a good idea.  What do you think? 

How Important Is Vitamin Supplementation?

Like minerals, vitamins are absolutely essential for maintaining good health.

Believe it or not there are still a few stubborn people who choose to ignore the overwhelming research and clinical support documenting the value of vitamin supplementation.

• Over the last 20 years the U. S. Department of Agriculture has sponsored 178 separate studies analyzing the vitamin status of more than 12,000 people located in different parts of the country. Every one of these studies found large segments of the population at risk for sub-optimal nutrition.

In summarizing the studies Dr. Gordon Graham, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, stated that biochemical and clinical evidence of malnutrition is not limited to the poor, but extends throughout the entire population.

Doctors and medical researchers now recognize that peak immune system function is accomplished only with optimal nutrition. Every single month new medical journal articles are published pointing out the clear and obvious health benefits of proper nutrition.

• It’s absolutely certain that good nutrition helps build strong immunity and a strong immune system helps protect your from literally everything under the sun that could cause physical discomfort, distress, weakness, illness or disease.

For over 10 years now medical literature has been reporting a direct correlation between nutrient levels and immune system strength, and vitamin supplementation unquestionably improves nutrient levels.

Is it possible to get the vitamins you need through eating a well balanced diet? 

The answer used to be YES, but not so today. Disregarding the controversy over what constitutes a "well balanced diet," the overall nutrient content of food is much lower today than it used to be.

A recent USDA survey found that not a single person of the 20,000 participants in the study consumed 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance for all the major nutrients.

As if this isn’t bad enough, a growing number of doctors and medical researchers consider the current RDA levels for vitamins to be adequate enough to prevent vitamin deficiency diseases but not sufficient to protect you from conditions that may result from sub-optimal nutrient intake. 

• Conditions like tiredness, fatigue, obesity, high blood pressure, allergies, and a generally weakened immune system are just a few of the things a sub-clinical vitamin deficiency can move you toward.

Like minerals, vitamins are involved in numerous body processes including glucose metabolism, hormone production, and just about everything involving human biochemistry. 

Hundreds of published studies confirm that proper nutrition reduces the risk for all major diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. 

Having an abundant, bio available supply of all the essential nutrients may be one of the most health-protective and health enhancing things you can do for yourself.

Personally, I supplement every day with essential fatty acids, a natural-source B complex vitamin, chelated multi-minerals and any one of several different Green Drinks, which are available at most health food stores.   Additionally, I supplement daily with vitamin C, aged garlic extract, and curcumin, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curcumin).

Uncross the Stars dvdrip

Trying to run your body without the essential nutrients required for proper function is like driving a car low on oil or engine coolant.  It’ll run for awhile, but not well and not for long.  

Getting proper nutrition every day sets the stage for positive health benefits.  Not getting proper nutrition will, over time, undercut your health.

Stress Burns Essential Nutrients Like A Blow Torch BurnsTissue

Unavoidable environmental stress is at an all time high 

75 years ago there were fewer than 2000 man-made chemicals in existence and cancer was rare. 

Today there are over 250,000 man-made chemicals used in literally everything and cancer is epidemic. Hundreds of different chemicals are used in food processing alone. If you eat, drink or breathe you are ingesting chemicals on a regular basis and these chemicals put a constant strain on your system.

If essential nutrients are not available to break down and eliminate these chemicals your body wraps them in body fat and tucks them away as fatty tissue as far away from vital organs as possible, meaning on your arms, under your chin, around your waist and so on.  Some of these chemicals may find their way to the joints producing arthritis-like symptoms.

Many Of The Worst Forms Of Stress Are Easy To Avoid

It’s impossible to avoid many environmental stresses but it’s easy to avoid others. 

Cigarette smoking is a "direct deposit" of chemicals straight into your lungs.

Alcohol, artificial sweeteners, candy, junk food, fried food, foods with hydrogenated oils, processed foods containing any ingredient you can’t pronounce are all treated like poisons inside your body and injesting them increasases your need for essential nutrients your body uses to breakdown and elininate these substances..

Smoking just a few cigarettes completely depletes your vitamin C, which must be consumed daily.

Vitamin C is essential to maintaining the collagen layer just below the skin surface. As collagen is weakened wrinkles appear. Cigarette smokers with less than an "ideal" diet and who fail to supplement with vitamin C are headed for excessive facial wrinkling and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If you choose to regularly eat, drink, or otherwise consume things that are known to increase stress on your body, it only makes sense to supplement with nutrients your body needs to help handle the increased stress. At the very least, a good vitamin supplement is highly recommended.  It won’t solve the problem but it may slow the process of deterioration.

Emotional Stress Burns Essential Nutrients And Results In Self-Poisoning 

Emotional stress plays a dramatically important role in overall health. Getting control of your emotions is one of the single most important actions you can take to protect your health and your happiness.

Emotional upset floods your system with adrenaline, which is one of the most potent oxidizing agents known to man. Continually flooding your system with a highly reactive oxidizing agent places ENORMOUS demands on life systems and, if maintained over time, WILL RESULT IN EXTREMELY SERIOUS AND ACUTE HEALTH PROBLEMS. 

If you are prone to anger, guilt, fear, resentment, sadness, anxiety, or any of the negative emotions, do something to get control of your emotions, otherwise it could cost you your health.  And yes, you’ll benefit from a good vitamin supplement… but that is not the solution.  

What About "Exotic" or "Specialty" Supplements?

Every week some new "miracle" supplement hits the market. These supplements promise everything from hair growth and better vision to instant weight loss,  a stronger libedo and bigger biceps.

There are several potential problems with these products. Far more often than not there’s little if any real research and no long-term research on the effects of prolonged use.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing under your skin that is not regulated, directly or indirectly, by essential nutrients.

Contrast this to essential fatty acids and vitamin C; Nobel Prizes have been awarded for scientific research into these nutrients. Their importance in maintaining good health, like the importance of all the essential nutrients, is extremely well documented.  Their value is beyond contestation.

The Problem With Speciality Supplements

Specialty products focus on producing a highly specific result in one area of the body without regard to possible side effects.

Steroid use is a good example. Steroids quickly result bigger, stronger muscles, but steroids also lead to male pattern baldness, increasingly aggressive temper, shrinking testicles and reduced mental capacity. 

Some specialty supplements are especially risky if you have an underlying health issue.  For example, most over-the-counter diet supplements contain herbs and other ingredients that can quickly raise blood pressure, increase heart rate and, with prolonged use, lead to clinical depression.

For a person with high blood pressure taking this kind of product immediately increases the risk of stroke or heart attack.  There are no such concerns with any essential nutrient, and I hasten to add, if you’re short on essential nutrients you will never lose weight and keep it off popping diet pills.

There are numerous examples of specialty nutrition products that focus on a narrow aspect of health and ignore the effects the product may have on other parts of the human system.

Many natural laxatives, often marketed as a "health cure-all," contain herbs so powerful that they can STOP the peristaltic reflex from occurring and create a dependence on the laxative.  And you thought coffee was addictive!

Fiber products sold as carbohydrate or fat blockers for weight loss expand so greatly that they have actually damaged the intestines of many trusting consumers who didn’t do quite enough research on the pills they decided to swallow.

Virtually all of the quick energy and meal replacement "health" drinks contain enough crystalline fructose and other sugars to cause an immediate insulin response, which could be very problematic for borderline diabetics and will result in increased fat storage for anyone exactly 100% of the time.

Most so called Power Bars contain enough sugar and carbohydrate to induce an immediate blood sugar surge and an insulin response guaranteed to stimulate immediate fat production and storage.

In other words, the product they want you to believe is extra healthy just makes you fat and stresses your pancreas.

Bottom Line on Non Essential Nutrient or Specialty Supplements

Buyers beware!

Your body is remarkably complex and each life-system is interrelated and interconnected to every other life-system. Any product that causes a highly specific effect in one area will almost certainly cause effects in other areas as well. And you need to know what those effects are before you take the product.

If you get a good supply of essential nutrients, odds are you have no real need for specialty supplements designed to produce extreme results in one area.

If you decide to take a non-essential specialty supplement, some of which may be very beneficial, find out everything you can about each ingredient in the product BEFORE you take the product.

If you take prescription medication for any reason OR if you suspect you may have high blood pressure or diabetic tendencies ASK YOUR DOCTOR before you take a new supplement, especially if the supplement contains herbs.

Some specialty supplements are quite good; others however, may put you at risk. Seek information, ask questions, Google ingredients,  read the research and get the answers BEFORE you take the supplement.

Supplements – Some Final Thoughts Falling Down psp

Giving yourself a bountiful supply of the essential nutrients is one of the most meaningful steps you can take to protect and preserve your health. 

Having a good supply of essential nutrients does not guarantee good health; but not having them guarantees sub-optimal health. 

Health is a choice only you can make.  My goal is to help you make that choice every day.  And it’s easy when you know how! 

Until Next Time… All The Best To You And Yours!

Russell J. Martino, Ph.D
Bringing You Health… At The Speed Of Life!

PS: This is a small sample of the practical, actionable information in 5 Steps To Optimal Health, a program thousands have benefited from since 1999 and I have updated continuously every year since.  Learn more here:  www.5StepsToOptimalHealth.com 

Written by Dr. Russell J. Martino, Ph.D
The Voice Of Health
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