Wellness-pays

You don’t have to look far to find a reason to supplement your diet with vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrition.   Why?   Because unfortunately the food we consume today, too often lacks sufficient nutrition to help our bodies function as intended. 

Some quick resources are listed here… article continues below the break.

• Food, Inc.  (documentary of the US Agricultural Industries)
• Diet & Nutrition from WebMB
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Dietary Supplements should be considered carefully under the advice of a nutritionist or physician.   Not all things are created equally, so educate yourself before adding supplements to your diet.

1. What is your current diet likely lacking?
2. How much is enough?  vs How much is too much?
   1. For example Glucosamine can provide significant benefit to joint health but experience shows that consuming 1500mg/day is the threshold for efficacy
3. If you consume a supplement does your body see it the same way as a whole food product?
4. Which is better —  fresh,  frozen or canned produce?
5. When selecting supplements check out the manufacturing processes used:
   1. they should be cold processed to avoid “cooking off” the nutrients
   2. they should be aqueous coated to ensure better absorption rather than simply passing through the body undigested
   3. where appropriate, compounds should include complementary elements to aid in proper metabolism.  For example, Calcium is not used by the body correctly without proper Vitamin D. 
   4. Does this supplement interact with any medications that I may be on?
      1. for example… Vitamin K (an essential part of our diet that many of us lack) must be carefully controlled when taking certain medications such as Warfarin
   5. Don’t add numerous things to your diet all at once. It makes it nearly impossible to gauge the impact of the individual elements.  
   6. Know HOW and WHY a supplement works.   And know yourself and your reaction.  For example, many people like Echinacea for preventing colds.  However, what Echnicea does is simply rev-up the immune system by increase white blood cell counts.   Some studies have shown that Echinacea can actually increase the occurrance of resperatory infections.   Given this information it may be most appropriate to take Echinacea remedially rather than prophylactically.