Somebody asked me the other day why we sell vitamins and supplements when studies abound saying we can get everything our bodies need from a healthy diet.
I couldn’t have been happier.
It is true, one probably can get all the nutrients and vitamins one needs through eating right and keep the body functioning well with the proper amount of exercise. Supplement bashers of all stripes, especially medical researchers, have no problem opining that dietary supplementation is a waste and of little force because, they drone, we can get everything we need…yada, yada, yada.
We’re not arguing with them. They are just missing the point.
How many weeks running have you had your two to three servings of cold-water fish or other source of omega fatty acids? How many consecutive days running have passed since you had your five daily servings (at the very least) of fruits and vegetables? The government recommends at least two cups of fruits and three cups of veggies daily.
Ok – have you had an apple in the last couple of days? Something? Anything?
Then there is the whole issue of processed and fast foods. The fact of the matter is America is tilted toward fast and convenient; healthy is probably back deep in the pack, running well off the pace. How many fast-food restaurants do you pass on your way home? Now, how many fresh produce stands do you pass along the same route.
A recent New York Times article stated Americans eat 31 percent more packaged and processed food than fresh food. The Center for Disease Control states the average American eats three burgers and four orders of fries per week.
That ain’t cold-water fish.
The percentage of kids who are overweight has tripled over the last 30 years, and obesity has become such a pandemic that governments have considered a weight tax on sweetened foods.
That’s why we sell natural, high-quality vitamins and supplements. We sell them because we – you, me, most of us – do not eat as well as we should for optimum health and we need them. This really isn’t news.
A 1998 article in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that since 1970, 25 percent of Americans regularly consumed a daily multivitamin and folic acid, and – lo and behold – these folks and their children were healthier.
There are just a myriad of vitamins, fats and nutrients that our bodies need for peak performance and health, and most likely we’re not eating the right foods or the right foods in the right amounts to get them.
If you’re eating the right things in the right amounts, then you may not need to supplement with something specific or generally with a daily vitamin. But before you start dancing on the tables, you’re still not out of the woods, tough guy. There’s also the issue of the laundry list of enzymes and hormones your body stops producing with age. That’s stops producing with a capital “stops.”
That’s for next week. For now go eat an apple and take your vitamin.
Copyright ©2010 Jim Mayfield
Showing posts with label vitamins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vitamins. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Complex Nature of B Vitamins
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of vitamin B complex, primarily because vitamin B is not one compound, but eight different vitamins your body uses, quite literally, from head to toe.
Turkey, liver and tuna are excellent sources of B complex, and these water-soluble compounds can also be found in whole, unprocessed foods such as molasses, lentils, whole grains, potatoes, bananas, tempeh and c hile peppers.
As with most vitamins and nutrients, if you’re eating a wholesome, healthy diet, you can expect to get the B complex vitamins you need. If you’re not eating right, however, you need to consider other sources.
New Chapter's Coenzyme B Food Complex™ delivers 8 different nourishing probiotic vitamins as well as 11 stress-balancing, soothing and restorative herbs and mushrooms cultured for maximum effectiveness.
Thiamine (B1) is absolutely essential for daily function. Every part of your body, especially the heart, needs it to make energy.
Riboflavin (B2) assists in the production of red blood cells, helps the nervous system to function properly and activates B6 and folic acid to make them more effective.
Niacin (B3) has been shown to be an effective treatment for high cholesterol and helps breakdown and release energy from carbs, fats and proteins.
B5 is converted to pantethine, which can lower triglyceride and to a lesser extent reduce blood serum cholesterol levels, benefiting those with high triglyceride levels and Type 2 diabetes.
B6 is needed to produce the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, so its cognitive attributes are particularly important. There is also strong evidence that B6 can significantly lower chances of heart disease, and it has been linked positively to treatments for PMS, childhood asthma and Alzheimer’s disease.
B12 is important for metabolism and maintaining a healthy nervous system and cognitive function. It is necessary for calcium absorption, and research indicates that the body’s ability to absorb B12 declines with age. It should be noted that B12 is not available from plants, which is a considerable concern for those on vegetarian and vegan diets.
Biotin (B7) is required for the formation of certain nucleic acids and glycogen, and important enzyme in the digestive and energy-producing process. It is also necessary for healthy hair and nails.
Supplementation of folic acid, or B9, is recommended during pregnancy, and research also shows its use may slow the effects of age on cognitive functions and the brain. Its key function is metabolizing fatty and amino acids, and it also helps in the production of red blood cells.
The B complex vitamins also reduce the effects of stress on the body.
So which one do you want to do without? Oh, and by the way – and we’re not making eye contact with anyone here – but a study found in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that an over-abundance of alcohol intake reduces vitamin B levels in the body.
Just thought you might want to know before Friday night.
So think about what you’re eating. If you’re not getting your vitamin B, you’re not getting a lot of things your body needs.
Jim Mayfield is the lead shipper and writer for The Organic Affair, online retailer of natural, organic whole food vitamins, supplements, and organic teas. Visit us at www.theorganicaffair.com.
Turkey, liver and tuna are excellent sources of B complex, and these water-soluble compounds can also be found in whole, unprocessed foods such as molasses, lentils, whole grains, potatoes, bananas, tempeh and c hile peppers.
As with most vitamins and nutrients, if you’re eating a wholesome, healthy diet, you can expect to get the B complex vitamins you need. If you’re not eating right, however, you need to consider other sources.
New Chapter's Coenzyme B Food Complex™ delivers 8 different nourishing probiotic vitamins as well as 11 stress-balancing, soothing and restorative herbs and mushrooms cultured for maximum effectiveness.
Thiamine (B1) is absolutely essential for daily function. Every part of your body, especially the heart, needs it to make energy.
Riboflavin (B2) assists in the production of red blood cells, helps the nervous system to function properly and activates B6 and folic acid to make them more effective.
Niacin (B3) has been shown to be an effective treatment for high cholesterol and helps breakdown and release energy from carbs, fats and proteins.
B5 is converted to pantethine, which can lower triglyceride and to a lesser extent reduce blood serum cholesterol levels, benefiting those with high triglyceride levels and Type 2 diabetes.
B6 is needed to produce the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, so its cognitive attributes are particularly important. There is also strong evidence that B6 can significantly lower chances of heart disease, and it has been linked positively to treatments for PMS, childhood asthma and Alzheimer’s disease.
B12 is important for metabolism and maintaining a healthy nervous system and cognitive function. It is necessary for calcium absorption, and research indicates that the body’s ability to absorb B12 declines with age. It should be noted that B12 is not available from plants, which is a considerable concern for those on vegetarian and vegan diets.
Biotin (B7) is required for the formation of certain nucleic acids and glycogen, and important enzyme in the digestive and energy-producing process. It is also necessary for healthy hair and nails.
Supplementation of folic acid, or B9, is recommended during pregnancy, and research also shows its use may slow the effects of age on cognitive functions and the brain. Its key function is metabolizing fatty and amino acids, and it also helps in the production of red blood cells.
The B complex vitamins also reduce the effects of stress on the body.
So which one do you want to do without? Oh, and by the way – and we’re not making eye contact with anyone here – but a study found in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that an over-abundance of alcohol intake reduces vitamin B levels in the body.
Just thought you might want to know before Friday night.
So think about what you’re eating. If you’re not getting your vitamin B, you’re not getting a lot of things your body needs.
Jim Mayfield is the lead shipper and writer for The Organic Affair, online retailer of natural, organic whole food vitamins, supplements, and organic teas. Visit us at www.theorganicaffair.com.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
New You for the New Year - Part I: Vitamins
Well, it’s that time of year again. You know the time.
You were reminded of it as you cinched up that new Christmas belt that was your size last year.
And again when you bent over to lace up the freshly unwrapped sneakers and realized high-tops would have been an excellent idea to avoid having to reach quite that far.
OK. We all need to get back in shape. It’s the same resolution every year, but this time let’s not savage ourselves and make it our own Day of Atonement; let’s just get to it – shall we?
Let’s also keep it simple. My own favorite personal philosophy. Unless you actually enjoy knotty and labyrinthine procedures – like building the space shuttle – there’s really no reason this whole supplement thing needs to get complicated.
How about a basic supplementation plan in three quick installments. This week: vitamins; next week: omega fatty acids, followed by beneficial flora – bacteria we need – in week three. Hang on. Here we go.
Vitamins. There are 13 of them. Take your pick, real or…unreal – as in synthetic.
Grab your bottle of Flinstones there on the counter. Notice it contains “vitamin C.” You then skim to the ingredients and find it does, in fact, contain sodium ascorbate, which many of us recognize as a form of vitamin C.
Not quite so fast, tough guy. Sodium ascorbate is a buffered form of ascorbic acid, which on some level over the years we relate to vitamin C. But neither ascorbic acid nor sodium ascorbate IS vitamin C. Sorry to have to break that to you.
Ascorbic acid is a component of vitamin C, but if you only ingest ascorbic acid, you’re eating what amounts to the outer wrapper of the chemical nutrient we label vitamin C.
Vitamins are tiny bio-chemical complexes, the whole of which are greater than the sum of their parts. Without any one part, the nutritional effectiveness is diminished or lost. Think about it. Do you want the outer ring that holds everything that is vitamin C together or do you want the whole enchilada?
Most of the vitamins found on shelves are of the synthetic variety. Man-made chemical isolates (as in outer ring only) of vitamins that occur naturally. They are cheap to manufacture, market and sell, and they are...well, cheap.
Frankly, when your body gets to a synthetic chemical that purports to be some portion of a vitamin or nutrient, it has no idea what to do with it. And many times, it does absolutely nothing with it, not because it doesn’t want to help you out but because it can’t.
The alternative to the man-made vitamin variety is the natural, whole food vitamin. It is essentially exactly what the name implies. Whole, complete food.
The pure, non-chemical manufacturing process for natural vitaimins involves removing the water and fiber from vitamin-rich plants and then culturing and fermenting the result into a predigested natural food. In addition to recognizing and using the nutrients, your body doesn’t have to supply any “missing links” from its own stores.
You can find a number of natural whole food vitamin selections here. One of the first things you’ll notice is that whole food vitamins are more expensive. A number of factors are at work here.
Distilling natural food and nutrients is a more expensive process. The natural vitamin manufacturers are also outside the major marketing chain of the big three chemical suppliers to the world’s vitamin makers: Hoffman-La Roche, Ltd., a subsidiary of Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG; BASF AG of Germany and France’s Rhone Poulenc.
Those three companies control over 75 percent of the world market for human and animal vitamins. Talk about your economies of scale. It all boils down to the old adage you get what you pay for.
So chuck the man-made chemical pills called Flintstones and OneADays (both made by Bayer) and get on a good, solid, natural vitamin your body can use.
It’s a good start and won’t hurt at all – not nearly as much as all those situps you’re committing to right about now. Put down that cupcake, cupcake.
Next week: Omega oils.
Copyright ©2009 Jim Mayfield
You were reminded of it as you cinched up that new Christmas belt that was your size last year.
And again when you bent over to lace up the freshly unwrapped sneakers and realized high-tops would have been an excellent idea to avoid having to reach quite that far.
OK. We all need to get back in shape. It’s the same resolution every year, but this time let’s not savage ourselves and make it our own Day of Atonement; let’s just get to it – shall we?
Let’s also keep it simple. My own favorite personal philosophy. Unless you actually enjoy knotty and labyrinthine procedures – like building the space shuttle – there’s really no reason this whole supplement thing needs to get complicated.
How about a basic supplementation plan in three quick installments. This week: vitamins; next week: omega fatty acids, followed by beneficial flora – bacteria we need – in week three. Hang on. Here we go.
Vitamins. There are 13 of them. Take your pick, real or…unreal – as in synthetic.
Grab your bottle of Flinstones there on the counter. Notice it contains “vitamin C.” You then skim to the ingredients and find it does, in fact, contain sodium ascorbate, which many of us recognize as a form of vitamin C.
Not quite so fast, tough guy. Sodium ascorbate is a buffered form of ascorbic acid, which on some level over the years we relate to vitamin C. But neither ascorbic acid nor sodium ascorbate IS vitamin C. Sorry to have to break that to you.
Ascorbic acid is a component of vitamin C, but if you only ingest ascorbic acid, you’re eating what amounts to the outer wrapper of the chemical nutrient we label vitamin C.
Vitamins are tiny bio-chemical complexes, the whole of which are greater than the sum of their parts. Without any one part, the nutritional effectiveness is diminished or lost. Think about it. Do you want the outer ring that holds everything that is vitamin C together or do you want the whole enchilada?
Most of the vitamins found on shelves are of the synthetic variety. Man-made chemical isolates (as in outer ring only) of vitamins that occur naturally. They are cheap to manufacture, market and sell, and they are...well, cheap.
Frankly, when your body gets to a synthetic chemical that purports to be some portion of a vitamin or nutrient, it has no idea what to do with it. And many times, it does absolutely nothing with it, not because it doesn’t want to help you out but because it can’t.
The alternative to the man-made vitamin variety is the natural, whole food vitamin. It is essentially exactly what the name implies. Whole, complete food.
The pure, non-chemical manufacturing process for natural vitaimins involves removing the water and fiber from vitamin-rich plants and then culturing and fermenting the result into a predigested natural food. In addition to recognizing and using the nutrients, your body doesn’t have to supply any “missing links” from its own stores.
You can find a number of natural whole food vitamin selections here. One of the first things you’ll notice is that whole food vitamins are more expensive. A number of factors are at work here.
Distilling natural food and nutrients is a more expensive process. The natural vitamin manufacturers are also outside the major marketing chain of the big three chemical suppliers to the world’s vitamin makers: Hoffman-La Roche, Ltd., a subsidiary of Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG; BASF AG of Germany and France’s Rhone Poulenc.
Those three companies control over 75 percent of the world market for human and animal vitamins. Talk about your economies of scale. It all boils down to the old adage you get what you pay for.
So chuck the man-made chemical pills called Flintstones and OneADays (both made by Bayer) and get on a good, solid, natural vitamin your body can use.
It’s a good start and won’t hurt at all – not nearly as much as all those situps you’re committing to right about now. Put down that cupcake, cupcake.
Next week: Omega oils.
Copyright ©2009 Jim Mayfield
Friday, October 9, 2009
Our Kids Are Not Eating Right
You’d think the H1N1 Swine Flu and ever-present threat of biological terror would be more than enough to keep all the gears humming at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, but it seems they’ve got something else to worry about.
CDC now points to a 2007 survey of 100,000 high school students that shows fewer than 10 percent of our kids are eating the combined recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables.
With breath-taking lucidity, the CDC labeled these findings “poor” in a report just this week.
The report found that only 13 percent of U.S. high schoolers get at least three daily servings of vegetables (French fries don’t count) and just 32 percent get two servings of fruit.
Fewer than one in 10 get enough of both combined.
And we haven’t even covered the section on eating disorders.
OK. So tell me the kids don’t need something extra in the tank. Tell me a good multiple vitamin, quality protein powder and/or greens powder won’t help, and – in some cases – isn’t absolutely necessary.
There was also a recent article suggesting that supplements would not take the place of food, which apparently is something some fools in some corners are considering, and which we at The Organic Affair have never maintained.
What we do believe is that quality supplements from reputable manufacturers are an excellent source of nutrition to pick up the slack.
Kids move fast. Before they get out the door, consider Kids Multi, by Jarrow, either of the excellent one-daily vitamins by New Chapter, Pure Essence Life Essence multi and maybe even Greens + Wild Berry Burst, an excellent source of nutrient-rich green superfoods.
If your child isn’t eating right, and the fact is she’s probably not, give them a little something extra in the morning. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it will let the good folks at CDC rest a bit easier at night.
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