CHAPTER 6
Vitamins and Minerals
By selecting the right foods to put into our bodies, we are providing it with the tools that it needs to operate optimally and to heal itself. A vital part of wellness is to ensure that we are getting the 30 vitamins, minerals and dietary components that the body is unable to make by itself. These micronutrients found in foods, include water-soluble vitamins, fat-soluble vitamins, major minerals and trace minerals.
Vitamins are organic chemicals – substances that contain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. The word can be broken down to ‘vita’ meaning life and ‘amines’ for nitrogen compounds. They occur naturally in all living things. Their job is to regulate a whole host of bodily functions. They are, therefore, vital for such things as building body tissues, assisting in the digestion of macronutrients and preventing disease. Because vitamins are stimulants, they should be taken early in the day.
Your body needs at least 11 specific vitamins:
Nutritionists classify vitamins as either fat soluble or water soluble, depending on whether they dissolve in water or fat. Consuming larger amounts of fat soluble vitamins than you need, will leave the excess stored on your body as fat. Excess water soluble vitamins however, are expelled in your urine.
Large amounts of fat-soluble vitamins stored in your body may cause problems. To remember which are the fat soluble vitamins, here’s a mnemonic to aid your memory:
All Dogs Eat Kidneys
The fat soluble vitamins match the first letters of the words in that sentence. They are Vitamins A, D, E and K. Each of these vitamins has a distinct purpose – keeping your skin moist (E), protecting your bones (D), keeping your reproductive organs healthy (A) and making special proteins (K).
Even though each vitamin has a specific job, some of them work optimally in tandem with others. Here are some examples.
Sometimes, one vitamin may even alleviate a deficiency caused by the lack of another vitamin. People who do not get enough folate are at risk of a form of anaemia in which their red blood cells fail to mature. As soon as they take folate they begin making new cells.
Water soluble vitamins include Vitamin C and all the B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, biotin and pantothenic acid). If you take in more of these vitamins than you need to perform specific tasks, you will simply pee away the excess. However, if you don’t take in enough of them you will suffer the effects of deficiencies.
The following things can lead to a depleting of vitamins:
Minerals
Minerals are atoms made up of only one type of atom. Because they don’t contain the carbon, hydrogen or oxygen atoms found in all organic compounds, they are classed as being inorganic. They occur naturally in non-living things such as rocks and metal ores. Plants get their minerals from soil and humans get them from eating plants.
For optimum health, you need certain minerals, classified as major minerals and trace elements. The body stores different amounts of minerals. It keeps more than 5 grams of each of the major minerals at all times. To ensure that you have a steady supply, you should consume more than 100mg a day of each major mineral. Trace elements are those minerals which your body stores less than 5mg of. To maintain your body’s trace elements you need to take in less than 100mg per day.
Here are the essential major minerals:
The body cannot manufacture these minerals and they need to come through the foods we eat. Minerals have a calming effect on the body and are alkalising. It is best to take minerals at night when we rest and repair our bodies.
The Power of Antioxidants
Of all the vitamins and minerals we need, antioxidants are some of the most important and functional nutrients because they work as free radical scavengers, neutralising those unstable molecules before they can damage you DNA. This keeps your tissues young and vital for longer. Antioxidants are abundant in citrus foods (vitamin C), almonds (vitamin C), carrots (beta carotene) and garlic (selenium).
There have been many studies that have shown that the antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables can help prevent age-related conditions such as heart disease and cancer.
Choosing Your Supplements
The market is saturated with vitamin, mineral and antioxidant supplements yet you are always better off to stick with practitioner only products. Practitioner only products are supported by scientific evidence, to achieve successful clinical outcomes. They are positioned as the highest quality supplements available in the world. This is not always the case with retail products. Similar over the counter products may be cheaper however, they can sometimes contain unsuitable additives, inferior quality raw materials and are not always formulated to achieve optimum results. In contrast, practitioner only products are guaranteed for quality-tested ingredients, are synergistically designed to treat and target a specific condition and use the optimum dose range and potency to achieve the desired therapeutic effect.