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Dietary Supplements – Do We Need Them?
People who are young
and healthy rarely think of taking dietary supplement,
but when illness hits or age progresses, with its attendant
health problems and lack of energy, the search begins
for a dietary supplement that might provide that long
sought for holy grail, eternal youth.
No dietary supplement can provide that,
but with the assiduous use of vitamins and minerals,
we can often achieve optimum health for our age group
and certainly ease the symptoms of diseases we may suffer
from.
Dietary supplements can be divided into
two main types; nutritional, (vitamins and minerals
and amino acids) and botanical (herbal types).
But is it really necessary for someone
who is young and healthy to take dietary supplements?
You may consider that your diet is healthy enough, but
vegetables and dairy food can only be as good as the
soil in which they are grown and many farmers will agree
that their soil is worn out. Why else do they have to
add chemical fertilizers at ever increasing rates? If
the soil were farmed organically, instead of with an
eye to profit all the time, it would be in much better
health and so would we.
Another point to consider is the freshness
(or otherwise) of the products we buy. Most vegetables
are at least a week old by the time they get to our
homes. Although many are kept in cool storage, this
length of time causes the nutritional value to greatly
decrease. Fruit is often picked before ripe and put
into cold storage for weeks or months, then when it
is needed, hit with a gas to make it ripen quickly.
This gas is supposed to be safe in small amounts, but
it is carcinogenic….
Some dietary supplement exponents declare
lack of magnesium to be a major cause of high blood
pressure. People who have found the usual blood pressure
medications to cause more discomfort than they cure
tried out magnesium supplements and in some cases were
able to stop using their prescription medication entirely
within two months. Of course, you should never do this
without consulting your health care professional.
There are some people who claim that
dietary supplements do nothing but give us expensive
urine. That may be true if you have a super healthy
diet and are therefore less likely to be lacking in
vitamins, but health-care professionals are increasingly
advising extra supplements for those under stress such
as illness, pregnancy, or periods of sudden growth spurts.
If your tongue is inflamed and you suffer
from loss of appetite, shortness of breath, are irritable,
forgetful and mentally sluggish, you may have a folic
acid deficiency. Folic acid is one of the B group of
vitamins and most animal and plant foods are poor sources
of it. The exception is liver which most people don’t
eat a lot of these days. Some habits and diseases like
celiac disease, alcoholism and irritable bowel syndrome,
also play a major part in causing a deficiency of this
vitamin, so if you suffer from any of these problems,
ask your doctor if you need a supplement.
1howto.com
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