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.
To lose weight,
the first thing one has to change about himself is his will power
and his dedication. Concentrating on the acidic or alkaline
diet comes next. Usually working people find adapting to a
zone
diet much easier than to any other format, which is the key to
its success actually.
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