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 dont 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.
