Humans have been living on food and without food supplements up until a few generations ago. Why do we need them now?
But first, what are supplements?
Supplements are nutrients, alone or in combination, that are not directly in food, and may or may not be derived from food. Supplements are typically in pill, capsule, powder, or liquid form, or even injectable. They can be vitamins, minerals, amino acids (protein components), oils, herbs, enzymes, or probiotics (beneficial bacteria).
Why would you need supplements?
We are exposed to stressors that are in many ways greater than any we have faced in the past. Stressors include chemicals of all kinds, metals such as mercury in dental fillings, fluoride and other pollutants in water, pharmaceuticals, structural problems, physical inactivity, and microbes such as viruses and bacteria. We also face emotional stressors greater in some ways than those faced by our predecessors: physical safety, financial stresses, competition, health concerns, feeling powerless, and others.
Dealing with all of these stressors requires more of the right kind of fuel; in other words, nutrients. But aren’t these in food?
Depleted food
Although our need for nutrients is climbing, our food quality is declining. Food manufacturers do whatever they can to save money and to entice consumers into buying. To save money, chemical fertilizers replace nutrients that are found naturally in soil. Artificial flavorings replace real ingredients. Additives of all sorts not only don’t provide nutrients but can be toxic.
GMO (genetically modified) foods are becoming more prevalent. Not only do these have less nutrition, but their alteration at the genetic or molecular level, such that some of them barely qualify as food, becomes yet another body stressor.
RDAs
The RDA, or Recommended Daily Allowance, of nutrients is set by the government. For example, the RDA of vitamin C is 60mg, enough to prevent the vitamin C deficiency disease scurvy. It isn’t hard to get this much from food. However, these RDAs were set decades ago, when stressors were fewer and food was actually food. Nowadays people often need a lot more than the RDA for health. There’s a lot more at stake than just avoiding deficiency diseases such as scurvy. Also, RDAs haven’t kept pace with new discoveries about nutrition, and new nutrients and cofactors have since been discovered. To be on the safe side, supplementation is a good idea.
Is adequate actually adequate?
There’s a big difference between adequate and optimal. Let’s use a financial analogy. Say your basic household expenses – rent, food, car, electricity – come to X dollars. And your net income is X dollars. Your income is adequate to meet your expenses…but it’s far from optimal. If you have to go to the doctor or get new tires, if you want more out of life than just a roof over your head, if you have debt…then your income is no longer adequate.
Similarly, your nutrition from food may be adequate to handle the best-case health scenario, but you may need greater nutrient reserves to deal with a crisis, even one as simple as a common cold. You might feel okay, but you’d rather feel vibrant and energetic. And you may have a nutrient debt. In any of these cases, adequate nutrition may not actually be adequate after all.
What’s nutrient debt?
You may well be deficient in one or more nutrients. That’s like having a financial debt. In the case of financial debt, you can make minimum payments, which will keep you out of trouble, but you may never get caught up, or it will take an awfully long time. Similarly, relying only on our depleted food supply for your nutritional needs may result in your nutrition debt never getting caught up, and your health will likely never be as good as it could be because of that.
Nutritional supplements are the equivalent of making larger payments on your credit card bill; they can allow you to make up the nutritional debts and even get ahead and enjoy greater health.
But what if you eat really well?
Let’s face it: not everyone needs supplements. There are plenty of people who eat healthy organic food and enjoy good health. Are you one of them?
Someone who is healthy to begin with can extract most of the nutrients from healthful food. But if you have health issues, your digestion, absorption, and utilization of food and nutrients might be far from optimal. On top of that, your illness is a stressor that means you need even more nutrition to overcome it. And then you’ve got a vicious cycle – poor health leads to poor digestion, which leads to not getting enough nutrition, which leads back to poor health. Supplements can help break that cycle. They can provide some of the nourishment that you’re not getting from food.
Not all supplements are the same
Supplements vary considerably in quality. Cutting corners in the making of supplements can lead to your being shortchanged nutritionally. Low quality supplements might be poorly absorbed by your body; the label, which reflects laboratory analysis of the nutrients, might be technically accurate, but this doesn’t reflect how much of the nutrient your body will actually get and use.
Good quality supplements often make it easier to absorb and use the nutrients, by having the nutrients in predigested or chelated form, or by being in a form that is less likely to lead to allergic reactions.
Do it right
You may not know what nutrients you need. A friend might praise a particular supplement, and it’s tempting to get it and try it yourself, but if your friend has different nutrient needs and deficiencies than you do, it’s unlikely that you’ll get the same impressive benefits from the supplement. A lot of people buy supplements more or less randomly, amassing a cabinet full of supplements that can cost hundreds of dollars, and yet they may actually not be very useful. Some of them, in fact, can cancel out the effects of others if not used properly.
It’s important to have a knowledgeable practitioner such as those at CAM assess your nutritional needs and tell you what supplements and nutrients are right for you. The practitioner can recommend the best quality supplement types and brands. He or she can also tell you how much to take, and when they should be taken, for optimal results.
