Are you one of the 50%, and should you be?
As many as half of the people in the US take some kind of nutritional supplements, and you might well be one of them. Or maybe you should be one of them. Do you really need to take supplements, and why, and when, and how? Don’t you get everything you need from a good diet? Are all supplements the same? Let’s take a look at these questions.
What exactly are supplements?
As the name implies, supplements are nutrients, usually in capsule or tablet form, that supple-ment nutrition from food. A supplement is usually a nutrient that would normally be found in the body or in food, although often in lesser amounts than the supplement provides.
Supplements can be single nutrients or a combination. They can be vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients from plants, amino acids that form proteins, proteins themselves, oils, herbs, probiot-ics (beneficial bacteria), enzymes, antioxidants, and others. Supplements can come as pills, tab-lets, liquids, or powders, or can be injected or given intravenously.
But the question of what a supplement is can be a huge and sometimes confusing topic. If you were to ask ten knowledgeable people what is and is not considered a supplement, you might get ten different answers and just as many questions: is nutritious oil a supplement or a food? Are herbs supplements, foods, or medicines? Is the acidophilus (good bacteria) in a cup of yo-gurt and in a capsule the same, or is one a supplement and the other a food or a food additive? Whew! No wonder you’re confused.
Shouldn’t we get all the nutrition we need from food?
After all, people have gotten their nutrition from food for a good many years before supple-ments came on the scene. But is food a sufficient source of nutrients today? A lot of things have changed in just the past sixty years, so it’s very possible that our nutrient and food needs have, too.
The dirt on dirt
For one thing, most food isn’t nearly as nutritious as it was sixty years ago. You are what you eat…and, in turn, the plants you eat are what they eat. They can’t contain more nutrients than they can take up from the soil.
All that’s needed to produce a lush green healthy-looking vegetable plant are three chemical nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, or NPK for short from each element’s chemical symbol, so this is what commercial plants are fed. A plant on NPK fertilizer is outwardly fat and green and healthy-looking, and can be compared to someone on a junk-food diet who may be fat and outwardly healthy-looking but have a lot of underlying disease conditions. But even if plants can appear to thrive on those three elements, NPK, we need a lot more for health than just those three. If we eat plant foods grown only with NPK – or, for that matter, eat animals that feed on such plants almost exclusively – it is clear that we won’t get all the nutrients we need, even if we eat tons of salad and broccoli.
What about organic food, then?
Organic food is usually healthier than conventionally grown food, but commercial organic food is a profit-making business. Although the guidelines for organic certification are strict, many commercial organic growers follow only the minimum to keep the profit coming. Organic food grown in your own backyard with years’ worth of compost and crop rotation is optimal, but – let’s face it – most of us don’t or can’t do this.
The other part of the equation
Not only are we getting less nutrition from our food, but our changing times mean that many of us have a greater need for nutrition than in the past. We are exposed to physical stressors, from air pollution to metal dental fillings to whiplash injuries, that are in many ways greater than what people who came before us have experienced. We need more nutrients to be able to cope with that stress and to heal. We may not be getting them.
You are what you eat? Not exactly
More accurately, you are what you eat…minus what you don’t digest and send to your blood-stream, minus what you don’t absorb into your cells, minus what you don’t utilize. Ironically, any health problems that create a greater need for nutrients might also interfere with your di-gesting and using these nutrients properly. At any given time, you’re in either “fight, flight, or freeze” stress mode (called sympathetic), or “rest and digest” mode (called parasympathetic). If you’re chronically ill, you may be in stress mode 24/7, digestion suffers, nutrition suffers, and your health can spiral downwards.
Adequate or optimal?
Yes, you can get adequate nutrition from food – but is it optimal? There’s a big difference. Many of us have been deficient in certain nutrients for so long that we have a nutrient debt; we need quite a bit just to catch up. This can be compared with credit card debt: making the mini-mum payment is adequate, but making a large payment each month is optimal. Well-chosen food can provide adequate but not necessarily optimal nutrition for most people. Whole foods can provide good health, but there can be even more efficient ways to get there.
All supplements are not created equal
Before taking supplements on your own, you should know that not all supplements are the same quality or equally effective. The supplement market, like any market, simply responds to what people ask for. If people want all nutrients in one pill, the market will provide them, even if the nutrients don’t work well together and should best be taken separately. If people want a cheap vitamin C tablet, their tablet will likely contain only ascorbic acid and not the bioflavonoids and copper that will help the vitamin C actually be utilized in the body. If you buy the cheap dollar-store calcium, it will probably be only calcium without the other minerals that make it work best in your body, and that calcium might well come from an inexpensive and indigestible source like chalk.
The best supplements are those that come from food sources rather than cheap laboratory ma-terials. They should be formulated for optimal digestion and use of the nutrients. Think about it: if you take supplements and your body can’t do anything with them, what good are they?
So do you need supplements, and which ones?
The bottom line is that it depends on:
• Your diet
• Your health issues
• Your nutritional needs
• What specific nutrients are deficient
• How bad the deficiency is
• Quality of food intake
• Ability to digest and assimilate nutrients
What can you do now?
You can certainly do a lot for yourself by upgrading your eating habits, and to a certain degree by taking the highest quality supplements you can find. But you can get the best results by con-sulting with a knowledgeable practitioner who follows the above list and evaluates your health and your nutrient needs personally.
