Beat Nutritional Deficiencies & Disease

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Beat Nutritional Deficiencies & Disease

Posted On : Aug-08-2011 | seen (232) times | Article Word Count : 2787 |

The Doctors Health Press is the health publishing division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation, one of the largest consumer information publishers in the world. The Doctors Health Press publishes monthly health newsletters for a wide array of alternative and natural health topics like healing foods, homeopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, hidden cures for common illnesses, and natural self-healing.

Have you been wondering of late whether those supplements you buy are actually doing anything for you? There’s a popular saying these days in the health community and it goes something like this: “all you get from taking vitamins is expensive urine.” There are those who believe that most supplements are never absorbed into the body after being swallowed. Others argue that many suffer from vitamin deficiencies for one reason or another, and supplements are the perfect antidote to these deficiencies.
So where does the truth lie? Probably somewhere in between.
While it is probably true that each body is a little different when it comes to utilizing the vitamins and minerals in supplements, most of us are able to boost our intakes to some degree by popping a multivitamin or taking a calcium/magnesium pill. On the other hand, there is very little debate around the issue of food being the best source of nutrients. Our bodies are designed to eat, digest and absorb vitamins and minerals from the foods that we eat. We have been using this system on an evolutionary scale for over a millennium.
If you are going to take supplements, the best advice might be to target those vitamins and minerals that you know you are low in. For example, in the winter months, you may need to supplement with vitamin D. If you are going through a period of stress in your life, taking a B-vitamin complex may help you get through.
For an overall, general dose of all the vitamins and minerals, remember that supplements should never act as a substitute for a well-balanced diet. A healthy diet should be able to provide you with your recommended levels of nutrients. It is only extenuating circumstances that should cause you to reach for some supplements.
Supplements as a Complement to Diet
The ultimate key to good health is eating a diet that is rich in whole foods. These are not refined in any way and are power-packed with an entire dose of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fiber and other health-promoting substances. Whole foods consist largely of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains. Nothing can be substituted for the diverse nutritional power that these foods give you.
Certain foods contain many other substances besides the ones that medical science knows about —and it is this wealth of “phytochemicals” and “flavonoids” that we are just beginning to understand, and that could be responsible for food’s disease-preventive qualities.
As you grow older, the importance of maintaining a diet that is rich in nutrients increases. Wear and tear starts to take a toll on the organs and systems of the body. Subsisting anything other than whole foods for a prolonged period of time will inevitably result in illness.
If you don’t get enough fruits and vegetables in your diet (which eight of out every 10 people don’t), then supplements could be a good idea. While they can’t replace your diet, they can complement it. However, don’t make the mistake that they can ever be substitutes. Remember that your body’s ability to absorb what you are feeding it can be influenced in a number of ways by the manufacturing of supplements.
In the end, it’s possible that you are only truly using 15% of any particular ingredient in a multivitamin. This is one thing that most health-food stores won’t discuss. Food is your greatest resource for health: focus on it first.
The Most Common Supplements
The following is a list of common nutrients that are sold in supplement form—and purchased by the millions. These nutrients are definitely important when it comes to boosting your health, but why not look for them in delicious foods instead of pills? Let’s start with the B vitamins.
Vitamin B1
Also known as “thiamin,” this vitamin is required for your body to turn proteins, fats and carbohydrates into energy. Specifically, thiamin is needed to make a molecule that carries energy. It also appears that thiamin has direct effects on your brain, because it uses glucose to function properly, thus thiamin helps turn glucose into energy. Another way of putting it is that low levels of thiamin could be disrupting your cognitive function.
It’s accepted that thiamin is essential for your nerve and heart function. Deficiency includes feeling fatigued, weak, completely uninterested, unmotivated and not thinking on all cylinders.
Inadequate levels of thiamin could also hurt your heart. Congestive heart failure develops over time, with your heart lacking the ability to pump blood properly. In one study, patients who had experienced heart failure were found to be deficient in thiamin.1
You should try to get 1.4 milligrams (mg) of vitamin B1 a day for good health. “Benfotiamine” is a fat-soluble form of vitamin B1. It is found naturally in roasted, crushed garlic; onions; shallots; and leeks. This variant lasts longer in the body, giving you some health benefits that vitamin B1 cannot.
Thiamin is often included in a B-complex vitamin, but it’s unclear how much your body absorbs—certainly, the supplement provides benefits, but not to the degree that healthy foods do.
Vitamin B2
Also known as “riboflavin,” this vitamin is a common supplement either on its own or mixed into a B-complex vitamin jar. It also helps produce energy in the body and processes fats and amino acids. Riboflavin is required for the formation of red blood cells, the production of antibodies and the growth and respiration of cells.
Inside a cell’s “mitochondria,” vitamin B2 helps shuttle the electrons that we get in food along a pathway. It’s needed to activate vitamin B6 and folate, which, as you’ll see, play big roles. Vitamin B2 also helps with the absorption of iron and vitamin B6.
Carpal-tunnel syndrome may ease if you add lots of vitamin B2 to your diet. You may find that riboflavin can even help with migraines—one study showed that B2 lessened the number and intensity of headaches in adolescents.2
The recommended daily intake (RDI) for vitamin B2 is 1.6 mg. Riboflavin is easily found in leafy green vegetables, whole grains, liver, eggs, lean beef and asperagus. Alcoholics are at the highest risk of being deficient in B2, as are older adults who aren’t getting enough calories each day and who may have cut out dairy products.
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B6 is involved in more functions that your body performs than any other vitamin or mineral. Vitamin B6 breaks down protein. It’s needed by 100 different enzymes in your body. It’s also needed by red blood cells and the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in those cells. At the same time, vitamin B6 boosts the oxygen capacity of hemoglobin so that more oxygen reaches your cells at any given time.
The vitamin is critical in the creation of hormones and “neurotransmitters.” Both the immune system and the nervous system need the nutrient to work properly. Vitamin B6 also helps prevent anemia.
It plays a role in your blood-glucose levels as well, keeping them in a safe range. When these levels get too out of whack for too long, you are at great risk for diabetes. It is essential for turning tryptophan, which is an amino acid, into niacin. This one also helps break down the dangerous amino acid known as “homocysteine.”
The specific ailments that it helps treat and prevent include “atherosclerosis,” heart disease, PMS, nausea, lowered immune function and kidney stones. Also, it seems that folate is good for your brain. A recent study found that elderly patients who boosted their folate levels had better “neuropsychological” test scores than those who were low in the vitamin.3
Get your RDI of 1.4 mg for vitamin B6 by eating yeast, whole grains, sunflower seeds, soybeans, lentils, chickpeas, nuts, bananas, lean meat and dairy products.
Vitamin B12
Another important B vitamin, vitamin B12 makes sure that your red blood cells are made properly. It prevents your body from having a lack of oxygen. It’s needed in the areas of your body that have a high turnover of cells—namely your intestines and your blood.
The vitamin ensures that your body can react quickly to infections, make DNA at a rapid rate and avoid dangerous cell mutations that can pave the way to cancer. It also helps maintain a healthy nervous system, protecting each nerve cell. It also helps folate and B6 defeat homocysteine, and it reduces the risk of heart problems.
Now, here is another very important note: as you can see, the B vitamins work together—being low in one causes problems when utilizing another.
Vitamin B12 is the most chemically complex of all the vitamins. This complexity allows it to heal and protect an equally complex organ: the brain. Vitamin B12 could protect against neurological disorders and prevent diseases like Parkinson’s.
The RDI for vitamin B12 is six micrograms (mcg). It is found in high amounts in some foods. For vegetarians and vegans, getting enough can pose a problem, but this one is a perfect example of the fact that the food industry invariably rises to the occasion. Many vegetarian foods are supplemented with vitamin B12, so vegetarians can meet their adequate needs. Foods that are high in B12 include eggs, dairy, beef, organ meats, fortified breakfast cereal and cheese.
Folate
Folate is of the highest importance in your body. Without it, your cells can’t divide properly, and the essential process of cell division is disrupted. Folate helps create and maintain new cells and protects your DNA from any changes that can result in disease. This B vitamin also breaks down and reassembles several amino acids—it is the most important weapon versus homocysteine.
Your risk of heart disease could be cut in half if you have adequate levels of folate. Its other notable contributions to your health include cutting the risk of birth defects, making “SSRI antidepressants” work better and preventing the cellular damage that can spark cancer.
Folate is critical to many bodily processes. In supplement form, it’s called folic acid.
It is extraordinarily easy to get this vitamin in food. In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started requiring that all enriched flour, rice, pasta and other grain products be fortified with 140 mcg of folic acid per 100 grams (g). That’s because they recognized how important the vitamin is.
The RDI for folate is 200 mcg. In general, you can find folate in leafy green vegetables, fruits (particularly citrus fruits) and legumes. Specifically, these are high: fortified breakfast cereal, liver, spinach, asparagus, celery, beets, baked beans, long-grain rice, broccoli, green peas, avocados, peanuts, oranges (and orange juice), tomato juice, romaine lettuce, lentils and chickpeas.
Beta-carotene
This nutrient is turned into vitamin A within your body. Beta-carotene is a “precursor” to vitamin A, as its molecules are very similar to the essential nutrient. While vitamin A can be toxic if you take it in very high amounts, beta-carotene is not. Its link to this vitamin sets beta-carotene apart from all other carotenoids.
Beta-carotene is a very powerful antioxidant, reducing the risk of heart disease through its efforts to prevent fats and cholesterol from oxidizing and forming plaques in your arteries. It helps deactivate “free radicals,” which can damage cells and cause chronic diseases. It is a potent immune-booster, as well.
Therapeutically, the nutrient can slow the progression of cataracts and “macular degeneration”—the two biggest causes of blindness or reduced vision in older adults. Studies continue, as the evidence is anything but indisputable, but scientists have suggested that beta-carotene plays a role in treating all of these, as well: osteoarthritis, depression, asthma, headaches, cystic fibrosis, heartburn, infertility, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, epilepsy and sunburn.
It is normally suggested that you get beta-carotene from food, not supplements. If your diet provides at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day—including brightly colored fruits and dark-green leafy vegetables—then it should provide you with all the beta-carotene you need. (Not to mention the other “phytonutrients” that are found in these foods as well.)
You need six mg of beta-carotene to meet the daily requirement of 1,000 mcg of vitamin A. The U.S. Institution of Medicine advises that beta-carotene supplements aren’t advisable for the general population—other than for people who are trying to correct a vitamin-A deficiency.
Vitamin C
Everybody knows about this heavy-hitting antioxidant. Also called “ascorbic acid,” it protects against free-radical damage, and it is essential for a strong immune system. Vitamin C’s ability to ward off bacterial and viral intruders is well documented.
Your body also needs it to build collagen, which is the most important protein there is, as it is of a structural nature. It holds your connective tissues in place. Vitamin C allows these connective fibers to weave across each other and form a stronger structural layer. It’s also critical during the healing of wounds.
Vitamin C is even good for your eyes: in one clinical trial, higher intake of the vitamin was associated with a long-term protectiveness against cataracts.4
The RDI for vitamin C is 75 mg. Vitamin C is the ultimate proof that you don’t need supplements as much as your health store might say. Vitamin C is abundant in many foods, with many fruits and vegetables containing high levels of it.
Vitamin E
While vitamin C fights free radicals in water, vitamin E does so in your body’s fats and oils. The medical effects of vitamin E are wide in scope. Major trials have found that it helps prevent patients from getting cancer. The nutrient is a vital protector of “LDL cholesterol” molecules, using its antioxidant strength to shield them from damage. In this way, it protects against heart disease.
Since it plays a role in your body’s ability to produce glucose, vitamin E may be useful in treating and preventing diabetes. What else? It fights inflammation, regulates blood cells, helps ensure the growth of connective tissue, controls cell division, helps treat dementia, boosts the cardiac system, boosts the immune system and helps limit the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Vitamin E is actually a family of eight antioxidant compounds, which may explain its effectiveness in fighting disease. In one clinical trial, dietary vitamin E was found to reduce the incidence of prostate cancer in men in Italy.5
The RDI for vitamin E is 10 mg. In Canada and the U.S., you’d have to try pretty hard to not get vitamin E in your diet.
There is mounting evidence that shows that getting high amounts of vitamin E through supplements can be very damaging. Foods that are high in vitamin E are: vegetable oils, avocados, whole grains, seeds and nuts, leafy salad greens, broccoli, olives, turnip, parsley, papaya, salmon, tuna, shrimp, lobster and egg yolks.
Calcium
With 99% of your body’s calcium stored in your bones and teeth, it’s easy to see why it is so crucial to your overall bone health. However, calcium can help keep more than just bones and teeth strong. Hundreds of enzymes rely on calcium to do their jobs, as do your nerves, muscles, heart and blood-clotting mechanisms.
The calcium in your bodily fluid and tissues is there to ensure that your muscles contract, your blood vessels work, your hormones are secreted and messages are sent effectively throughout the nervous system.
Low intakes of calcium cause a particular hormone to be elevated, which raises your blood pressure. In this way, calcium can protect against hypertension. Calcium is needed in blood clotting. The mineral also may lower cholesterol levels by binding cholesterol and fats in your intestines. Calcium is believed to help protect against colon cancer, as well.
The RDI for calcium is 1,000 mg. Calcium is one of the most popular supplements in history. Don’t forget, though, that there are a lot of calcium-spiked beverages and foods on the market that deliver huge amounts of calcium. If you’re going to make the effort to buy calcium supplements, why not pay attention to the foods you buy, too? After all, foods are less expensive and a lot tastier!

E-Bonus
Three Home Remedies for a Stuffy Nose
The next time that your nasal passages are congested, boil some water and allow it to cool, then add a quarter of a teaspoon of table salt to it. Put two to three drops of this solution in both nostrils before meals and at bedtime. Another effective remedy to try is apple-cider vinegar and water. Mix the vinegar and water in equal parts. Boil the solution in a pan, and when steam starts to rise, lean over the pan and inhale the fumes. Finally, prepare a solution using four drops of lavender essential oil and pine essential oil, three drops of peppermint essential oil and seven drops of eucalyptus essential oil. You can inhale the vapors of this solution by putting it on a cotton ball or an aromatherapy diffuser.

Re-Publish this Article

<h1>Beat Nutritional Deficiencies & Disease</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_doctorshealthpress.aspx'>doctorshealthpress</a> Have you been wondering of late whether those supplements you buy are actually doing anything for you? There’s a popular saying these days in the health community and it goes something like this: “all you get from taking vitamins is expensive urine.” There are those who believe that most supplements are never absorbed into the body after being swallowed. Others argue that many suffer from vitamin deficiencies for one reason or another, and supplements are the perfect antidote to these deficiencies.
So where does the truth lie? Probably somewhere in between.
While it is probably true that each body is a little different when it comes to utilizing the vitamins and minerals in supplements, most of us are able to boost our intakes to some degree by popping a multivitamin or taking a calcium/magnesium pill. On the other hand, there is very little debate around the issue of food being the best source of nutrients. Our bodies are designed to eat, digest and absorb vitamins and minerals from the foods that we eat. We have been using this system on an evolutionary scale for over a millennium.
If you are going to take supplements, the best advice might be to target those vitamins and minerals that you know you are low in. For example, in the winter months, you may need to supplement with vitamin D. If you are going through a period of stress in your life, taking a B-vitamin complex may help you get through.
For an overall, general dose of all the vitamins and minerals, remember that supplements should never act as a substitute for a well-balanced diet. A healthy diet should be able to provide you with your recommended levels of nutrients. It is only extenuating circumstances that should cause you to reach for some supplements.
Supplements as a Complement to Diet
The ultimate key to good health is eating a diet that is rich in whole foods. These are not refined in any way and are power-packed with an entire dose of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fiber and other health-promoting substances. Whole foods consist largely of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains. Nothing can be substituted for the diverse nutritional power that these foods give you.
Certain foods contain many other substances besides the ones that medical science knows about —and it is this wealth of “phytochemicals” and “flavonoids” that we are just beginning to understand, and that could be responsible for food’s disease-preventive qualities.
As you grow older, the importance of maintaining a diet that is rich in nutrients increases. Wear and tear starts to take a toll on the organs and systems of the body. Subsisting anything other than whole foods for a prolonged period of time will inevitably result in illness.
If you don’t get enough fruits and vegetables in your diet (which eight of out every 10 people don’t), then supplements could be a good idea. While they can’t replace your diet, they can complement it. However, don’t make the mistake that they can ever be substitutes. Remember that your body’s ability to absorb what you are feeding it can be influenced in a number of ways by the manufacturing of supplements.
In the end, it’s possible that you are only truly using 15% of any particular ingredient in a multivitamin. This is one thing that most health-food stores won’t discuss. Food is your greatest resource for health: focus on it first.
The Most Common Supplements
The following is a list of common nutrients that are sold in supplement form—and purchased by the millions. These nutrients are definitely important when it comes to boosting your health, but why not look for them in delicious foods instead of pills? Let’s start with the B vitamins.
Vitamin B1
Also known as “thiamin,” this vitamin is required for your body to turn proteins, fats and carbohydrates into energy. Specifically, thiamin is needed to make a molecule that carries energy. It also appears that thiamin has direct effects on your brain, because it uses glucose to function properly, thus thiamin helps turn glucose into energy. Another way of putting it is that low levels of thiamin could be disrupting your cognitive function.
It’s accepted that thiamin is essential for your nerve and heart function. Deficiency includes feeling fatigued, weak, completely uninterested, unmotivated and not thinking on all cylinders.
Inadequate levels of thiamin could also hurt your heart. Congestive heart failure develops over time, with your heart lacking the ability to pump blood properly. In one study, patients who had experienced heart failure were found to be deficient in thiamin.1
You should try to get 1.4 milligrams (mg) of vitamin B1 a day for good health. “Benfotiamine” is a fat-soluble form of vitamin B1. It is found naturally in roasted, crushed garlic; onions; shallots; and leeks. This variant lasts longer in the body, giving you some health benefits that vitamin B1 cannot.
Thiamin is often included in a B-complex vitamin, but it’s unclear how much your body absorbs—certainly, the supplement provides benefits, but not to the degree that healthy foods do.
Vitamin B2
Also known as “riboflavin,” this vitamin is a common supplement either on its own or mixed into a B-complex vitamin jar. It also helps produce energy in the body and processes fats and amino acids. Riboflavin is required for the formation of red blood cells, the production of antibodies and the growth and respiration of cells.
Inside a cell’s “mitochondria,” vitamin B2 helps shuttle the electrons that we get in food along a pathway. It’s needed to activate vitamin B6 and folate, which, as you’ll see, play big roles. Vitamin B2 also helps with the absorption of iron and vitamin B6.
Carpal-tunnel syndrome may ease if you add lots of vitamin B2 to your diet. You may find that riboflavin can even help with migraines—one study showed that B2 lessened the number and intensity of headaches in adolescents.2
The recommended daily intake (RDI) for vitamin B2 is 1.6 mg. Riboflavin is easily found in leafy green vegetables, whole grains, liver, eggs, lean beef and asperagus. Alcoholics are at the highest risk of being deficient in B2, as are older adults who aren’t getting enough calories each day and who may have cut out dairy products.
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B6 is involved in more functions that your body performs than any other vitamin or mineral. Vitamin B6 breaks down protein. It’s needed by 100 different enzymes in your body. It’s also needed by red blood cells and the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in those cells. At the same time, vitamin B6 boosts the oxygen capacity of hemoglobin so that more oxygen reaches your cells at any given time.
The vitamin is critical in the creation of hormones and “neurotransmitters.” Both the immune system and the nervous system need the nutrient to work properly. Vitamin B6 also helps prevent anemia.
It plays a role in your blood-glucose levels as well, keeping them in a safe range. When these levels get too out of whack for too long, you are at great risk for diabetes. It is essential for turning tryptophan, which is an amino acid, into niacin. This one also helps break down the dangerous amino acid known as “homocysteine.”
The specific ailments that it helps treat and prevent include “atherosclerosis,” heart disease, PMS, nausea, lowered immune function and kidney stones. Also, it seems that folate is good for your brain. A recent study found that elderly patients who boosted their folate levels had better “neuropsychological” test scores than those who were low in the vitamin.3
Get your RDI of 1.4 mg for vitamin B6 by eating yeast, whole grains, sunflower seeds, soybeans, lentils, chickpeas, nuts, bananas, lean meat and dairy products.
Vitamin B12
Another important B vitamin, vitamin B12 makes sure that your red blood cells are made properly. It prevents your body from having a lack of oxygen. It’s needed in the areas of your body that have a high turnover of cells—namely your intestines and your blood.
The vitamin ensures that your body can react quickly to infections, make DNA at a rapid rate and avoid dangerous cell mutations that can pave the way to cancer. It also helps maintain a healthy nervous system, protecting each nerve cell. It also helps folate and B6 defeat homocysteine, and it reduces the risk of heart problems.
Now, here is another very important note: as you can see, the B vitamins work together—being low in one causes problems when utilizing another.
Vitamin B12 is the most chemically complex of all the vitamins. This complexity allows it to heal and protect an equally complex organ: the brain. Vitamin B12 could protect against neurological disorders and prevent diseases like Parkinson’s.
The RDI for vitamin B12 is six micrograms (mcg). It is found in high amounts in some foods. For vegetarians and vegans, getting enough can pose a problem, but this one is a perfect example of the fact that the food industry invariably rises to the occasion. Many vegetarian foods are supplemented with vitamin B12, so vegetarians can meet their adequate needs. Foods that are high in B12 include eggs, dairy, beef, organ meats, fortified breakfast cereal and cheese.
Folate
Folate is of the highest importance in your body. Without it, your cells can’t divide properly, and the essential process of cell division is disrupted. Folate helps create and maintain new cells and protects your DNA from any changes that can result in disease. This B vitamin also breaks down and reassembles several amino acids—it is the most important weapon versus homocysteine.
Your risk of heart disease could be cut in half if you have adequate levels of folate. Its other notable contributions to your health include cutting the risk of birth defects, making “SSRI antidepressants” work better and preventing the cellular damage that can spark cancer.
Folate is critical to many bodily processes. In supplement form, it’s called folic acid.
It is extraordinarily easy to get this vitamin in food. In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started requiring that all enriched flour, rice, pasta and other grain products be fortified with 140 mcg of folic acid per 100 grams (g). That’s because they recognized how important the vitamin is.
The RDI for folate is 200 mcg. In general, you can find folate in leafy green vegetables, fruits (particularly citrus fruits) and legumes. Specifically, these are high: fortified breakfast cereal, liver, spinach, asparagus, celery, beets, baked beans, long-grain rice, broccoli, green peas, avocados, peanuts, oranges (and orange juice), tomato juice, romaine lettuce, lentils and chickpeas.
Beta-carotene
This nutrient is turned into vitamin A within your body. Beta-carotene is a “precursor” to vitamin A, as its molecules are very similar to the essential nutrient. While vitamin A can be toxic if you take it in very high amounts, beta-carotene is not. Its link to this vitamin sets beta-carotene apart from all other carotenoids.
Beta-carotene is a very powerful antioxidant, reducing the risk of heart disease through its efforts to prevent fats and cholesterol from oxidizing and forming plaques in your arteries. It helps deactivate “free radicals,” which can damage cells and cause chronic diseases. It is a potent immune-booster, as well.
Therapeutically, the nutrient can slow the progression of cataracts and “macular degeneration”—the two biggest causes of blindness or reduced vision in older adults. Studies continue, as the evidence is anything but indisputable, but scientists have suggested that beta-carotene plays a role in treating all of these, as well: osteoarthritis, depression, asthma, headaches, cystic fibrosis, heartburn, infertility, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, epilepsy and sunburn.
It is normally suggested that you get beta-carotene from food, not supplements. If your diet provides at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day—including brightly colored fruits and dark-green leafy vegetables—then it should provide you with all the beta-carotene you need. (Not to mention the other “phytonutrients” that are found in these foods as well.)
You need six mg of beta-carotene to meet the daily requirement of 1,000 mcg of vitamin A. The U.S. Institution of Medicine advises that beta-carotene supplements aren’t advisable for the general population—other than for people who are trying to correct a vitamin-A deficiency.
Vitamin C
Everybody knows about this heavy-hitting antioxidant. Also called “ascorbic acid,” it protects against free-radical damage, and it is essential for a strong immune system. Vitamin C’s ability to ward off bacterial and viral intruders is well documented.
Your body also needs it to build collagen, which is the most important protein there is, as it is of a structural nature. It holds your connective tissues in place. Vitamin C allows these connective fibers to weave across each other and form a stronger structural layer. It’s also critical during the healing of wounds.
Vitamin C is even good for your eyes: in one clinical trial, higher intake of the vitamin was associated with a long-term protectiveness against cataracts.4
The RDI for vitamin C is 75 mg. Vitamin C is the ultimate proof that you don’t need supplements as much as your health store might say. Vitamin C is abundant in many foods, with many fruits and vegetables containing high levels of it.
Vitamin E
While vitamin C fights free radicals in water, vitamin E does so in your body’s fats and oils. The medical effects of vitamin E are wide in scope. Major trials have found that it helps prevent patients from getting cancer. The nutrient is a vital protector of “LDL cholesterol” molecules, using its antioxidant strength to shield them from damage. In this way, it protects against heart disease.
Since it plays a role in your body’s ability to produce glucose, vitamin E may be useful in treating and preventing diabetes. What else? It fights inflammation, regulates blood cells, helps ensure the growth of connective tissue, controls cell division, helps treat dementia, boosts the cardiac system, boosts the immune system and helps limit the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Vitamin E is actually a family of eight antioxidant compounds, which may explain its effectiveness in fighting disease. In one clinical trial, dietary vitamin E was found to reduce the incidence of prostate cancer in men in Italy.5
The RDI for vitamin E is 10 mg. In Canada and the U.S., you’d have to try pretty hard to not get vitamin E in your diet.
There is mounting evidence that shows that getting high amounts of vitamin E through supplements can be very damaging. Foods that are high in vitamin E are: vegetable oils, avocados, whole grains, seeds and nuts, leafy salad greens, broccoli, olives, turnip, parsley, papaya, salmon, tuna, shrimp, lobster and egg yolks.
Calcium
With 99% of your body’s calcium stored in your bones and teeth, it’s easy to see why it is so crucial to your overall bone health. However, calcium can help keep more than just bones and teeth strong. Hundreds of enzymes rely on calcium to do their jobs, as do your nerves, muscles, heart and blood-clotting mechanisms.
The calcium in your bodily fluid and tissues is there to ensure that your muscles contract, your blood vessels work, your hormones are secreted and messages are sent effectively throughout the nervous system.
Low intakes of calcium cause a particular hormone to be elevated, which raises your blood pressure. In this way, calcium can protect against hypertension. Calcium is needed in blood clotting. The mineral also may lower cholesterol levels by binding cholesterol and fats in your intestines. Calcium is believed to help protect against colon cancer, as well.
The RDI for calcium is 1,000 mg. Calcium is one of the most popular supplements in history. Don’t forget, though, that there are a lot of calcium-spiked beverages and foods on the market that deliver huge amounts of calcium. If you’re going to make the effort to buy calcium supplements, why not pay attention to the foods you buy, too? After all, foods are less expensive and a lot tastier!

E-Bonus
Three Home Remedies for a Stuffy Nose
The next time that your nasal passages are congested, boil some water and allow it to cool, then add a quarter of a teaspoon of table salt to it. Put two to three drops of this solution in both nostrils before meals and at bedtime. Another effective remedy to try is apple-cider vinegar and water. Mix the vinegar and water in equal parts. Boil the solution in a pan, and when steam starts to rise, lean over the pan and inhale the fumes. Finally, prepare a solution using four drops of lavender essential oil and pine essential oil, three drops of peppermint essential oil and seven drops of eucalyptus essential oil. You can inhale the vapors of this solution by putting it on a cotton ball or an aromatherapy diffuser.About the Author: And remember, you can always get more natural health advice, the latest alternative health breakthroughs and news, plus information about nutrition, alternative remedies and cures and doctors health advice, all free when you sign up for the Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin. Visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/">http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/</a> now to find out how to start your free subscription.
	 
	The Snack That Makes You Smarter &amp; 11 Other Brain-Boosting Super Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Beat-Nutritional-Deficiencies--Disease_71979.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Beat Nutritional Deficiencies & Disease_71979.aspx</a>

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And remember, you can always get more natural health advice, the latest alternative health breakthroughs and news, plus information about nutrition, alternative remedies and cures and doctors health advice, all free when you sign up for the Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin. Visit http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/ now to find out how to start your free subscription.

The Snack That Makes You Smarter & 11 Other Brain-Boosting Super

Keywords : Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Folate, Vitamin C,

Category : Health and Fitness : Health and Fitness

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