Dietary Supplements
The purpose of nutritional dietary supplements is to supply nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fatty acids amino acids that are missing or not consumed in sufficient quantity in the diet. This may also include herbal supplements which claim to prevent or treat certain conditions. It is up to you as the consumer to become a savvy nutritional supplement shopper in order to make informed choices that enhance your health.
In you life time you will consume more than 80,000 meals. The presence or absence of vital nutrients in these foods will directly influence health and disease. Nutrition is the key element in the development and maintenance of the health state that is optimal for you. A poor diet together with a sedentary lifestyle is known to be a recipe for the risk factors of chronic, life-threatening disease and death. Optimal nutrition is vital for growth and maintenance of a healthy body throughout life.
The fact that you’re here is either because you or someone you know may need to improve on their nutritional needs. Humans have known for thousands of years that the best medicine is no “medicine,” but rather what nature has provided for us. Hippocrates, a Greek physician called “the father of medicine”, almost 2500 years ago said; let your food be your medicine and medicine be your food. Some of the foods are intended to be consumed as part of our normal diet contains biologically active components which offer the potential of reducing the risk of disease. These are foods that provide health benefits beyond the traditional nutrients they contain.
Fruits and vegetables are examples of such foods. When such nutrients are not supplied in our diets nutritional or dietary supplements may fill the gaps. However, we have got to be realistic; no supplement can make up for our bad diet habits or our poor exercise efforts. Good health is the result of a long time sound nutrition and exercise. You must have these elements in place.
Meeting your minimum nutrient requirements is the key to a good nutrition start. It is important to be aware of the amount of nutrients you are getting from your normal eating habits so you can be in a position to know if you meet at least RDI’s suggested amounts. However, if you are looking for optimal health, evidence continues to mount, requirements for such nutrients are a lot higher than RDIs.
For most of us to achieve optimum health levels, we cannot relay to obtain them through normal diet alone. Why is so? We consume mostly fast and highly processed foods that are depleted of nutrients. Our dally intake of nutrients and health promoting substances that we might need are missing in such foods.
Some people want us believe that a diet based on the old food pyramid style is sufficient to give us the best of health nutrients can offer and dietary supplements are no necessary. Vitamins minerals and trace elements or micro nutrients, are essential to life and healthy living as everyone is aware. Failing the necessary amounts can cause deficiency states that create health problems.
When deficiencies persist for a long time, can create dangerous health problems. When your food intake doesn’t supply your body with the needed and sufficient amounts of micro nutrients, it is important to take them through man made nutritional dietary supplements. A pill or tablet seems to be the best alternative to missing nutrients and they are easily available. A man made dietary or nutritional supplements are meant to provide nutrients when they are missing or not consumed in adequate quantities in someone’s diet.
It is our fast pace 21st century lifestyle that we choose to embrace, with its fast and processed foods that let us down. In addition, with age and/or some health conditions our bodies become less efficient or unable in absorbing what ever little nutrients are in such foods. It becomes very important to ensure that the right amount of vitamins and minerals are available to your body.
Improving your nutrition with dietary supplements it’s important for all the above reasons but, you must make an informed decision about which nutritional supplements are safe and necessary to take. A good and useful way to find the appropriate ones for your needs is to look for someone that can give a qualified opinion and direct you to the appropriate resources.
The Food and Drug Administration determines dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than conventional foods and drugs. For dietary or nutritional supplements must be proven harmful before the FDA remove them from store shelves, it is up to you as the consumer to become informed of what dietary or nutritional supplements are the best choice to promote your health.
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