As a holistic health counselor and a relatively healthy eater (yes, I eat ice cream and can be seen eating french fries), I take supplements every day. The reason for this is because despite eating a healthy American diet, it is virtually impossible to get all the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need.
In a new weekly series that will launch on Saturday, November 28th, I’m going to feature specific vitamins and provide an overview as to why you need it, what it does for your body and where you can get it.
More and more people are deficient and with busy schedules you can start to feel even more run down especially heading into the holiday season.
Everywhere we go, we are assaulted by claims of “Enriched with Vitamin C!”, “Added B vitamins!”, “More Vitamin A than the leading brand!”, and so on. We all know that vitamins and minerals are essential to the proper balance and function of our bodies, but which supplements are vital and necessary to our health and well being, and which might we avoid, lest we end up with an expensive bathroom trip? Here are my top five choices for essential supplements:
- Calcium – According to the National Institute of Health, the recommended total calcium intake is 1,000 mg a day for women between 25 and 50 years of age, 1,200 – 1,500 for pregnant or lactating women, and 1,500 mg per day for postmenopausal women. The average calcium consumption among North American women is currently only 600 mg per day. I take a calcium magnesium supplement and find that it really helps me with nighttime leg cramps.
Experts are warning that current recommendations for daily vitamin D intake are “grossly inadequate.”
“National recommendations from the Food and Nutrition Board are 400 to 600 International Units (IU) a day,” says Neil Binkley, MD, an Associate Professor in Geriatrics and Endocrinology at the University of Wisconsin.
The Food and Drug Administration currently recommends between 400 and 600 International Units (IU) a day. Experts are recommending between 1500 to 2600 IU daily. And there’s no concern for overdoing it since it’s safe to take 40,000 IU a day or even a little more.
A new Canadian study has found alarmingly low levels of the important vitamin D in young children. While newborns tend to be OK if they are fed formula, which is usually fortified with vitamin D, as they grow into eating solid foods, that’s where the problems begin.
“Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a number of chronic medical conditions,” says Jonathon Maguire, a researcher at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and lead author of the study.
Research has linked vitamin D deficiencies to many cancers, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.
We associate catching a cold with dreary winter weather. So maybe it’s appropriate then that the sunshine vitamin – vitamin D – could be the savior.
According to the largest study to date that has taken a look at the link between vitamin D and its power against colds, at least 50 percent of the subjects involved had insufficient levels.
In the study, Dr. Adit Ginde of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine and colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston found that people who had low blood levels of vitamin D were more likely to report having had a cold than those with higher amounts. To compound the problem, the risk of a recent cold or other respiratory infection seemed to rise as vitamin D levels dropped.
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