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posted on:
4/7/2012 11:28:28 AM EST
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Supplements: What you need to know
Supplements: What you need to know
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If you have read all of the parts of this blog so far, hopefully you will know quite a lot about supplements by now and will be in a good position to judge whether or not to take them.
My advice for the long term is to try to get your micronutrients from food and to take a high-quality whole food powder such as Akea Essentials which provides not just vitamins and minerals but thousands of other phytochemicals just as they are found in food and which work synergistically in the body for maximum benefit.
Certain supplements may be helpful if you have a particular deficiency. These are likely to be in a high dose which can be used therapeutically to get you up to a level which you might not be able to achieve with diet alone. If you are going to take a vitamin and/or mineral supplement, choose a good food-based brand which includes cofactors for maximum absorption.
It is not necessarily a good idea to take multivitamin and mineral supplements in the long term because we don't yet know the full story of how they work in the body. It can also be harmful to health to take high doses of vitamins or minerals for too long; for example. vitamin A is stored in the liver (rather than excreted) and can be toxic in excess, whilst too much calcium can get 'dumped' in places where it should not be such as in joints or arteries. Taking high doses of antioxidants for a long time may be problematic because we actually need some free radicals in the body; this delicate balance is probably best achieved with a super-healthy diet such as that of the people in the Hot Spots.
Whole food powders and vitamin and mineral supplements will always work best when taken as just that – a supplement to a healthy diet. This is partly because the food in your diet will work with the nutrients synergistically so that they complement each other. It may be because of unhealthy diets of subjects that studies on supplements are often inconclusive. (It is not so important for a product such as Akea Essentials to be supplementary since it is such a complete nutrient package, but of course we still recommend that you use it along with a healthy diet).
Consuming the wrong things with supplements can even be harmful. For instance, one study from Finland showed that male smokers were more likely to get lung cancer when taking high doses of beta-carotene supplements. This may be because when antioxidants such as beta-carotene are taken, they turn into free radicals themselves and must be neutralised by other antioxidants present. In the case of the Finnish smokers, the beta-carotene antioxidants may have caused excessive amounts of free radicals.
Don't forget to eat your good fats
People on low-fat diets have a higher risk of cancer than people eating good fats, according to some studies. This is likely to be because we need the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) to protect the fatty parts of our cells from free radical damage. If there are no fats in our diet, we can't absorb these vitamins properly.
Cold-pressed nut and seed oils such as flax or hemp oil, extra virgin olive oil, and fish oils are good sources of healthy fats which won't cause weight gain. If you don't get these in your diet, it is a good idea to use ground flax or a supplement providing both omega 3 and omega 6 fats.
Protein and oil also work together. If you eat a lot of protein and no fat you can eventually suffer from protein toxicity (hyperaminoacidemia). Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived on game and fish which had a good ratio of protein to healthy fats; the closest we can get to that nowadays is to eat organic grass-fed game and wild fish or to make sure we consume olive oil and essential fatty acids on a daily basis.
Tomorrow, in the final part of this blog, I will look more closely at Akea Essentials – what it is, and how it can work for you.
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