Importance of Quality Nutritional Supplements

Before we proceed, take the time to acquaint yourself with the following basic terminology below which will be used throughout this web page:

Nutrients: are organic and inorganic compounds that the human body requires for growth and development. Macronutrients are nutrients that the body requires in large quantities like proteins, carbs and fats. On the other hand, micronutrients are nutrients consumed by the body in smaller amounts like vitamins and minerals.

Essential Nutrients: are nutrients that the human body cannot synthesize on its own and therefore must be obtained from a outside dietary source.

Vitamins: are organic substances found in plants and animals that the human body requires for normal growth, but cannot generally produce by itself. There are a total of 13 vitamins in humans: vitamins A, D, E and K are fat-soluble, and vitamin C and 8 B vitamins are water-soluble.

Minerals: are inorganic chemical elements that are generally found in the soil which are in turn absorbed by plants. The human body requires adequate amounts of minerals to maintain optimal health. Some examples of minerals are calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium and zinc.

Antioxidants: are nutrients found in our foods that help prevent and restore oxidative damage caused by free radicals. Some commonly known antioxidants are vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin E which can be found in fruits, vegetables and meats.

Oxidative Stress: is caused by free radicals (unstable organic molecules) that are responsible for cell damage. They are produced when food is metabolized and become unstable looking to bond with other healthy cells, thereby destroying them. Oxidative stress is one of the causes of many degenerative diseases.

Nutritional supplements are primarily designed to provide essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other nutrients that you may not be getting from your diet. Also known as dietary supplements, these products can offer significant health benefits and are an important part of a balanced health regimen.

There is growing scientific evidence of the benefits of nutritional supplements and their role in maintaining optimal health, which we will discuss further in this article. However, some of the benefits are listed below:

  •   they help us overcome nutritional deficiencies;
  •   they help boost our immune system;
  •   they help deal with oxidative stress caused by free-radical damage.

Once you understand the importance of supplementing you diet, it is just one part of the equation. In order to ensure your body gets optimal nutrition, you need to understand the difference between RDA and Optimal levels of nutrition which we will discuss in the next section.

One of the reasons most physicians do not recommend supplements for their patients, even though studies show that nearly 70 percent of physicians are taking them themselves, says Dr. Ray Strand, is because they have been taught that all we need are the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of micronutrients.

If you consume a healthy diet, it is possible to get this level of nutrients, however, you must understand the origin of RDA's. They were developed sometime in the 1930s and 1940s to establish the daily dietary intake of nutrients to prevent nutrient deficiency diseases like scurvy, pellagra and rickets.

When researchers began studying about the possible health benefits of taking nutritional supplements, they were concerned about chronic degenerative diseases like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's dementia and others. What they learned was that RDAs have nothing to do with chronic degenerative diseases.

For example, the RDA of vitamin E is 30 IU (International Units); however, you require at least 100 IU of vitamin E to see a health benefit. Though, nutritional medicine researchers suggest that the optimal level of vitamin E is 400 IU.

For over five decades, we have learned that Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) levels are adequate, however, adequate only to prevent nutritional deficiencies like scurvy, rickets, beriberi and pellagra.

According to the Food and Nutrition Board: "The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is the average daily dietary intake level that is sufficient to meet the requirement of nearly all apparently healthy individuals in a particular life stage and gender group".

Furthermore, "requirement" is defined as "the lowest continuing intake level of a nutrient that, for a specified indicator of adequacy, will maintain a defined level of nutrition in an individual." So essentially, if we focus on consuming nutrition based on the RDAs, we will receive minimal amounts of nutrients to help prevent nutritional deficiencies. However, RDA levels of nutrition will not necessarily prevent oxidative damage and degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.

Our bodies are being depleted slowly, but surely of the nutrition they need for long-term health. Supplements are designed to provide advanced levels of nutrients like vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, to promote a healthier lifestyle. These advanced levels of nutrition can be a challenge to obtain from our current diets.

Next, we'll discuss the importance of understanding the difference between "Food Grade" versus "Pharmaceutical Grade" products.

It's important to understand the difference between "Food Grade" and "Pharmaceutical Grade" products and the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) standards that apply to products that use these manufacturing standards.

Food Grade is a standard use by which all foods are made by. For example let's look at chocolate chip cookies. No two are the same. No two have the same size and have the same number of chocolate chips and that's ok because it's a biscuit. But it's not ok for a supplement you are trusting to help prevent cancer and other chronic illness.

The majority of all nutritional supplements are made using the food grade standard, therefore no two formulations are the same. Also because of this standard the manufacturer doesn't have to guarantee that what is on the label is inside each and every tablet. So you may get inadequate doses or too much of one element, which can even be toxic to your body.

Pharmaceutical Grade is a standard use by which all controlled drugs are made by. This is the highest standard in manufacturing products and guarantees that the products are potent, pure and bio-available which means in a form that your body can absorb and not just pass it straight through.

This highest grade also means that physicians can and recommend this type of supplement because it conforms to the very highest standards that are used in their medical practice. This is one of the main reasons, most doctors considered supplements a waste of time and money. Well they were right; most of them are, with the overwhelming exception of a few Pharmaceutical grade nutritional supplements.

Food GMPs focus on safety, whereas, Pharmaceutical GMPs focus not only on safety, but on the potency, efficacy and purity as well. Pharmaceutical GMPs also require that raw material be tested for safety, potency, purity and efficacy. So you see how important it is to take Pharmaceutical Grade nutritional supplements.

While many may say that constant illness is a sad fact of old age, there is significant amount of accumulating scientific research that supplementing your diet with nutritional supplements can provide immense health benefits for the elderly and potentially reducing the number of days they are sick to half!

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) released a comprehensive report stating that consistent use of multivitamins with minerals and such single-nutrient supplements as calcium and antioxidants (vitamins C and E) demonstrated substantial positive impact on the immune systems of elderly people. Furthermore, it played a key role in protecting eye and brain function and maintaining bone mass.

The detailed report titled "The Benefits of Nutritional Supplements" reviewed over 10 years worth of scientifically-significant studies measuring the health benefits of multivitamins and other nutritional supplements, including antioxidants (vitamins C and E), calcium, long chain omega-3 fatty acids (fish oils), vitamin D, vitamins B-6 and B-12, and folic acid. A consistent theme of the report was a quantifiable impact of supplementation for the elderly.

      •   About the Council of Responsible Nutrition
      •   Benefits of Nutritional Supplements
      •   Nutritional Supplements for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
      •   Who Needs Nutritional Supplements
      •   Recommended Intakes of Vitamins & Essential Minerals

With so much of scientific evidence supporting the benefits of nutritional supplements, how do you go about choosing the right one? Read on%u2026

With such overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the benefits of nutritional supplements, we now know that is of paramount importance that we examine our lifestyle choices. That is to say, we MUST supplement our diets with nutritional supplements in order to ensure our bodies receive optimal nutrition to aid long-term health.

However, it doesn't stop there; just taking any supplements is not the answer. The market is flooded with low quality (Food Grade) nutritional supplement products; so it's important to choose Quality nutritional Supplements. When I started my research on choosing quality nutritional supplements, I came across a scientific-based guide, called the NutriSearch Comparative Guide, which evaluated over 1,500 different supplement products and it helped me a great deal.

In closing, it's imperative to mention that taking nutritional supplements alone won't help. If you're serious about your long-term health, you need to embrace healthy living as a lifestyle which means that you need to focus on eating a healthy foods, supplementing your diet as well as getting moderate exercise.

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Updated: May 27, 2012