Importance of Quality Nutritional Supplements

Vitamins: are natural substances found in living things such as plants. Vitamins must be obtained in the body from foods or supplements as they cannot usually be produced by the body.

Minerals: are found in plants. Plants get their minerals from the soil, and the soil gets minerals from water washing over rocks. For vitamins to do their job, they require minerals. Minerals must also be obtained from food and supplements.

Antioxidants: are specific vitamins or minerals that act as free radical scavengers. Most antioxidants are electron donors and react with the free radicals to form innocuous end products such as water. These antioxidants bind and inactivate the free radicals. Thus, antioxidants protect against oxidative stress and prevent damage to cells.

Nutrients: are substances present in food and used by the body to promote normal growth, maintenance, and repair. Nutrients needed in relatively large quantities are called macronutrients and those needed in relatively small quantities are called micronutrients.

Essential Nutrients: are nutrient required for normal body functioning that either cannot be synthesized by the body at all, or cannot be synthesized in amounts adequate for good health (e.g. niacin, choline), and thus must be obtained from a dietary source. Some categories of essential nutrients include vitamins, dietary minerals, essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids.

Oxidative Stress: there are a certain number of free radicals produced when you simply metabolize your food. However, there are many things that increase the number of free radicals you produce: excessive stress; excessive exercise; pollutants in our air, food, and water; sunlight; radiation; medication; cigarette smoke; etc. Our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment and over-medicated societies, produce free radicals, which leads to oxidative stress, the cause of degenerative diseases.

Information/Research Sources: Wikipedia & USANA Health Sciences

Nutritional supplements are an important part of a balanced health regimen, as they can 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.

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.

Information/Research Source: USANA Health Sciences

One of the reasons most physicians do not recommend supplements for their patients, even though studies show that nearly 70% of physicians are taking them themselves, 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. These RDA's were developed in the late 1930's and early 1940's to establish the MINIMAL amount of micronutrients required to prevent acute deficiency diseases like pellagra, scurvy, 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 RDA's have absolutely nothing to do with chronic degenerative diseases.

For example, the RDA of vitamin E is 30 IU (International Units); however, you don't begin to see a health benefit until you supplement with at least 100 IU of vitamin E. This health benefit increases as you increase the amount of vitamin E supplemented. Most researchers in nutritional medicine now believe that the optimal level of vitamin E is 400 IU.

Information/Research Source: USANA Health Sciences

For over 50 years we've been led to believe that Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) levels are adequate...but adequate for what? Adequate to prevent clinically obvious nutritional deficiencies like scurvy, beriberi, rickets, 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".

The Food and Nutrition Board further defines "requirement" 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."

Basically, the RDA is - by their own definition - the lowest level of nutrient intakes that will prevent deficiencies in apparently healthy individuals. And, while RDA levels may have helped us to avoid acute deficiency diseases, they do not address any issues of optimal nutrition.

Products based solely on RDA amounts are fine for their intended purpose (i.e. providing minimal amounts of important vitamins and minerals), but the RDA of vitamins and minerals is not always enough to help prevent certain degenerative diseases (like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.) or to provide protection from oxidative damage.

In other words, there are more benefits of nutritional supplementation than just preventing rare deficiencies. Really, the RDA should only be considered the "minimum wage" of nutrition. Many degenerative diseases and chronic illnesses develop over a lifetime, striking otherwise healthy individuals when they least expect it.

The bottom line is that for the millions of "apparently" healthy individuals in the world, minimal nutrient intakes and the RDAs are not always adequate - or even designed - to address our most common health challenges.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), much of the illness, disability, and death associated with chronic disease is avoidable through known prevention measures.

A question we are commonly asked is, "if I am eating healthy, do I still need to take supplements?" A healthy diet is a necessary foundation for any program of optimal nutrition, and there is really no substitute for eating well. In this context, good quality nutritional supplements are designed to complement a healthy diet - not replace it.

Supplements are designed to provide advanced levels of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are difficult to obtain from diet alone; levels that we could all use, everyday, to promote a lifetime of good health.

The scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of nutritional supplements is solid and growing daily and more health care professionals are starting to recognize its benefits.

Information/Research Source: USANA Health Sciences

Food Grade standard is essentially what all foods are made too. 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!

99% of all nutritional supplements are made to this food grade standard, so no two pills are the same and 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 the standard to which all drugs are made too. The highest standard in the world and guarantees product to product, pill to pill that they are the same, that they are potent, pure, bio-available (which means in a form that your body can absorb it not pass it straight through)

This also means that doctors and physicians can use and recommend this type of supplement as it conforms to the very highest standards they use every day in their medical practices. This is the reason why, until recently, most doctors have been unanimous that supplements are 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.

Information/Research Source: USANA Health Sciences

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was enacted in 1994 by the United States Congress, which reclassified Nutritional Supplements from "food" status to a new category called "Dietary Supplements" (DS).

Due to the above, certain changes were made to regulate dietary supplements differently than food. The first noticeable change effected the way DS were labeled.

The "Nutritional Facts" panel seen on foods was changed to a "Supplement Facts" panel on DS. You may notice DS labels do not declare calories, fat, carbohydrates, or proteins. Dietary supplements do, however, declare nutrient values for vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc.

The second change allowed dietary supplement manufactures to include health claims that were not permitted for foods. For example, the FDA originally approved only 4 health claims for foods (including the link between high fiber and a reduction in cancer risk, calcium and osteoporosis, etc.) Under DSHEA, dietary supplement products could extend health claims in the area of structure/function (i.e. vitamin E nutritionally supports good cardiovascular function).

The last change effected by DSHEA concentrated on DS quality. Directed by DSHEA, the FDA was to establish GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) guidelines for the dietary supplement industry and model the rules after existing Food GMP regulations.

GMP is the minimum quality expectation for a given product used by the consumer. Since 1994, the FDA has not fully established and/or enforced GMP regulations for dietary supplements, meaning that DS products are currently monitored only under food GMPs.

Information/Research Sources: Wikipedia & USANA Health Sciences

When looking at the two current regulations (Food GMP vs Drug GMP), there are several dramatic distinctions. We will use a pizza vs penicillin analogy to help illustrate this point.

Food GMPs focus more on products as "safe" food items. Basically, they ensure that no poisons or pathogenic biological elements are introduced into the finished product. Food GMPs do not mandate you test each batch or its ingredients for these harmful elements.

The only actual stipulations for a manufacturer are:

1) that they use ingredients generally recognized as safe for human use, and

2) that they maintain good hygienic practices. For example, when you order a pizza, the maker uses flour, yeast, salt, water, tomato paste, and cheese. It is not necessary to test these ingredients individually for safety because they are all generally recognized as safe. Provided the chef runs a clean shop, they are fully compliant with food GMPs.

Since dietary supplements are regulated under food GMPs, it has created numerous problems for the industry. Remember: food GMPs do not mandate that finished dietary supplement products - or ingredients used in DS products - be tested to verify label claims.

Information/Research Source: USANA Health Sciences

Of course! Because of this difference in expectation, drug GMPs are much more restrictive. Remember that food GMPs are only focused on safety; drug GMPs, in contrast, are focused not only on safety, but also on potency, purity, and efficacy.

Drug GMPs mandate ingredient (raw material) testing for each of these four categories. It also mandates safety, potency, purity and efficacy testing on each batch of finished product.

Similarly, hygienic practices are more restrictive under drug GMPs. Additional metrics - such as uniformity, validation, process controls, and stability - are required.

These terms are never discussed under food GMPs and are only applicable under drug GMPs. So you see how important it is to take Pharmaceutical Grade nutritional supplements!

Information/Research Sources: Wikipedia & USANA Health Sciences

While many may say that constant illness is a sad fact of old age, there is significant amount of accumilating 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.

Listed below are some highlights from the report findings:

- Research has found that while many Americans' diets are deficient in the intake of critical nutrients like calcium, vitamin D and vitamin E.

- Elderly people residing in nursing homes are typically at even greater risk of unrecognized inadequacies of vitamins and minerals.

- One top researcher in the field estimates that proper supplementation with calcium and vitamin D in the elderly could reduce the rate of hip fracture by at least 20%-meaning thousands of fewer hip fractures each year and millions in savings in health-care costs.

- There is growing scientific evidence of the positive impact of antioxidants (vitamins C and E) on both eye and brain function. Other research has found that use of vitamin C and E supplements had a significant protective effect in reducing the risk of dementia, as well as in improving overall cognitive function.

For an in-depth chapter-by-chapter look into the research put together, on the Benefits of Nutritional Supplements, by the Council of Responsible Nutrition (CNR), please visit the website (by CLICKING HERE)

With so much scientific evidence supporting the benefits of nutritional supplements, how do we go about choosing the right one? We'll find out in the next article titled The How-To Guide For Choosing The Best Nutritional Supplements

Information/Research Source: Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN)

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.

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 vital to choose Quality nutritional Supplements.

In this next article, we'll find out exactly that: The How-To Guide For Choosing The Best Nutritional Supplements

Credits: Information Sources for this Aritcle from: Wikipedia, USANA Health Sciences and Council for Responsible Nutrition (CNR)