Food Supplements
Just imagine: all you have to do is take a pill to be sure that every cell in your body is working at full capacity – you will have “perfect health.” Impossible? Find out if the effectiveness and benefits of supplements, including vitamins, minerals, and immunostimulatory compounds.
SUPPLEMENTS OR NOT?
Over the past decade, more than 10,000 scientific articles published around the world have all talked about the beneficial effects of vitamins and minerals on health. Whether the research was done on humans, animals, or cells in test tubes, an abundance of vitamins and minerals has almost always been associated with good cell performance, while a deficit is synonymous with poor functioning. We don’t have to wonder why: vitamins and minerals are essential for starting and maintaining the biochemical processes essential for normal health. Several vitamins are even thought to improve the behavior of genes.
First, food. Scientists point out that foods and superfoods are the best sources. When you bite into an apple or carrot, you absorb a highly specialized set of phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals, and other health-promoting substances.
About 60 years ago, we began to recognize the benefits of fresh, unprocessed food on the immune system. Weston A. Price, a Cleveland dentist, noted that the isolated populations encountered in his travels around the world did not suffer from the diseases that afflict industrialized nations. He lives in communities free from tuberculosis (one of the most common diseases at the time), dental disease, cancer, and arthritis in Africa, the Andes, and New Zealand.
These people ate what they grew or gathered from the wild and worked hard physically. However, those who emigrated to “developed” countries, in turn, fell prey to infectious and degenerative diseases, while several of the subjects observed by Price, on their return to their village, were doing better.
Unless you carefully analyze what you eat, you can hardly know if you are getting the nutrients you need and in the right amount. In addition, it is not enough to eat food to assimilate its nutrients. Your habits (for example, if you follow a lipid-lowering diet), your genes, your biochemistry – but also stress, illness or overwork – can hinder assimilation.
It is estimated that 35 to 40 percent. One hundred seniors have lower levels of several nutrients than normal. Identifying what is missing is not easy; you should analyze your food intake and measure your blood levels of more than 52 different nutrients, which no health care professional would recommend.
Researchers at Tufts University in Boston studied the cases of 88 people aged 65 and over who took 60 mg, 200 mg, 800 mg of vitamin E or a placebo every day for almost eight months. Result? According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, immune function increased in the three treatment groups. But the 200mg dose gave the best results – an improvement of 65p. One hundred of the measurement of an immune function (the delayed dermatological response of hypersensitivity) as well as greater production of antibodies after vaccination against hepatitis B and tetanus. Since the 800 mg dose did not give better results, it is believed that the 200 mg dose is sufficient.
The healthiest part of these meals that your children beg you to buy them after returning from training? No doubt the plastic toy that comes with it. While making your own burgers on the barbecue at home can be a good choice, those sold in fast food chains are nutritionally suspected. A single meatball can be taken from a dozen different cows raised in feedlots. These animals are stuffed with hormones, have very high levels of inflammation, and are horribly malnourished, he continues. You then find a white bread very rich in starch and which, depending on the garnish you choose, may contain poor quality bacon and cheese in highly processed plastic.