Supplements

Do you need to take a daily supplement of vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients?

● If you are:
- healthy, and have an effective digestive system
- live in an area that has rich soils with a good variety of trace elements
- live in a pristine area (not subject to high levels of pollution)
- enjoy a diet exclusively of local, ripe and organic foods
- also eat a variety of super foods
then you probably don’t need to take any supplement pills.

● If you are like the majority of health conscious people living in the modern world, feeling some of the stresses, subject to some level of pollution, and dependent to some extent on supermarkets and commercial foods, then supplements can help you to attain optimum nutrition and total health. This is particularly important if you live in Australia (especially West Australia), which has the most barren soils of any continent. Rather than multi-vitamin multi-mineral and other pills, you should be looking to superfoods for your micronutrients and enzyme supplements. Grow Youthful introduces a range of superfoods such as bee pollen, spirulina, ionized whey powder and certain herbs and berries.

● If you live in a city, eat a poor diet of mostly prepared, processed and cooked food, and are exposed to a high toxic acid load through stress, pollution and drugs, then your body needs all the help it can get. Your immune system in particular needs support. Take a daily micronutrient multi-mineral multivitamin anti-oxidant supplement – a broad spectrum, low dose micronutrient supplement will help you to fight disease, neutralise toxins and free radicals and guard against the degeneration of your body tissues.

Nutritious food is better than any pill

Nutrients are nearly always more effective than other medicines in treating any ailment. Time and again, David Niven Miller shows how healthy eating is the key to curing many degenerative diseases, rather than medicines and pills.

A micronutrient supplement can also slow or even reverse your ageing. However, don’t expect to take a multi-vitamin multi-mineral supplement and look younger a month later – the greatest anti-ageing results only occur after a decade. For example, in a study of 88,000 nurses over 26 years, those who took multivitamin tablets for fifteen years or more reduced their risk of colon cancer by 75%. However, there was no reduction of colon cancer among those who had been taking multivitamin tablets for only five years.

What to look for.

The best supplements contain a broad and complete range of micronutrients. You can take a dose of zinc sulphate or citrate to improve your skin or immunity, and it may be quite effective. Combine it with magnesium, and it will double its performance. Combine it with B vitamins, or a wider range of vitamins and minerals, and it will work significantly more effectively again. A synergistic combination of micronutrients is far more effective than taking the individual components. The interactions between the components are so complex that it is best to rely on nature to create them wherever possible. The best ingredients are from wild herbs, super foods, seaweeds, peat bogs, glacial muds and natural minerals.

Trace minerals act as catalysts for many biological reactions, including muscle responses, hormone production and nerve transmission. Most vitamins will not work without supporting minerals. We need some minerals, such as calcium, sodium and potassium, in relatively large quantities. Others, such as barium, bismuth, boron, chromium, cobalt, molybdenum, rubidium, selenium, titanium and vanadium are essential in micro-doses, but are toxic at higher levels. Your body continually needs a minimum array of minerals just to stay alive, but optimal health requires higher levels, tailored to your individual needs.

A broad range of over 100 minerals is available in sea salt. If you throw away any refined table salt in your home and avoid foods made with refined salt, instead replacing it with natural sea salt, you will get a large portion of the minerals your body needs. A year’s supply of Celtic sea salt only costs a couple of dollars.

A pill cannot possibly contain many of the living nutrients made by plants. Vegetables, fruits and herbs contain thousands of chemicals that have health and synergistic properties. Right now, this area is at the forefront of nutritional science, with most of these phytochemicals still undiscovered. A daily supplement pill can provide specific vitamins and minerals that science knows we need to maintain excellent health in today’s polluted world, but don’t kid yourself that a pill can in any way make up for a beautiful, fresh multi-coloured salad, or a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs on a daily basis. The bottom line is that you also have to eat a variety of fresh, organic, ripe picked fruit and vegetables – supplements are not an excuse for poor eating.

Good digestion is the most important factor in getting all the nutrients you need. You can eat the most nutritious diet, and take additional supplements, but if you cannot digest them, you will still be malnourished. Years of poor eating make it likely that most adults have a weak and damaged digestive system.

Supplements should not include:

any vitamins or minerals which cannot easily be excreted if they are in excess of your body’s needs. The most common components which are included in excess are:

● Vitamin A. This fat soluble vitamin can accumulate in your tissues, causing nausea, bone fractures and pain, and skin problems. A good supplement will contain carotene or beta carotene instead of vitamin A, because your body can convert them into vitamin A, and any excess is easily excreted.

● Iron. This mineral tends to accumulate in the body rather than be excreted, and in excess it can be dangerously toxic. Women can lose iron in their blood during their period, but men have no such outlet. Menstruating women, particularly those who are vegetarians, can take a supplement containing up to 10 mg. Some people need iron to combat anaemia, in which case it should be taken as a separate tablet.

● Copper. The majority of the population have excess copper in their bodies. If a supplement contains copper, it should be no higher than 10 mcg.