Useful Info
Vitamins are micronutrients that are essential to life and healthy living. And, as everyone is aware, failing to get the necessary amounts of specific vitamins can cause deficiency states that are unhealthy and even dangerous.
However, vitamins can play a much larger dietary role in our ongoing quest for health than the FDA's Reference Daily Intakes (formerly known as recommended daily allowances, or RDA's) might suggest.
As many scientific studies now indicate, vitamins, when taken in amounts greater than the RDIs, may reduce the occurrence of certain illnesses and degenerative disorders, improve the functioning of the immune system, and, perhaps, even allow us to live longer and healthier lives.
This section of Vitamin Stuff will attempt to answer many of the questions that are commonly asked about vitamin supplementation. For information on specific vitamins, please refer to the menu column.
Minerals are inorganic nutrients that keep the body alive and healthy, and help to prevent and treat serious illness. Minerals and vitamins have a synergistic relationship—both have to be present in the body before either can perform their function. Both vitamins and minerals are needed to make antioxidant enzymes that protect the body from free-radical damage.
Scientists and nutritionists have long been aware that minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and iron play an important role in keeping the bones, heart, skin, and red blood cells healthy. However, researchers have only recently begun to understand the potential health benefits of trace minerals such as chromium, selenium, copper, boron, etc.
Minerals are not manufactured in the body. The only way to get them is through your diet, and if your diet is lacking in fruits and vegetables chances are you have some form of mineral deficiency. This section provides articles and information related to the role of minerals in promoting and maintaining good health.
Antioxidants can be conceptualized in a number of different ways: as insurance against some of the more visible effects of aging; as a weapon in our fight to make our average life expectancy more closely resemble our ultimate lifespan; and as a line of defense against the risk of developing certain illnesses and diseases.
What are antioxidants? Essentially, they are substances that reduce, neutralize, and prevent the damage done to the body by free radicals. Free radicals are simply electrons that are no longer attached to atoms. Instead of circling the nucleus of an atom (much like the earth circles the sun), free radicals are both free and radical enough to go careening through our cells, inflicting damage as they go.
What causes free radicals to be formed? A process called oxidation creates free radicals and this process happens in the context of normal metabolic processes and our everyday exposure to our environment. In other words, eating, breathing, and going out in the sun all contribute to the the process of oxidation, free radical formation, and the resulting damage that is caused to the cells of our bodies.
What kind of damage are we talking about? Pretty much every kind you can think of: the deterioration of bone, joints and connective tissue; the wearing out of organs; the decline of the immune system; the irritating advance of the visible effects of aging; and even, possibly, to some extent, the aging process itelf.
Because free radicals are implicated in all these processes, minimizing and neutralizing their activity with antioxidants may allow us to live longer and healthier lives, look and feel better, and reduce or eliminate the risk of certain illnesses.
The menu to the right lists most of the known antioxidants and each antioxidant page contains a discussion of the antioxidant's characteristics as well as the nutrient category into which it is classified. For, example the antioxidant selenium is a mineral, while the antioxidant methionine is an amino acid and the antioxidant melatonin is a hormone.
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