The Facts about Vitamins

When you think of metabolism, what do you see?....

The first thing I picture is my food getting broken down and absorbed into my body.

The actual definition of metabolism is: the set of chemical reactions that occur in your body to maintain life. I guess I was pretty close :)

When you eat food, your body converts it into energy through metabolism. So vitamins help your body make good use of the food that you eat. They are essential for this process.

Unfortunately, your body cannot produce these vitamins alone. You must consume them through your diet. In our nutrition, the vitamins are referred to as micro nutrients.

Micro nutrients are made up of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. They are consumed in very small amounts. They help breakdown macro nutrients that we eat. Macro nutrients are the carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that are found in our food.

For example, when you eat let's say, oatmeal for breakfast, vitamins in your body help break down this carbohydrate into energy. Only some of these vitamins are stored in your body for a period of time, so you must replenish them everyday.

If you wrap your mind around this idea, you can see how not having these essential vitamins, may cause your body not to perform at it's highest level.

Facts about vitamins: Not having enough leads to low performance

To be honest, that right there might be all that you really need to know concerning the facts about vitamins. Heck, I think that's good enough for me.... Vitamins help convert our food into energy so we can survive, bingo!

Ok well, that's not all vitamins do. They actually do a lot more specific things, but that's the general role or objective.

So why do we need to take our vitamins in the form of a multivitamin pill? Why can't we just get the vitamins through the food we eat? Good questions. We'll get to that in about 5 mins.... Sit tight :)

To get all the facts about vitamins, lets go over some more basic information.

Facts about vitamins: There are two different forms

The two types of vitamins are: Water-soluble and fat-soluble.

The water-soluble vitamins are vitamins C and the B complex group. Water-soluble means they dissolve in water. These vitamins are not stored in your body. Every day you flush them out through your urine, and therefore you must replenish them through your diet.

Fat-soluble vitamins are vitamins A, D, E and K. These are dissolved in fat. The excess nutrients that are not used, are stored in the liver.

These different vitamins have various functions.

See the benefits of vitamins for more information.

The facts about vitamins have shown us that they are essential because the body cannot produce them by itself. We need to obtain them through our diet. Not getting optimal levels of vitamins is the cause of many chronic diseases.

Facts about vitamins and chronic diseases: Why are vitamins important?

If you had the chance to review the benefits of vitamins, then it's easy to see that they help the body with many important functions. These functions are essential for staying alive.

So what happens when we have insufficient amounts of vitamins? What are the risks of not having optimal levels of vitamins?

Vitamins have not always been known to be beneficial to the point where you should be supplementing them. Up until 2002, even certain scientists were not convinced that supplements help prevent chronic diseases.

Chronic diseases are diseases that progress slowly, and last a long time. Over half of the deaths in the world are caused by chronic diseases. In America, the number one killer is cardiovascular disease.

If you don't take a vitamin supplement, and you're not concerned with making sure your diet contains all the essential vitamins, you probably won't die from vitamin deficiency diseases like scurvy. Your typical diet is good enough to protect you from developing vitamin deficiency diseases.

On the other hand, the average North American diet is not sufficient in providing the body with an optimal level of health. Without a good vitamin supplement, you are at risk of developing a chronic disease. The facts about vitamins clearly tell us this.

If you don't want to take my word for it, at least listen to what these Harvard researchers say regarding the facts about vitamins:

Dr. Robert Fletcher and Dr. Kathleen Fairfield

Nutrition research takes a long time to gather, and it's time consuming to make proper assessments. The data must be analyzed over a long period of time.

Not until the early 2000's have scientists at the American Medical Association confidently concluded that it is important to take a multivitamin supplement everyday.

Fortunately it's now clear that the many nutritional studies conclude that optimal levels of vitamins help to prevent chronic disease.

Facts about vitamins and Food: Why take health supplements?

Now you should have a good understanding of why you need your vitamins, but there's still that question of why do I need to take a multivitamin?

Without beating around the bush, ask yourself this question: Do you eat 5 servings of vegetables and 5 servings of fruit everyday?....

No you don't. If you did then you probably wouldn't be reading this article.

It's hard to eat all that food everyday. It's so much easier to take a multivitamin supplement.

Now, just because you take a supplement does not mean you shouldn't eat veggies and fruits. The supplement should be seen as a safety net, or that extra nutrition for an optimal healthy lifestyle.

Plus it's convenient, customizable and keeps it consistent. (check out the benefits of vitamins article and the key points on the Three C's; convenience, consistency, customization.)

But let's back it up.... Maybe there's a slim chance that you are really getting your 5 servings every day :)

Are those fruits and veggies packed with the same punch that the vitamin supplement has?....

Maybe.... Maybe not.

The facts about vitamins tell us this: If you take a supplement that has a 100% guarantee on it's potency, and it's a pharmaceutical graded product, then you can say with confidence: Yes I am getting an optimal level of vitamins.

With the fruits and veggies, it's not so clear.

So even though we live in a fast food world, where we might miss our breakfast, or we occasionally stop for a burger, let's keep assuming that you rarely do this, and you always get all those fruits and veggies.

Let's also be realistic and say that you don't grow your own fresh vegetables and fruits, you rely on commercial agriculture.

If the nutrients are not in the soil, they are not in the food!

The soil that farmers grow the produce that we eat is constantly being turned over. The old ways of growing fruits and vegetables have been replaced. After the second world war, many farmers started using NPK fertilizers (N-Nitrogen, P-Phosphorus, K-Potassium).

Over the past half century, many of the nutrients have been lost and depleted from the soils.

Also, when you consider the further processing and storing of these foods, then the cooking and so on. By the time you eat it, most of the nutrients have been lost.

The vitamin C content in an orange today, is no where near where it was 50 years ago. Even though you get those 5 servings of veggies and fruits everyday, you are not getting the optimal levels you will with a multivitamin supplement.

Facts about vitamins and supplementation: What are the best multivitamin supplements?

There are a lot of cheap vitamins on the market that are a waste of money. The multivitamin is your most important supplement. It should be a high quality supplement.

Vitamins are still considered a food by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). What this means is that vitamins only need to demonstrate food grade GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices). The quality of their manufacturing only has to be at a food level.

On the contrary, if you get sick and get a prescription for antibiotics, those drugs have pharmaceutical GMPs. They are of higher quality and require more guidelines for their manufacturing processes.

You should be taking a multivitamin that has pharmaceutical GMPs. This way, you know what nutrients you're getting.

If you order a pepperoni pizza, do you know how many pepperonis you're going to get?

No you don't. Under the food standard you don't.

So, when you order a vitamin supplement that is not pharmaceutical graded, who knows what you're getting. Anyone can start a vitamin supplement company and say it has all these nutrients when it probably won't.

For example, Centrum pays far to much money in advertising, instead of creating a quality product (Centrum Vitamins ranked very poorly in the Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements).

Some companies spend money on marketing, which can work for them. But for the customer, they should spend that money on research and development.

That brings us to the criteria for a high quality supplement and the facts about vitamins.

When it comes to picking the best multivitamin there are 4 major things you should look out for:

1. Nutritional research

The nutritional company should spend significant time and money in scientific operations that help create a superior product.

Companies that spend a large portion of their profits on advertisements rather than research and development usually don't offer a high quality supplement.

2. First-class ingredients

You should look for a supplement that has high quality ingredients. Some products offer scientifically validated research and tested ingredients.

3. Guaranteed potency and high quality manufacturing

What's on the label, is in the bottle. In the vitamin world, that is not always easy to find.

Some companies can guarantee the potency and ingredients in their products because they are pharmaceutical graded products.

This requires them to have very stringent manufacturing processes. Government agencies conduct inspections and require procedures and documentation to be met.

4. Confidence of athletes

You should be taking a product that ensure its safety and quality. Certain athletes only take supplements that they can trust.

They need products that are free of contaminants and let them perform to their best abilities. Why shouldn't you get the same quality?

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