Why should you take food supplements?

The Problem

Millions of people are unaware of the importance of adequate nu­tritional intake and of the dire con­sequences which befall those with nutritional gaps in the diet. Many others think they are eating a good diet, but in reality they are not .

This blog post addresses the issue of why supplementing the diet is im­portant for virtually everyone. Even the Journal of the American Medi­cal Association has published an article pointing out that subopti­mal intake of nutrients is common in the general population, putting people at risk of chronic diseases.

Reference: Fairfield, Kathleen M., Fletcher, Robert H., “Vi­tamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults,” JAMA 2002, 287:3116-3126

The major factors essential for human life

The picture on your left shows the chain of life – this is the basis of life for us. If we are lacking in one or more of these, it is going to have an effect on your health.

If you are reading this post because you were searching on a health related topic, I welcome you to read on as you may find this quite interesting. My aim is to create a series of blog posts using my own and other reference material to create a source of information for you, the reader, to go out there well informed when making a choice about supplementation.

So, it is a well known fact that our diet leaves a lot to be desired. The modern lifestyle is also full of stress and many people live a life without any form of physical exercise. This has led to the increase of lifestyle related diseases. The biggest killer in the world today is heart disease. More feared are AIDS, cancer, Diabetes, Lung related issues and so on…but the fact remains that we should be in awe of heart disease as it affects so many people around the world today. The funny thing is that doctors have said that it has actually been misnamed because there is no physiological problem – it is all a lifestyle related problem! Imagine that – if only people could correct their diet and lead a life with adequate rest and physical exercise, this so called “heart Disease” would not even have to exist. Amazing, isn’t it? So why don’t people do something about it if the answer is so simple? I don’t really know…many put it down to lack of knowledge…so I’m doing my bit to pass on some information and perhaps help some people change the course of their lives.

Data from the World Health Organisation (www.who.int) makes for interesting reading – did you know for example, the average Briton has only 3 portions of fruit and vegetable daily? Also interesting is the fact that there is actually a group that don’t have any fruit or vegetable meals in a day. See the graph on their website (http://tiny.cc/RWD4K), which clearly shows that between 12-15% of the young generation between the ages of 16-24 don’t have any fruit or vegetables – amazing stuff! Is it any wonder that more and more young people are being struck by diseases normally associated with older people?

MOST PEOPLE DON’T EAT RIGHT

People most often have a fairly good idea of what a healthy diet looks like and they tend to think that they eat well. They often answer dietary surveys in such a way that their diets look better than they actually are. This is revealed by sneaking into their garbage cans to see if what is in the garbage cans matches the answers they are filling out on dietary surveys.

One of my favorite studies on nu­trition was published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. This study published by those who

have maintained that we can get all the nutrients we need in our foods found that only 22% of 5,884 diets examined contained 2/3 of the rec­ommended intake for 15 essential nutrients and only 14% of the study group was consuming less than 30% fat. Only 2% of the population group studied met both these criteria.1

The percentages of the popula­tion deficient in individual nutrients is staggering. A study conducted in 1980 found the following percent­ages of the population were not receiving 100 percent of the recom­mended intake of specific nutrients: vitamin A (50.1%), thiamine (45%), riboflavin (34%), niacin (32.9%), pyri­doxine (80.2%), B12 (33.5%), vita­min C (40.8%), calcium (67.9%, iron (57.3%), and magnesium (74.4%).

It is important to remember that the recommended allowanc­es for nutrients are not designed to be an optimal intake. They are designed to prevent the onset of nutrient deficiency diseases.

Linus Pauling pointed out long ago that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommended far more vitamin C to maintain the health of monkeys than it does for human be­ings. The recommendation is about twenty times what is recommended for a human being. He wrote, “I am sure that the first committee has worked hard to find the optimum intake for the monkeys, the amount that puts them in the best of health. The second committee has not made any effort to find the optimum intake of vitamin C or of any other vitamin for the American people.”3

Loss of a laboratory animal, espe­cially a monkey, can put a big dent in a research budget. If you or I become ill, somebody makes a lot of money!

References:

1. Murphy, Suzanne, et al., J Am Diet Assoc, 1992; 92:1352-7.

2. Jaffe, Russell, and Donovan, Patrick, Guided Health: A Constant Professional Reference, Health Studies Collegium, 1993, 6.38-9.

3. Pauling, Linus, How to Live Longer and Feel Bet­ter, New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1986,

HEALTHCARE COSTS

I am not going to bore you with facts and figure – you can do the research yourselfas well. I’ll just give you one figure – diabetes costs the NHS in UK £ 1 million every hour. That is a significant part of the budget and we have’nt yet spoken of the more prevalent chronic illnesses yet. Roughly 1 out of every 10 people in hospital has diabetes – and we have a faster growth rate in the UK than probably anywhere else on earth. Even more interesting is that my local borough of Harrow has been shown to have the highest increase in diabetes in UK. Furthermore, the highest risk population group is the South Asians in Harrow. Many people resign themselves to “fate”, yet Diabetes is a lifestyle related disease – you can control it very well with just a few lifestyle changes. Food for thought – how long before the NHS can’t afford to offer free treatment? Also, I’ve come across some people who say that they get free treatment by the NHS so why bother buying food supplements? Well, the fact is that there are some things that money can’t buy, which you only realise when you start loosing your health which you have taken for granted. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, amputations and kidney problems.

There are many other factors to take into account like nutrient depletion, environmental toxins, faulty digestion and so on.

As we have seen there are many reasons to supplement. Many peo­ple believe they should supplement, but they do not. Why this discon­nect? One of the common reasons for this is they have tried different supplements and they notice no difference. The supplements often appear to fail to provide benefit. So the question remains, how to supplement? I am frequently asked these by my clients and the answer is divided into two parts – the first part deals with the manufacturer and the second with the products.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

There are many companies out there selling nutritional supplements. There are three main types of supplements: There are the synthetics, then there are the organic, high potency isolates sold in health food stores and then there is whole food supplements. So where should I begin? Let’s start with the synthetics.  A number of years ago, scientists studying the effects of various foods on the human body discovered that certain vitalised factors had the potential to greatly boost health. As they were discovered, many terms were used to refer to them, until they all settled on Vitamins. As these vitamins were discovered, the scientists found ways to synthesise them in the laboratory. Synthesizing these vitamins meant that they could now guarantee the potency and accuracy of the vitamins used in tests. It was also found that some of the vitamins could be cheaper to produce in the lab rather than to extract from nature. But the problem lies here: synthetics are not easily recognised by the body and so you may not get what’s on the label. For example, Dr. Arthur Furst (one of the greatest scientists in the world) said that your body cannot recognise synthetic proteins and they will be discarded as 100% waste! Similar problems have been recorded with synthetic versions of Vitamin E and C. Now, you work hard for your money and deserve the best value for your money – when you buy a synthetic supplement, do you see that you are not getting what you pay for?  Ok, so it is clear that synthetic supplements are not all that great, but what about the health food stores high potency organic supplements? Well, they insist on their products being all natural and organic, which is great, but they have get into some real heavy concentrations of the isolate compounds. For example, Vitamin A – what you would get from a health food store would be a high potency Vit A, which requires about 12 other factors along with it in order for the Vit A to be used by the body. Do you realise that by taking the high potency Vit A, you are actually creating a deficiency in your body of the 12 other factors? So this is the problem with the organic, high potency isolates . So now we look at the whole food supplements. These are all natural, whole food based. This means you get the rest of the stuff in the food that comes along with the supplement in question and your body is better able to utilise the supplements, as nature intended. Hence you get true value for money in this case.

So what sort of things should you look out for when choosing the right company for your whole food based supplements?

NOT A SHOOTING STAR

Firstly, I would look at their track record – how long have they been on the market for? Many companies like a shooting star. They appear suddenly and make wild and exaggerated claims about their product. They usually run foul with the legal authorities or their products are shown to be worthless or even dangerous by credible scientific authorities. They then burn out.

PHARMACEUTICAL LICENSE

I want a company that oper­ates with a pharmaceutical license. This is not required of natural food products (the supplements I pre­fer) but it provides an extra mea­sure of safety and quality control. Companies that operate with a pharmaceutical license are not afraid to have the regulatory authorities such as the FDA come in and inspect their facilities for cleanliness and to insure that what is placed on the label is actually in the prod­uct. These are unannounced in­spections. Such inspection also as­sures that a manufacturer follows Good Laboratory Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices

ABOUT THE MANUFACTURER

THE COMPANY

I want a company that manu­factures its own products. Many private labelled products are de­signed more for profit than quality. I know many companies would sacrifice product quality in order to increase margins. That’s just the commercial reality.

BACKED BY SCIENCE

Products should be based on legitimate scientific research rather than the desire to have something to sell. There is a difference between producing a product and looking for a scientific reference to sup­port the product and basing the development of a product on the best scientific research available.

INDEPENDANT VERIFICATION

I look at a company’s associa­tions. Is research on their products published in peer reviewed journals like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, the FASEB Journal or similar publications? Do they have a work­ing relationship with organizations like the United States Department of Agriculture, the World Health Or­ganization, and Stanford University.

A SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

I look for products that have competent scientific personnel working on the development of products rather than lending their name for the promotion of the prod­ucts. These companies will have research facilities at their disposal and will often have unique and dif­ferent types of products. Some of these products are patented.

TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING

Quarantine and examination of all raw materials for purity and potency prior to manufacture of products is important. Testing of manufactured products for disin­tegration and dissolution time, sta­bility, purity, potency, bioavailabil­ity, odour, and taste is also essential. Many companies are not even aware of the fact that there are toxico­logical issues with supplements.

These are just some of the factors I would consider when buying my supplements – not “how cheap is it?” or “is it available from the pharmacy nearby?” or things like that. My next post will start looking into more detail at some of the health issues we are faced with and start going through the chain of life I have mentioned at the start.

At this point, I would like to point out that some material is extracted from the newsletters written by Dr. Jim Mcafee, a certified nutritionalist, who runs www.imageawareness.com. You can access the rest of his newsletters here.