What do you want from an all-in-one vitamin and mineral nutritional health supplement?
To make sure you are not deficient in any important vitamin or mineral? A one-a-day A-Z supplement pill at 100% of the RDAs will do that. On the other hand deficiency diseases like scurvy and rickets are rare.
Or do you want to reduce the risk of long term health problems â age related diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis and even cancer? Unfortunately extensive research shows that the one-a-day vitamin pills are unlikely to have this effect. Thatâs why you see headlines like âVitamin pills are a waste of moneyâ.
So I suggest the real question is âWhat all-in-one supplements can create an environment in your body that reduces the risk of long term health problems?”
Can you really get all the nutrition you need from a “balanced diet”?
We still often hear this claim. It might have been true 50 or 60 years ago. But 50 years ago we were far more physically active and ate more. More food means more nutrients.
In contrast, todayâs low energy, sedentary, and largely indoor lifestyles mean that most people have had to cut their average daily food intake to about 2,000 â 2,500 calories a day if they are not to put on weight. Even if you choose and mix your foods scrupulously, you cannot get a full range and amount of the most important health-protective nutrients at todayâs calorie intakes.
Take just vitamins C and D. According to the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 25% of people do not reach the RDA of Vitamin C and 70% do not reach the RDA for Vitamin D. The situation is almost the same in the UK.
But these are just nutrients for which there ARE RDAs. We now know that some of the most important nutrients for long term health have not yet had RDAs established for them; such as the omega 3 fatty acids and the polyphenols, two classes of nutrient that have critically important anti-inflammatory properties.
Why do we need these anti-inflammatory nutrients in an all-in-one supplement? Because they protect us against called âchronic sub-clinical inflammationâ, an insidious and invisible process that develops in our tissues and which is now known as a driver of all the degenerative diseases, from cancer to Alzheimerâs to heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and osteoporosis; not to mention sexual dysfunction, ageing of the skin, and indeed the bulk of the ageing process.
There is overwhelming evidence that Omega 3 fish oil is heart-protective, helps to protect brain function and has a role to play in reducing the risk of cancer. But few people have sufficient Omega 3 in their normal diet. You would need to eat 3-4 portions of oily fish such as herring, mackerel, sardines or wild salmon (not farmed) a week.
There is equally good evidence to support the importance of polyphenols, a group of phyto-nutrients found in fruits and vegetables, to our long-term health. So much so that the American Cancer Society and many other authorities now recommend 9 portions of fruit and vegetables a day!
Preventing deficiency is not enough
It now becomes much clearer why the best and most effective all-in-one supplements need to go beyond a simple vitamin and mineral pill.
Up to the age of about 50, the aim of a well-designed supplement should be to ensure you have a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals, plus adequate Omega 3 fish oil, plus polyphenols including flavonoids.
To recap, Omega 3s and polyphenols are important because they are anti-inflammatory nutrients which protect us from the silent danger of chronic sub-clinical inflammation. As Scientific American confirmed in a major review:
âInflammation is an underlying contributor to virtually every chronic disease ⊠rheumatoid arthritis, Crohnâs disease, diabetes and depression, along with major killers such as heart disease and stroke. The connection between inflammation and cancer has now moved to center stage in the research arena.â
We now know, however, that these dangers can be lessened by taking two simple steps. Firstly, we must reduce pro-inflammatory factors in our lifestyle, like high temperature cooking and fast foods which a mostly cooked at high temperatures.
Secondly, we should increase the level of anti-inflammatory nutrients in our diet. Thatâs why increasing the amount of fruits, vegetables and oily fish â which provide the key anti-inflammatory nutrients – is so important.
And thatâs why I recommend Omega 3 and polyphenol supplements â such as derived from curcumin, green tea and grapeseed extract. They are powerful anti-inflammatory ingredients.
You need these elements even in your 30s and 40s, because over time, inflammation causes slowly progressive damage in the tissues leading up to the emergence of clinical symptoms will have been gradually accumulating for decades.
Over 50, add more nutrients to your all-in-one supplement
Over the age of 50, when the powers of healing and regeneration are no longer as effective as they were in youth, there are further protective steps you can take.
For example, the evidence for the carotenoid supplements such as beta carotene, lutein and lycopene is persuasive. Lutein appears to have a protective effect for eyes and the laboratory research for the anti-cancer effect of lycopene is increasingly convincing.
I would also add the nutrients betaine, Co-enzyme Q10 and soy isoflavones. Soy isoflavones are one of the dietary elements that contribute to the generally better health and life expectancy of the Japanese.
All these nutrients occur in high levels in the diets of those societies that have a long life expectancy and health expectancy â and overall, itâs an all-in-one supplement combination designed to reproduce the elements of that ideal diet.
Although food and supplements cannot treat or cure age-related disease, they can create a climate in the body where disease is less likely to develop or worsen, and where the bodyâs own ability to heal itself is supported.
Donât bother with vitamin and mineral supplements labelled as being especially for women or men. These are marketing gimmicks. Weâre all human and we all need the almost the same vitamins and minerals.
The only exception is iron. Iron in men and post-menopausal women can potentially accumulate to the point where it becomes pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidative, so I would not include it in an all-purpose supplement. But pre-menopausal women should include it. Some women may also benefit from extra calcium, although if you have regular dairy products and leafy green vegetables you should have adequate calcium.
Donât bother with specialist supplements either â for eyes or heart or for the brain. Why try to protect one vital organ and leave others undefended? Especially when the secret of brain, eye, heart and indeed sexual health, lies in reducing the tissue damage inflicted by chronic inflammation.
You can now see why simple A-Z vitamin pills have little impact on reducing long term age related illness. They are only designed to avoid deficiency diseases. They have little or no anti-inflammatory effect and so cannot combat the key driver of age-related health decline, namely chronic inflammation.
Only a truly comprehensive all-in-one nutrient support programme can do that. You can see details of NutriShield, which I designed to help cut the risk of age-related illness at www.nutrishield.com.
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