Vitamin and Mineral Supplements are Crucial for Your Health
The Function of Minerals and Why You Need Them
Without sufficient minerals -just about every function in your body from supporting your immune system, to making your teeth and bones to helping your body produce energy would be impossible. Only a slight imbalance of some minerals can exert a significant impact on your health. Look at what happens when people are deficient in iron, it interferes with the ability of their red blood cells to move oxygen. When you find the term colloidal minerals, what it means is that these minerals are taken from plant materials. These minerals are the most easily available to our body.
Since minerals are not organic, they won’t be made by the human body. As a substitute, our sole source of minerals is through our diet or from supplements. When you hear about any mineral or vitamin that is called Essential – what essential means is the fact that they must be supplied by your diet. It’s not a statement about the importance or value, just where it comes from.
You will often hear that if we eat a proper diet, we will get all the nutrients necessary. Possibly that was once true, but sadly it is simply not accurate nowadays. Modern farming has robbed the topsoil of minerals and they’re no longer available to crops or present in our food. This mineral shortage, along with the simple but unhappy truth that not many of us choose diets that are remotely healthy. Actually, considering what goes into quite a few fast and processed food products, a good argument can be made that what we’re eating shouldn’t really even be called food. Suffice to say that it’s hard for most North Americans to get adequate amounts of the essential nutrients. (Source: US Department of Agriculture Center for Policy and Promotion. Nutrition Insight 37, “Diet quality of Americans in 1994-96 and 2001-02. August 2008.)
Our Plants are Nutrient Poor
Seventy five million years in the past, in the age of the dinosaur, the soil was filled with as many as seventy known minerals. These were absorbed by plants and passed on when the plants became food. The diet was filled with nutrients and minerals.
Over time, things such as soilerosion and bad farming practices have robbed our topsoil of its important mineral content and modern farming practices have continued to make the problem worse. In spite of being able to produce three times the yields when compared to only fifty years ago, the nutritional content of our vegetables, fruits and grains is worse than ever. (Source: Davis DR, Epp MD, Riordan HD. Changes in USDA food composition data for 43 garden crops, 1950 to 1999. J Am Coll Nutr;23:669-82.)
Our nutritional demands haven’t changed, although our lifestyles and the sources of nutrients available to us have changed dramatically. To obtain the nutrients your body requires, it’s just about impossible, without adding naturally derived and where possible, plant based supplements.
Beyond Tangy Tangerine – a vitamin/mineral powder created by Dr. Joel Wallach of Youngevity (who wrote Dead Doctors Don’t Lie) and CheriMins liquid minerals supplement are 2 excellent plant based Vitamin Mineral supplements.