Vitamin Trader - Healthy Discounts on Quality Vitamins

• Plenty of fresh, raw organic fruits and vegetables
(5 or 6 servings a day)
• Fresh unpolluted fish
• Grass fed meat, free of hormones
• Fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, tempeh that promote probiotics (friendly bacteria)
• Small amount of organic whole grains
• Tiny amounts of natural, unrefined concentrated sweets like honey
• Supplemental antioxidant herbs and spice
• Plenty of fresh unpolluted water
• Daily exercise

The above scenario is not what most of us are likely to follow. Many do not have access to organic produce. Consuming produce from our local grocers won’t give us the nutrients we require as years of commercial agriculture have depleted soils and thus the produce grown there of vitamins and minerals we need for optimal health. Transportation and storage of produce further depletes essential nutrients.

Pollution of the soil with agricultural chemicals affects everything we eat. Farm-raised and grain-fed dairy and other animals may be lacking the optimum nutrition they need as these animals evolved on a diet of wild plants full of minerals and vitamins. Seafood is now heavily laden with the by-products of industrial activity – especially mercury.

While the first and best thing you can do for your health is to eat a good diet, the next step is to improve the quality of whatever diet you have with supplements. Supplements can supply nutrients missing in food. But to replace those missing nutrients we must take more than the government RDAs (recommended daily allowances) as RDA amounts are designed to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy or rickets. Nothing is wrong with preventing those conditions, but to really improve health more is required.

Enzymes are key to getting nutrients from the food you eat and the supplements you take. Many events in a person’s life can affect one's ability to produce enzymes and to digest and assimilate nutrients. For example, a round of antibiotics can shut down normal enzyme production. A diet of processed foods with little or no raw fruits and vegetables can cause depletion of your body’s capacity to digest by lowering hydrochloric acid production and production of pancreatin (both critical digestive agents). Stress and aging can also affect your body’s output of enzymes.

Most of us know that whenever we take antibiotics we need to eat yogurt or take acidophilus to replace those “friendly” and useful bacteria that were depleted when we took the antibiotic. But what isn’t as widely understood is the need to continuously supply probiotics (or friendly bacteria) to our digestive tract for superior digestive and assimilative function. Traditional foods supplied these in years past – yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles, fermented beers and wines. Today those foods are not widely used, so supplementing with a good broad spectrum probiotic on a daily basis can provide the benefits of those traditional foods: increased bowel health, reduction of toxins in the G.I. tract, and improved assimilation of essential nutrients.

Today’s miracle is that we can supplement many nutrients missing from our diet and regain and maintain good health. A good multiple supplies what’s missing with A, B, C, D, E, vitamins and with both macro and trace minerals. Many of today’s multiples will supply much more in terms of nutrients including enzymes, probiotics, antioxidants, greens, etc.

Green foods contain an abundance of nutrients unsurpassed by any other type of food on the planet. Chlorophyll, trace minerals, vitamins, excellent proteins, and more are in an easy to assimilate form. Here’s the best supplement for those whose vegetable intake is minimal, and for those who want to increase total health with extra nutrients.

Essential Fatty Acid is a term for those fats that must be supplemented in the diet. Many Americans typically do not consume the best balance of fats for their optimal health. Lipid imbalance and deficiency is linked to hormone, liver, kidney, central nervous system, digestive, lung, muscular and cardiovascular disease, and lipid supplementation can positively impact the health of all those systems. A good fish oil supplement (make sure it’s free of contaminants) can work wonders.

Oxygen damage (oxidation) to your cells may be partly responsible for the effects of aging and certain diseases. Antioxidants can protect against this damage. Best known antioxidant supplements are vitamins C and E, the mineral selenium, plants like coffee berry, lycopene from tomatoes, nutrients CoQ10 and alpha lipoic acid, but there are many more antioxidants available.

A good multi-vitamin mineral formula can supply most essentials – but remember that the more one bottle supplies, the more of each you’ll need to take – up to 6 tablets each day! Or, you can take a lower potency multi-vitamin mineral formula and add other types of supplements – for example a greens formula, an antioxidant formula, an essential fatty acid like Omega-3 fish oil. Whichever way you choose to go, you’ll want to make sure you take a good enzyme formula and a good probiotic each day. Enzymes are taken with each meal and probiotics are taken once or twice a day.