The Best Way to Get All Our Vitamins.

Load Up on Nutrient-Rich Food!

Nick Borja, MD
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

Around 2 a.m. a message came through my pager. A burn patient had developed an abnormal heart rhythm. Her blood pressure was dropping.

“A heart attack?” I thought while racing to the intensive care unit. “Or maybe a blood clot to the lungs?”

We started a workup: metabolic panel, blood cultures and EKG. The answer came soon. Her potassium was low. Moments later, we had fluid running and her vital signs normalized. We were lucky.

Potassium is one of 15 minerals, which along with 13 vitamins play a special role in human health. These tiny micronutrients are considered “essential” because 1) our bodies need them to function and 2) we can only get them from what we eat.

Micronutrients made of a single element, like potassium, are termed minerals. The small compounds are termed vitamins.

Unlike carbs, fat & protein that get broken apart for energy, vitamins and minerals are kept intact for specific uses by our body. And despite their small size, they carry a big load.

Take vitamin C. It helps create collagen, activates immune cells, and detoxifies free radicals. Or consider the mineral calcium. It supports our bone structure, the contraction of muscle, and blood clotting after injury.

It’s no wonder that when any one of these vitamins or minerals goes missing, our health can take a serious nosedive. And though you’re not likely to see a person’s gums bleed from scurvy these days, micronutrient deficiencies aren’t a thing of the past.

Very few of us are getting enough of the mighty antioxidant, vitamin E. Over half of Americans are low in magnesium, a metabolic workhorse. And about one-third of us are low in vitamins A and C.

The truth is, we’re malnourished. Our house of bricks is missing the mortar: foods rich in vitamins and minerals. Americans eat less than two servings of veggies a day and just a single serving of fruit. We rarely consume nutrient-rich legumes or seeds.

Instead, we live off junk. The #1 source of calories in the U.S. diet is grain-based desserts like cakes and cookies. The #4 source of calories is sugar-sweetened beverages like soda and energy drinks.

With a diet so nutrient-poor, it’s little wonder Americans flock to supplements. Over half of all Americans take a supplement that includes vitamins and minerals, at an annual cost of nearly $36 billion.

Supplementation can be important in specific circumstances. Pregnant women should take folic acid to prevent birth defects. Vegans need to supplement with vitamin B-12 to maintain healthy blood cells and nerves. And if you’re not out in the sun often, you should consider extra vitamin D. Supplements support important health needs that our diet can’t always meet.

But beware if you’re taking vitamins or mineral supplements to fend off chronic disease in place of a nutrient-rich diet. It just doesn’t work.

Small studies from the ’90s suggested that many could benefit from supplementing with high doses of antioxidants that naturally occur in food. Since then, larger trials have shown that supplementing with beta-carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E offers no protection against cancer, cardiovascular disease or death.

Researchers looking at the potential benefits of multivitamins have found similar results. Multivitamin users don’t enjoy any discernible health benefits.

As a result, the National Institute of Health and the US Preventive Services Task Force have separately recommended against vitamin and mineral supplements for preventing chronic disease.

Keep in mind, supplements are drugs. They shouldn’t be taken lightly. The risk of toxicity from supplements is real, particularly with the industry having so little oversight. Multivitamins often contain doses far higher or lower than what their labels disclose. And we know very little about how the vitamins and minerals in concentrated doses get absorbed and metabolized.

Although supplements fail to measure up, it’s not synthetic vitamins and minerals themselves that deserve blame. Chemists have succeeded in making most of them identical to the natural ones we find in food.

The big difference is context. The lion display at your local zoo can’t recreate the Serengeti plains. Too much is missing. In much the same way, healthy foods contain a complexity that is stripped away in supplements.

Take your ordinary grapefruit. It combines fiber, beta-carotene, vitamin C and folic acid with hundreds of other phytochemicals like flavonoids and limonoids. These all harmonize together like a nutritional symphony. The interactions between them shapes everything from their absorption to their cellular effects. When isolated, however, these nutrients go silent.

So the solution is simple. Go to the source. Eat foods rich in vitamins and minerals.

The ultimate vitamin and mineral powerhouse are dark leafy greens. A serving of spinach or kale is only 40 calories and offers all the vitamin K and vitamin A you need in a day. They are also abundant in calcium, potassium, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, and more.

Other foods play key roles in helping us get all the micronutrients we need. Fruits like pineapple and strawberries are rich sources of vitamin C and manganese. Seeds like sunflower and sesame seeds have abundant vitamin E, copper and magnesium. Legumes like beans and lentils offer high levels of folate, vitamin B1, and iron.

A diverse diet of foods rich in vitamins and minerals delivers exactly we’re looking for. Study, after study, after study finds that these foods prevents chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, dementia and even cancer.

So embrace the nutrient-rich life! There’s just no substitute if you’re after real health.

Takeaways

  1. Most of us are missing nutrients we need to enjoy our fullest health. But loading up on synthetic vitamins and minerals isn’t the answer.
  2. Get your daily nutritional insurance by eating a diversity of micronutrient-rich foods. Make a special effort to get dark leafy greens like spinach or kale EVERY DAY!
  3. A vitamin and mineral supplement can be useful in specific circumstances. Check out labdoor.com if you’re in need of a high-quality supplement.

Thanks so much for reading! If you missed my introduction to the Nutrient-Rich Life series, you can catch it here. You can also check out the 5th article on phytochemicals, the best-kept secret in all of nutrition. And be sure to follow me so you don’t miss the next one!

Nick Borja, MD

Written by

Founder at Nosha.com

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