Vitamins and Minerals: The Health Care Industries Big Deep Secret

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There is no doubt that vitamins and minerals are critical to good health. Vitamins are carbon-containing substances derived from living things. They are used by the body in tiny amounts to build, maintain, and repair tissues. For example, the various compounds dubbed vitamin A are used in eye tissues for vision, and in cell nuclei to aid gene expression, among other functions. Vitamin D is needed for bones to develop properly, and the B vitamin folic acid aids in the digestion of amino acids and plays a role in the metabolism of deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) and ribonucleic acids (RNA). DNA is genetic material that codes instructions for the production of proteins—the basic building blocks of life; RNA is a molecule that helps carry out those instructions.


Unlike vitamins, minerals are inorganic (not bound to carbon). They come from soil and water, but make their way into the plants and animals people eat. Essential minerals include calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, and selenium. These minerals have myriad biological roles. Some work in enzymes, protein “tools” that make possible many critical biological processes. Others enable blood to carry oxygen to the body's tissues; strengthen bones and teeth; help cells grow and repair themselves; or keep the heart beating properly.


The RDAs – Recommended Daily Allowances

Unlike macronutrients—the fats, proteins, and carbohydrates people burn for energy—vitamins and minerals are used by the body in much smaller quantities. How much of these micronutrients do people need? That depends on the nutrient and on the person. However, general guidelines known as Recommended Dietary Allowances, or RDAs, are set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific advisory council for the U.S. government.

Recommended Daily Allowances - RDAs, which are revised about once every five years, are educated guesses about nutrient requirements based on evidence gleaned from studies in large human populations, test-tube experiments, and everything in between. In setting RDAs, scientists account for the body's inability to completely digest or absorb certain vitamins and minerals in foods or pills, and include a margin of safety.


RDAs are, in most cases, designed to prevent nutrient deficiency diseases such as scurvy, caused by a lack of vitamin C, and goiter, resulting from too little iodine. The consequences of such diseases can be serious. In scurvy, the gums become spongy, the teeth loosen, and tiny blood vessels called capillaries bleed into the skin and mucous membranes. Goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland at the base of the neck, can lead to a type of mental retardation known as cretinism.


Are Recommended Daily Allowances - RDAs Adequate?

In America, severe micronutrient deficiencies are rare, because most Americans' diets are good enough to prevent them. That does not mean Americans' diets are necessarily good, however. High in fat and low in fruits and vegetables, the typical American diet may be contributing to chronic ailments such as cancer and heart disease. Indeed, many experts believe it is a lack of certain vitamins and minerals in the foods Americans eat that raises their risk of chronic ailments.


In a few cases, the RDA reflects this notion. For instance, the RDA for calcium is set at a level to ward off a disease of weakened bones called osteoporosis that usually shows up in old age. But the RDA for many nutrients may be too low to stave off certain illnesses. Some studies even suggest that truly protective doses far exceed what a person could eat in a day and thus, supplements are necessary.

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The Folic Acid Story

An argument for supplements could certainly be made for folic acid; a B vitamin that recent evidence has shown can prevent certain deadly or paralyzing birth defects and may also ward off heart disease. The RDA for folic acid, also called folate, is 200 micrograms for adult men and 180 micrograms for adult women. (A microgram is one-thousandth of a milligram.) However, many experts now recommend that all women of child-bearing age consume at least 400 micrograms of folate a day to prevent birth defects.


What is the basis for this recommendation? Controlled studies (studies that include control groups) have shown that women who took folic acid supplements when they conceived were far less likely to give birth to infants with neural tube defects such as anencephaly, in which the brain does not develop fully, or spina bifida, when the spinal cord does not completely close. Folic acid, it appears, is critical for the closure of the neural tube, the tissue that encloses a developing embryo's brain and spinal cord.


Folate is also used by the body to break down an amino acid called homocysteine, and that role is critical to its presumed ability to prevent heart disease. In large amounts, homocysteine is thought to scar arteries and cause them to clog, leading to heart attacks. Recent studies have shown that people with high homocysteine levels are at increased risk for heart disease. Other recent work has indicated that people with low blood levels of folic acid are likewise at increased risk. Folate supplements can lower homocysteine levels. However, no one has yet shown that taking folic acid supplements prevents heart attacks and prolongs lives.


Thus, the American Heart Association (AHA) still recommends getting folic acid from foods such as leafy green vegetables, beans, and orange juice instead of supplements, since these foods have other beneficial nutrients as well. But since most Americans do not consume even the RDA for folic acid, women of childbearing age are advised to take supplements, especially since the folic acid in supplements is better absorbed than that in foods. By January 1, 1998, the FDA will require all grain products sold in the United States to be fortified with folic acid.

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The Antioxidant Debate

Scientists have also been turning up evidence suggesting that large doses of vitamins E and C and beta-carotene, a substance the body converts into vitamin A, may prevent chronic illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. These nutrients are thought to “mop up” unstable chemicals in the body known as free radicals that can damage tissues and contribute to disease.


Free radicals are formed all the time—whenever the body uses oxygen or is exposed to a toxin such as cigarette smoke—and can harm cells in a number of ways. They can chemically alter fats in low-density lipoproteins (LDL) (components in the blood that carry cholesterol), making them more likely to clog arteries. Free radicals can also damage DNA, possibly raising the risk of cancer.


Vitamins C and E and beta-carotene are thought to work as antioxidants, molecules that block the formation of free radicals and thus lower the risk of heart disease and cancer. What is the evidence for this theory? Numerous studies have shown that people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables—the major sources of many antioxidant nutrients—have a lower risk of heart disease than those who do not. Similarly, a lot of research indicates that people whose diets are produce-poor have a higher risk of several kinds of cancer.


While those studies strongly support the recommendations of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, they do not prove that isolated antioxidants in the form of supplements provide disease protection. Although test tube and animal studies do suggest benefits from antioxidant supplements, the evidence in people has been mixed. Here is a rundown.

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Vitamin E and Heart Disease
Will large doses of vitamin E protect against heart disease? Several lines of research seem to indicate so. In one, scientists examined whether vitamin E supplements caused favorable changes in blood chemistry—such as lowering levels of oxidized LDL. In the February 1995 issue of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, Texas scientists described results from testing the blood of 48 men who had been given various daily doses of vitamin E. They found that doses of 400 International Units (IU) (about 27 times the RDA for men) produced significant protection against the oxidation of LDL particles in their blood.


Such research does not say whether vitamin E can prevent heart disease. That is left up to studies that follow people for years and associate vitamin E intake with heart disease incidence. Three major studies have shown that taking daily vitamin E supplements of at least 100 IU for two years or longer reduced the risk of heart disease by almost half.


But even those studies are not definitive: While they associate vitamin E intake with low disease rates, they do not show cause and effect. That is because people who take vitamins often have other healthy habits—such as exercising and eating a balanced diet—that could explain the lowered disease risk. The best type of evidence is a so-called intervention trial in which participants are given supplements or placebos and followed for a period of many months to many years to determine the incidence of disease in the two groups.


So far, just one small study of this type has examined the effects of vitamin E on heart disease. Published in the March 23, 1996, issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, Cambridge University researchers in England found a more than 75 percent reduction in nonfatal heart attacks among people who took from 400 to 800 IU of vitamin E for a little more than a year. However, the vitamin did not appear to prevent deaths from heart attacks: There was a slight increase in the percentage of patients who had fatal heart attacks, 2.6 percent in those on vitamin E vs. 2.4 percent in those on placebo. Several larger human studies currently underway promise to shed more light on the effects of vitamin E on heart disease.


Beta-Carotene and Cancer

Earlier research showing associations between intake of beta-carotene and reduced cancer incidence have not held up in the latest intervention trials. One of these trials, the Beta Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET), was halted in January 1996 because preliminary results indicated that a combination of beta-carotene and vitamin A was not preventing lung cancer in high-risk men and women and may actually have been harming study participants. Published in the May 2, 1996, New England Journal of Medicine, the study found 28 percent more lung cancers and 17 percent more deaths in participants taking 30 mg of beta-carotene and 25,000 IU of vitamin A.

This result was similar to that found in two other trials. Researchers conducting the Physicians' Health Study reported in the same issue of the New England Journal that they found no benefit or harm from beta-carotene on cancer or heart disease. And the 1994 results of the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Lung Cancer Prevention Trial, published in the same journal on April 14, showed 18 percent more lung cancers and 8 percent more deaths in smokers who took 20 mg of beta-carotene daily for five to eight years.


Not all of the intervention trials have reported negative results, however. In 1993 a study published in the September 15 Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggested that a combination supplement of beta-carotene, vitamin E, and selenium reduced the stomach cancer mortality rate by 21 percent on average among subjects in Linxian, China.

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1. Organo-natural Based Supplement Medicine/Prescription Drugs Guide
2. Organic Liver Detoxifying Supplement Base for immunity boosting and suppress ailments, sicknesses and disease
3. Women Friendly Multivitamins food supplement
4.
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