Can I Get All Of My Nutrients From Food?
One of the most common questions we get is, do I need to take supplements or can I get all of my nutrients from food?
Ideally, we would be able to get everything we need from the food we eat. Unfortunately, even with a perfect diet, food these days is not what it used to be. Things like depleted soils, storage and transportation of food, and increased stress and nutritional demands make it hard for us to get everything we need from our modern diets.
Think about it. Our great grandparents weren’t wondering if a food was organic or if it contained hormones, artificial ingredients, or pesticides. They weren’t eating meat from animals that were cooped up, fed unnatural diets, and mistreated.
This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to eat well. It means that as conscious consumers we have to choose the highest quality foods to nourish our bodies. And it also means that sometimes, we need to consider nutritional supplements.
Emerging scientific evidence shows the importance of nutrients as essential helpers in our biochemistry and metabolism. They are the oil that greases the wheels of our metabolism. And large-scale deficiencies of nutrients in our population—including vitamin D, folate, zinc, magnesium, and iron—have been well documented in extensive government-sponsored research.
High-quality supplements help fill in nutritional gaps. They are not made to replace a healthy diet, but to supplementone and to ensure that you have an optimal level of nutrients for the billions of chemical reactions happening in your body every second of every day.
When it comes to supplements, quality is key!
Did you know that the supplement industry is largely unregulated? This is a major issue because companies are getting away with putting untested and contaminated products into pills with fillers, additives, and potential allergens, and selling it to you at a discount. It’s shameful and gives supplements and good manufacturers a bad rep.
Did you know that many vitamins have different forms: some synthetic, some natural, some well absorbed, and some poorly absorbed?
Take folate, vitamin B9, for example. You have likely heard that our grain flours and many processed foods are fortified with “folic acid” to help reduce neural tube defects in pregnant women.
However folic acid is the cheap, synthetic form of vitamin B9, which is poorly absorbed, must be converted in your body into the active, usable form of folate, and you MUST have the proper genes to facilitate the conversion. Around 60% of the population has a genetic single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that inhibits this conversion (called MTHFR mutation) and consuming folic acid can cause harm. So, not only is the synthetic form inferior for everyone, it can actually be dangerous for over half of the population.
This is why at Medical Age Management, we have done extensive research into the quality and consistency of supplements so that the products we carry or recommend have already been vetted for you. We use only manufacturers who have a proven track record, and who regularly submit themselves to testing for purity and consistency. You can rest assured that the brands we recommend to you already meet our high standards of quality.