Special Report Basic Nutrition & Weight Management
Developing a Personal Vitamin Program
by Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D., Science Advisor, and Lyle Hurd, Publisher
Vitamins are substances that the body must have to survive. Taking vitamins is not a choice for humans; the only question is “how much vitamins should we take?”
An exponential increase in positive research findings over the past 20 years establishes that there is a huge “window of opportunity” between the small amounts of vitamins we need in order not to go blind, go crazy or die, and the larger amounts that can give us better all-around health and resistance to ALL disease. For instance, it’s clear that amounts of 10–100 times the RDAs of various vitamins (more than 1000 times for vitamin B12) improve energy levels, well-being and immunity, and lower the risk of heart disease and cancer.
This is important for the health conscious
consumer to grasp, as week-by-week
science demonstrates that vitamins
and other nutrients are not just safer to
take but actually work better than do drug
treatments. Most of the vitamin supplementation
over and above what we get
from our diet is necessary, since the Standard
American Diet (SAD) fails to provide
amounts sufficient for us to derive the
maximum benefits to our health that vitamins
can provide. Hence the rationale for
developing a personal vitamin program, one
crafted as carefully as a career development
plan or an investment planning program.
For instance, there is also a compelling
case for incorporating nutritional
supplements in our daily diet to counteract
the insidious impact of environmental
toxicity on our systems. These toxic
substances poison our organs, they drain
our energy, and cause cancer and other
killer diseases.
It is now clear that health essentially
rests on the balance in the body between
free radical load and antioxidant reserve.
Any toxic exposure, however slight, depletes
a portion of the antioxidants that
protect all life processes. If no further
toxic exposures occur, the antioxidant
system may bounce back. If further toxic
exposures do occur, further challenges
are placed on the antioxidant defenses.
However limited each toxic challenge
may be, cumulatively they intensify free
radical stress and weaken the antioxidant
defenses. unless the antioxidant defenses
can be maintained through repletion from
the outside, they eventually fail and good
health is transformed into ill health.
The Multivitamin-Mineral Cornerstone of a Personal Program
The first step in establishing your personal
vitamin program is to ensure that every
day you are receiving those vitamins and
other nutrients that are truly essential to
the human body. Since thousands of dietary
supplement products are available,
claiming to benefit every manner of body
function, here are some guidelines to
help separate the wheat from the chaff.
Let’s start with the multivitamin-mineral
(MVM) product.
To do what it is supposed to do, your
MVM should provide just about ALL the vitamins
and minerals truly proven essential
to human health. The list of known
vitamins hasn’t changed much in recent
decades; it includes vitamin A, vitamins
B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12, (the missing
numbers were those which proved not
to be truly essential) and vitamins C, D,
E and K. Folate and biotin are also vitamins,
as are the essential fatty acids,
which are discussed below. Choline was
recently established as essential. A number
of minerals are also proven essential
to survival.
Minerals are not organic since they do
not contain carbon and thus cannot be
called vitamins. However, certain minerals
are as essential to survival as are the
vitamins. For a number of minerals, deficiency states are established and recommended
dietary allowances exist.
Unequivocally, every person, whatever
their age, gender or state of health can
benefit from taking a multivitamin-mineral
product on a daily basis. A good
MVM will provide all the vitamins and essential
minerals, minimally in amounts
of at least 100 percent of the “daily values.”
The daily values seen on the dietary
supplement product labels are the RDAs
(Recommended Dietary Allowances)
recalculated on the basis of each 2000
“calorie” intake of food per day (kilocalories,
really). A good multivitamin-mineral
will also supply close to 100 percent of
the daily values for the following minerals:
magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper,
selenium, silicon, iodine, manganese, molybdenum,
boron, and chromium. Potassium,
unfortunately, is kept low (around
99 mg daily maximum) by regulation.
As you shop for a good MVM, you
must examine the label carefully or you’ll
waste your money. By law, the manufacturer
has to list the ingredients on the
label. Also, some MVMs provide meaningful
amounts of certain standardized
herbal extracts. These add to the quality
of the product, since they have proven
health benefits.
Take Extra Vitamin C and Vitamin E
As the scientific research on vitamins
and minerals has progressed, the recommended
daily amounts of minerals necessary
for good health have not changed
much. Among the vitamins, the benefits
of some extend to such large amounts
that we cannot expect full intakes from our
MVM product and are forced to take them
as additional supplements. Two proven
examples are vitamin C (ascorbate) and vitamin
E (d-alpha, beta, gamma, and delta
tocopherols [VERY IMPORTANT]).
The Essential Fatty Acids Are Vitamins
The essential fatty acids (EFA) are oily
substances, which are really vitamins
because deficiency states have been
demonstrated for them. There are two
kinds of EFA, omega-6 and omega-3, differing
in their molecular details but sharing
the same enzyme systems. The two
kinds compete with each other for uptake
and utilization and play a “yin-yang” role
in the body by delicately balancing and
complementing each other’s effects. Unfortunately,
in today’s world, we are getting
either too little of both kinds if we eat a lot
of junk food, or too little of the omega-3s
if we eat the typical Western diet. Now it has
been found that supplementing the diet
with certain omega-3s will protect against
heart attacks and strokes, and generally
help protect the body against inflammatory
damage. The omega-3s that work
best are DHA and EPA a certain amount of
omega-6 intake is also important, and this
is best obtained from GLA.
Conditionally-Essential Nutrients Sometimes May Be Vitamins
A number of substances that have not
been established as vitamins through
deficiency assessment are nonetheless
intricately involved in life processes. One
that has been extensively researched is
coenzyme Q10 (“CoQ”), otherwise called
ubiquinone. CoQ is crucial for the generation
of energy in all our cells and makes
important contributions to our protective
antioxidant defense system. Technically,
our cells have the enzyme machinery to
make their own CoQ. Why, then, do people
with heart problems develop a functional
deficiency of CoQ? Alpha-lipoic acid also is
crucial for making energy and is also a potent
antioxidant. Another example is taurine,
which is an antioxidant, antitoxin and
electro-osmotic buffer substance found in
the heart tissue, the nerve tissues and in all
our cells. Yet another is carnitine, which is
also important for the heart and is central
to the body’s energetics. These nutrients
all fit the category of conditionally-essential
nutrients in that portions of the population
are critically unable to make enough
to keep up with body demand for them.
Stress of Any Kind Increases the Body’s Nutrient Requirements
Never underestimate the power of stress
to make you sick. Emotional stress works
through many mechanisms to damage
our tissues. But stress is far more than
just emotional.
Although the word “stress” is commonly
taken to mean emotional stress, its
meaning for the body is much broader. In
a biological sense, stress means any challenge
to the body’s life processes and survival
skills. For example, exposure to too
much cold or heat is stressful. Malnourishment
or eating junk food is stressful.
Too much noise is stressful. Fits of anger
are stressful, and anxiety and depression
exacerbate emotional stress. Chemicals
foreign to the body cause stress, as they
react with our biological molecules and
so modify our body chemistry.
One of the most stressful chemical
agents is cigarette smoke. Oxygen free
radicals, tars, heavy metals, and radioactive
substances in cigarette smoke,
whether inhaled actively or passively, deplete
virtually all the types of nutrients in
the body, and as this happens, the risk of
asthma, bronchitis, cancer, and heart disease
skyrockets. Chlorinated hydrocarbon
pollutants entering our bodies from
the air, water and foods deplete our antioxidants
and many other orthomolecules
and thereby increase the risks of cancer,
nerve damage, memory loss, and liver or
kidney failure. Alcohol intake is stressful,
whether or not a person is an alcoholic.
Other sources of stress include infectious
agents (ALL viruses or bacteria,
fungi such as yeasts and molds, protozoan
or worm parasites, mycoplasmas
such as the one that causes pneumonia).
Infectious agents hijack our biochemical
machinery to meet their needs. These intruders
also siphon off vitamins and minerals
that we need to make energy and
otherwise conduct our life processes.
As the immune system mounts assaults
these unwanted guests, fever and other
inflammation develop that literally burn
away our antioxidant reserves and accelerate
our losses of B vitamins and minerals.
That’s why increasing your intake
of the superb antioxidant vitamin C and
minerals such as zinc and magnesium
can make such a difference when you
have a cold. Don’t underrate the importance
of nutrients against the stress of
infection. Increased nutrient intakes will
even help slow AIDS progression.
Managing Specific Health Problems and Healing Organ Damage
The topic of therapeutic nutritional supplementation
is a huge one. Hundreds of
books have been written, and tens of thousands
of scientific papers have been published
on the uses of vitamins and other
nutrients to treat clinical disease conditions
in order to achieve healing. Drugs
don’t heal, and government regulatory
agencies, goaded on by the pharmaceutical
drug interests, have done their best to
shut down this entire field of nutritional
application. They’ve spectacularly failed,
though, because the records show that vitamins
and minerals can be employed in
combination with other orthomolecules
and with herbal preparations to manage,
heal or cure just about any disease or
dysfunction. Not only this, but in so doing
they outperform the drugs in all areas.
Here nutrients become nutraceuticals,
to be administered in doses sufficient to
give maximum benefit against a disease.
Sophisticated nutraceutical combinations
are personalized to the needs of the individual.
Some clinicians and scientists
believe, as do we, that even aging can be
slowed using this strategy.
Every one of us has an “Achilles Heel”
in our body makeup, some weakness or
weaknesses that will likely bring on ill health
or premature aging and without intervention
will likely shorten life. By learning to
be aware of our body’s grunts, groans,
squeaks, and quirks, and by working with
trained professionals, we can target these
weaknesses for special treatment in order
to slow progressive functional loss (as the
liver carrying a chronic virus, for example),
to reverse existing loss (as memory function)
or even to heal longstanding zones
of trauma (as a damaged joint). At this
level of a personal vitamin program, the
potential benefit is lifesaving, and this is
both the promise and challenge of 21st
century health care.
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