SUPERCHARGE YOUR HEALTH: THE BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC SUPPLEMENTATION
How healthy are you? Do you eat your fruits and veggies daily? Do you exercise regularly? Do you get enough vitamins and minerals in your body? Hopefully, you are able to answer yes to all of these questions, any if not, perhaps consider taking vitamins and minerals. In this week’s blog, we will dig a little further into last week’s topic on nutrition, focusing on what supplementation is, the importance of it and what we can do help.
What Are Vitamins and Minerals?
As a reminder, vitamins and minerals are micronutrients that are essential dietary elements required by organisms in varying quantities throughout life to orchestrate a range of physiological functions to maintain health. Each vitamin and mineral has their own function essential for survival and disease prevention. Although the focus is often on vitamin deficiency, it’s important to remember that too much of one vitamin can be toxic and dangerous.
What is Supplementation?
There’s nothing wrong with a little help, right? Sometimes, we don’t get enough vitamins and minerals from the foods that we eat and we need that extra support in order for the body to thrive and survive. That is the goal of supplementation. What does that mean? Vitamins and minerals in the form of a tablet or capsule provide the support that we need to address an array of conditions including arthritis, decrease bone density, gut issues immunocompromised, etc. This does not mean that people should stop eating our fruits and veggies and rely solely on supplements? Supplementation is an aid, not a substitution.
Now wait. If we have foods in high abundance of vitamins and minerals, what is the point of taking supplements? Believe it or not, some vitamins and minerals need to be in high abundancy and order for the body to function properly. Some foods that contain high vitamins and minerals may not be readily available or can be very costly for the average individual. Let’s take Vitamin A for example. Carrots contain an extraordinary amount of Vitamin A. It only takes one medium size carrot to provide an individual enough Vitamin A for two days. Carrots are reasonably affordable and readily available. Now let’s take zinc for example. Zinc is perhaps the best mineral for immune support. The only problem is that the best source of zinc is oysters. Here faces 3 problems: 1. Fresh oysters are not the easiest to obtain. 2. Oysters are expensive. 3. Have you ever had fresh oysters? They are a unique acquired taste.
The point is some sources of food provide specific vitamins and minerals but only contain a small amount in a normal portion size that still is not enough for the body to properly function. Supplementation allows the body to thrive by taking the necessary dosages needed to fulfill daily requirements. This doesn’t mean that you need a supplement for every vitamin and mineral as some only require small doses that can be fulfilled by the foods that we eat.
How Do You Know What Brands to Buy?
The first thing to do before buying supplements is make sure they are FDA approved. We highly recommend avoiding supplements that are not FDA approved or independently verified because there is no guarantee that the ingredients are exactly as described. Why ingest something that has not been approved or tested for that matter? There are so many questions that may be left unanswered.
Second, we recommend not buying supplements from a retail store such as Walmart, Target, Walgreens, etc. One of two things could be the issue: 1.) They may not be FDA approved. 2.) They are FDA approved but were not created in a well-known lab. Try researching for reputable labs that have great reviews and contain a lot of supplements at a reasonable retail price.
What Can Our Facility Do to Help?
We don’t sell every vitamin and mineral out on the market, but we do sell supplements to help with immune support, inflammation, digestive breakdown, muscle spasms, prostate regulation, arthritis, enzymes and disc rehydration. The supplements we offer focus on pain, inflammation and increase organ function. Even though we don’t specifically focus on the nutritional aspects of supplements, we are glad to give you names of companies that we use and are glad to order the appropriate supplements based on symptoms and issue presented. If you have any questions about supplements and nutrition, please call us at (724) 547-3377 and checkout our website at www.drlarrywilkinsspinalcare.com for more content.
Yours In Health,
Larry E. Wilkins, DC
Brian M. Steinert, DC
