Vitamin Advice

This question has been has been tormenting parents all over the world. Yet, there are no easy answers to it. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)says that “a diet based on the Food Guide Pyramid provides adequate amounts of all the vitamins a child needs.” But then, there are a lot of other factors that decide whether your child is getting adequate amounts of vitamins, such as the child’s eating habits, composition and quality of the diets, etc.

One important thing to note here is that the quality of most foods available now has declined. The only good ones available now are organically grown food. Just look at these figures: the amount of calcium in broccoli has fallen by a whopping 50 per cent, the iron content in watercress is down by a steep 88 per cent, the vitamin C in cauliflower has fallen by a huge 40 per cent… You may not be giving your child the usual fare of refined food spiked with sugar and fat and carbohydrates. Yet, there is no guarantee that he or she is getting her required daily dose of children’s vitamins.

Still experts disagree much on this subject of children’s vitamins. The AAP advises giving your child a vitamin supplement only if your pediatrician recommends it. That is because most of the daily foods are fortified. However, the AAP acknowledges that a daily dose of children’s vitamins won’t hurt your child unless it exceeds the recommended daily allowance for any vitamin or mineral. Also, such a daily dose of children’s vitamins help fill in any gaps in a child’s nutrition, and also helps children who are sensitive to certain foods. What is to be borne in mind here is that children’s vitamins cannot replace good food. They can only supplement your child’s food. If your child is not eating well, you should not only give him children’s vitamin supplements but also take steps to improve his eating habits and his diet.

Oh yes, there is one more reason why you should be giving your children a proper diet. Recent research says diet and behavior are interlinked. The Appleton Central Alternative High School replaced vending machines with water coolers and started offering fresh vegetables, fruits, whole-grain bread and a salad bar in place of the hamburgers and french fries. The result: No longer does a police officer patrol the school’s hallways, there is no vandalism, there is no litter.

Go for food-based children’s vitamins

Now comes the important question. What kind of children’s vitamin should you give your child? You should start with a food-based vitamin. No questions about that. Synthetic vitamins are out. Scientists and doctors now prefer to use natural vitamins. This is where glyconutritionals come in. They are foods and nutritional supplements that provide saccharides along with other glycoforms essential to the body. Glyconutritional blends are made from fruits and vegetables and contain the essential vitamins, minerals, and other vital nutrients, and provide support for the body’s immune system.

The saccharides in glyconutritionals are necessary for proper ‘cell-to-cell’ communication and helps keep the body’s glands and organs functioning well. They also help the immune system and the endocrine system in top order, and the body in optimal health.

Worried about how you will make your child swallow all those pills? Well, children’s vitamins and nutritional supplements now come as delicious, multicolored, flavored, chewable tablets. Your children will eat them up just as they eat up the junk foods and candies!

Vitamin Advice

Vitamins are organic substances that are necessary for normal health and growth in both animals and humans. If a vitamin is absent from the diet, or we don’t properly absorb it, a specific deficiency disease may develop.

Even worse, our entire body may start a decline that, over a period of years, may develop into a very serious disease such as, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc.

That there is a relationship between what we eat and specific disease was first noted by the Englishman William Fletcher in 1905 while researching the causes of the disease beriberi. He observed that the disease was prevented by eating unpolished rather than polished rice. He concluded that the husk of rice must have special nutrients, which we know today as vitamins.

Even before this discovery, fruits and vegetables were known to prevent and cure many diseases.  Even though what we now know as “vitamins” were unknown, many of their benefits were well recognized.

Even today English sailors are known as “Limeys” because, when limes were added to their diets, they no longer suffered from scurvy.

While vitamins prevent and cure some specific diseases, they also are necessary for virtually every function within our bodies.

Because of heavy advertising, we associate Vitamin C with preventing/fighting colds.  In truth, Vitamin C does not prevent or fight a cold.  It bolsters and strengthens our immune system which attacks the cold germs.

Vitamin C performs many other important functions within the body.  A major function is synthesis of hydroxyproline, an important component of collagen and, thereby, all connective tissues.

Vitamin C is essential for growth of cartilage, bone and teeth, and for wound healing.  It contributes to the structure of bones, muscles, and blood vessels.

Vitamin C helps support the immune system, aids amino acid metabolism and iron absorption.

Another vitamin – B6 – does not have a reputation as grand as Vitamin C yet it is as essential to good health.  Vitamin B6 cannot claim dramatic and immediate “cures” for diseases like scurvy, beriberi, or colds like other vitamins, but it is known as the master vitamin in processing amino acids.

It is estimated that 50% of Americans are deficient in Vitamin B6.

The same is true for virtually every vitamin.  Without a proper supply of vitamins, the body develops disease.

Some diseases, such as beriberi and scurvy, show up quickly and dramatically.

Other diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, take years to develop.  They go undetected for many years until it may be too late.

Because the body is a “closed system”, vitamins, like every other nutrient, must come from the food we consume. The principal sources of vitamins are the fruits and vegetables we consume.

In 1936 the US Government released a report that clearly and emphatically stated that the soils used to grow our food products are so depleted of minerals that: “We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for normal function of some special structure in the body. Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body’s appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.”

Things have not improved in 70 years.  In fact, they have gotten much worse.

An entire industry has come into existence because of this fact.  Vitamins are consumed by 43% of Americans, yet we continue to suffer and die from preventable diseases that were unknown 50 years ago.

Research scientists have long recommended that nutritional supplements are absolutely essential to our health and wellbeing.  This is especially true when we consider our long term health.

And now the American Medical Association, in a significant break from its earlier position that vitamins only produce colored urine, agrees that every American needs to take nutritional supplements.

Not only are vitamins missing from the fruits and vegetables we consume, but antioxidants, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and fiber are also missing.

Nutritional supplements that provide only one, or a limited number of components, can provide a false feeling of wellbeing.

It is unrealistic to believe that the food we eat is lacking only one element needed by our body.

When the body lacks one component it probably lacks many, even most, simply because the source of the components is deficient.  Adding only one component to the diet not only ignores the fact that the basic diet is deficient but gives a false sense of security that we are correcting a health problem.