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VITAMINS, MINERALS AND AMINO ACIDS

VITAMINS
Vitamin supplements are NOT pep pills nor are they substitutes for food. A lot of people think vitamin supplements can replace food. They cannot. In fact, vitamin supplements cannot be assimilated without ingesting food. Vitamin supplements have no caloric or energy value of their own and are not substitutes for protein or for any other nutrients, such as minerals, fats, carbohydrates, and water – or even for each other! Vitamins themselves are not the components of our body structures. You cannot take vitamin supplements, stop eating, and expect to be healthy.

If you think of the body as a car’s combustion engine and vitamins as spark plugs, you have a fairly good idea of how these amazing minute food substances work for us. Vitamins regulate our metabolism through enzyme systems. A single deficiency can endanger the whole body. Vitamins are components of our enzyme system which, acting like spark plugs, energise and regulate our metabolism, keeping us tuned up and functioning at high performance. Compared with our intake of other nutrients like proteins, fats and carbohydrates, our vitamin intake (even on some megadose regimes) is miniscule. But a deficiency is even one vitamin can endanger the whole human body.

“ Everyone who has in the past eaten sugar, white flour or canned food has some deficiency disease, the extent of the disease depending on the percentage of such deficient foods in the diet.” – Dr Daniel T. Quigley (author of The National Malnutrition)

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MINERALS
Like vitamins, minerals are essential for just about every body process.
Calcium, magnesium and phosphorus help make bones and teethe. Nerve signals, vital for the brain and muscles, depend on calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium. Potassium is also responsible for water balance in the body. Magnesium is essential for healthy muscles esp. the heart muscle. Oxygen is carried in the blood by an iron compound. Chromium helps control blood sugar levels. Zinc is essential for all body repair, renewal and development. Selenium and zinc help boost the immune system. Brain function depends on adequate magnesium, manganese, zinc and other essential minerals. So basically without minerals we'd be a mess!!!

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AMINO ACIDS
Organic compounds from which proteins are made. In other words, they are the building blocks of our body and are therefore also the end product of protein digestion. The human body needs and uses 20 amino acids as its building blocks for everything from making cells and maintaining tissue to producing hormones, enzymes and neurotransmitters. These 20 amino acids can reassemble themselves to create over 50,000 different protein combinations.
– Amino acids are used for growth of body cells and tissue.
– Synthesis of hormones, enzymes, plasma proteins and anti – bodies.
– Provide energy (primarily when on a low carb diet and fat stores are depleted).

There are two types of amino acids, essential and non-essential. The essential amino acids are obtained from eating proteins in food (protein itself is comprised of amino acids), and the non-essential amino acids can be manufactured by the body. A diet lacking in even one of these amino acids can be detrimental to one's health. Stress, infection, trauma, age and some medications may also put one's amino acids out of balance. Scientists are only just beginning to understand how these chemical compounds work and whether or not amino acid supplements can be beneficial for certain conditions.

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