Maurice Boscorelli
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2010
- Messages
- 19,322
It’s essential you get adequate nutrients in your diet to be healthy and have a lean body composition. Vitamin D, B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, omega-3 fish oils, carnitine and many more nutrients are absolutely essential for well being and disease prevention. With the nutrient-poor soil of today, the overconsumption of processed foods, the use of pesticides and antibiotics in food and animal industries, and our modern lifestyles, we have to get adequate nutrients from sources other than food. Or, if we do get our essential nutrients from food, we have to be smart about it and eat organic, local, and wild as much as possible.
There is much confusion about how much of these essential nutrients we need in our diets. Controversy and severe health consequences abound when it comes to recommended daily allowances from the U.S. Institute of Medicine. A new review published in the journal Nutrition Reviews explains why official recommendations are not adequate. If you follow them, they may put your health at risk.
Medicine uses a model of nutrition whereby a deficiency of a particular nutrient is associated with a single, particular disease, such as rickets with vitamin D or scurvy with vitamin C. Scientists identify adequate intake by finding the population that has the lowest intake of the nutrient in question but doesn’t have the disease in question.
For example, physical symptoms of osteomalacia or the softening of bones that precludes osteoporosis can be avoided if vitamin D is at least 15 ng/ml—an abysmally low level that puts you at risk for altered gene function, the development of chronic inflammation, and poor immunity, among other things. But, a 2010 study was the first one to analyze the cellular health of bones and relate it to vitamin D status. Results showed that a vitamin D level of over 32 ng/ml was necessary to ensure normal bone health, whereas more than 50 percent of the study participants had vitamin D readings below this level, and had evidence of osteomalacia in the bones—the physical symptoms just hadn’t yet presented themselves yet.
Simply, the widespread problem is that nutrient recommendations are for amounts that prevent physical symptoms of a serious disease at the lowest possible level. But most of us want to actually be healthy, not just avoid getting a near mortal disease. It is essential we find another way of identifying how much of these nutrients we actually need.
Robert Heaney suggests that an excellent way to identify nutrient intake levels is to look at the level at which the human physiology adapted over the millennia of evolution prior to the agricultural revolution because that is the level to which our physiology is fine-tuned. Given the many changes to diet and lifestyle, returning to the Paleo era for our nutrient recommendations is a reasonable starting point for identifying what our bodies need to prevent disease and help us maintain a lean, strong body composition.
Of course, we still need scientists and researchers to tell us what the adequate nutrients were for our ancestors, and another alternative is to find sources you trust. For example, the Vitamin D Council agrees with most functional medicine experts that 50 ng/ml is an adequate serum level for vitamin D for health. The organization Nutritional Magnesium doesn’t make a clear cut suggestions on magnesium needs, but if you read their articles, you’ll find that a daily intake of 500 mg will lead to less disease risk and better health.
Take away from this tip the understanding that you need to get adequate nutrients to support the optimal cell, tissue, and gene function in the body, and for virtually all nutrients, this level will be higher then the amount needed to prevent “pre-mortal” symptoms or the development of a disease that will kill you. An easy place to start is to ensure your vitamin D levels are at least 50 ng/ml with a serum test, take an easily absorbable magnesium, and balance your omega-3 fats with your omega-6 fats so that the amount you get is in an equal ratio.
There is much confusion about how much of these essential nutrients we need in our diets. Controversy and severe health consequences abound when it comes to recommended daily allowances from the U.S. Institute of Medicine. A new review published in the journal Nutrition Reviews explains why official recommendations are not adequate. If you follow them, they may put your health at risk.
Medicine uses a model of nutrition whereby a deficiency of a particular nutrient is associated with a single, particular disease, such as rickets with vitamin D or scurvy with vitamin C. Scientists identify adequate intake by finding the population that has the lowest intake of the nutrient in question but doesn’t have the disease in question.
For example, physical symptoms of osteomalacia or the softening of bones that precludes osteoporosis can be avoided if vitamin D is at least 15 ng/ml—an abysmally low level that puts you at risk for altered gene function, the development of chronic inflammation, and poor immunity, among other things. But, a 2010 study was the first one to analyze the cellular health of bones and relate it to vitamin D status. Results showed that a vitamin D level of over 32 ng/ml was necessary to ensure normal bone health, whereas more than 50 percent of the study participants had vitamin D readings below this level, and had evidence of osteomalacia in the bones—the physical symptoms just hadn’t yet presented themselves yet.
Simply, the widespread problem is that nutrient recommendations are for amounts that prevent physical symptoms of a serious disease at the lowest possible level. But most of us want to actually be healthy, not just avoid getting a near mortal disease. It is essential we find another way of identifying how much of these nutrients we actually need.
Robert Heaney suggests that an excellent way to identify nutrient intake levels is to look at the level at which the human physiology adapted over the millennia of evolution prior to the agricultural revolution because that is the level to which our physiology is fine-tuned. Given the many changes to diet and lifestyle, returning to the Paleo era for our nutrient recommendations is a reasonable starting point for identifying what our bodies need to prevent disease and help us maintain a lean, strong body composition.
Of course, we still need scientists and researchers to tell us what the adequate nutrients were for our ancestors, and another alternative is to find sources you trust. For example, the Vitamin D Council agrees with most functional medicine experts that 50 ng/ml is an adequate serum level for vitamin D for health. The organization Nutritional Magnesium doesn’t make a clear cut suggestions on magnesium needs, but if you read their articles, you’ll find that a daily intake of 500 mg will lead to less disease risk and better health.
Take away from this tip the understanding that you need to get adequate nutrients to support the optimal cell, tissue, and gene function in the body, and for virtually all nutrients, this level will be higher then the amount needed to prevent “pre-mortal” symptoms or the development of a disease that will kill you. An easy place to start is to ensure your vitamin D levels are at least 50 ng/ml with a serum test, take an easily absorbable magnesium, and balance your omega-3 fats with your omega-6 fats so that the amount you get is in an equal ratio.
