Health & Fitness Blog

Vitamins and Minerals and What they do

The Basics

We all have heard of vitamins and minerals and their importance in our daily diet for good health.

The sheer variety of vitamins and minerals that is available in health shops and supermarkets may seem confusing and even a little scary – what to buy, and for what benefit ??

Vitamins are a fundamentally important part of the human diet, and in order to take the best care of your health and well being,  it’s useful to understand what each vitamin does – and why you need them. Once you understand the  basics and functions of each of the vitamins and minerals, then you’ll be able to shop wisely and choose food, and vitamin supplements, that will help improve your health and well being.

It’s not necessarily the pills containing the highest quantities of vitamins that are the best, and the more expensive ones aren’t necessarily better than the cheaper brands.

Given that most food today is highly processed, it is recommended that you check to see that you are getting your daily requirement of vitamins and minerals from your daily diet.   If  you’re not, then it’s worth making up the lack by taking supplements.

Some vitamins are actually produced by the body rather than being absorbed from food, but even then certain conditions are required to make this happen.   Vitamin D, for example, is produced from exposure to sunlight, and so our vitamin D levels fall in the Winter, and can be low if you work indoors.

What are Vitamins and Minerals?

Vitamins and Minerals are micro-nutrients which are required for the normal functioning of the body. Though they have no energy or calories, the body needs vitamins and minerals because of their various functions, and the chemical reactions they enable in the body and brain.

For example -

• Some Vitamins, including the B-group vitamins, convert food into energy, and help strengthen your nervous system – good if you’re overworked or stressed-out !.
• Vitamins are required to make enzymes and hormones.   Hormones are important substances used by the body and the brain to perform a number of essential functions
• Vitamins promote normal growth by aiding metabolism and helping to build protection against germs and viruses.
• Vitamins are very important for normal growth and development in children
• Vitamins and Minerals help in healthy bones and teeth
• These micro-nutrients are good for healthy skin, hair and nails and keeps you mentally strong

Vitamins D and K are INTERESTING IN THAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY produced naturally by the body. Vitamin D can be formed in the skin, given adequate exposure to sunlight, while vitamin K is normally produced by our natural healthy intestinal bacteria. However, it’s necessary to supplement the naturally-produced amounts of these two Vitamins because, partly due to the conditions of modern life, they are generally not produced in adequate amounts for your on-going needs.

So How Many Different Vitamins and Minerals Are There ?

There are thirteen Vitamins, and sixteen (or more) minerals currently recognized by science.  Of these 13 Vitamins, there are two basic groups – Fat Soluble and Water Soluble.

Fat-Soluble Vitamins

Fat-soluble vitamins are stored in the fatty tissues in the body and in the liver. Vitamins A, E, D and K are fat-soluble – that is, they dissolve in fat, but not water.  Since these vitamins are stored in the body, it’s important not to take too high a quantity of them in a healthy diet.   Because the body stores them, their levels will build up in your body if you get too much of them, and in excess quantities they can be toxic and even cause health problems.

Water-Soluble Vitamins

The other group of Vitamins are the water-soluble vitamins. These Vitamins pass into the water in your body and pass out again when you pass water.   Vitamin C, and the B-group Vitamins are water soluble vitamins.   The good news is that, if you take too much of them, the excess is passed out of the body when you visit the toilet.   But the downside is that you need to keep taking them every day for the very same reason.   Also, when you cook your food, especially when boiling food such as vegetables, these vitamins are lost as they leach out into the cooking water.

In my nest post I’ll go into the details of the function that each Vitamin and Mineral plays in the body.   As I said above, once you know the function of each vitamin and mineral – and how much of each one you need – then it’s easy to pick the right combination that will maintain and improve your health.

Vitamins are Famous !

Of all the nutrients a healthy body needs, almost everybody has heard of Vitamins, and while most people have heard that “Vitamin C can help prevent you catching a cold”, most of us don’t know much about these essential micro-nutrients.   Hopefully now you’ve gained a bit of knowledge that will help you know what you’re looking for when you want to make some small changes to your diet that will improve your health.

Next Time

Come back soon, I’ll be going into more detail on what each Vitamin can do for you, and how much you should aim to get, in order to be sure that you have a healthy diet.

TYPES OF FATS IN YOUR DIET: The good, bad, and the ugly

There are various types of Fats in your diet, let’s discuss them in detail:

Saturated Fats:

Everybody knows that the Saturated Fats are the “bad” fats and you should avoid them, right ?  Wrong !

Provided you eat  the recommended daily intake  of saturated fats of no more than 20 grams per day, and no more than one third of your total fat intake in a day, then saturated fats are actually good for you.

They help in the absorption of Omega 3 fatty acids, which are good for a number of things, including healthy lungs (smokers take particular note !).

Saturated fats also help in the absorption of calcium, and are therefore good for strong bones and for helping protect against osteoporosis as you get older (and this applies to men as well as women). Saturated fats will also help protect the cells in all parts of your body against invading infections and diseases.

However, like most good things, Saturated Fats are bad if you take them in excess. These are the fats that raise your blood cholesterol levels and clog your arteries.   These are the fats that cause heart disease.

Watch out for Saturated Fats in the diet.   Animal products (such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, lard and butter), as well as coconut, palm and other tropical oils are all rich in saturated fats. Butter, and the fats in meat and dairy products, are all especially high in saturated fat.   And margarine, you know – the stuff that the ads on TV say is good for you – margarine is also a supplier of saturated fats in your diet.

So what should you do ?

Although it sounds like all bad news, by just making a few changes in your diet, you can make a huge difference in your health, and in your life, by avoiding an excess of saturated fats as a part of your healthy diet.

At breakfast, choose skim milk verses full cream milk for your cereal.   Throughout the day, switch to skim milk in your coffee and tea.

Cakes and muffins have a lot of saturated fats, it is good if you can avoid them in your regular daily diet.   Then allow yourself to have the occasional one as a special treat now and then, and you will enjoy it all the more !

And here’s an interesting calculation – if you change to low fat dairy products instead of full cream, in one year you will reduce your intake of Saturated Fat by around 4 kilos.

Wherever possible, choose margarine instead of butter. Study the labels on the containers in the supermarket, and select a good low fat margarine that is better than regular butter.

As a final tip, reduce your intake of refined and processed foods such as white bread etc, and go for wholemeal products instead.   Not only will this reduce your fat intake, but also the extra fibre in wholemeal products will actually help to absorb and flush fat out of your body.   The fibre in the wholemeal bread will counteract the fat in the margarine that you spread on it.

Unsaturated Fats:

Unsaturated Fats are good for you, right ?  Right !  So most of your fat intake should be from unsaturated fats.

There are two types of unsaturated fats: Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated.

When you replace “bad” saturated fats with “good” unsaturated fats in your diet, they both (Mono-unsaturated and Polyunsaturated) help in lowering your cholesterol levels. Not only that – Monounsaturated Fats actually help in raising the amount of “good” cholesterol.

Polyunsaturated fats contain essential fatty acids that our body can not produce itself  –  Omega-6 and Omega-3.  Since the body needs these fats, but can’t manufacture them itself, we have to get these fatty acids from the food we eat.

So what should you do ?

Most cooking oils are unsaturated fats. Canola oil and olive oil are the best options for cooking, because of their ratio of monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids. But be aware – when you see a label on cooking oil that says “light”, this refers to the taste or the colour, and not the fat content. All oils are 100% fat, “oil” and “fat” is really just the same thing.

Mono- and Poly- unsaturated fats are found in most vegetable products and oils. Avocados, nuts and seeds, and olive oil, peanut oil, and canola oil,  these are excellent sources of the “good” unsaturated fats.

But don’t forget – “good” fats are still fats, and if you eat them in excess they will cause you the same problems as “bad’ fats in excess.   If you eat more than your body needs, then your body will still save them for you, adding them in handy layers around your nice slim waist, hips and thighs !

And Then There are Trans Fats

The more we hear about Trans Fatty Acids, the more we hear that they are the real fat villains.   But is this the true picture ?

Let’s discuss it in the next article! Come back soon