DO SUPPLEMENTS WORK?

MARCEL SALAZAR touches on the topic of supplements and asks if they work. Supplements may not be necessary for healthy people with a bal‐anced diet, but unfortu ‐nately it is harder now to get food closer to source and some fruits, for exam‐ple, may have been picked six to eight months before they end up on the supermarket shelves.

This means that even these good foods are not as nutritionally dense as fruit picked within a week or so. There are also prob‐lems in mineral content in vegetables which have been grown in depleted soil. So, even with an os‐tensibly ‘healthy’ diet we may still find ourselves depleted in vitamins and minerals.

Marcel is very clear that all supplements are not equal and there is usually a relationship between price and quality. Supple‐ ments are not always a regulated activity so the quality of supplements can vary significantly. More and better quality control usually results in a better quality product.

The key to knowing what we need as well as which one to buy. Even for those of us who eat a basically healthy diet rarely do we consider the balance of vitamins and minerals. Marcel outlines the range of vitamins: A, B Group, C, D, E, and K and gives a brief explanation of the benefits of each product.

Minerals can be consid‐ ered as even more impor‐tant than vitamins. For sports people magnesium has a major effect on bones and muscle tissue.

Supplementing calcium can often be helpful but consuming calcium from your food is better than supplements. Iron is also critical for blood cells, and phosphorous, often taken in combination with other minerals. Zinc and copper are also essential to good body function.

Marcel can be contact‐ed via his website ‘strong‐forlife.me’ and he also has a YouTube channel and is on Facebook.