Do I need to take supplements?

The first thing I do every morning after breakfast is take my supplements. Do I need to take supplements? I’m pretty active and eat very nutritionally balanced meals.

I often get asked the same question: “Why should I bother taking supplements? I’m healthy.”

So, why SHOULD people take supplements? And, does EVERYONE need to supplement?” Read on to make your own opinion.

Why Take Supplements

The purpose of supplementation is to supplement an already good nutritional eating plan. Proper supplementation provides your body with the nutrients it needs to not only maintain optimal health and prevent deficiencies, but also to meet the demands under which it is placed daily.

For the majority of us, getting in our exercise and required dose of fruits and vegetables daily is a struggle! The new recommended daily intake of fruits and veggies is actually 10 to 13 servings and I know very few people who manage to achieve anything close to that. Unfortunately, the quality of our foods just isn’t what it used to be.

I still highly recommend consuming as many fruits and vegetables as possible, as the health benefits are indisputable, but due to the use of fertilizers, our soils and our food just don’t contain the same levels of nutrients it used to. In North America we only have 8% of the mineral content left in our soils today (WHO 2009). As opposed to N. America , Europe still has 72% of the mineral content left in their soils.

Recommendations from the American Medical Association – AMA

For this reason, if we want to maintain optimal vitamin and mineral levels in our body, we have to supplement! The American Medical Association even recommends that everyone supplement with a high quality multivitamin daily, to ensure that we’re getting the nutrients we need.

In addition to the reduced quality or our food, most of us expose our bodies to tremendous amounts of stress on a daily basis – environmental toxins, food additives, chemicals, unhealthy foods, alcohol… all of these things take a toll on the body and can disrupt our hormone levels, our vitamin stores and the way that the body functions. So, we need to take our supplements to counteract these daily disruptions! It has been assessed that , in order to have our full complement of vitamins and minerals today , one would have to consume 22,000 calories/day!

If you have questions about what type of supplements to take please feel free to message me.