Vitamins: Separating Fact From Fiction by Web MD
"Your Health" <[email protected]> Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:59:29 -0600
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--===============1784466735== Content-Type: text/html; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <html><body id='h304837' ><table width='500' border='0' align='center' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='3' style='font-size:12px;'><tr> <td align='center'><p align='center'><a href='http://technewsout.com/html.php/97004/539327'>View this email as Webpage</a></p></td></tr></table><div> <table style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" border="1" width="64%"> <tbody> <tr> <td><a onclick="sl(this,'','logo');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30475"><img class="logo_rdr" src="http://img.webmd.com/dtmcms/live/webmd/consumer_assets/site_images/layout/shared/logo_webmd.gif" border="0" alt="WebMD: Better Information. Better Health." width="190" height="58" /></a> <h2>Vitamins: Separating Fact From Fiction</h2> <div class="subhead_fmt">Experts cut through the hype about the health benefits of vitamin supplements.</div> <div class="author_fmt">By <a onclick="return sl(this,'','prog-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30498">Richard Sine</a><br />WebMD Feature</div> <div class="reviewedBy_fmt">Reviewed by <a onclick="return sl(this,'','prog-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30521">Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD</a></div> <p>There are enough myths around vitamins and vitamin <a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30544">supplements</a> to make an ancient Greek blush, and it's easy to see why.</p> <p>We all know that vitamins and minerals are essential to good health -- it says so right there on the cereal box. And we live in the more-is-better era of Hummers, Big Gulps, and McMansions. Which raises the obvious question: if taking 100% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of, say, vitamin C is good enough to keep us going through the day, then why shouldn't taking 1,000% be enough to melt our fat, cure our blues, and let us leap tall buildings in a single bound?</p> <div class="aia_rdr"> <div class="aia_border_fmt"> <div class="aia_title_bar_fmt"> <h4>Recommended Related to Food and Recipes</h4> </div> <p class="aia_read_full_fmt"><a onclick="return sl(this,'','aia-related');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30567">Beyond Snack Packs: 22 Healthy Munchies</a></p> <div class="aia_section_fmt"> <div class="aia_content_fmt">Consumers are turning to 100-calorie snack packs -- of crackers, cookies, chips, and more -- in recornumbers. Obviously, many see these convenient little bags as a great way to control calories and keep them from polishing off whole bags of less-than-healthy snacks. But is this new food category -- which has gone from $0 to $150 million in sales in less than two years -- really the best bet for those trying to eat healthy snacks and control weight? WebMD put the question to several diet...</div> </div> <p class="aia_read_full_fmt"><a onclick="return sl(this,'','aia-related');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30567">Read the Beyond Snack Packs: 22 Healthy Munchies article > ></a></p> </div> </div> <p>Meanwhile, the $19 billion-a-year dietary supplement industry continually reminds us that we can get our vitamins from a pill. Which invites yet another question: Why should we bother choking down bushels of brussels sprouts when we could get the same effect by sprinkling supplement shavings over our Boston cream pie?</p> <p>If life were only that easy. The broad consensus from <a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30590">nutrition</a> experts -- or at least the ones who aren't buying Hummers with the proceeds from supplement sales -- is that while vitamins are indeed essential, big doses are usually pointless and can even be harmful. And no pill is likely to ever adequately substitute for a healthy <a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30590">diet</a>.</p> <h3>Why They Matter</h3> <p>Vitamins and minerals are substances your body needs for normal growth and functioning. Some facilitate crucial chemical reactions, while others act as building blocks for the body.</p> <p>Nutritionists call vitamins and minerals "micronutrients" to distinguish them from the macronutrients such as proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that make up the bulk of our food. While micronutrients are vital for the proper processing of macronutrients, they're needed in smaller quantities. Think of it this way: If macronutrients are the <a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30613">gas</a> in your engine, then micronutrients are like the motor oil, coolant, and battery fluid.</p> <p>Micronutrient deficiency can lead to acute diseases with exotic names like scurvy, pellagra, and <a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30636">beriberi</a>. Deficiency diseases were common in the U.S. until the 1940s, when the FDA-mandated fortification of common foods like bread and milk. These diseases are still common in many poorer countries.</p> <h3>Maintaining a Healthy Diet</h3> <p>It's easy to get enough micronutrients from your food if you maintain a healthy diet, Audrey Cross, PhD, associate clinical professor of nutrition at Columbia's School of Public Health, tells WebMD. But most people fail that test; they'll eat two or three servings of fruits and veggies per day rather than the recommended five. That's why Cross (and many other nutritionists) suggest a multivitamin as a sort of nutritional safety net for many of their patients.</p> <p>But it's just a safety net. So-called "<a onclick="return sl(this,'','embd-lnk');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30659">whole foods</a>" like veggies and whole grains contain fiber and a host of other important nutrients that can't be adequately delivered through pills. In fact, scientists are still finding new "trace elements" in whole foods that may someday be labeled essential to health -- but aren't found in any pill.</p> <p>"There are literally thousands of these compounds, and we're just scratching the surface on knowing what their role is," says David Grotto, a registered dietitian and spokesman for the American Dietetic Association. "We're sending the wrong message if people believe they've got everything under control and if they're taking vitamins while eating a horrible diet."</p> <h3>Health Solutions <span>From Our Sponsors</span></h3> <div class="hs_cols"> <ul> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_1');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30682">Answers about puberty</a> </li> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_2');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30705">Depression Med for You?</a> </li> </ul> <ul> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_3');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30728">Discover Wakefulness!</a> </li> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_4');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30751">Multiple Sclerosis </a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_5');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30774">Nodding on Night Shift?</a> </li> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_6');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30797">Psoriasis Treatment </a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_7');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30682">Teen Girls & Health</a> </li> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_8');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30820">Treated OSA with CPAP</a> </li> </ul> <ul> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_9');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30843">Treating Depression</a> </li> <li><a onclick="return sl(this,'','hicb f-hs_10');" href="http://technewsout.com/jp.php/97004/539327/30866">Wellness Videos </a></li> </ul> </div> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div><!-- 211041 --><br><br> <table width="500" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="3"> <tr><td><div align="left"><font face="arial, verdana" size="1"> To remove yourself from this distribution please click <a href="http://technewsout.com/option.php/97004/539327">here</a> to start the process for email deletion.</font> </div><p align="center"><img src="http://technewsout.com/o.php/97004/539327" border="0"> <font color="#999999" face="arial, verdana" size="2">MSC Marketing Inc <br>111 West Broadway Vancouver, BC V5Y 1P4</font></p></td></tr></table></body></html> --===============1784466735== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ Ding-patches mailing list [email protected] http://hawk.netfonds.no/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ding-patches --===============1784466735==--