Minerals and Health - They Go Hand in Hand

Minerals are essential for your health and nutrition. Minerals are need for the proper composition of body fluids, the formation of blood and bones, maintaining healthy nerve function, and minerals also function as coenzymes, which enable the body to build and feed cells.They are also partly responsible for your energy levels.

There are two ways for your body to get the essential minerals it needs. The best way for your body to get the minerals it needs is through food, but some people prefer supplements because of the difficulty associated with following a strict diet.

If you decide to take supplements, however, make sure they are of the highest quality and are independently regulated and tested. Most supplements are poorly made and are never broken down within your body.

Listed below are the food sources of the essential minerals your body needs on a daily basis to stay healthy:

* Copper---Soy beans, raisins, legumes, brazil nuts, molasses, and seafood
* Iron---Figs, beets, kelp, soy beans, carrots, cucumbers, sunflower seeds, watercress, raisins, bananas, grapes, and parsley
* Calcium---Figs, beans, almonds, raisins, brown rice, carrots, dates, spinach, cashews, papaya, celery, avocados, sesame seeds, brazil nuts, and garlic
* Chromium--- Clams, whole grains, brewers yeast, corn oil, and cheese
* Iodine---Dulce, lettuce, kelp, grapes, Irish moss, beets, oranges, celery, and mushrooms
* Potassium---Apples, tomatoes, spinach, bananas, strawberries, celery, mushrooms, figs, lemons, pineapple, rice, papaya, cucumbers, Brussels sprouts, pecans, and raisins
* Zinc---Liver, seafood, mushrooms, sunflower, and soy beans
* Sulphur---Eggs, cheese, nuts, onions, turnips, corn, broccoli, fish, wheat germ, and cucumbers
* Manganese---Bananas, beets, celery, egg yolks, walnuts, bran, whole grains, and leafy green vegetables
* Magnesium---Honey, tuna, almonds, pecans, kelp, and green vegetables
* Phosphorus---Cashews, oats, pecans, squash, almonds, carrots, and mushrooms
* Sodium---Raw milk, cucumbers, okra, seafood, lima beans, turnips, wheat germ, and pumpkins

If you have a hard time eating a lot of the foods above, try taking supplements, but remember that you need to be careful and do your research first. Make sure that it is a reputable health company with a proven track record of success. They should have nothing to hide and should be able to provide you with all of the technical information, ingredients, research, and the results of the independent research for every product they sell.

Natural health is becoming a popular and ever growing industry. It is good that more people are becoming pro-active about their health., but you need to watch out for companies who are providing poor quality natural products to make a quick buck in the natural health trend. There are a lot of them. Good natural health companies have been around for more than thirty years--before natural health was ever a cash machine.

A good natural health company should also have clinical studies published in scientific journals. In order to get published in one of these journals, the scientific community as a whole must agree with the findings in the study. It is very difficult to get published and only a few natural health companies have ever done so. Last but not least they should offer you a money back guarantee, just in case their products aren't for you.

Please try and implement as many of the foods listed above into your diet as possible. They are loaded with the essential minerals your body needs for its health. Do your research and find some unique, healthy recipes that include the foods and minerals above.

To Your Health,
Diet Health & Fitness
'Blog Squad'
DietHealthandFitness.com

How To Get Vitamins From Eating

If you struggle with things like fatigue, obesity, stress, or anxiety one of the main reasons is because your body is not getting the essential daily intake of vitamins that it needs. There are two ways to get vitamins in your body: food and/or supplements.

Food is obviously the best way for your body to get the vitamins it needs, but if you don't have the self discipline or the time to stick to the list below then you might want to consider supplements.

Vitamin supplements can get you what your body needs, but you need to make sure they are of the highest quality. Most vitamins that you can buy are poorly made and do not get broken down by your body. They simply pass right through you. Even high quality supplements should be taken along with food or a meal, this helps ensure their absorption by the body.

Whether you take supplements or not you should try to implement as many of the foods below into your diet as possible. Here are the food sources of your most important vitamins:

* Vitamin A - Fish oils, butter, egg yolks, liver, whole milk, goat's cheese, and dark green leafy vegetables, such as kale.

* Vitamin B1 - Brown rice, wild fish(not farmed), nuts, organic poultry, wheat germ, molasses, legumes(peas, beans etc.), sunflower seeds, soybeans, asparagus, oatmeal, plums, raisins, brussel sprouts, and broccoli.

* Vitamin B2 - Whole grains, nuts, molasses, almonds, spinach, brussel sprouts and brewer's yeast.

* Vitamin B3 - Organic poultry, wild fish, peanuts, eggs, molasses, and legumes.

* Vitamin B5 - Legumes, whole grain cereal, wild fish, organic poultry, goat's cheese, eggs, avacados, nuts, dates, orange juice, cooked mushrooms, and orange juice.

* Vitamin B6 -Wild fish, eggs, peas, organic poultry, spinach, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, and walnuts.

* Vitamin B12 - Wild seafood, liver, eggs, dairy products, sea vegetables (kelp etc.) and goat's cheese.

*Vitamin C - Oranges, lemons, green peppers, whole grains, green leafy vegetables, cabbage, potatoes, bananas, cantaloupe, grapefruit, papaya, tomatoes, and strawberries.

* Vitamin D - Egg yolk, fish oils, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, spinach, and the sun, from exposure of naked skin. To ensure the proper amount of vitamin D everyday stand in the sun for 10-15 minutes. Do not where sunglasses (most of the Vitamin D you get from the sun is taken in through your eyes), but don't stare at the sun either.

* Vitamin E - Dark green leafy vegetables, eggs, oatmeal, peanuts, tomatoes, raw fuits, watercress, and whole grain cereals.

Well, there you have it, those are the foods that carry the important vitamins your body needs everyday to be healthy and function properly. Hopefully you can make an effort to eat all of these different foods on a regular basis.

If you can you should feel better, have more energy, feel less stress, lose weight and notice a difference in your overall health and wellness.

To Your Health,

Diet Health & Fitness
'Blog Squad'
DietHealthandFitness.com

Who Else is Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired?

It's morning, at least according the alarm clock, since the sun isn't up yet. There's no more time on the snooze button, so you drag yourself out of bed and prop yourself upright until your coffee is ready.

Your morning shower helps you feel slightly more awake and alive, just in time to get you through preparing breakfasts and lunches for your family members without stopping to eat something yourself. The "rush hour" never ends: commute traffic, barely-met work deadlines, lunch-hour meeting over soda and cookies, behind schedule all afternoon.

After racing to meet your daughter at soccer practice, you do errands on the way home (dry cleaners, post office, last-minute groceries). The checklist continues: make dinner, eat dinner, wash up after dinner, help kids with homework, do laundry, take out the trash, sew on a button, change the hamster bedding and pay bills.

Then you toss and turn with worry half the night. And then the alarm goes off. Sound familiar? You are doing what you can to eat better, cut back on the caffeine, slow down, exercise more, and just take a deep breath. But isn't there something else that would help you fight back against the fatigue that often accompanies the never-ending "to-do" list?

The modern energy crisis: Everyday fatigue is a common complaint in our fast-paced society, ranking among the top five health problems reported by adults. Four out of 10 adults across all age groups experience fatigue, and it affects women far more than men.

Working women are particularly likely to be exhausted from the day-to-day challenge of juggling the many demands of modern life, including long work hours, care of children and aging family members, and the ever-growing burden of errands, chores, shopping trips, and more that are required just to keep a household going.

What's more, lack of energy becomes a vicious cycle. More adults today report only fair to poor or very poor quality of sleep. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the majority of adults who report everyday fatigue and loss of energy admit they don't get the minimum Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamins and minerals from their diet even one day per week!

Stressful lifestyles and jobs produce eating patterns that are rushed and nutritionally inadequate. The long-term negative health effects of this type of nutrient shortfall are potentially devastating. And some lifestyle patterns are more difficult to control.

Over one-third of menopausal women say they suffer from tiredness and loss of energy. Interestingly, less than half of people who feel stressed and exhausted consider this to be a health problem! Of those who admit they may need help, only half have tried any treatment.

Some people consider taking energy, or vitality supplements to naturally give them sustained energy all day long. Based on centuries of use in Asia, clinical use in Europe, and recent scientific studies, scientists have formulated a uniquely comprehensive formula for sustained vitality.

This formula is a natural, concentrated source of herbal ingredients and antioxidant phytonutrients shown to support your body's natural ability to maintain energy and resist everyday fatigue. This formula is used to make high quality energy supplements.

A natural energy supplement made with this formula should contain standardized extracts of cordyceps (a mushroom), Asian ginseng, and green tea which is specifically teamed to promote vitality. Cordyceps is clinically proven to help fight everyday fatigue, ginseng is traditionally used as an energizer, and the antioxidant properties of polyphenols in green tea promote sustained vitality.

People with a lack of energy need to consider getting more protein, vitamins and minerals in their diet. If you don't have a lot of energy it is simply because you are not healthy. Get healthy, lose those extra pounds and you will feel a tremendous difference in your energy levels.

High quality supplements can help, but ultimately it is YOUR choices that make the difference. Make time to get healthy, if you do you will have more energy and will be able to do everything else more efficiently. If you are considering a natural energy supplement, do your research and make sure it is one made with the natural formula listed above.

To Your Health,

Diet Health & Fitness
'Blog Squad'
DietHealthandFitness.com

Do Nutritional Supplements Support Weight Loss?

The next best thing you can do to lose weight and keep it off, after choosing a healthy diet, and exercise is to plan a good supplement program. The foundation of a good supplement program should be based on a quality multi-mineral, multi-vitamin daily supplement.

The basic multi-mineral, multi-vitamin daily supplement will supply what your body needs under ordinary circumstances to meet your normal daily needs and prevent disease.

If you are ill, if you have a propensity for a certain problem, if you are trying to recover from a disease or illness of any sort, if you are preparing for an operation, or if you are recovering from operation, you should plan on augmenting the daily supplement with other specialized supplements.

Another serious problem with food is that it is less and less nutritious in terms of vitamin and mineral delivery. Recent studies suggest that vitamins and minerals delivered to the human body by fruits and vegetables may have declined as much as 30 - 40% since 1960!

The problem of poor mineral and vitamin content is even further exacerbated by the wide spread use of chemical fertilizers that bind micronutrients, such as zinc and selenium, in the soil.

This binding makes the micronutrients inaccessible to the plants (the plants cannot get the nutrients out of the soil) and therefore the mature vegetables or fruits are lacking both in major and micronutrients. A highly disproportionate amount of food has added sugars and/or artificial sweeteners.

Some of these are cancer causing in and of themselves being, as they typically are, petrochemical derivatives (artificial flavor usually means carcinogen), but even an innocent sweetener like white (or brown) sugar inactivates your white blood cells by a factor of 40 percent for up to three or four hours!

Imagine, your immune system is weak, then you drink some orange juice (most of it is phony sugar water) or some yogurt loaded with sweeteners (like glucose, sucrose, fructose, real sugar, etc.) and then for the next four or five hours your white cells are disabled (their effectiveness blocked by 40%) and they are unable to successfully defend your system against any attack.

The best general solution to this problem is to dramatically improve your eating habits. It is nearly impossible to do this in an intelligent way unless you take time to inform yourself about food and how to prepare food.

For example, the majority of cooks do not understand that heavy metals bleed from stainless-steel cookware (once its hard, smooth surface is scratched or damaged in any way) into the foods prepared in such pans. We personally prefer enamel pans for most uses.

I should also mention that some recent evidence suggests that the microwave may be one of the most dangerous machines ever invented from a health standpoint.

Since it tears the cells in food apart by intermittent vibration, it may cause you to consume an extraordinary amount of free radicals which will accelerate your aging, promote illness, and weaken your immune system.

If a microwave can give you cancer from standing close to it while it is on just imagine what it is doing to your food. If you want to heat something quickly just put it in your oven and broil it.

Your oven gets extremely hot on the broil setting, so it won't take much longer than a microwave. If you want to defrost something, plan ahead and defrost it in the refrigerator.

To protect your body and immune system, it is essential to stop eating suspect foods, prepared goods, and most foods that fall in the candy or snack category. For example ordinary crackers are almost universally made with hydrogenated oils and often, like bread, have added iron.

We suggest that you purchase and prepare foods for yourself such as eggs (fry or boil eggs, whole eggs; eggs have a balanced supply of lecithin and cholesterol naturally), poultry (bake a chicken, boil chicken breasts), beef (broil a steak, throw a roast in the crock pot.

And prepare fruit and vegetables. For instance, along with scrambled eggs I might saute a diced onion, a diced apple or two with one or two diced jalapeños in a bit of butter to serve with the eggs.

Use a whole cabbage to steam or saute, add onions and garlic for additional flavor. Obviously, we cannot tell you what to eat or how to prepare it, but it is imperative to get away from most prepared foods (in frozen or shelf boxes, cans, jars, and all foods that are in any way prepared.)

Even yogurt can be dangerous if not plain. The flavored yogurts are often made with petrochemical carcinogens such as color and flavor, and sweeteners that are deadly to the weakened immune system. If you want to flavor your yogurt, buy organic plain yogurt and put fresh fruit and/or granola into it. I feel a safe rule is not to eat anything that would not have been available on the table of your grandfather.

You would not have found bagged salads, which can stay fresh for a week or two, thanks to chemicals, on his table. If I want a salad I chop up some kale, collards, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and stir up some oil, lemon juice, and vinegar; that is a salad.

Something grown in California, chopped and bagged in Chicago, and shipped to your grocer by way of New York is not a salad but it is a lifeless food source.
Another important addition to the diet would be to go on a modified juice fast to help cleanse the body (and particularly the individual cells of the body).

This would be to juice singly, together, or in any combination cabbage, onions, garlic, carrots, apples, pears, peppers, celery, onions, kale, spinach, fruits, and similar foods and to consume only the juice and as much as you can tolerate.

As a rule of thumb, any supplement program you start on, make sure you are getting what you pay for. I highly recommend you find a natural supplement company, one that has a track record of quality, integrity, and understands the power of nature.

To Your Health,

Diet Health & Fitness
'Blog Squad'
DietHealthandFitness.com

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What is The Difference Between Vitamins and Minerals?

Most people may realize that vitamins and minerals are two different things, but they probably do not know what vitamins and minerals their body needs and what they are good for. Vitamins, for example, are essential to life; regulate metabolism and assist the processes that release energy from digested food.

They also work with enzymes as co-enzymes, enabling the body to perform its activities, or build and feed cells. Vitamins are also either water soluble or fat soluble.

This is important because vitamins must have an effective way of being broken down within the body, otherwise they are not used and passed through the body. This is actually best evident in most vitamin pills or supplements you can buy in stores or on-line.

Most of these company's vitamins are not water or fat soluble enough for the body to ever break them down. I often refer to them as vitamin bricks. While you think you are getting all of that vitamin C you are buying, it is probably passing right through you. This has often been referred to as "expensive pee."

Just be careful and do your research. Like I said a reputable company will be able to provide you with information that proves that its vitamins are of the highest potency and purity and are very soluble.

So what are the fat soluble vitamins? They are: vitamin A, D, E, and K. Beta-carotene is also a fat soluble vitamin.

Fat soluble vitamins are stored in body tissues and require the presence of fatty acids in order to be transported and absorbed. Fat-free diets, for example interfere with the absorption of these vitamins and can create possible deficiencies.

What about water soluble vitamins? They are: B-complex, which consists of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12. Biotin, vitamin C, and Folic Acid are also water soluble vitamins.

Water soluble vitamins must be regularly consumed, and replenished within the body. Water soluble vitamins should be consumed or taken at divided times throughout the day. That is one reason it is best to eat a few small meals throughout the day than eat one or two giant meals.

Water soluble vitamins are not stored in the body, and therefore they are quickly depleted. Unlike animals, we cannot produce any Vitamin C in our bodies, therefore it is essential that you pay attention to how much vitamin C you are consuming, that is the only way your body will get enough to be healthy.

Well enough about vitamins, lets talk about minerals. Minerals are needed for the proper composition of body fluids. They are also needed for the building and formation of blood and bones as well as building and feeding cells.

The minerals you need are: Calcium, sodium, magnesium, boron, copper, cobalt, chromium, Iodine, sulpher, manganese, selenium, iron, vanadium, zinc, potassium, silicon, and phosphorus.

Minerals are needed in varying amounts and, like vitamins, are crucial to the body's health. Minerals also give you sustained energy.

The best way to get your proper amount of vitamins and minerals is through your diet (vitamins and minerals are easily broken down within food). However, many of us do not have the time or money necessary to create a perfect diet for ourselves that contains just the right amount of vitamins and minerals.

That is why many people rely on supplements as well as their diet to give them the vitamins and minerals they need. But if you are going to buy any vitamin or mineral supplements you need to do your research and make sure they are of the highest quality, and most importantly that they are going to be broken down within your body and not just pass through you.

A good company will give you access to this information before you buy. You can make sure that the vitamin and mineral supplements you are buying are of highest quality by making sure that the company you buy from has a proven track record of success, plenty of testimonials, and a money back guarantee. If their products work they will guarantee them, otherwise they have something to hide.

To Your Health,

Diet Health & Fitness
'Blog Squad'
DietHealthandFitness.com

P.S. Get a FREE Body Profile Analysis - Click Here now.