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 Commercials on television push the same message – “Take your vitamins” — but doctors are less urgent. A balanced diet of fresh nutritious  foods is still the ideal way to get  the vitamins and minerals that your body needs. A catch phrase form medical school holds that if you take extra vitamins and minerals, what you get is expensive urine. That’s because the kidneys filter excess water-soluble micronutrients from the bloodstream, treating them as waste, and elsewhere your cells take the vitamins and minerals that they need, no more and n less.

 

Still millions of Americans automatically pop supplements every day, and some go even further. Massive doses, popularly called mega-vitamins, are touted as cures for aging, cancer, and other hazards. The fad for meg-vitamins has not been supported by scientific research, however.  With mainstream medicine turning a deaf ear to claims about vitamins and the public being bombarded by dubious claims, we need to dig deeper for clarity.

 

Before we do that, the basic approach to vitamins and minerals can be restated, since few changes have occurred since the health classes taught in grade school.

 

Vitamins and minerals: the basics

 

The bullet points for vitamins and minerals are a bit lengthy since so many basic processes are involved. Just keep in the mind the reassurance that for most people, there is little need to manage risks in this department.

- A normal balanced diet supplies the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamins and minerals.

-  The water-soluble vitamins (vitamin C and the entire vitamin B group) need to be replenished far more frequently, often daily, than fat-soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D, E, and K), which leave the body very slowly. Minerals, with the exception of water-soluble ones like salt and potassium, leave at an even slower rate. For growing children, the chief source of vitamin D is sunshine. Children who stay indoors most of the time can readily get vitamin D from milk with vitamin D added. The iodine added to salt is generally not useful, since modern diets are not  low in iodine.

- Most Americans consume vast quantities of sugar and refined flour. This can push aside vitamin-rich natural foods, although deficiencies are regularly encountered.

- Optimal absorption can be disrupted by lifestyle choices, medications, and a number of health conditions. A few examples: Smoking interferes with the absorption of Vitamin C, and alcohol abuse with the absorption and metabolism of folate. Antacids, as well as medications for type-2 diabetes, can interfere with B₁₂ absorption. Dehydration is the most common cause of mineral imbalances, known medically as electrolyte imbalance.  Taking a “water pill” for high blood pressure leads to the leaching of sodium, potassium, and the water-soluble vitamins. This needs to be addressed on a daily basis, or the result may be electrolyte imbalance.

- For normally healthy adults, the chief caution is directed at seniors, whose bodies become less efficient with age at processing vitamins and minerals. For this group, it is the absorption of minerals, in fact, that is generally a problem rather than vitamins. Taking a mineral supplement is often a good preventive measure but not to excess.  More isn’t better, nor is more frequent.

- Vitamin and mineral deficiencies are slow to appear, since the body is good at conserving micronutrients. Menstruating women should eat foods high in iron or consider taking a supplement, however, in order to prevent anemia.

- Natural sources of vitamins tend to be preferable over synthetic sources. The body uses them more easily. For women taking iron or calcium supplements (the latter is for preventing or slowing down osteoporosis), any source needs to be absorbable.

- Scientific evidence is scant for the benefits of high levels of vitamins and minerals. (At the same time, scientific worry for people who ingest mega-vitamins tends to be greatly exaggerated.) The most likely benefit comes from taking extra vitamin E, since the natural sources for it (e.g., nuts, whole grains, the fats found in raw vegetables)  are decreasing in modern diets. Processed vegetable oils are low in vitamin E, which also oxidizes once the oil is exposed to air and begins to turn even mildly rancid. The RDA for vitamin E is unclear, but studies have shown that taking ten times the usual RDA can be of benefit and causes no harm.

 

Our aim in this book is to find a level of higher health through consciousness. With that in mind, relying on drugs for miracle cures isn’t helpful, and the sad truth is that many people look upon vitamins and minerals as drugs. If you eat a healthy, balanced diet, put your attention on things other than pill-popping. In other words, don’t waste time obsessing over vitamins. No study has ever shown that people who take supplements at high doses enjoy better health or longer life. If you are following the general indicators listed above, you are okay. That said, it can be worthwhile to know more about your body and its need for micronutrients.

 

Let’s start with the most primal, which is neither a vitamin nor a mineral but linked to both.  We humans are self-contained, walking oceans, a fact that has been true for land creatures for hundreds of millions of years. It’s remarkable to think that the water in your cells, which constitutes around two-thirds of your total weight, hasn’t drastically changed from sea water. The proportion of salt is essentially the same, and even the trace elements of minerals like manganese, zinc, copper, and iron are a direct inheritance from ocean water. The body replenishes itself by creating new cells, a process that requires the chemicals that began as components of sea water. As long as chemical balance is maintained,  which is a top priority for every cell and its strongest instinct, the waling ocean is naturally healthy.

 

Reasons for confusion

One reason for the gray area surrounding vitamins and minerals is the difference between the positive effects and the negative effects of micronutrients. Vitamins came to light not through the good they did but the bad that occurs when there is a deficiency. The most famous example is scurvy, a disorder caused by lack of vitamin C. Vitamin C needs to be replenished daily since it belongs to the class known as water-soluble vitamins, which quickly wash out of the blood through urine (vitamin C reminds us of this fact by being a strong diuretic when taken in tablet form as ascorbic acid. For some people, even a natural source like orange or grapefruit juice leads to immediate urination). British sailors acquired the nickname of limeys after the cause of scurvy became known after 1614, and the British navy stocked ships with citrus fruits. Oranges, lemons, and grapefruit are just as effective for preventing scurvy; it is interesting that the link with vitamin C was discovered and lost, only to be rediscovered, from ancient times, ling before ascorbic acid was isolated.

 

Into the twentieth century, as other vitamin-deficiency diseases were identified, such as rickets and pellagra, two things remained consistent. The first was that it took a poor, often impoverished diet to create such disorders. Second, the actual benefits of vitamins and minerals were difficult and often impossible to name. Iron is necessary for the production of hemoglobin, the complex chemical that makes red blood cells red; this link was relatively easy to connect.  But most links are so obscure that even when the chemical basis has been traced all the way down to the cellular level, the actual benefit is far from clear.

 

For example, to a biochemist vitamin C has multiple uses at the cellular level, which can be isolated and name.  For example, ascorbic acid is needed to make collagen, the protein that connects skin tissue, among other things. It enters into hydroxylation and amidation reactions;  the components of collagen production that are critical for needing it are prolyl hydroxylase and lysyl hydroxylase.  The last time most physicians heard such terms was in pre-med biochemistry, and they are generally unknown to the public. This leaves plenty of room for outsized, unsupported claims for the benefits of vitamin C. It also makes it difficult, when there is no deficiency, to see how adding more than the body’s “natural” requirement might be beneficial.

 

But we have to put “natural” in quotes as long as the picture is vague. Around the world human beings have adapted t so many different diets that the consumption of vitamins is by no means the same. An extra degree of confusion enters with processed foods, an invention of the twentieth century, in which micronutrients are stripped from their natural sources and then put back again, if at all, through artificial and synthetic means. Ironically, such foods are touted as “enriched” with vitamins, which is like saying that taking someone’s wallet and then handing it back adds to his riches.

 

In the next post we will go into a more detailed scientific look at vitamins and minerals

 

(To be cont.)

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This week for the first time in the presidential race, a poll gave Mitt Romney the edge over President Obama (only a tiny one, within the margin of error). One foresees that a simple message may prevail over a complex one. The simple message, which Romney endlessly repeats, is this: The President is a nice guy, but he’s in over his head, and his wild spending has bankrupted the country. The complex message, which comes from Obama in mixed, varied, and confusing in ways, is this: We must revamp America in order to meet the future.

 

Because Romney has blame, impatience, and angry frustration on his side, he may succeed in his uphill climb. Already most of what the pundits told us – that Romney had been damaged in the combative primary race, that the conservative base is opposed to him, that the religious right is suspicious of him – has proved invalid. Republicans are rallying en masse behind the simple message, while seething underneath is an irrational hostility to Obama that no sensible person can quite fathom.

 

Yet it’s the President who knows the magic word that will end all our woes: Evolve.  He picked “Forward” as a simpler synonym, but the net effect is the same. The old America that was such a familiar comfort zone isn’t coming back, no matter how warmly the Republicans try to conjure it. Our future will not be the repetition of our past, because certain hard facts are set in place:

 

- Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back.

- Workers with only high school diplomas are at a permanent disadvantage that grows larger every decade.

- Older blue-collar workers are forming a new class of the permanently unemployed.

- Safety nets in the form of pensions and benefits have drastically eroded.

- Fossil fuels are more in demand than ever from places like India and China.

- Economic inequality is wider than ever before in our history.

- The middle class has stagnated in income potential and burdensome debt.

- Society is getting older, putting pressure on entitlements as never before.

 

It’s a tragic irony that the Republican Party has become the domain of white blue-collar workers, because they are the worse off and the ones who need Obama’s vision the most.  All governing classes come from the elite (after all, both candidates have Harvard degrees, just as all the leading contenders in 2004 went to Yale). The difference is that the Democratic vision is fostered by an elite that wants to retool our whole society for the benefit of the greatest number. The Republican Party wants to benefit well-off white males.

 

Somehow, after forty years of reactionary conditioning, the working class has been persuaded to support rich white males while ignoring their own best interests. Abortion and gay marriage are typical red herrings, as are foreign wars and stoking mass fear about terrorism.  For all that, America must evolve on all fronts. Obama realizes this quite clearly; hence his programs for alternative energy, a cleaner environment, infrastructure repairs, universal health care, and on and on.  Nothing offered by Romney is remotely commensurate. One prays that in his heart he is the moderate, sensible person that the extreme right hates and fears.

 

But the larger point is that “evolve” is too complex a message to cut through Tea Party hostility and unreason, which Romney must cash in on.  For decades the elite mentality inside both parties has kept reactionary forces from doing their worst. We still have abortion, no prayer in the schools, increasing acceptance of gay marriage, etc.  But this kind of passive resistance has come to an end. Angry populism has battered down the doors of Congress. Endemic problems have finally come home to roost.  Without a doubt President Obama has the clearest vision for our future and the one that would benefit the very kind of voter who riles against health care, alternative energy, a sane immigration policy, and gay marriage. It would be a tragedy if these voters get what they want instead, which is another decade of decline and misery if reactionary politicians have their way.

 

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In a world plagued by food shortage that are reaching crisis level, carbohydrates are the easiest salvation and yet the greatest temptation to abuse. Ironically, the same is true in prosperous countries but for opposite reasons. Where food is desperately needed, vast portions of the ecosystem are obliterated to make way for a small handful of crops, particularly rice and wheat, that can provide abundant, cheap calories to a mass population. In well-fed societies where food can be channeled for diversion rather than raw fuel, refiners mangle natural carbohydrates to produce refined sugar and flour.

Visualization is courtesy of TheVisualMD.com

Either way, it has taken thousands of years to move from the first farmers, who paved the way for civilization by cultivating wild grains, to our present situation. Most of the world cannot survive without more grains and vegetables – our primary source of carbohydrates – while a small portion of the world faces an epidemic of obesity and diabetes linked to over consumption of sugar and fat. What will give us a balanced use of the body’s main source of energy without falling into gross misuse?

 

Since the reader is almost certain to belong to a prosperous society, balance begins with two steps: refusing to join the processed food glut and putting sugar and starch back in place where they naturally belong. The issue isn’t really how much fat, protein, and carbohydrate to ingest every day. It’s more important to stop abusing your body’s great gift of adaptability. Because human beings can adapt to almost any diet, you are in a situation no other living creature faces: our minds rule our diet.

 

Some people are naturally sensitive to bodily sensations. When they say, “My body is telling me” or “I need to eat such-and-such,” there’s a real basis for the statement. The rest of us, the vast majority, eat out of our heads.  We are susceptible to advertising, suggestive selling in restaurants (“anybody save room for our delicious chocolate cheesecake?”) diet fads, diet scares, and endless “breakthroughs” over how to lose those extra pounds. In the massive food industry, the cheapest calories for sale are processed sugar, which leads to the disturbing fact that the average American consumes 156 pounds of added sugar per year. “Added” is the word that should shock you. As people consume 31 five-pound bags of processed sugar a year, much of it in processed corn syrup and white cane sugar, even more comes to them in fruits and vegetables.

 

Scare tactics haven’t altered this picture, which has been the same for decades. A recent study showed that adult males who regularly consume sodas are 20% more likely to suffer a heart attack. That seems like a strange finding, since a typical can of pop, although it contains from 12 to 18 teaspoons of sugar, is still free of fat, the molecule that eventually can clog coronary arties. But soda is most often met in fast-food chains combined with high-fat burgers and fries. Lured by the three addictive tastes of sweet, sour, and salty, we think we are making choices with our minds when in fact the persistent message from our taste buds – along with mass media – have made the American diet mindless for millions of people.

 

Your goal should be to bring your mind back in control of your diet. This step is more important than any fad or crusade. Forget food groups and remember yourself. You are here to satisfy your desire for a better life, and that means reaching in a state of well-being. As with protein and fat, carbohydrates fall in line with well-being if you ask a few basic questions:

 

• How much junk food am I eating for junk satisfaction?
• What does it take to stop taste addiction?
• Which foods make me feel good for the rest of my day?
• What’s the best way to meet my emotional needs?

 

The glut of sugar we consume is tied to how you answer these questions, because sugar can be abused so easily that it leads to junk satisfaction (a brief sugar high), taste addiction (craving sugary foods even when you are not hungry), broken connection to bodily signals (not knowing when your stomach is empty or full), and reaching for emotional surrogates (eating in order not to feel bad). None of this abuse is part of sugar itself. None of it relates to what your body actually needs as fuel.  The best nutrition a=advice in the world is pointless until your relationship to food has been straightened out.

 

That’s a major process that reaches far beyond three meals a day. Carbs are only a sliver of the solutions, but since they play a big role in the problem, let’s arm ourselves with some basic knowledge.

 

 

To your body, carbohydrates are the most readily digested fuel. They are converted into energy, which everyone needs not only for physical activity but for basic metabolic functions. Every cell needs fats and proteins as well, but carbs provide quick, easily accessible fuel. Once metabolized by enzymes in the digestive system, most carbohydrates break down into simple sugars, which permeate the intestinal wall and then course through the bloodstream to deliver a caloric payload to your cells.

 

There are three main categories of carbohydrates:

 

• Simple sugars (simple carbohydrates), such as those responsible for the sweetness in fruit (fructose) and table sugar (sucrose).
• Starch, the most common complex carbohydrate in our diet
• Fiber, another complex carbohydrate. Fiber can’t be broken down and passes through the system essentially undigested.

 

Most people naturally associate sugar and sweetness. But in scientific terms, sugars are not identified by flavor but by their chemical makeup. All sugars are based on a simple union of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules (C, H, and O). The sweetness of sugars will vary depending on how many molecules each of C, H, and O are in the sugar’s chemical formula.

 

Carbs have long been neatly grouped into two categories that also make diet choice more clear cut: simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates.  You’ve heard many times that we should be eating complex carbohydrates and shunning simple carbohydrates. It would be convenient if one group represents “good” carbs and the other “bad” carbs. However, the health implications are not quite so neat and tidy.

 

Simple carbohydrates are so named because they are built on just one or two molecules. The structure of other sugars is termed “complex” because they have a molecular structure that is constructed of two or more joined molecules. (There are more complicated ways that sugars combine in nature, but we don’t need to go into those.) In this case, simple doesn’t equate with bad.  Only the smallest molecules of sugar can pass through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. That’s why foods ingested as simple carbohydrates (single- and double-molecule sugars) can be used immediately. Complex carbohydrates (three or more molecules) require more time and action to break down and be absorbed.

 

Some simple sugars occur naturally in vegetables, milk, honey, and other unprocessed foods. Synthetic sweeteners such as corn syrup and high fructose are simple sugars as well. The problem with all of them arises because simple carbs cause a rapid rise and fall in glucose, or blood sugar, leaving you feeling hungry faster. Like pieces of wood going into a chipper, simple carbs resemble narrow branches and leaves that are quickly shredded.  Complex or “long chain” carbs are bigger pieces, like thick branches and tree trunks that have to be fed slowly through the chipper to be broken down. Due to their bulkier, compound structure, complex carbs remain in the system for a longer time, providing slow-burning energy and longer durations of satiety, or feeling full. (Athletes who “carb up” begin the night before, taking advantage of the body’s ability to use long-term fuel sources.)

 

The threshold for a normal fasting glucose level in healthy people is 99 mg/dL; that is, 99 milligrams of glucose per 1/10^th liter of blood.  Lower than normal levels are characterized as hypoglycemia, indicating around 70 mg/dL and lower. This condition can be traced to three causes. The body may be using up the available blood sugar, or the glucose ingested may be released into the bloodstream too slowly. It’s also possible that too much insulin is being released.

 

Higher than normal levels of blood sugar are an indication of the opposite state, hyperglycemia.  It exists as a threshold condition known as prediabetes (between 100 and 125 mg/dL) and further on clinical diabetes (126 mg/dL and higher). Elevated blood sugar is caused either by too little insulin being released by the pancreas or the body’s inability to use insulin properly. After you eat and sugars pass from the small intestine into the bloodstream, the pancreas detects this increase in blood sugar and secretes insulin in response. Most cells of the body have insulin receptors, which bind to the insulin molecule. The cell can then turn on other receptors that absorb glucose through the cell wall. Once absorbed, glucose may be used for energy or stored for the future.

 

The glycemic index (GI)  ranks hundreds of foods on a scale of 0-100 according to their impact on blood sugar. The GI indicates how intensely and rapidly a food will influence glucose and insulin levels.

 

Glucose, being the sugar that cells can immediately use as food, is the GI’s measuring stick and tops the index at a rating of 100. Foods in the lower range, which include many complex carbohydrates, are absorbed into the blood slowly. With a gradual and prolonged effect on blood sugar and insulin, low GI foods have a proven health benefit. The conviction of GI proponents—which include the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the Harvard School of Public Health, and others—is that diet should be based on low GI foods to prevent and even treat diseases that are in epidemic proportions in the Western world; namely, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

 

Instead of fretting over recommended allowances and food pyramids, it’s simpler to eat within a “calorie budget.” As your basic expenditure, you need to cover the essentials—vegetables and fruits, and possibly whole grains and dairy products—before the budget can afford to spend calories on foods that offer minimal nutritive value.  Luxury isn’t bad – every life should have a sense of abundance – but wasteful spending is different. You don’t have to forbid yourself a treat here and there, but consider how it fits into your dietary budget.

 

Yet every road leads back to holistic well-being. You can eat too much and harm your body. You can eat the wrong foods for what your cells actually need. You can eat all the “right’ foods but neglect to exercise, and exercise fanatics can forget to be relaxed and content simply with being. As nutrition becomes more scientific, it becomes more reductionist. Remember that no one ever became healthy by memorizing calorie charts and the government’s RDA of vitamins.

 

Millions of Americans make the numbers their enemy, as we are inundated with data. The scariest and probably the most useless data concerns food and dieting.  Facts won’t make you achieve the ideal figure, a healthy heart, or freedom from aging and disease.  Life isn’t a puzzle with many pieces that need to fit where they belong. Life is an unfolding process, and it’s your choice to make that process into one of continuous evolution.

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