By Gene Bruno, M.H.S.

Are Your Supplements
Up to Par?

Studies indicate that only 10% of Americans actually eat a diet that contains all the necessary vitamins and nutrients their bodies need to function at its peak. Taking a multi-vitamin or other nutritional supplements makes sense for the majority of Americans.

When visiting a pharmacy, grocery store or vitamin website, the choices and brands of dietary supplements can be daunting.

Look for supplements that are manufactured in a pharmaceutically registered facility. Such a facility surpasses federal standards for manufacturing dietary supplements. For example:

A pharmaceutically registered laboratory is licensed to manufacture drugs. The legal quality standards for manufacturing drugs are much higher than those for manufacturing dietary supplements. These more stringent standards translate to a better quality product.

Guaranteed 100% of potency, not 90%
According to federal standards, a dietary supplement can contain only 90% of its labeled potency (e.g., a product labeled as containing 1000mg vitamin C can legally contain only 900mg). Supplements from a pharmaceutically registered facility must include enough of a given nutrient in their products to assure 100% of its labeled potency through the expiration date.

To ensure you’re receiving the highest-quality supplement with a guaranteed appropriate level of dosage, consider a manufacturer that is pharmaceutically registered. An example of a dietary supplement line manufactured in one of these facilities is Great Earth products that are registered with the FDA.

Stressed Out?

Stress and anxiety are not new. Even our distant ancestors had stress. If a saber-tooth tiger came too close for comfort, our ancestors’ sympathetic nervous system would respond by increasing the rate and force of heart contractions, dilating bronchial tubes and pupils, stimulating sweat and the production of adrenal hormones, and inhibiting the movement of food through the digestive tract—basically getting them ready to run for their lives. After the danger had passed, the parasympathetic nervous system would bring all of these functions back to normal. Luckily, these threats were not a daily occurrence, allowing their nervous system time to recover.

Today, we may not be chased by saber-tooth tigers, but a traffic jam, deadlines and other stressful situations cause our sympathetic nervous system to react in a similar way. The relative frequency of such stressful situations can heavily tax our nervous systems, without allowing adequate time for recovery. The biochemical ramifications of this are decreased immune response (with more frequent illnesses), mood alterations (anxiety), decreased energy levels/fatigue, and a serious depletion of various nutrients in our bodies.

What's a Body to Do?

Do you eat a good diet? If so, you’re in the minority.

For example, only 17 percent of the population consumes the recommended number of servings of fruit per day. With such a poor dietary report card, it shouldn’t be a surprise that USDA’s Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII) revealed that adult females failed to meet the RDA for five nutrients—calcium, vitamin E, vitamin B-6, magnesium and zinc; and adult males fell short of the RDA for vitamin E, magnesium and zinc (this doesn’t mean that men eat healthy food, just more food).

The same survey from the USDA indicates that only 6 percent of female adults over 60 met the recommended calcium intake. When you consider that postmenopausal women are most susceptible to osteoporosis, this calcium inadequacy is particularly alarming.

Since people are not getting adequate amounts of nutrients from their diet, using dietary supplements as a “nutrition insurance policy” is a good idea. In fact, the American Medical Association, or more specifically their journal (JAMA), has actually recommended that all adults take a multiple vitamin supplement on a daily basis.

The Pressure's On

High blood pressure (hypertension) is one of the leading causes of disability or death due to stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney failure. It’s also the most common chronic illness Americans face. An estimated 50 million American adults have high blood pressure. That’s about one out of every four people in this country. Each year, 2 million new cases of the disease are diagnosed. High blood pressure is often called the “silent killer” because it doesn’t produce any signs or symptoms to warn you that you have a problem.

A typical normal blood pressure reading is 120/80mm Hg. This means that the pressure in your arteries is 120 mm Hg during your heart’s pumping phase (systolic pressure). Between beats, when your heart is relaxing and filling with blood, blood pressure (diastolic pressure) is 80mm Hg. Your blood pressure is considered high if your systolic pressure is consistently 140mm Hg or higher, your diastolic pressure is consistently 90mm Hg or higher, or both. A diagnosis of high blood pressure requires having your blood pressure measured periodically over a period of a few weeks to months to see if it remains increased.

Interesting Facts to Improve Your Health

• Lack of sleep is increasingly being linked to the epidemic of obesity in many developed nations, with new research showing that obese people sleep less than their normal-weight peers. Insufficient sleep has been associated with changes in hormone levels that may stimulate appetite. This suggests that our stressful lifestyles may be influencing the rise in obesity, not only because of changes to the diet, like increasing consumption of fast food, but also as a result of sleep deprivation.
• It appears that rice bran oil is responsible for the cholesterol-lowering effect of rice bran; rather than the fiber content as previously thought. Research shows that consumption of rice bran oil in your diet can lead to a 7 percent decrease in LDL cholesterol. Rice bran oil is now being used by some U.S. restaurants to eliminate trans fats.
• Teenage girls who take calcium supplements for a short time may see a longterm benefit to bone health, suggest Israeli researchers. In a new follow-up study, completed 3.5 years after a previous study in which girls with low calcium status took 1000mg of calcium carbonate each day for a year, researchers found that those who had taken supplements tended to have a greater accretion of total-body bone mineral density than the control group