When it comes to vitamins and minerals, most of us know they are essential for overall health and well-being, but how many of us actually know what they are and how they work.
By eating a healthy, well-balanced diet and supplementing with high-quality greens, getting your daily required limit of essential nutrients is much easier than you think.
Let’s take a look at the different vitamins and minerals, including trace minerals that exist and how they can help you live a long and happy life.
Essential Nutrients
On a daily basis, your body regenerates bone, skin, and even muscle. The body transports nutrients and oxygen to all different parts of the body and even sends signals along thousand and thousands of miles of nerve pathways.
The body also forms what are called “chemical messengers” that transport messages from different organs to one another that play a critical role in keeping you safe and healthy.
Here’s the critical point, however, to efficiently and effectively perform all the tasks I’ve just mentioned, the body requires nutrients in the form of vitamins and minerals. Up to 30 vitamins, minerals, and ingredients in this list are needed, yet the body can naturally manufacture them. (1)
This is where high premium greens supplements can play such a valuable role in improving cognitive function, increasing energy, improving focus and concentration, reducing stress, and even boosting the immune system.
Some of the roles they play are:
- Strengthening bones
- Boosting your immune system
- Helps to heal wounds
- Restores or regenerate cell damage and
- Helps convert food to energy
Micronutrients
On some occasions, vitamins and minerals are referred to as “micronutrients.” The primary reason for this is that the body only needs small amounts of most vitamins and minerals to function efficiently. However, if you fall deficient in any number of these vitamins and minerals, you can fall ill or even become prone to disease.
Some of these diseases are:
- Scurvy: In the 1700s, British sailors quickly realized how important Vitamin C was, and without it, they became susceptible to scurvy, which has symptoms like bleeding gums.
- Blindness: Vitamin A deficiency plays a significant role in blindness, and in many third-world countries, those deficient in Vitamin A suffer greatly.
- Rickets: Rickets is caused by Vitamin D deficiency and make the bones weak and vulnerable to deformities like bowed legs. To combat this, the U.S. has supplemented milk with vitamin D going all the way back to the early 1930s.
Benefits:
Although deficiency can cause disease, correct dosage and supplementation have many positive effects on the body, including:
- Keeps your bones strong: Vitamin K, D, and minerals such as magnesium help protect the bones against breaking.
- Helps stop Birth Defects: Supplements like folic acid can help prevent congenital disabilities such as cognitive and spinal defects.
- Keeps your teeth strong: Mineral fluoride can help stop cavities from forming.
Vitamins and Minerals; What’s The Difference?
Vitamins and minerals are both considered micronutrients; however, they do differ in several different ways. Vitamins are quickly broken down by our bodies and are considered “organic,” whereas minerals are classified as “inorganic” this is because they maintain their chemical structure. (2)
Water-Soluble Vitamins
These types of vitamins are jam-packed into the different foods you eat, particularly in the watery servings of foods. The body absorbs these water-soluble vitamins directly into the bloodstream, either while digesting or supplementing, while the supplement naturally dissolves.
Examples of water-soluble vitamins:
- Niacin
- Vitamin B-12
- Vitamin C
- Riboflavin
- Vitamin B6
- Thiamin
Water-soluble vitamins help release the energy that is found in foods and perform many tasks throughout the body. They allow free energy while at the same time producing energy, and they help build protein cells and also manufacture collagen.
Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Instead of quickly being absorbed by the bloodstream like water-soluble vitamins, fat-soluble vitamins enter through the lymph and intestines. The vast majority of fat-soluble vitamins require proteins to be carried effectively throughout the body.
Fatty foods like oils are stores for these fat-soluble vitamins; another way to look at these fat-soluble vitamins is as a timed-released nutrient. This is because the body slowly releases these minerals when needed.
Because the body stores these minerals, many researchers suggest they don’t need to be supplemented daily, but to be sure, they do recommend keeping your levels topped up periodically.
Primary Minerals
As with vitamins, the body requires and stores an abundance of minerals that are essential for health and well-being. These particular “primary minerals” are no more critical to your health than trace minerals; It’s just they are stored in your body in much larger quantities.
These primary minerals move through the body in a number of different ways. Let’s take potassium as an example; It is promptly absorbed into the bloodstream, where the kidney then excretes it; this is very similar to a water-soluble vitamin.
Some examples of primary minerals:
- Sulfur
- Chloride
- Magnesium
- Potassium
- Sodium
These minerals play other critical roles, like maintaining the correct balance of water and hydration in your body, keeping bones healthy, and maintaining proteins that help improve skin and hair. (3)
Trace Minerals
As the name suggests, trace minerals are found in trace levels throughout the body, but this doesn’t mean these minerals aren’t essential, as you’ll see they are. These trace minerals can account for as much as one pound of your body weight.
Some example of trace minerals are:
- Iodine
- Fluoride
- Manganese
- Iron and
- Selenium
Some of the critical roles these trace minerals plays are, carrying oxygen through your body, strengthening teeth and bones, help blood clot effectively, is essential for taste, and helps boost metabolism. (4)
Some of the other trace minerals like iodine and selenium also play significant roles like thyroid hormone production and helping maintain a healthy weight.
Antioxidants
We’ve all heard of antioxidants, and in recent years they’ve become somewhat of a catchall term for companies who sprout their many benefits. Antioxidants, in basic terms, help the body fight off and kill harmful free radicals that can cause major long-term damage to the body.
Many of the highest premium greens supplements contain substantial amounts of these potent antioxidants that are essential for your overall health and well-being. Several vitamins such as vitamin C and E are also rich sources of antioxidants, along with the trace mineral selenium.
Conclusion
What’s the bottom line here? Well, you might be shocked to know it’s actually not rocket science. We all understand the importance of eating and supplementing with the correct doses of essential vitamins and minerals that keep us strong and healthy.
Exercising daily, taking time out with family and friends also play an important role in keeping fit and healthy.
So keep an eye on your vitamin and mineral levels, supplement with high-quality greens supplements and be sure to eat whole fresh fruits and vegetables to keep your antioxidant levels high.
