“What you can buy in a bottle doesn’t come close to providing you with the wealth of benefits that come automatically when those nutrients are present in the form of food,” said Linda Van Horn, a research nutritionist at Northwestern University in Chicago. Nutrition advice, though, is never quite as simple as “take your vitamins” or even “don’t take your vitamins.” And further complicating matters, the answer isn’t the same for everybody. Much of the recent criticism of vitamins has revolved around megadoses, which can be 10, 20, even 30 times stronger than the amount recommended for the daily diet. But even multivitamins, which typically contain the recommended daily intake of a host of nutrients, are not universally accepted by nutritionists.
Alice Lichtenstein, a professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition, said there is no evidence that multivitamins are hazardous – but she said there’s also no compelling proof that they do much. Other experts believe multivitamins can help restore nutritional equilibrium to a defective diet. “If you look at what people eat, and there have been many national surveys to look at levels of nutrients and foods, there is a lot of deficiency,” said Dr. Meir Stampfer, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “We’re not talking about people with scurvy or rickets, but there are nutrients that large, substantial portions of the population are not getting,” he said, including vitamins B12 and D. And for some people whose extreme poverty keeps them from eating well, supplements can be lifesavers.
Sources The best sources are liver, brewer’s yeast and dark green leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale. Dried beans, green vegetables, oranges, avocados and whole wheat products are also good sources. Food processing such as boiling and heating can destroy folic acid. It can also be destroyed by being stored unprotected at room temperature for long periods. Starting in 1998, commercial grain products in the USA will be enriched with between 0.43 mg and 1.4 mg of folic acid per pound of food. Breakfast cereals may contain up to a daily dose of folic acid. Recommended dietary allowances America Men 200 mcg Women 180 mcg Australia Men 200 mcg Women 200 mcg UK Men 200 mcg Women 200 mcg
I don’t know much about hamster ailments, but when you wrote that he is shivering, it made me think that he might feel better with a heating pad under his cage. We have been doing this with Tricki since she became pregnant, and she really seems to like it. Sometimes she streches out on her tummy on the warmest spot (on top of the pine shavings) and naps.
How much clearer can I make my plea? The first vaccine made available is the nasally-instilled live-virus vaccine which induces viral shedding for 5 days following inoculation and spreads the disease to family members, teachers, grandmothers, everybody. The vaccine industry knows how to jump start a flu season – begin with the live- virus vaccine. Don’t fall victim to this evil vaccination scheme. The deaths will continue till health authorities address nutritional status. A 100% vaccination rate would not quell mortality rates.
What deficiency in nutrition or other problems should I watch out for? You might want to check on your calcium intake, depending on what your needs are. I need 1500mg/day, so I need either more dairy [than you eat] &/or supplements. Plus I take a 1-a-day type multi-vitamin/mineral just in case. Is there a problem if you lose a few more pounds? I went well beyond any target that might have been set for me — none ever was, but my doctor did ask a couple of times how much more weight I was “planning to lose”.
Turmeric – a spice I use in cooking as desired – It reduces the re-absorbtion of cholesterol from the gut, and it’s also a powerful anti-inflamatory. Plus a few other helpful things. It’s cheap, readily available in any grocery store, and commonly used in many recipes. A “thistle” formulation in capsule form, containing both milk thistle and globe artichoke. This promotes the excretion of bile (which uses lots of cholesterol), as well as promoting the health of the liver in a number of ways. I had hepatitus as a child, and felt I need that kind of assistance. There have been quite a number of good studies that have verified it’s actions as legitimate. It should not be used though, if one is prone to gall stones. Quentin reckoned one time, when I posted my chol profile, that I had numbers he envied. I guess everyone is different, and one needs to find the balance that suits the individual. For example, I see the occasional comment in different studies that men and women differ in their chol. profiles, and in their response to diet and exercise levels. Women tend to have higher HDL levels generally, and men but NOT women are able to raise their HDL quite significantly with exercise. 
