Source: http://www.mdwls.com/supplements.html
To you, the answer is YES. To your ancestors who lived half a million years ago, the answer is NO.
Let me explain.
Vitamins and minerals are very important in maintaining basic function of various biological reactions in your body. These reactions determine your very own health and sickness.
Your ancestors who roamed the earth hundreds of thousand years ago lived as hunter-gatherers. That means they get their foods fresh from the wild and eat it almost immediately and often raw. There were no farming and no herding. Their foods were always fresh and full of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. They do not need supplements.
Your foods, on the other hand, come from supermarkets. They are highly processed. They are harvested probably weeks or even months ago. They are grown on the same soil year after year. They are sprayed with toxic pesticides and other chemicals. If they are animals, they are fed with various antibiotics, bad hormones and unhealthy feeds and grown in crammed and diseased filled cages. On top of that, your food probably reached to you overcooked and overdressed.
With that kind of food you are eating, what makes you think that you are getting enough vitamins and minerals? Minerals comes from soil. Planting the same crops year after year on the same patch of land will deplete the rare minerals. The chemical fertilizers often provide only Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. What about Boron, Selenium, Chromium, Magnesium and so on? These minerals are needed for vitamins to be synthesized. Even the most popular vitamin C needs at least one mineral for it to be synthesized in plants – phosphorus.
On top of that, up to 70-90 percent of these vitamins are lost or deactivated during processing, packaging, storage and transportation. Vitamin C in an average sized orange from organic farm (often they are not) in China at the time of harvesting is around 70 – 100 mg. By the time it gets to you, it ends up with as little as only 20 mg of vitamin C. That is not even enough to neutralize the toxic preservatives and pesticides on the skin of the orange which you have ingested.
You need vitamins and minerals supplements not because you are not getting them from your foods, but because your foods are not getting them from the soil (or have lost them before the foods got to you). To make matters worse, you probably are not eating variety enough to increase your chances of getting various vitamins and minerals. The last one week, you may have eaten only refined rice, refined wheat, refined sugar, refined salt, some farmed lettuce and cucumber and some farmed chicken or beef. No matter how hard you look, there are hardly any sufficient vitamins and minerals there.
So, if you think you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need from your modern foodstuffs, think again!
Dr Rizin H Kusop. MBBS, MSc (Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Aesthetic Med), Dip. Family Med. (rizinkusop@gmail.com).
Source: Vitamins, minerals, and mood. Kaplan, Bonnie J.; Crawford, Susan G.; Field, Catherine J.; Simpson, J. Steven A. Psychological Bulletin, Vol 133(5), Sep 2007, 747-760.
[This article belongs to The Malaysian Medical Gazette. Any republication without written permission from The Malaysian Medical Gazette is prohibited.]
Hi Doctor,
I’m 21 and still studying.
I’d like to take mega fish oil for supplement but a bit hesitate to start because I read on somewhere, this kind of supplement can increase cancer risk.
For your opinion, it is ok to take this supplement?
Thanks!!
Dear Siti,
Fish oil is rich with good omega 3, which is needed to balance the excess of bad omega 6 in our diet. The fear of cancer may be due to the presence of mercury in fish. This can be avoided by buying fish oil produced by reputable companies.
If your diet is typical of modern diet which consist of animal fats and processed cooking oils, you definitely need fish oil (omega 3). However, if you diet is consist mainly fresh vegetables, fruits and fish, you probably do not need to take fish oil.
If you need further clarification, please email me directly at rizinkusop@gmail.com.
Thank you so much Dr. Rizin H Kusop for sharing this article… This information was very helpful to explain to communities why we need supplements now a days.. 🙂
There is a question about the conclusion of the article in one of the twitter comments. The conclusion of the above article is; due to unhealthy crops, we absolutely need daily supplement of multivitamins and minerals in our diets. Unless of course, you are one of those rare breed who constantly getting your food materials fresh from the wild, you don’t need supplements. For most of us, who eat- out or buy food from supermarkets, we need quality supplements.
To editor: Please insert another source citation.
Yea, Z et al. Antioxidant vitamin intake and the risk of coronary heart disease: meta analysis of cohort studies. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 2008; 15:126-134.