What are Essential Vitamins and Minerals?
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Essential vitamins and minerals and supplements are quite literally, essential for life. In the case of essential vitamins and minerals, the definition says it all. If we do not get these from food or supplementation, with the exception of vitamin D, we will die! It may not be a short, quick death but without essential vitamins and minerals, we can expect illness and disease to follow. This article is an overview on this subject and designed to introduce our new, free, e book on the subject with immediate access below!
As stated, essential means required or mandatory and in the case of this subject, we must get these exogenously from food or supplements. The only exception is vitamin D that can be created by UVB rays from the sun. If we do not get the essential vitamins and minerals, we will get sick and eventually die! It’s no joke and our purpose of this article is to enlighten those that are unaware of these essential life-giving elements and delve into what their deficiencies may lead to.
In addition, you will be able to access our new 100-page PDF book on which supplements to buy, make and store for survival prepping by simply clicking on the cover link!
Identifying the Essential Vitamins and Minerals
There are 14 essential vitamins that are in the following groups:
Biotin, choline, folate, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamine, and
vitamins A, B6, B12, C, D, E, and K.
Here are the basic essential minerals with dozens more as semi essential:
calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, sulfur, cobalt, copper, fluoride, manganese, and selenium.
Before you panic, we do get these vitamins and minerals from food presuming you eat a reasonably well rounded diet. With this said, the food quality is worse than ever, and American’s eating habits are extremely poor. The soils are depleted of several nutrients and the GMO foods are woefully lacking.
Our free e book listed below, gets into our top recommendations along with some insight into benefits, deficiency side effects and dose. Although it goes into some illnesses and potential diseases caused by deficiencies, that is not the main focus and what we will go into in this article.
It’s pretty obvious that a starving person dies generally within a couple of months without food, but more specifically, nutrients. There have been obese individuals known to have fasted for a year without health issues. Presuming you have a lot of extra fat that stores many nutrients, you might make it for quite a while. Those more within the normal range, without supplementation, the end comes much faster.
What Happens When Lacking in these Nutrients?
First of all, unless we are fasting or starving as touched on in the previous paragraph, the majority of us may simply have poor quality diets or eating habits that omit some of these essential nutrients. I believe these isolated deficiencies are probably the biggest plague on health world-wide. Whether vegan, carnivore, low fat, high carb, etc., people have restricted their nutrients by diet. Even well rounded diets are at the mercy of poor soil and chemical additives and hormones that compromise nutrition.
Western medicine treats the symptoms with drugs instead of getting to the root cause and treating with nutrition in general. Nearly all illness and disease is created by a lack of certain nutrients in my opinion and we will show evidence of the vitamin and mineral deficiency causation. New research indicates that in spite of our epigenetic or inherited gene makeup, maximizing our nutrients will overcome our negative “pre-dispositions.”
We will go down the list of these essential vitamins and minerals showing direct correlation of disease caused by lack of the specific nutrient or nutrients. I find it appalling that big pharma purposefully turns its back on nutrition as though it’s voodoo.
It’s not surprise since on average, it takes 17 years for the medical industry to adopt proven research studies. Vitamin C is an incredible example that took nearly 400 years to validate what was determined in the 16th century! The British found that citrus fruit staved off scurvy in the 1500’s when sailors were dying at sea from lack of vitamin C.
Granted, they did not know about C back then but even after introducing citrus fruit and seeing how most sailors survived afterward, they refused to validate this correlation. It was somewhere around 70 years later, another medical practitioner tried lemons in addressing what was essentially done before.
He gained a little traction and a few believers but something like another 70 years went by without full acceptance! It wasn’t until the early 20th century before vitamin C was made official and confirmed to treat scurvy as a cure! This is just one of many examples with so many still in limbo!
Look at Dr. Fauci announcing that there is nothing to help viruses and vitamin D does nothing! He later was quoted as saying to try vitamin D as it can help!
Anemia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, dementia, cancer, etc., etc., It’s appalling and a medical conspiracy to withhold natural cures either for money, arrogance, stupidity or greed and maybe all of these! Let’s delve into each nutrient and what deficiencies can cause!
Recently, I am seeing more research and studies on the use of higher dose in many of these supplements. Concurrently, there are numerous articles warning of overdosing on these same supplements and most recently questioning if vitamin D is even safe! There’s a war on for your mind and since media propaganda was legalized under the Obama administration,
it has run rampant through our society. Personally, I only found improvement in my health and conditions when I took doses much higher than the RDA in most supplements. Even knowing that the RDA is incredibly understated, I cautiously proceed likely due to the negative press. I recommend that you do your own research and get relevant blood tests where applicable but also to look into studies on higher dosing.
Keep in mind that some of the “essential” trace minerals are not to be high dosed or even dosed at all such as fluoride. They may be essential but our diet provides more than enough on some of them. It is also best to be cautious on most fat soluble vitamins in that they are known to stay in the system and potentially build up when taking too much. One of the exceptions in my opinion is of course vitamin D.
We must also keep in mind that even optimizing all of these essential vitamins and minerals may still fall short due to absorption issues. In your free pdf book on this page, I list all my favorites that I use and the top consideration in nearly all instances is the absorption factor.
If we get low quality supplements with poor carriers, your money is wasted! Just like low quality food with minimal nutrition, a low quality supplement may be as much as 80 percent less effective than a highly absorbable version! My book took years of trial and error and research to discover the best forms to take. I did the research and was your lab rat for the recommendations that are contained within.
Most recommendations are through Amazon since the majority of people use them and we get a small stipend if you use our links to buy. This has no effect on pricing. Some recommendations are to avoid supplementation or to purchase from other sources. One example is a highly effective and natural supplement that has won awards and been in use for decades.
I cannot even mention the name or it will be censored! I don’t know how this happens since this is my website and we are not even posting elsewhere in most cases! A line will be drawn over the supplement name or sometimes my source and the link removed! In spite of this supplement being fully legal and still available, many sources have banned its sale! You will find it in the supplement section at the end and the source to buy from “hopefully”.
I would say that I use 98 percent of my recommendations and plan to order the other 2 percent simply because I was unaware of the others. My criteria was absorption as mentioned, manufacture reputation and price. Absorption and quality are pretty much synonymous to me. Price is based mainly on dose and amount of servings. Anyone can have a cheap price on low dose, low quantity, low absorption supplements so the price may not be the lowest but the value is my consideration.
Essential Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies and Relationship to Disease
Vitamin Deficiency Diseases
Vitamin is a micro-nutrient that is not prepared by the body in sufficient amounts. This is the reason why it is necessary to take in from outside sources for the normal functioning of the body. Inadequate intake of vitamins results in vitamin deficiency diseases.
Following is the list of some of the vitamins and the deficiency diseases caused by them:
Vitamin A
It is an important micro-nutrient that is obtained from different food sources such as carrots, spinach, milk, egg liver and fish. It is required for normal vision, reproduction, growth and healthy immune system of an individual.
Most children below five years of age suffer from xerophthalmia, a serious eye disorder, in which the child is at risk of becoming blind. Vitamin A deficiency in a pregnant woman can lead to complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
Vitamin B
Vitamin B is a complex of various types such as Vitamin B1, B2, B12 etc. The deficiency diseases depend on the complex and the individual components.
Vitamin B1: Deficiency of vitamin B1 causes beriberi, which results in weak muscles and severe weight loss. Acute deficiency can lead to paralysis and cardiac failure.
Vitamin B6: Deficiency is associated with microcytic anemia, electroencephalographic abnormalities, dermatitis with cheilosis (scaling on the lips and cracks at the corners of the mouth) and glossitis (swollen tongue), depression and confusion, and weakened immune function.
Biotin – Biotin deficiency results in alopecia, a scaly dermatitis, anorexia, and eventually death.
Vitamin B12: Lack of vitamin B12 causes pernicious anemia. Other diseases related to B12 deficiency are muscle and nerve paralysis, extreme fatigue, dementia and depression.
Niacin – Pellagra is a disease that occurs when a person does not get enough niacin (one of the B complex vitamins) or tryptophan (an amino acid). Dementia, dermatitis, diarrhea
Folate – If left untreated, folate deficiency may result in folate deficiency anemia, which can cause severe complications
Choline
Choline deficiency can cause muscle damage, liver damage, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD or hepatosteatosis)
Vitamin C
Deficiency of vitamin C can cause scurvy, a disease that is characterized by bleeding gums, skin spots and swelling in joints. It also affects the immune system and can even be fatal in acute conditions.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, which leads to the weakening of bones, especially near the joints. It can also lead to the decay of teeth.
Vitamin K
Vitamin K is important for blood coagulation. Its deficiency is common in infants and leads to excessive bleeding due to the inability to form blood clots. Facilitating placing calcium in bones and removing from soft tissue
Mineral Deficiency Diseases
Minerals are inorganic that include trace elements such as copper,,zinc, iodine, and iron, along with the micro-nutrients such as calcium, potassium, magnesium and sodium.
Following is the list of a few minerals along with the deficiency diseases associated with them:
Iodine
Iodine is the most important element required for the brain development of the developing fetus. It is responsible for a number of other functions such as the production of hormones. Salt is an important source of iodine in many countries. The deficiency of iodine leads to goiter. Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of thyroid diseaseand, if serious, can cause permanent brain damage
Iron
Iron, in the form of hemoglobin, carries oxygen from the lungs to different tissues of the body. Iron deficiency causes anemia, a condition in which the blood is unable to carry the required oxygen to the tissues, which also results in death. Around 40-60% of infants in developing countries suffer from mental impairment due to iron deficiency. Red meat, spinach, poultry, etc. are some of the iron-rich foods.
Copper
The most common complications of copper deficiencies are anemia, pancytopenia, and ataxia: Anemia is a condition where a person’s red blood cells are low. This affects the amount of oxygen delivered to organs and tissues. Pancytopenia is a condition where all three major cellular parts of the blood are low.
Zinc
Wilson’s disease, sickle cell disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease have all been associated with zinc deficiency. Skin lesions, poor wound healing, gastrointestinal problems.
Magnesium
Magnesium deficiency can lead to health problems including: high blood pressure and heart disease. diabetes. osteoporosis.
Potassium
Weakness, fatigue, cramps in muscles and legs that may result in total inability to move. Tingling, or numbness in the body. Nausea, vomiting, Bloating, constipation, abdominal cramps. Excessive urination and the urge to drink water frequently. Heart palpitations. Extremely low blood pressure that can cause fainting. Depression, delusions, or hallucinations
Sodium
Hyponatremia is diagnosed when there is too little sodium in your blood. It can be caused by a variety of factors, from conditions like Addison’s disease or Cushing’s syndrome, to excessive vomiting or diarrhea. Hyponatremia can be mild, and cause no symptoms, or it can be very severe and life threatening
Calcium
Hypocalcemia can be caused by lack of vitamin D. It can also signal a condition of the four small glands in the neck (parathyroid glands), the kidneys, or the pancreas. Most cases have no symptoms. In severe cases, symptoms include muscle cramps, confusion, and tingling in the lips and fingers. Treatment includes calcium and vitamin D supplements. If there’s an underlying condition, that will also need treatment.
Phosphorous
A reduced concentration of phosphate in the blood serum is a disorder known as hypophosphatemia. Phosphorus deficiency may cause bone diseases such as rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults
Sulfur
A deficiency of sulfur in the body can cause following health disorders: acne, arthritis, brittle nails and hair, convulsions, depression, Eczema, Itchy skin or scalp, Migraine headaches,memory loss, gastrointestinal issues, rashes and even slow wound healing.
Cobalt
Anemia is a main cause of a cobalt and vitamin B-12 deficiency. This is the case with pernicious anemia. Symptoms can include numbness, severe tiredness (fatigue), and tingling in your hands and feet. Over time, the condition also leads to decreased nerve function.
Manganese
Epilepsy.osteoporosis.diabetes.exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (an inability to digest food due to a deficiency of digestive enzymes produced by the pancreas)
Selenium
Keshan disease is a disease related to selenium deficiency in endemic regions of China, which results in congestive cardiomyopathy, heart failure, cardiomegaly, and ECG changes. It is often triggered by the presence of Coxsackievirus or some chemical trigger. Keshan disease occurs only in selenium-deficient children and is associated with an enlarged heart and poor heart function.
Kashin-Beck disease is a disorder of the bones and joints of the hands and fingers, elbows, knees, and ankles of children and adolescents.
Infertility, weakness, hair loss
Summary
I hope you learned something with this quick overview of vitamin and mineral essentials! Like most other endeavors, it is usually best to have the basics covered and supplements are no exception. After years of dinking around with esoteric supplements that only touched the peripheral needs did I finally discover that optimizing the essential vitamins and minerals was the answer.
Please review the book to get extensive insight into all of these essentials that will truly make a difference in your health! I am living proof and nearly 70 and healthier than I was 40 years ago in many ways! Best wishes and I hope that you enjoy the free pdf book that can be read on any device!
