here is no question that people who eat more than eight ounces of fish per week live longer and healthier lives than those who don’t.  Study after study shows that fish eaters are more likely to avoid illnesses like heart disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, and psoriasis much more than people who only eat one serving of fish per week or less.  It has been noted that the Japanese, who hold the world’s record for longevity, eat three times more fish than people in many other countries.

So what about those of us who don’t get enough fish in our diets?  The prognosis isn’t great.  Non-fish eaters run a thirty percent higher risk of contracting serious illnesses like heart disease and cancer.    This is not good news for people who don’t like fish or want to eat it.  However, you don’t have to like to eat fish to enjoy its benefits.  As far as vitamins and supplements go, people who take regular doses of fish oil capsules get similar benefits to those people who eat fish 3 times a week.  

Most of the benefits derived from fish oil supplements are from their high content of omega 3 fatty acids.  Omega 3 fatty acids discourage the formation of hormone-like agents called prostaglandins.  Prostaglandins are the perpetrators that (read more…)

 When you take prescribed medication, it comes with a warning label and usually an entire pamphlet explaining how to use the medication.  It also comes with the advice of a doctor and a pharmacist; two medical professionals who are at your disposal if you need them.  This is, however, not the case for vitamins and supplements.  With vitamins, all you get in the way of directions is usually the dosage suggestion on the bottle.  This can be somewhat disconcerting, especially when you consider that you are taking vitamins and supplements for health reasons.  So, here are a few tips on using vitamins and supplements that you won’t find on the warning label of your vitamin bottle.

1.  Always take vitamins with some kind of food.  Vitamins are not a meal substitute, they are a meal supplement.  If you take vitamins or supplements on an empty stomach, they will simply wash right out of your system.  Also, don’t take vitamins with fresh fruit for breakfast.  The citrus acids in the fruit can change the chemical makeup of the vitamin and strip away its nutritive values.

2.  Always take vitamins and supplements with water.  While it seems healthier to take them with fruit juice, all you are doing is subjecting your vitamins to a bath of citric acid, thereby stripping them of their nutrients.  Also, do not (read more…)

There are many people who eat healthy most of the time, but think they don’t need vitamins and supplements.  They also think that you can get all the nutrients that you need from the foods that you eat.  It’s possible that this is may be true in some cases, but more often than not, it isn’t.  Researchers are learning all the time about new vitamins and supplements and how they work in the right doses to make our lives better.  In most cases, you can’t physically eat all the foods that it would take to get the amount of vitamins and supplements for optimal health.  So it is always better to take vitamin and supplements, even if you always eat healthy.

Remember, eating healthy means getting at least five servings of vegetables every day.  If you can’t remember the last time you had this many vegetables on any given day, then you aren’t eating healthy.  According to government statistics, only one in five adults get this many servings of vegetables every day.  One out of five, they don’t even eat one vegetable in a 24 hour period.  If you have a salad for lunch every day, that’s a good start, but it still doesn’t come close to the five helpings you need seven days a week.  If you only eat three meals a day, this means that you have to have two servings for lunch, and three for dinner.  If you aren’t getting close to this, the best thing to do is to supplement your diet with the top quality vitamins and supplements.

Even if you do eat a lot of vegetables, you have to worry about where they come from.  The quality of the soil where vegetables are grown isn’t (read more…)

If you go to the grocery store, health food store, or pharmacy to buy vitamins and supplements for nutritional reasons, you may be surprised at how many different types and varieties there are on the shelves.  It used to be that every store where vitamins and supplements were available only had one aisle of these products; but now there are whole sections and even entire stores dedicated to selling vitamins and supplements.

If you read an article on vitamins and supplements and decide to purchase them for nutritional reasons, having this many different products available can be confusing.  Each vitamin and supplement may come in several different forms and also different dosages.  For example, Vitamin C can come in a liquid form, pill form, or can even be combined with other vitamins to produce a specific result.  It can be sold in different doses and even different measurements like milligrams and IU’s that you may not understand.   It can also be frustrating to make a choice if there are ten or twenty different brands available.

So if you want to buy vitamins and supplements to boost your health, where do you start?  If you are just looking for general health improvement, then you might (read more…)

If you’ve decided to start purchasing vitamins and supplements, you will notice one distinct characteristic about them.  They are extremely expensive!  If you go to the health food store and only purchase three or four bottles of supplements, the total can easily be well over a hundred dollars.  Assuming that each bottle has only a month’s supply, if you are on a serious supplement regimen,  it could possibly cost you up to a couple of hundred dollars a month if you buy the premium brands of vitamins.  So here are a few tips on how to get your vitamins for the cheapest price and still enjoy the benefits associated with the most expensive name brands.

Tip #1:  Don’t pay more for the fancy label.  Many vitamins and supplements come in very ornate looking packaging.  However, once you start reading the fancy label, if you don’t see any difference between its ingredients and the cheaper brands’ – that’s probably because there is no difference.  A lot of times, you are paying more for the name on the bottle because you are paying for the advertising the company puts out.  In reality, vitamins from companies with a huge difference in price from other brands actually come from the same factory.

Tip #2:  Generic brands are just as good as name brands and cost about half as much.  Again, read the label.  If the generic has the same ingredients as its competitors; it is the same thing.  In fact, many companies put out a generic brand along with their name brand to capture price-conscious shoppers along with their more discerning customers.  On some generic labels, you can even see a “distributed by” in fine print on the back of the bottle.  Always buy (read more…)