I used to take vitamin and mineral supplements fairly intermittently. Basically, whenever I got sick and the odd time my mom would urge me to take them because of my active and physically demanding lifestyle. As a broke student I really only took them when I got them from my mom.
Now I take not only vitamin and mineral supplements, but also other nutritional supplements such as fish oil and specific plant based extracts. I have learned why it is important to take nutritional supplements and why I won't get what I need by just eating healthy. But I have also experienced what has happened to my body when I started to give it everything it needs. When I experienced a recurrence of testicular cancer late last year it was bit like wild fire, growing and spreading. Before a surgery in January it had spread to some lymph nodes in my abdomen and consecutive CT Scans showed that those nodes were growing. After drastic lifestyle changes, which to list them would require a blog entry of its own, I experienced significant results.
I had gone to the Naturopath and done some intravenous therapies there, Vitamin C and Sodium Bicarbonate. I went on a near vegan diet, got my body ph into the alkaline range and began taking supplements. CT Scans since have shown that those lymph nodes have shrunk. I went from wildfire to tumors getting smaller. I am not trying to make any claims about having cured myself. As of now I still have enlarged lymph nodes and elevated tumor markers (levels of certain substances in the blood). But things are far from the out of control situation last winter.
But enough about my personal journey, I promised to write about why it is important to take Vitamins and why we don't get enough of essential nutrients just by eating healthy. First of all, you probably don't eat as healthy as you think. If you took an honest account of what goes into your body, kept track of it for a week and then looked at it, you would most likely have to admit to yourself that there is a fair bit of less-than-healthy food that you eat. But even if you ate as much fresh vegetables as you should and you ate mostly unprocessed foods, whole healthy meals, I am saying that you're not getting enough of certain vitamins, anti-oxidants and minerals. And here is why:
Some things have changed over the last couple of decades and I am going to begin with the changes in how our food is grown. As the world's population has increased, farming has become more and more an industrial food production. Most crops are grown in monocultures, which require large amounts of fertilizer and as a result the soil has become devoid of many essential minerals. If it isn't in the soil, it won't be in the plant! The following are two charts that show the level of mineral depletion in the soil here in North America and specifically the depletion of certain minerals in vegetables. The last graph shows a strong correlation between the depletion on minerals in the soil and mineral deficiency related diseases.
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