MODULE 3: VITAMINS/MINERALS/MULTIVITAMINS

LECTURE 1: Do I really need a multivitamin and a mineral supplement?

Hey guys, Akash here, hope you have been enjoying this course so far and
gaining valuable information.

Supplementation was a huge cause of confusion for me, in the early years of
my journey and I wasted hundreds of dollars on useless products that my
body simply threw out....

The supplement industry is full of greedy companies that will do anything to

survive and therefore make unsubstantiated extravagant claims but in reality
their ingredients, formulations are so poor, that sometimes the supplements
do more harm than good.

In this course, I will help you become a dietary supplements advisor. Although
do read the disclaimer and know your rights before you embark on helping
your clients.

You can definitely use the title dietary supplement advisors and can create
supplement stack for various fitness goals like muscle building, fat loss, and
to improve overall health and therefore provide guidance to only healthy
individuals.

what if someone is pregnant. what if someone is suffering from cardiac

issues. please please stay away and let the doctors do the job. with this
course, you will not become a dietician.

but this course has all the basic information to know about dozens of
common supplements found in the marketplace. it will give you a pretty darn
good idea about protein powders, creatine, multivitamins, omega-3's, and
other most commonly supplement use and after listening to this course and
passing the test you will feel confident when you clients are confused which
supplement companies to trust, or what top supplement to buy when they
are trying to lose fat.

So with that thought, let's delve deep into the world of vitamins and minerals
supplements.

So the title of this lecture is food vs a multivitamin. Do we really need to pop

pills?

Now, let me start by asking you two simple questions:

1) Do you consume at least 5-8 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every
day..not once in a while, but every day?

2) Does more than 80% of your total calories come from whole foods or
unprocessed foods?

If you answer is a resounding, yes, then awesome you don't need to

supplement with a multivitamin even though I strongly recommend to watch
the remaining lecture as I will discuss some important points.

If on the other hand, you are like most people, who eat most of their calories
from processed foods including junk, fast and ready to eat meals, and the
only salad you eat is a small iceberg lettuce leaf under your sandwich, then
my dear student a good multivitamin will be super-beneficial for you.

Now, as we discussed in Module-2 protein powders, your protein powder is

as good as it's source. if its whey protein, then the cows needs to be grass-
fed, hormones and antibiotic free, and so forth.

The same logic obviously applies to your food. Unfortunately, in the past 50
years or so, the soil that your food is grown in has been severely depleted off
its nutrients. [1][2][3]

This is mainly because of heavy use of pesticides, herbicides and due to the
introduction of genetically engineered plants.

[1]http://www.californiaearthminerals.com/media/mineral-nutrient-depletion-
in-us-farm-and-range-soils.pdf

[2]http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/07/soil-depletion-human-security/

[3]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
48855698_Global_Soil_Nutrient_Depletion_and_Yield_Reduction

There is a further loss of nutrients during transportation. Unless you grow

your own food in your backyard [which by the way is becoming a huge
practice all over the world], or you buy your produce from a farmers market, a
lot of nutrients are lost.

And if this was not enough, our methods of storing, preparing and cooking
food is not optimal. High flame cooking is a norm, we don't store our produce
in airtight containers and so forth.

Bottomline is that unless you are not buying organic produce from your local
farmers market or growing your own produce and employ optimal methods of
cooking and storing your food, there will be a substantial loss of nutrients and
this will be the case if you eat 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables in the first
place which most people don't.

We rely more on convenience and taste rather than worrying about the
nutrients in our food.

Now, I can say with reasonable confidence that most of us would do well if
we supplement our diet with a multivitamin and mineral supplement.

So the first question that will probably come to your mind is this:

1) Should I take individuals vitamins and minerals, like just calcium, or

magnesium or even vitamin k? or should I simply opt for a multivitamin?

So let's deal with this important question first in the next lecture before
moving on to other important questions...

Lecture 2: Single Vitamins and Minerals or a Multivitamin

So the questions that demand attention here is:

whether you should take individuals vitamins and minerals or simply go for a
multivitamin?

I like to think that a single vitamin or mineral supplement is better suited to

specific nutrient deficiencies or in support or prevention of certain diseases.

For example, when a woman gets pregnant, the need for iron and folate is the
highest that why pregnant women are prescribed just that.

Similarly, calcium or vitamin-d is prescribed for adults over the age of 50, who
at a higher risk of osteoporosis or arthritis.

Vegans usually supplement with vitamin b12 and so forth.

So what about healthy adults, who don't have any disease or any special
requirements?

The general consensus amongst dieticians and nutritionist is to recommend a

multivitamin which I also believe in.

also, taking individual vitamins or minerals can become an expensive

process, as you will more likely to be consuming more than one vitamin or
mineral.

Then, billions of chemical reactions occur in our bodies, and the interplay of
vitamins and minerals and how they interact with each other is something
that food scientists haven't truly discovered. A good multivitamin company
will take care of their formulations and put the dosage in an amount so that
the vitamins and minerals don't compete with each other.

And lastly, some vitamins especially the fat-soluble vitamins in very high
dosage can potentially be harmful to you, as they get stored in our body,
unlike water-soluble vitamins which get extracted from your urine if you
overdose them.

Bottomline, to stay under budget and avoid any potential harmful effect of
overdose (which is rare mind you), for a healthy adult its best to stick with a
multivitamin.

Well, then what about individuals who have special considerations? Students,
remember we are not doctors, we are experts and advisors and our scope of
work should be limited to helping and advising healthy adults. so keep this in
mind always.

In the next lecture, I will teach you how to ensure you select a good
multivitamin.

Lecture 3: How to select a good multivitamin

Let's start with whether the multivitamin you select has natural or synthetic
vitamins and minerals in it or not.

When your body gets vitamins and minerals from food, it is much better
absorbed because of the presence of co-factors, enzymes, and other
compounds that aids in their absorption.

Whereas when you consume a multivitamin and mineral supplement which

are made in the lab (mimics the chemical structure) they usually don't get
absorbed that well because of the missing cofactors.

There are supplement companies that go the extra mile and provide you
vitamins and minerals in the potent and bioavailable form that enables your
body to absorb them more effectively.

Let me give you some examples that will give you a good idea of what I am
talking about.

If you already have a multivitamin that you use, pause this video and bring
the bottle and turn around and check the label.

Let's start:

Vitamin B6's bioactive form is Pyridoxal 5'-Phosphate

but most companies use pyridoxine HCl form which is not the active form of
vitamin B6.

Bioactive form of b12 is methylcobalamin, but most use cyanocobalamin

which is a cheaper version.

For Folate [b9] the best form l-5-methyltetrahydrofolate

Talking about minerals they are poorly absorbed. But when bound to an
amino acid which is termed as a 'chelate' they are absorbed much better.

So guys first point, look at the labels, and check in front of the respective
vitamins if their active forms are mentioned, otherwise the vitamin or mineral
is synthetic.

and synthetic stuff is not absorbed efficiently and a term is used to define the
process and is called expensive urine because when the body cannot absorb
something it throws it out through urine.

Next point. Non-GMO. You don't want your multivitamin to have any
genetically modified organism. '

third point. you want a multivitamin in a dosage that is required you to take it
few times a day, ideally two times, one in the morning after your meal and
after dinner.

why is this? you need the supply of nutrients throughout the day. this is
certainly true when it comes water-soluble vitamins like b vitamins. when your
body does not need them, it throws out the extra. so it's much better to
supply it with constant dosage spread over 2-3 times a day.

also in a multivitamin, there is a lot to compress in a pill, a tablet or a capsule,

and therefore a good multivitamin company will divide the dosage in such a
way so that you are required to take in close to 6-8 pills a day. yeah,
unfortunately, you will be required to pop that many pills in a day ideally
divided into two dosages.

if a company is asking you to simply pop a single pill of multivitamin a day,

they are lying to you. it's simply not possible. maybe it is but the dosage is
not optimal and will not yield good results.

moving on, we also don't want any unnecessary fillers like gluten, yeast,
artificial colours, preservatives, lactose, etc.

The ingredients that you probably want to see are cellulose, silicon dioxide
which is completely natural and does not inhibit the absorption.

so this was somewhat of a long list of criteria's that should be strictly

adhered to by the supplement company that I buy from.

A website, multivitmainguide.org is one of the best sources of information on

this topic. they have compiled a list of over 100 multivitamin brands to find
out which ones are the best.

Each of the reviewed vitamins was evaluated against four criteria, including
composition, bioavailability, safety, and potency. Each supplement received a
score ranging from 0 to 10 to help you easily compare the effectiveness of
the different brands and determine the best multivitamin to take.

Here is the link. https://www.multivitaminguide.org/best-multivitamin.html

if you still have questions, i have compiled a list of FAQ’s in the next lecture.