Nutritional Supplements

what are they, how do they work and how do you choose them?

Nutritional supplements are without a doubt one of the most easily accessible and also one of the most confusing aspects of natural health. Manufacturers of nutritional supplements often blind us with science and scientific (or pseudo-scientific) names. Here we summarise the different types of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, antioxidants and other nutritional supplements, so that you can both understand what they do and why they are necessary for healthy living.

Why do we need nutritional supplements or food supplements?

Since the 1920s, Western Governments have known that the majority of our food crops have been grown on mineral-depleted soils, which makes them not only more susceptible to plant diseases and insect attack, but also nutritionally fairly worthless.

In addition to this, animal feeds have changed from the natural foods they eat in the wild to highly processed, chemical laden concoctions that are designed to maximise growth rate, muscle mass and therefore value whilst minimising cost and the time it takes to turn them into a healthy profit. The result is meat that is dangerously high in chemicals and totally lacking in the natural nutritional elements that have kept us healthy for so long (until the 20th century!).

If this weren't bad enough, the modern reliance on pharmaceutical medicine to remove all symptoms of disease instantly has led us away from the traditional cures that sought to replace what was missing in the body. Indeed, many modern drugs, such as diuretics actually make us lose the very minerals we require for health at an increased rate.

As a consequence, virtually everyone in the Western World (many "primitive cultures" are much better nourished than we are) needs to supplement their diet to a greater or lesser extent. the most commonl types of nutritional supplements fall into the following categories:-

Types of Nutritional Supplements

Antioxidants

Amino-acids

Carbohydrates

Essential fatty acids

Fats

Minerals

Plant extracts

Proteins

Trace elements

Vitamins

Glycemic Index

All carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels (and so have a glycemic index) and therefore cause insulin to be released from the pancreas in order to control the amount of glucose in the blood. The more glucose that has been made available in the blood, the more insulin is released to control it. The relative effciency with which carbohydrates do this is known as the glycemic index.The importance of the glycemic index is that it predicts how much insulin will be released and therefore, how the body will respond. For example metabolise fat (use it for fuel - low glycemic index) or store excess energy as fat (high glycemic index).

This happens in two ways.

Firstly, the presence of insulin (high glycemic index) instructs the liver that energy requirements are more than being met by current food intake, so the breakdown of fat to provide energy from body stores is unnecessary. Therefore, insulin (and so high glycemic index) stops the body from burning fat for energy.

Secondly, and at the same time, excess sugar in the blood is quickly targeted to be stored for later energy requirements and is converted to fat. So, insulin ( and high glycemic index) also causes the body to store more fat.

If the blood sugar level remains high, i.e. with really high glycemic index foods, more insulin is released in an effort to reduce it.

From these two very simple rules, it should be easy to see that any high glycemic index food that causes sudden increases in blood sugar and therefore massive release of insulin is likely to lead to increased fat production and storage.

Not surprisingly, therefore, people who eat a lot of sugary foods and other foods with a high glycemic index, such as refined flour, potatoes, white rice and cereal-based foods are more likely to retain fat than those that don't. Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are told to do by modern medicine and Government, who clearly have no idea about weight control.

The following table gives an indication of the relative glycemic index of various foods.

Glycemic index of popular foods

High glycemic index	Medium glycemic index	Low glycemic index
Maltose (beer)*	Rye bread (crispbread)	Oatmeal porridge
Cooked parsnips	Muesli (no sugar)	Wholewheat pasta
Cooked carrots	Brown rice	Sweet potato
White Rice	Cooked beets	Dried Peas
Biscuits / cookies	Garden peas	Apples
Baked potato	Boiled potato	Pears
Cornflakes / cereal	Wholewheat bread	Whole milk
Bagels	Corn, polenta	Kidney beans
White Bread	Sultanas / raisins	Lentils
Corn chips	Orange juice	Soybeans
Mangoes	Oatmeal biscuits / cookies	High water content fruits (melon etc)
Ripe bananas	White pasta	Apple juice
Papaya	Buckwheat	black-eye peas
Rice cakes	Pinto beans	Green vegetables

*the Glycemic index of Maltose is actually higher than that of glucose. i.e. malt and it's products (like beer) actually stimulate more insulin release than pure sugar!

What is clear from this table is that different varieties of similar foods have different effects. For example, boiled potatoes have a lower Glycemic index than baked potatoes and wholewheat varieties of bread and pasta are much better than their white counterparts. This effect on glycemic index is explained below.

The effect of eating high glycemic index foods consistently is to lead to constantly high insulin levels. In this situation, the body becomes accustomed to these high insulin levels and starts to respond to them less effectively over time. As high glycemic index foods are eaten further, this progresses, more and more insulin is required to have the same effect on the tissues. This phenomenon is known as insulin resistance, and is the first step towardsdiabetes.

The glycemic index situation is made worse if the body has insufficientchromium. Chromium helps insulin to exert its effect on the tissues, encouraging sugar uptake and thereby reducing blood sugar. In the absence of chromium, insulin is much less effective, sugar levels stay high and MORE insulin is secreted in an effort to control them

The Good News

Thankfully, it is not all bad news. Whilst It is best to avoid foods with a high

glycemic index, they often have direct alternatives with a moderate or even low glycemic index. This is because the insulin-stimulating effect of carbohydrates is greatly reduced in the presence of fibre, as found in some fruits and the wheatgerm present in whole wheat. This moderates the insulin response, spreading out the absorption of carbohydrate over a prolonged timespan and so reduces the amount of insulin released (lower glycemic index.

In addition, the use of chromium supplements makes insulin's job easier, helping reduce blood glucose (and therefore insulin) to normal levels.

In this way, the effect of brown rice and wholewheat alternatives to white flour products is much lower, and therefore much less detrimental to health. This is why it is best to ALWAYS use wholewheat / wholegrain versions of these foods, with a lower glycemic index.

Glycemic Index, Insulin resistance and diabetes.

Whilst diabetes is discussed elsewhere on this site, it is worth touching here on the role of insulin resistance in the development of the disease.

Diabetes is the inability of the body to produce enough insulin to control blood sugar. As a consequence, those who suffer from diabetes suffer from a number of problems related to the massive spikes of sugar immediately following a meal and subsequent troughs in between meals, which, if unchecked can lead very quickly to coma and death.

It has long been known that frank diabetes is often, indeed usually preceded by a period of insulin resistance, in which, as described above, more and more insulin is released with each subsequent dose of high glycemic index carbohydrate in order to overcome the increasing insensitivity of the tissues to insulin's "demands".

Eventually, the body reaches a stage where, no matter how much insulin is produced, the tissues no longer respond and blood sugar remains unchecked. In such a situation, the pancreas can "give up" completely, and all insulin secretion may stop. Whether this happens or not, diabetes is the result, and huge doses of insulin are required to be injected to overcome the problem, regardless of glycemic index. Needless to say, the high insulin levels mean that many diabetics are overweight. This adds further stress to the system.

Prior to this "end stage" diabetes, there is much to be gained from limiting the intake of high (and even medium) Glycemic index foods (not just sugar, as advised by medicine) and taking an appropriate dose of chromium supplements to make the existing insulin more effective.