July 28, 2012

Introduction to Series on Vitamins and Minerals


Many of us are deficient in certain nutrients and our doctors do not or will not test us for deficiencies as we age. Some of us do have sufficient quantities in our diets and then take supplements, which may give us an oversupply. I will give the name of the test when it is available. Your doctor should test for all of these (that have testing available) before you run out and buy supplements. You may not need them because you are already obtaining sufficient intake from your diet. If you have a doctor that will not test because you should be eating foods with sufficient nutrients, then you will have a decision to make about retaining your current doctor.

I realize that many of you may be aware of them, but it never hurts to review them. In the coming blogs I will cover iodine, selenium, choline, manganese, magnesium, potassium, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, and Vitamin B12. These may not be what you would think is needed for those of us with diabetes; however, they are still important. If you would like more detailed information, please read the links supplied with each blog as there may be several links. Some are water-soluble and others are fat-soluble. Vitamin D is neither as it is correctly a hormone. This will not change because of acceptance.

I would be remiss if I did not give you a warning about not overcompensating and ingesting too much of some of these nutrients as there are some medical concerns with toxicity and conflicts with certain prescription medications. More is often not better and can be fatal with some supplements. I will give warnings where they apply.

When there is a list of foods that may give you sufficient supply of a nutrient, they will be listed.

Since most of these vitamins and minerals have recommended daily allowances (RDAs) that vary by age, the entire table will be given. Some sources list only the adult RDAs and I prefer to give you the full list.

Please refer back to this blog if you question something and I will update this blog with each blog as I publish it. Some of my blogs will refer to my other blogs, as the nutrients can be essential for the same thing. Example - iodine and selenium both are essential for the thyroid gland to work properly. There may be others, but as of yet, I am not into research for each of them. I had intended to put two or three nutrients in a single blog, but with all that I am discovering, this would make the blog too long and essential points less obvious.

Vitamin K

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