What are nutritional deficiencies and what do they do to your health?    

A deficiency is basically a nutrient that your body does not have enough of to function properly.  

What if you forgot to put enough oil in you car?   Despite the fact that it was getting the air, gas, functioning spark plugs and good combustion, the car wouldn’t work properly.  Sure the piston would go up and down and the car would move forward – just like normal.  But soon the engine might run a little hot.  Down in the engine different things might start happening.  The rings around the piston that stopped oil from getting up into the combustion area might be giving way.  The normal straight camshaft might start to bend a little.   The engine just won’t work right. Perhaps the car will need a small repair, or maybe a major overhaul – or ignored the engine will just seize up and “die”. 

It’s the same with your body – except that you can’t just buy another engine and repairs made to a damaged body might not put things back together again.

Let’s look at some of the many varied things that can happen when you don’t put the needed nutrients into the body, and wind up with a deficiency.

Gingivitis is created when plague (sticky deposits of bacteria, mucus and food particles) adheres to the teeth, hardens and irritates the gum. The accumulation causes the gums to become infected and swollen. As the gums swell, pockets form between the gums and the teeth and act as a trap for more plague.  Irritated gums bleed and eventually start to recede.

This irritation can be fought by introducing Vitamin C, which fights the formation of plaque.  Now gingivitis, untreated, can progress to periodontal disease, which means loose teeth and false teeth.   Seems like it would be easier just to get enough C.   C would have fought the formation of plaque to begin with.

Does that sound too easy?  Remember in the fast food lifestyle that we live in, we need a Vitamin C to fight the many problems in that lifestyle – processed foods, polluted air, etc.  You need enough so that your gums get enough.  

Vitamin B12 comes from meat, eggs, fish and milk, but not everyone eats these and they do not eat enough to fight the depletion that happens from day to day living.   Alcohol, coffee, tobacco to name a few can also deplete the body of vitamin B12.

What happens when you have a deficiency of Vitamin B12?  It can bring about nerve degeneration.  Vitamin B12 supports the sheathing that protects nerve cells. Damage to the nerve sheathing can produce numbness, tingling and the pain. It’s called neuropathy.  Neuropathy can be a side effect of cancer treatments, certain medications, toxins, diabetes, and many other things.    And the funny part about it is that all reasons one can get neuropathy could have been prevented in the first place with the proper nutrients.   

We have all heard the problems from someone smoking, but even if you smoke, you can still take vitamins to compensate for the depletion of vitamins that it causes. 

There are a lot of problems that deficiency causes.  One of the reasons for the website is to help you understand those deficiencies and allow you to fix nutritional deficiencies and build good health. 

Remember when you build good health, disease tends to fade away.

For More info on your health - see McVitamins.com

Are you Getting enough Vitamin C to Protect your body from illness and disease?

One of the most important substances in the achievement and preservation of optimum health, as well as the prevention and treatment of disease, is vitamin C.

To appreciate why an optimum daily intake of this nutrient is so essential in the battle against infectious disease and well-being in general, we must remember that our bodies do not make vitamin C.

The question becomes what amount of vitamin C is needed to put a person in the best of health and give them the immune protection against infectious diseases of all kinds, as well as the various degenerative diseases that are now so common.

To help you understand the truth of "what amount," here is what experts in the field of nutrition have to say:

"In order to answer this, we must first understand the concept of Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) as formulated by the Food and Nutrition Board.

"Most people interpret RDA for any particular nutrient (in this case vitamin C) as being that specific dosage that leads to the best health for all people. That is, ‘if I take the RDA of vitamin C every day of my life, I will more than likely achieve the best health that can possibly be gained by the intake of this nutrient.’

"This interpretation is quite false!

"The RDA is only the estimated amount that, for most people, will prevent scurvy or death caused by vitamin C deficiency.

"The board's recommendations were adopted to indicate to the general American public the amount of vitamin C needed [45 mg] in order to avoid scurvy.

"The problem with the board’s recommendations is that the medical profession took hold of them and created a misconception generally accepted by many physicians. This being:

"If there are no signs or symptoms of scurvy, we must assume that there is no deficiency of vitamin C. Therefore no need to take supplements of this vitamin.

"But scurvy is not just a symptom of lack [of vitamin C], but a final collapse, leading to death, via a breakdown and disintegration of our bodies.

"There is a large area, including colds, infections, flu and degenerative diseases that exists between the total blackness of scurvy and death, and the pure white of optimum health and resistance to disease.

"No longer can we be satisfied with the misconception that if we do not have scurvy, we do not need any additional amounts of vitamin C in order to achieve optimum health and resistance to disease."

Excerpted from Brain Allergies
by William Philpott, M.D. & Dwight Kalita, Ph.D.

See McVitamins - for a good source of Vitamin C

Chris
McVitamins.com (www.mcvitamins.com )