Are You Aware of Nutritional Deficiencies?

Nutrient deficiency means that the body does not have enough of one or more nutrients.   An example:  People develop scurvy when they do not have sufficient

Vitamin C in their diets. Interestingly, the US Food and Drug Administration proclaimed

that only drugs can be used to treat or cure diseases. They seem to have overlooked scurvy.

Deficiencies can be difficult to detect.  In recent years research has shown that Calcium is involved in at least 300 metabolic processes.  Magnesium is involved in at least 350 metabolic processes. A deficiency of Calcium or Magnesium would mean the person’s body is not “working properly” in at least 300 metabolic processes.  How long can that go on without producing negative side effects (perhaps even disease)?

Recent research is tending to indicate that Vitamin D may help prevent or cure breast cancer. In modern North America a very large percentage of the population works indoors during the day. This limited exposure to sunlight puts that entire segment of the population at risk of Vitamin D deficiency, as the sun is our best source of    Vitamin D.

Another factor involved is soil depletion.  Our fields have been used so much that the soil nutrients are being depleted.  Vegetables tend to have 40-60 percent less nutrition  than they did 40 years ago.  That would seem to indicate that we need to eat twice as  many vegetables and fruit than people did in the mid-1900s to get as much nutrition. If we do      not, we may be unwittingly depriving ourselves of essential nutrients.

Some people respond with, “I take a vitamin every day,”  not realizing that synthetic   vitamins do not give life. They are only chemical reproductions.  Our living bodies need  vitamins (vita means life) from life-giving sources, like plants.