Vitamins and minerals have had a really good rap just recently, but regardless of some of the claims made, they are not the secret elixir of life. However, it is extremely tempting to look at them in that manner. Any product that may help hold back the years, look younger, help fight off conditions like cancer and heart disease, boost your immune system, fight off illness, help you work with anxiety attack and supercharge your vitality sure enough sounds moderately miraculous or magical.

Over the last few years, when people started to spread the word about the healthful potential of vitamins and minerals, people went wild for bottled nutrients and wanted to be told if they could be used as part of a liver detox regime. As it turned out, so did health authors and even some medical professionals. As the stories broke out, it was starting to sound like by taking a healthy dose of vitamins you could cure pretty much any illness. Start pumping vitamin pills like there was no tomorrow, and voila! Perfect health was just round the corner.

The bad news is that there’s more to perfect health than just vitamins. As we now know, vitamin supplements, regardless of how powerful they may be, can’t fix every illness known to man. They do, however, have an important part in our diets. A lot of clinical studies just recently are making interest in the topic heat up all over again. Some of the things that scientists have discovered regarding the life enhancing powers of these nutrients all but boggle the mind.

Lets look at one study in particular, out of the many, about the impact of vitamins. The study took place in London, UK, and followed 180 workers in the manufacturing industry in Britain. During the study, half of the participants took a complete health supplement and another group a look-alike pill that did not contain nutrients. When the 2 month study ended, the results showed that those taking the vitamins pills experienced a marked improvement in their quality of life.

The placebo group reported no significant changes to their wellbeing. Researchers concluded that the supplements did actually make a positive impact on improving the managers’ moods and reducing their stress levels. And all because they simply gave their bodies extra vitamins and minerals each day… with the scientific research to support it.

As more clinical trials take place and gather data showing spectacular health benefits from vitamins and minerals, especially when they are included as part of a natural detox diets, we’re all back where we were a few decades ago: eager to take advantage of all of this healing potential - yet at the same time completely confused due to information overload. With all the evidence for the health benefits of vitamins and minerals now supported by scientific research, shopping for nutrients is still nothing less than overwhelming.

Make sure you contact your doctor before taking health advice from non medical sources.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 5:23 pm and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.