Do I Choose Vitamins, Supplements or Herbs?
Everyone that I encounter has taken vitamins and supplements at some point in their life. Most pet owners do the same for their pets. In fact, if you are feeding a commercial pet food, the manufacturer has already added them into those foods. Are all these vitamins and supplements necessary and do they really help?
The purpose of vitamins and supplements is to add nutrients into bodies that have deficiencies. Making the determination as to what these deficiencies are and how many supplements are required is usually nothing more than guesswork. We also need to determine the sources of these nutrients because they are all different.
Unfortunately in today’s profit driven, corporate culture, many highly respected and well-branded companies use synthetic chemicals instead of natural sources to produce their products. While these products appear to be chemically identical and pure, the body does not recognize them as food, reducing the bioavailability significantly. Most of the time, we are only guessing on selection and dosage. In turn this leaves us unsure that the body is even utilizing these nutrients. This is good reason to question their usefulness.
The best way to provide your pets and your body with all nutrients that are needed, is by consuming a biologically species appropriate diet, comprised of the highest quality natural raw or minimally processed organic foods. These foods will contain the most bioavailable nutrients, along with the proper enzymes for digestion and utilization, along with the micro-nutrients that aid the body’s ability to absorb and utilize them. You should be feeding a wide array of foods in order to supply the necessary vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, that have varying degrees of availability. The variety will allow the body to pick and choose exactly what it needs. Being in a natural form, the body will easily eliminate those that it does not need.
Most of the time, we can narrow our decision regarding the supplements we require as we observe various body conditions and behaviors. Skin, hair, joint, gastric, muscle, and even our energy and immune health are all indicators of various deficiencies and imbalances.
We can correct these by adjusting our diet and using certain foods to supply the specific nutrients that we need. Diets should include not only the major food groups but the micro-groups such as natural herbs and spices as well. This means we need to learn exactly what our foods provide. For instance, we think of meat as a source of protein but it’s much more than just that. Lamb is a great source of natural, bio-available vitamins A, B-6, B-12, Niacin, Phosphorus, Manganese, Riboflavin, Iron, Zinc, Copper and Selenium. The same is true of every natural, organic food and herb that nature provides.
By supplying our supplements through natural foods, including herbs, we let the body do the magic that nature intended…