April 5, 2022

 

Food supplements such as SNAC nutritions for example, also known as dietary supplements, complement your general nutrition, a concentration of nutrients, or other substances that have a physiological or nutritional effect. Supplements are available in pill, capsule, powder, or other forms.

What Kind Of Supplements Are There?

There are many different types of dietary supplements on the market, and they can be divided into the following categories:

Vitamins and provitamins: 

folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, B vitamins

Macro elements and trace elements:  calcium, magnesium, iron, chromium

• Carbohydrates: Compounds of fructose and glucose
• Flavonoids
• polyphenols, carotene, lycopene
• Vegetable extracts: pomegranate extract, cranberry extract

Enzymes: enzymatic hydrolysis of proteins and sugars, such as lactase

• Vitaminoids: substances with an action similar to vitamins such as flavonoids, coenzyme Q10
• Amino acids and derivatives: L-arginine, L-carnitine, taurine
• Mineral supplements: silica, dolomite
• Other food supplements: probiotic cultures, yeast extract

Do I Need Food Supplements?

If you follow a balanced diet, you probably do not need dietary supplements. Still, there are times in life (such as growth, pregnancy, lactation, or old age) when many people need more vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and the like. These are some of the times when supplements should be taken. Some diseases, restrictive diets (such as vegan), food sensitivities (such as lactose intolerance), or heavy alcohol or tobacco use can lead to nutritional deficiencies. Supplements can have a positive effect on the symptoms of many diseases.

That is good to know

Before taking dietary supplements, you should take a blood test and discuss the results with your doctor. If you already get enough nutrients through your diet, you don’t need to take supplements. Do you have nutritional deficiencies? Depending on the degree of deficiency, your doctor may recommend that you include certain foods in your diet or may prescribe supplements.

How Much Should I Take?

Supplements contain substances with a transformative function in the body: they influence metabolism, cell division, and cell growth. Because of this, an overdose can be dangerous.

Multivitamin overdose can damage your organs. Too much vitamin A can cause skin and liver problems; too much vitamin C can negatively affect your digestion or cause kidney stones; too much vitamin K can decrease the effect of anticoagulants.

Where Can/Should I Buy The Supplements?

Today, in supermarkets, Para pharmacies, or pharmacies, you can buy food supplements everywhere. But here’s the danger: many of these substances are poor quality or contain the wrong dosage. We should be cautious with plant extracts because they can have a negative effect on essential processes in the body. You should only buy supplements recommended by professionals, such as at the pharmacy.

What Does The Science Say About Taking Supplements?

The results of several studies have shown that taking dietary supplements preventively does not provide any health benefits, nor does it guarantee that you will live longer. It’s the other way around: as discussed above, taking too many supplements or when you don’t need them can cause health problems.

It is necessary to define where Phytotherapy can help in maintaining health. As a complementary therapy, it cannot be seen as an adversary, substitute, or even alternative to traditional medicine, but rather as an ally that complements enhances, or helps its conventional therapies. There are many examples in medicine where traditional therapies can benefit either through prevention or the effectiveness of treatments, or improving the patient’s well-being. In this way, complementary therapies tend to be an option, and with them, the area of ​​Phytotherapy.

As already noted, modern herbal medicine combines traditional herbal medicine with the most advanced research in medicinal plants and is open to innovation.

The increase in the consumption of herbal products can also be associated with the dangers of the abusive and irrational use of synthetic pharmaceutical products that can have very serious side effects are increasingly being questioned, and they seek to replace them with medicinal plants. The evidence of therapeutic action also favors this dynamic.

Quality Assurance

Today, Phytotherapy is no longer based on its traditional use, contrary to what happened before. Studies increasingly support it as rigorous as conventional medicine with the same quality, efficacy, and security criteria. There is a set of requirements that a product must fulfill to be approved for sale on the market, with the primary objective of guaranteeing the well-being and safety of the consumer.

The prerequisites for ensuring quality in herbal medicine go through the standardization process, which begins during the cultivation of the fresh plant, continuing through validated production processes to result in a product that contains the constituents of the fresh plant in a stable composition. Nowadays, legislation regulates the production of different herbal health products.

What Is Natural? Is It Bad?

The use of plants for therapeutic purposes without proper guidance is a concern that must be considered by health professionals, as well as by all those involved in health education, given the incidence of species with a record of toxicity and contraindications in its use. Thus, the risk of intoxication caused by its misuse must always be considered. Care in the prescribed dosages and care in the precise identification of the material used can avoid accidents.

The false idea that everything that is “natural is good” or, as it is so often said, that “plants are not harmful to health” must be clarified by health professionals in the community. From the crossing of information obtained with bibliographic data, it can be concluded that a large part of the plants mentioned as being of therapeutic use in different populations presents some type of toxicity or contraindication for use in specific population groups.

The absence of information about some plants does not necessarily mean the absence of toxicity or contraindication, but it may be associated with the lack of studies in this regard.

Herbal preparations, despite being “natural,” are not harmless. Its possible negative effects are generally due to its active constituents’ pharmacological characteristics and dosages. Herbal medicines or preparations can be potentially toxic if misused and as a substitute for conventional medicines. In this way, both users and doctors or other health professionals must be able to make the best risk-benefit assessment before using or advising any drug or herbal product.

The use of health products such as PaylessKratom kratom capsules for instance derived from plants is complex because it results from an interaction between numerous components creating the global effect of a single extract. In this way, the rational and thoughtful choice and use is a huge advantage in maintaining health and preventing a series of health problems, leading to a lower incidence of minor pathologies that greatly impact global health and the economy.