The importance of micronutrients for optimal nutrition

The micronutrients are those nutritional components needed by the body in comparatively small amounts, usually measured in milligrams or micrograms, and may be classified into vitamins and minerals. The vitamins are organic (carbon containing) compounds functioning in the body as co-factors facillitating essential bichemical reactions at the cellular level. Minerals are inorganic (lacking carbon) elements found in the soil and utilized by the body in both functional and structural roles. Calcium, for example, has a structural role in the formation of bone, but it serves in a functional capacity as an electrolyte helping to regulate muscle contractions and heart rate. Plants pick up the minerals via their root system. Then grazing animals eat the plants and we eat the animals and plants.

The vitamins may be categorized as either water soluble or fat soluble. The water soluble vitamins include the entire B Complex, and vitamin C. The fat soluble vitamins include vitamins A, D, E, and K. Because they can be stored in fat tissue, a couple of the fat solubles, A&D, can reach toxic levels, as the first European arctic explorers learned when they ate polar bear liver which packs a whopping 150,000 I.U.(International Unit) of vitamin A per ounce. The medical term for this condition is Hypervitaminosis A. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is only 5,000 I.U. so it is easy to understand how these arctic explorers could have overdone the vitamin A so easily.

Minerals may be divided into the macrominerals, those minerals needed in doses of a milligram (1/1000 of a gram) or more, and microminerals, those with requirements in the microgram range (1/10,000 of a gram). A few of the macrominerals are calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, amd magnesium. Microminerals are also known as trace minerals and include boron, chromium, selenium, iodine, cobalt, fluoride, molybdenum, copper, and a host of others.

For optimal nutrition most of us could use more variety so as to stave off monotony and boredom as well as providing a better balance of nutrients. Try not to get hung up on the listed optimal percentages of macronutrients.

Getting our day off to a good start nutritionally is basic. Yet how many of us have no breakfast at all? Or, if we do have breakfast, how often is it little more than tea and toast, or a bagel and coffee? Such a poorly planned menu not only fails to provide us with the fuel and essential nutrients, but also sets the stage for overeating later in the day.

Whole, unprocessed foods are preferable to the refined, highly processed kind. For example, we will be better off having a baked potato than a bag of potato chips. Better still to choose an apple over a slice of apple pie.

Balanced nutrition means ingesting the right amounts of the right nutrients over time. No one food item has them all. There are no nutritional panaceas. Cycling our menus so that we won’t be eating the same meal two days in a row is a good way to start in our quest for balance.

For readily available energy have an easily digestible, high carbohydrate snack about an hour before exercise. Starches with a small amount of protein will be preferable to sugars. After a workout have protein.

Better yet, make breakfast the largest meal of the day, providing 1/3 of your daily calories and 1/4 of your protein. Have a low fat complete protein source with each feeding, continuing to eat at regular, two to three hour intervals throughout the day.

Every so often you may want to try a food item that you do not usually eat. For example, brown rice, sweet potatoes, grilled salmon steak with grilled vegetables, roasted unsalted peanuts in the shell, black mission figs, barbequed lamb in a kabab with vegetables, baked acorn squash; the permutations and combinations are endless.

Dietary supplements are not a substitute for real, whole foods, but serve as insurance only. Try taking these in either liquid or gel cap, especially supplementary calcium.

It is important for us to remember that nutrition is only one part of the equation for health and wellbeing. We also need to exercise. Now let’s get up off our fatty acids and develop start pumping up those deltoids.