[[:encoded, "We are honored to have an expert with us today to talk about the value of vitamin and mineral supplements in our diet. Denis Collier is a Registered Dietitian, a Certified Exercise Physiologist and has a Masters degree in Kinesiology. The company he founded specializes in helping individuals reach their most valuable goals by integrating nutrition with a physically active lifestyle. \n\nNutrition is often a very confusing topic. There is a ton of information out there, some from reputable sources, some from not so reputable sources. One area in particular that I think people find confusing is the area of vitamin and mineral supplements. There are just so many products out there, and so much information. Denis will help us clear up some of the confusion on this topic and give us the straight information. \n\nDenis has a program called The Fitness Phone. The Fitness Phone is a revolutionary way to consistently access the world’s leading health and fitness experts – and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Feel free to review his website by going to www.thefitnessphone.com. \n\nEnjoy the Podcast. I know you receive value from it.\n\nTo help keep you focused on the activities that produce the results you want, subscribe to The Accountability Coach Blog at www.AccountabilityCoachBlog.com. Invest in the 30-day Self-study Course so you can begin achieving your goals in the time frame you want so you can have the life you want. Get started by going to: http://www.accountabilitycoach.com/bw/30dayStudyCourse.php"]]
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(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Accountability Coach podcast where we will be discussing topics, ideas, questions and issues related to having a totally balanced and successful life. This is Ann Bakrak. Today we are honored to have an expert with us to talk about the value of vitamin and mineral supplements in our diet. Dennis Collier is a registered dietician and a certified exercise physiologist and has a master's degree in kinesiology. The company he founded specializes in helping individuals reach their most valuable goals by integrating nutrition with a physically active lifestyle. Nutrition is often a very confusing topic, I think. There is a ton of information out there, some from reputable sources and obviously some from not so reputable sources. One area in particular that I think people find confusing, Dennis, is the area of vitamin and mineral supplements. There are just so many products out there and so much information. Dennis, my hope today is that you can help us clear up some of the confusion on this topic and give us the straight scoop. - I will do my best to do just that. - Great, well, that's what I wanted to hear, Dennis. Perhaps you can start by telling us how to sort fat from fiction in the world of vitamin and mineral supplements. - I would love to start there, Anne, because this is a very important issue, not just for vitamin and mineral, not even for nutrition in general, but Anne, what we're gonna talk about a bit here today, and I don't wanna get too philosophical, but we're gonna talk about the very means by which we determine fats. - Hmm, well, you've got me interested. Let's keep explaining, Dennis. - Okay, Anne, how do we know what we know? What a question. What I'm gonna talk about here today to begin, to answer that question is the good old scientific method. I'm talking about identifying a problem or a question, framing it in a testable hypothesis, and then conducting an experiment, Anne, which controls for all the other variables, as best as you possibly can, and tests the one in which you are interested. This way, others can repeat the experiment in hope of arriving at the same result, which is the best evidence of its reliability. Anne, what I just described is the best way ever conceived or developed by mankind, human kind, for determining fats. Needless to say, most of the information we hear about vitamin and mineral supplements has not been scrutinized by this process. What we hear most often, Anne, is what the guy selling you some concoction on the infomercial says, or what your next door neighbor, who took a pill, and then felt better, so concluded, the pill made them feel better, says. And everything I'm going to talk about today is the result of tested and retested, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence as it relates to what vitamins and minerals do for the human body, and I'm gonna do my best to put it in a way that we can all easily understand. - Well, that's perfect, Dennis. Let's get started in finding out what that is. What does the science tell us about how much vitamins and minerals we really need? - What, Anne, that's a big question. The best place to start in answering it is to look at what is known as the dietary reference intakes. Awful called the DRIs. Now, this is the system, the DRIs, that have been in use for about the last 10 to 15 years. This system takes each vitamin and mineral and gives up different recommendations based on the quantity and the quality of reliable scientific information that has been collected. We can look at what vitamins and minerals do for us on a continuum of health, and I wanna talk about three parts of this continuum. And in an effort to make it as clear as possible, we'll go through this profusing of an example. Let's use the example of vitamin D because it's a vitamin perhaps more than any other that is getting a lot of press these days. Okay, here we go. The first level, the most basic level of this continuum would be the lowest amount of a vitamin or mineral needed to prevent deficiency. Now, years ago, until the DRIs came into use, this was basically all the information that we had. So it was known that our example vitamin D, say, or should I say a lack of vitamin D was associated with rickets, which is a disease, a childhood condition of severe bone deformity. You eat a certain amount of vitamin D, you don't get rickets, it's that straightforward. Now, and the DRIs were developed due to a change in philosophy that this way of looking at it just wasn't good enough. We could do better than this. What the DRIs aim to do is give us some recommendations as to how much of a vitamin or mineral we need to promote health. And that's a significant shift in thinking. This brings us to the second stage of the continuum, man. Primary and secondary prevention of diet-related chronic diseases. Going back to our example, we know that vitamin D at levels higher than that needed to merely prevent rickets will be beneficial for bone health and preventing osteoporosis. Now, most interestingly, what most people want to hear about, it is the third and final stage of this continuum that I'm talking about. It's the stage with the most oleur, and it's the notion that vitamin and minerals, well in excess of what our current recommendations say or what most people usually take, might have the ability to actually improve physical performance or optimize health. This is why vitamin D has gotten all the media buzz lately because there's some speculation that very large doses could possibly be linked to wonderful things like cancer prevention. Now, and keeping these three stages in mind, I need to relate it to my point about using science as the goal of standard for judging what we should regard as factual. Currently, the DRI for almost every vitamin and mineral are set based on the amount to prevent classic deficiency, which is somewhat unfortunate. We're way back in stage one of the continuum. There are no, there are zero, okay, zero hands. Vitamins or minerals that have a DRI set for stage three, the amount needed to optimize health. This is not as romantic or exciting as the reports that mega doses of vitamins and minerals can help you live disease free for a hundred years, but my duty is to report to you and your listeners the best information we have available, and that is this what science tells us. - Well, that's great, Dennis. It is tough because there are so many discrepancies in what we read or what we hear. What can you tell us about specific vitamins and minerals? Has science collected enough data about any vitamins or minerals in particular that we can take as fact? - There is some man, and I would like to tell you about that. Let me give you, I'll give you four vitamins and minerals. For examples that we can take as being pretty much solid, solidly back fat. Number one, women who could become pregnant and those who are pregnant or breastfeeding need a supplement containing folic acid every day. This is one of the B vitamins. They should aim to get at least 400 micrograms per day, so if anyone listening to this call falls into that category, this is a supplement that you're going to need. Number two, both men and women over the age of 50 need a daily vitamin D supplement of 400 international units per day. The third mineral that I want to talk about is iron and a very well-known, often asked mineral is iron. Now particularly pertaining to athletic performance and even more particularly within that realm to the exercising female, iron is very important. It is very difficult and for such a female to meet her requirements of iron through diet alone. Now I'm not necessarily recommending a supplement, but what I'm saying is this, it is a very good idea for an athletic young female who is at higher risk for iron deficiency to see a doctor and get blood work done to determine their iron levels. They may find that a supplement with iron may be beneficial to them. The fourth and final one I'm going to talk about, Anne, is calcium. Now once again Anne, I'm sorry to tell you this that and the other females of our species, but once again, the females are more susceptible to problems here than the men. We talked earlier about the disease of osteoporosis, a disease usually, but not always striking females particularly slight framed females and obviously calcium has a role to play here as well. And if you look at the requirement of calcium for a female who is trying to prevent or combat osteoporosis, she may need an excess of 1300 milligrams of calcium per day. Now that number may not have any meaning to you. Let me give you an example to try and clear it up. The best dietary sources of calcium are dairy products like milk, cheese and yogurt. Some people sometimes tell me Anne that, well, green vegetables are also a good source of calcium and they do have calcium. So much so that one time doing my research, I went through a list of them all, Anne, and took note of the ones that were higher in calcium. They included things like broccoli, bok choy, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, so the green vegetables, but Anne, the thing about them, my criteria for a high calcium green vegetable was one that had more than 50 milligrams of calcium. I just mentioned a female in this group that we're talking about may need 1300 milligrams. One glass of milk, for example, the best possible source of calcium has about 300 milligrams of calcium, also is much better absorbed than that in green vegetables. So, like with iron, I'm not saying every female needs to take a calcium supplement, but I am saying that if you simply look at the recommendation and the amounts that are available in food, you may need to consider a supplement with calcium if you're concerned about osteoporosis, and particularly if you're not a big milk drinker, you may need to look into this mineral supplement. Well, that's great. Like you recommended getting a blood test or to check if they're iron deficient. Is there a blood test to check if they're calcium deficient? Not reliably, Anne, and you don't want even with the iron blood test. Part of the problem with determining your level of vitamins and minerals is that science has really not pinned down the best indicators in our blood. Some things, for example, will use the iron example. Everyone knows that if your hemoglobin is low, then the first thing they're going to do is give you an iron supplement, rightly so. But there are many other indicators that also give you an idea of your iron status, and probably of all the vitamins and minerals, iron is the best researched one, and the blood work that we can get for iron is probably levels above all the others that I can think of. So there are blood indicators available, but unfortunately they're not well researched and not well identified. Yeah, so I guess just keeping track would be a good way to do that, knowing that we need to have so much calcium in our body. This is a great discussion. I really appreciate this, and especially since I'm female. So at the world is that? I know, I know. Dennis, is there a general rule of thumb for the average person? And I know that's a big question. Let's say people maybe between the age of 30 and 60 that we need so much of this vitamin or so much of that mineral, especially if we don't get it in our regular diet, which many of us actually don't. Let's also say that this average person is not an athlete, but they are a person who exercises, let's say a minimum of 30 minutes, four times a week. Are there any? And I know, again, this is a really big question. Any suggestions or rule of thumb for us? And it isn't a big question, but it's a great question. And I'm going to give you one rule. And I'm going to do this because I feel a bit badly asked. I've talked a lot about how the science in many of these questions that you've been asking just doesn't have the answers for us. And I know people when they hear that, they're disappointed. That's unfortunate. But again, I say it's my duty to report to you what the science has determined because it's our best means of determining facts. But I know people, they want concrete recommendations. So here is one for them, Ann. I think after listening to me talk for the last few minutes, you may realize that generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of supplements. One of the, sorry, there are thousands available on the market. And of those, there are probably a handful that I would recommend based on their having a solid scientific background of evidence as being useful. The one rule that I will give you is this. A daily multivitamin supplement is probably a good idea for the average person you describe. A good rule is that supplements should contain at least 100% of the recommendations for most vitamins and minerals. You can look easily on the bottle, look down the side. It'll be listed there quite clearly. Another thing people often ask me is they say, "Dennis, give me the one you recommend." I always suggest this, Ann. Just choose a reputable company, like Centrum or Jameson, that has been around for a long time. They're not going anywhere. They've been tried and tested. If you ask me, this is the best way to go. Individual differences between companies probably will not be that great, but I would recommend taking your daily multivitamin supplement from a reputable company. Okay, well that's great advice, that's solid. Appreciate that. So, Dennis, if you could summarize what the science is telling us about vitamin and mineral supplements, what would you say? And the diet patients of Canada just recently actually released a great paper, a comprehensive paper where they reviewed the scientific literature and weighed in on the benefits and risks of vitamin and mineral supplements. Very timely for us doing this interview here today. We'll read you Ann, the concluding line from that review. I'm quoting here, "Until research confirms a benefit of high intake, it is best to look to the DRI's and keep intake from supplements within those boundaries." I think this is the best advice for people concerned about how much vitamins and minerals they need to consume in. Is there a way for people to obtain this book, the DRI's? Yep, if you go on the internet and the great answer to do these questions these days, and type in dietary reference intakes into Google, it'll take you to a page produced by the National Academy of Sciences, and they will have them listed for you. So, if you're interested in knowing what vitamins and minerals requirements are applicable to you, they'll break it down for you based on your gender, your age, and whatever other criteria is applicable to that vitamin and mineral, and you should be able to find the amount that is applicable to you. Well, great. Some people on this call might be interested in that. I appreciate that. So, Dennis, we really are thankful for your time today and your expertise with us. You certainly provided us with some great insights and things to think about to help us implement and really have a healthier lifestyle. For those of you who might be interested in learning more about Dennis, he has a program called the Fitness Phone, and the Fitness Phone is a revolutionary way to consistently access the world's leading health and fitness experts, and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Feel free to review his website by going to www.thefitnessphone.com. That's the fitnessphone.com. My hope for our time together is that you've got value and an idea or two that will help you be even more successful, personally and professionally. You may be wondering, what should you do next? Well, on my website, www.accountabilitycoach.com, you have access to at least 11 free personal and professional development resources you can take advantage of right now. Review the 30-day self-study course so you can discover for yourself how to focus on your highest payoff activities that produce the biggest results in the shortest amount of time so that you can experience that feeling of true and total success and have a fantastic quality of life. This program is effective and powerful at improving every area in your life in 30 days time. This program will change bad habits into habits that will lead you to achieving all your personal and business goals. Aim for what you want each and every day. Until next time, make it a great day, today and every day. Thanks for listening. [music]
[[:encoded, "We are honored to have an expert with us today to talk about the value of vitamin and mineral supplements in our diet. Denis Collier is a Registered Dietitian, a Certified Exercise Physiologist and has a Masters degree in Kinesiology. The company he founded specializes in helping individuals reach their most valuable goals by integrating nutrition with a physically active lifestyle. \n\nNutrition is often a very confusing topic. There is a ton of information out there, some from ...
