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Nutrition and Nutritional Supplements for Your Health

Nutritional supplements help to maintain health of your body and to protect your body from diseases. But to know what nutrition supplements we need to take, we should have knowledge about nutrition and how it works.Understanding nutrition is very important for your health, because if your body doesn’t get enough nutrition, it becomes weak and more disposed to obtaining diseases. We need to understand it so that we can take care of our bodies to help it to function well.Nutrition is the study of nutrients and how it interacts with the human body. It is a study on how the body uses food as energy for its growth and activities. This leads to understanding how nutritional supplements is useful for the body.Macronutrients and the micronutrients are the two kinds of nutrients. Macronutrients, also called the “big” nutrients, are made up of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Micronutrients, also called the “little” nutrients,
are vitamins and minerals. Both of these two types of nutrients are what our body needs to be healthy.Knowing about these two will give us a good understanding about what nutritional supplements we need to help our bodies to function well.Macronutrients – ProteinsOne of the major structural part of the body are proteins. The organs and muscles consist of proteins. So is the blood, cell membrane and immune system. The elements in proteins are called “amino acids”, which is found mainly in meats, dairy products, eggs, soy, fish and poultry.Macronutrients – CarbohydratesThe main source of energy for the each cell in the body and fuel for the body is carbohydrate. Carbohydrates is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Carbohydrates are sugar, starches and fibers which are found in fruits, vegetables, grains, milk, syrups, honey and table sugar.Macronutrients – FatsFats is necessary for our bodies to be in good health, but as noted in the public eye, too much of it isn’t good for us. Fat provides linoleic acid to our body. Linoleic acid is a fatty acid necessary for our bodies growth, metabolism and healthy skin.Fats, also, help absorb fat soluble vitamins.The different types of fats are saturated fats, unsaturated fats, trans fats. also called hydrogenated fats, and omega-3 fatty acids.Saturated fats is found mostly in animal products like meat, dairy and egg. Also, some are found in some plant based sources like coconut oil.Unsaturated fats are commonly liquid at room temperature. They are found in most vegetable products and oils. Unsaturated fats are found mainly in fish, nuts, seeds and oils from plants.Trans fats are fats that are chemically processed that changes liquid oil into solid fats. It’s formed during the process of hydrogenation.Omega-3 fatty acids are called essential fatty acids and are important for our health but can’t be produced by our body. For this reason, omega-3 fatty acids must be obtained from food. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish and certain plant oils.Micronutrients – VitaminsVitamins are organic molecules that are vital in every living organism. Vitamins are classified as water soluble and fat soluble. Water soluble vitamins are vitamins that are easily dissolved in water while fat soluble vitamins are vitamins that are absorbed through the intestinal tract with the aid of lipids. Vitamins are important for normal growth and development and in various chemical reactions in the body. There are different types of vitamins. Each has its own function in our body that is why vitamins are essential in the body’s nutrition.Micronutrients – MineralsMinerals are inorganic elements, “non living” elements, that are relevant nutrition for humans, animals and plants. The human body contains lots of minerals. They are the main structural part of the body. Just like vitamins, minerals have significant function in the human body.I would like to mention that too much or too little of these nutrients are not a good thing for our health, but adequate amounts are necessary for our health.In future articles, we will get more detailed about the nutrients to get a further understanding of how it effects our bodies and to give us better understanding of how nutritional supplements will help our bodies for health.