A common question in the health shop is ‘how will I know if I am deficient in something’.
It’s a great question, based on our processed foods being devoid of nutrients and modern farming methods depleting our produce – the answer is that if you’re not experiencing OPTIMAL HEALTH, chances are you have a deficit of something important.
The most common deficiencies we help to rectify are vitamin D, iron, magnesium. It’s the tip of the iceberg though, especially the minerals.
There are macro minerals, calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, potassium and micro-minerals, around 100 of them. In the absence of minerals vitamins have no function, and in the absence of vitamins minerals can fulfill all of their functions So chances are if you’re experiencing anything less than vibrant, energetic good health that you could benefit from a mineral supplement.
All minerals are NOT created equal… mega doses of single vitamins may not be the answer. Calcium is the best example. Most women take big doses of calcium, usually a calcium carbonate, the least expensive option and the ingredient of (almost) all mass market supplements. “women who age on carbonates will end up with soft bones and hard arteries”. Hard to believe right? But 100% true.
So where to from here? How do we ensure optimal health and sufficient nutrients? The easiest way is a blood test – you can test the levels of all these minerals and most vitamins in your blood.
The trick is that, even if on your test your levels look normal, the test results are set up for minimum requirement to prevent deficiency. That is often quite far from optimum levels and very far from therapeutic levels.
A Functional Medicine trained Health Coach is well equipped to help you figure all this out during the course of the sessions you set up to remedy these deficiency symptoms. It’s only one of the many areas that we cover in a health coaching program.
If you’re curious and wish to invest one hour of your day in learning if health promotion is an option for you, reserve your seat at our workshop on Jan 15th at 4pm.