Men's Health – Men's Guide to Fitness, Health, Weight Loss, Nutrition, Sex, Style and Guy Wisdom | Basketcatalunya.com

Why bother taking vitamins at all? Our forefathers survived just fine without multi vitamin packs, why can’t we? The answer to that question is easy, go look in your cupboards. Our forefathers ate a lot better than we do. High processed, homogenized, pasteurized, canned and prepackaged fast food means less chance of natural occurring vitamins surviving for any length of time.

While some of us pick our own fruit and grow our own vegetables, most of the country chooses to rely on packaged, store bought fruits and veggies. These aren’t as healthy as they look, either. The longer the apples and tomatoes are off the vine, the faster they begin to lose their nutritional value, losing vitamins during processing and shipping.

Your body needs vitamins to boost your immune system, ward off colds and other viruses, and even keep you even tempered, so to speak. Did you know with a vitamin deficiency that you are less likely to clot when you cut yourself? Vitamins play a much bigger part then we think, and the average diet does not include all the vitamins necessary to keep the body in top shape.

A good multi-vitamin is your best choice, but here again you can be misled into believing that 100% of the USDA recommended dosage is good enough. They mean 100% total, not 100% of each vitamin necessary. Think about it, they can’t possibly pack the right amount of every kind of vitamin that you need into one pill a day, and most multi vitamins sold in your local grocery store are cut with fillers and preservatives. Nope, you’ll have to visit your local food co op and get some natural, all inclusive vitamin supplements. Along with eating well, these supplements contain everything you need for balanced vitamin intake, with none of the fillers and preservatives that I, for one, resent paying for.

So let’s talk B vitamins as an example. You need several different kinds of B vitamins alone. B6 and B12 are just two, but the most commonly talked about. Vitamin B6 promotes the development of red blood cells, and 12 helps promote energy and fights Alzheimer’s disease. You need these and other vitamins to be in the purest form possible in order to be the most beneficial. Let’s skip back for a moment, the history of vitamins, if you will. Vitamins began being “discovered” by scientists and surgeons around 1914, and the word “vitamin ” comes from the word “vital” as in vital energy for life, but as far back as the 1600’s sailors knew to eat citrus fruits to prevent scurvy. It wasn’t until later that they knew it as vitamin C.
(more…)

If you are a gym rat or bodybuilder or simply interested in beginning an exercise program you have probably heard a lot about creatine and the muscle miracles it performs. Unfortunately, most people believe that creatine helps build muscle and it does in a way, but probably not the way you are thinking. The best way to describe creatine is to say that it helps the muscles help themselves build muscle. If that is not clear enough, continue reading.

Creatine does exactly what it claims to do and that is to retain water in your muscles. This is the point of creatine and it really is effective at keeping water in the muscles. Now, what happens is when your muscles are retaining water they are in an optimal state for building new muscle. As a result, when you take creatine and water is retained in your muscles then when you weight train you will get more of an effect because your muscles are better capable of building muscle. After this period you may develop more strength and increased endurance as well. So, if you are taking creatine to help you build muscle and you understand what creatine does and how it helps you build muscle then you will not be disappointed. On the other hand, if you are taking creatine and hoping it will simply grow you bodybuilder’s muscles without putting in the work then you are mistaken.
(more…)

Despite obvious physiology differences, your cat is not that different from you. Just as humans, cats require vitamins and minerals to survive. Whether or not you need to supplement your cat’s diets with vitamins depends largely on their diet and current health status.

The vitamins that cats need include both fat soluble and water-soluble vitamins. These vitamins are essential to a cat’s growth and for the efficient processing of fats in the body. These vitamins ensure that a cat’s bones are healthy and that they have sufficient protection from disease. Cats are prone to cuts and vitamins can help to repair wounds quickly. Fat-soluble vitamins are vitamins E, D, A, and K. The water-soluble vitamins include the B vitamins (B1, B2, B6, and B12) and vitamin C.

Vitamins are easily absorbed in a cat’s system. Minerals, on the other hand, require that the cat’s system is healthy for proper absorption. Any slight infection can affect a cat’s ability to absorb minerals. The minerals that cats require the most include calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium chloride.

The good news about foods for animals is that they are formulated to meet all the nutritional needs of the animal. Feeding your cat food is typically all that is necessary for them to obtain all the nutrients they need. However, there are some things that can affect the amount of nutrients in cat food. For starters, cat food can lose some of its nutritional value. This often happens if the food is kept on a store shelf for a significant amount of time.
(more…)

The debate around the basic of taking dietary supplements is continuing to rage.

While many health care professionals maintain we get all we require from the foods we eat, others prefer to suggest vitamins when their patients are under a stress such as a pregnancy or illness or even aging or when the patients body’s function is deficient or overloaded. Others maintain that vitamins are preventative and should be taken routinely to prevent diseases and maintain health.

Studies maintain that taking extra B vitamins, specifically folic acid and B12 have reduced birth defects by 72 to 100% . And since regulations authourising the addition of folic acid to grains have come into force in the USA the incidence of birth defects their have dropped by 19%, although sceptics claim there could be alternative reasons.

So what are some of the symptoms of folic acid deficiency? If your tongue is sore and you suffer from loss of appetite, “shortness of puff”, are irritable, forgetful and mentally sluggish, you may have a folic acid insufficiency. Folic acid is one of the B group of vitamins and most animal and plant foods are poor sources of it. The exception is liver which most individuals don’t eat a lot of these days. Various dietary habits and health conditions can also result in causing a deficiency of this vitamin. Celiac condition, alcoholism and irritable bowel syndrome are three such conditions.

Studies have also suggested that when older people suffer from “the blues” it is caused by a absence of folate (B9) . It should be taken alongside B6 and B12 to support its absorption and function in the body. These three vitamins work closely together and help relieve symptoms of depression. They do this by decreasing the total amount of homocysteine, which is thought to play an major part in causing the depression. Occasionally the amount of folate in proportion to the other two may be required to be increased in order to be effective. Solgar Homocystein Modulators are a good supplement to take and can be found online at www .solgar .co.uk .

Some population-based studies across the USA have also established that numerous cancers are less usual in people who have high levels of folic acid. These people also consumed high amounts of beta-carotene, vitamin C and fiber. One large study of 50,000 women established that adequate intakes of folate essentially reduced the risk of breast melanoma.
(more…)