When it comes to vitamins and minerals, is the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) sufficient

Many people are under the impression that, if their intake of nutrients meets the RDA, then they are getting enough to stay healthy.

However, as Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner, once said;

"RDA for a vitamin is not the allowance that leads to the best of health for most people. It is instead, only the estimated amount that for most people would prevent death or serious illness from overt vitamin deficiency.

Values of the daily intake of the various vitamins that leads to the best of health for most people may be several times as great as the values of the RDA".

Meeting the RDA for nutrients is the bare minimum for maintaining optimal health throughout our life. Optimal nutrition requires much more than the RDA and this does not decline as we grow older. In fact, the need for optimal nutrition increases and it certainly does not decrease as one would get the impression if one were to examine the typical diet fed to our elderly in institutional care. As we grow older our caloric expenditure declines, so we eat less. At the same time illness, decline in digestive efficiency and medications combine to cause states of chronic malnutrition that is widespread in elderly populations.

When levels of a nutrient are low in the body, merely achieving the RDA will, at best, stem further drops in body levels. A good example is low iron levels which affect up to 50% of some populations like young women and the elderly. If a person is told their iron levels are low then it is necessary to consume several times the RDA to bring about an appreciable improvement in body stores. It can take several months, if not a year or two, of steady supplementation to build stores of iron in the organs to optimum levels. Of course, regular blood test or, better still, a Hair Tissue Analysis will guide the supplementation.

It is more difficult than ever to get the essential vitamins and minerals from our food, despite improvements in "quality" and freshness. This paradox is due to the selection of plants for their nice taste and speed of growth, rather than nutrient density. The same can be said of animal sourced foods such as the succulently soft battery chicken. Furthermore, the nutrient density of our agricultural soils continues to steadily decline as only those that are necessary for plant growth are replaced.

Like it or not, the case for supplementing one's already good diet with various vitamins and minerals grows stronger by the day. If you are not sure of your nutritional needs, then investing in a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis or an Active Elements Assessment helps you to take out the guesswork.

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Weight Loss Precedes Dementia Diagnosis In Women Mayo Clinic Study Finds

Mayo Clinic researchers have found that women who develop dementia experience a decline in weight as many as 10 years prior to the onset of memory loss, compared to peers who do not develop dementia.

"We discovered that the weight of those women who developed dementia was drifting downward many years before the onset of symptoms," says David Knopman, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and lead study researcher. "This illustrates changes that occur before the memory loss and mental decline in dementia. We believe that the brain disease began to interfere somehow with maintenance of body weight, long before it affected memory and thinking."

For the full article go here

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Gary Moller comments:

What a load of uninformed rubbish! There is hardly ever a single simple answer to these kinds of matters. Furthermore; what came first - the chicken or the egg? The weight loss or the dementia?

There are several other answers than dementia itself for the progressive weight loss that they report that better fits with my personal observations and from study of populations with very low levels of dementia, like the Okinawan Centenarians: It is that the progressive weight loss is occurring principally, as the result of one or a combination of -

• Malnutrition that is associated with poverty, drugs interactions, living alone, poor dental health and lack of access to fresh foods
• Lack of sunlight causing severe and chronic vitamin D deficiency (linked to dementia)
• Steadily reducing activity and dependency
• Dependency caused by well-meaning care-givers, that reduces the need to exercise brain power for activities of daily living
• Lack of physical challenge and mental stimulation, such as previously having to till fields, care for animals (including grandchildren) and grow crops
• Long term effects from chronic use of all kinds of prescription drugs that stultify the brain and interfere with nutrition, muscle strength, balance, kidneys, liver, adrenals etc

I have written this very quickly, so the above list is a bit of a mish-mash; but I am sure that you get the point.

Even if this report is out of the prestigious Mayo Clinic, speculation by experts who are experts in a very narrow field of expertise can be very misleading.

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Neglect of the Elderly

There was much controversy a few weeks ago about a photo essay of the care of elderly residents in a nursing home. This was published in a nursing magasine and included shots of emaciated and naked residents being bathed and toileted. Without discussing the ethics of this photographic exercise, it was interesting to note that some of these photos were indistinguishable from pictures one might see of a starving refugee or a concentration inmate.

These photos beg the question of what factors are at play with many frail elderly: is the obvious emaciation the direct result of their ailments, or is it secondary? How much of their poor physical condition is due to chronic protein, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, lack of mental stimulation and insufficent exercise?

If you have not already done so, you might like to read my newsletter "Another Horror Story". One of the cases referred to in this article demonstrates just how quickly an elderly person can deteriorate and die if their nutrition and mental stimulation are neglected.

When you are in your 80"s, what do you intend to be doing?

I am convinced that a nutrient rich diet and stimulating physical and mental challenges are the foundations of a long and satisfying life. Sure, heredity has a lot to do with it; but we have no control over who each of our ancestors chose to mate with!

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