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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For nutritional supplementation, should I take the recommended daily allowances?

Greg from Canada is about to commence a course of nutritional supplements. He has asked about how much to take of various vitamins and minerals. Should he go by the recommended doses on the labels? Should he take more or less?

Here is my response:
The recommended daily allowances (RDA) for nutrients, as set down by the World Health Organisation are levels of nutrients deemed by health researchers to be necessary to maintain life. The levels necessary for a given nutrient to maintain optimum function may be several times that of its RDA.

So, the vitamin C dose of 500mg per day, as may be advised on the label of the bottle you have is the minimum and the optimum for you may in fact be 2,000mg per day and much higher during times of stress and infection (Refer here for an expert opinion about vitamin C).

The doses of natural vitamin E as recommended of 500iu per day is fine; but there is research that shows a daily supplementary intake of about 1,000iu is beneficial for improving the flexibility of arterial walls which is an important consideration if you have raised blood pressure.

Most vitamin D supplements supply about 500iu per day at the most; whereas some experts say that we can safely take up to 10,000iu per day. During winter, I recommend taking about 1-2,000iu per day unless advised otherwise as the result of a blood test of your vitamin D levels.

Magnesium is another example where up to 800mg can be safely consumed per day which is several times more than what is usually recommended on the label.

The point about all of this is that, if you have built up a deficiency in any nutrients over the years, then taking just the RDA will only halt or slow further loss. RDA doses are most unlikely to have any appreciable effect on restoring body levels of a depleted nutrient anywhere back to optimum levels. If you have a nutritional deficiency and health is at an ebb then it is necessary to take greater than the RDA for three or more months in order to restore healthy levels and to see an appreciable improvement in health and vitality.

While I am presenting the case for taking more than the RDA to counter a deficiency, this is making the assumption that there is a deficiency in the first place. I am not all that keen on making broad generalised recommendations about supplementation. However; we can make a number of educated assumptions about nutritional deficiency based on a person’s health history, and how they look and feel and what the research tells us about certain populations.

For example; we can pretty much assume that a vegetarian female who is feeling lethargic and prone to infection, is probably deficient in iron and some of the B vitamins. These assumptions should be confirmed by blood tests and a hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA).

The HTMA is the most valuable test for determining what nutrients to take more or less of because it gives a history of internal cell nutrition which a blood test can not provide. It eliminates the educated guesswork and replaces it with hard science. When these tests are repeated, the effectiveness of any interventions can be accurately measured. So, please place the blood tests and HTMA at the top of the list when it comes to deciding about how much to take.

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