@trishrhymes Vitamins are....well... vital. Vital for health and life. As are minerals...
There are many of the ill who have discovered that they had a functional deficiency of a required substance in their body, due to the lack of an enzyme, mineral, or some other missing co-factor which the body needed to metabolize or absorb the nutrient. Many find that drugs have blocked absorption or otherwise depleted vital nutrients.
Further, illness can cause quick depletion of many vital nutrients... the body's requirements may become huge. The body stores a few vital substances in the liver, such as vitamin A, but that small store can easily be depleted by severe or chronic illness, or... simply over time by diet, i.e., giving up fatty foods in effort to reduce calorie consumption, since vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin.
I myself discovered an unrealized vitamin A deficiency. I had presumed that I was obtaining in sufficient amounts through my diet and if not there, through my vitamin supplement. On closer inspection, I discovered that my vitamin supplement provided merely
carotene (commonly done in effort to prevent overdose of vitamin A), which
converts very poorly to vitamin A at best, and which many, genetically speaking - including myself, do not convert at all.
There are quite a few major nutritional deficiencies known to exist in the "modern" world with serious consequences. Check out this 2016 report which is quite clear in that regard:
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedic...amin-and-mineral-supplements-can-help-fill-it
In the U.S. heart disease is the number one killer. if you contact a board certified cardiologist such as Sinatra and Roberts, co-authors of the book, "Reverse Heart Disease Now," they discuss the high magnesium mineral deficiency widespread throughout the population. Magnesium is one of the four minerals (potassium, sodium, calcium) called electrolytes that set up the electrical charge in your heart to pump your blood.
Energy production requirement
The
metabolism of
carbohydrates and fats to produce energy requires numerous
magnesium-dependent chemical reactions. Magnesium is required by the adenosine triphosphate (
ATP)-synthesizing
protein in
mitochondria. ATP, the molecule that provides energy for almost all metabolic processes, exists primarily as a complex with magnesium (MgATP)
(3). All enzymatic reactions involving ATP require magnesium.
People can get magnesium through their diet (leafy green vegetables, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, beans, tofu, figs, apricots and bananas are all rich in magnesium.)
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/#en3
Not all forms of magnesium are absorbed well and some supplements fail to provide a good form. Consumption does not equal absorption. And common use of drugs such as the birth control pill, cause depletion of magnesium and B vitamins, again with serious consequences.... Magnesium deficiency is rampant for many reasons.
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/magnesium
http://myscienceacademy.org/2015/05/20/why-80-of-us-are-deficient-in-magnesium/
Unfortunately most doctors are not trained in nutrition, however more are becoming more aware of the implications of such deficiencies.
