Are you even absorbing the nutrients in your vitamin and mineral supplement product?

If the vitamin and mineral supplement that you got for a great price at the super market ends up being one that has been poorly manufactured, your body may not be able to absorb the nutrients in your bargain product.

The result is that those nutrients may go right through your body and into the toilet and the money you spent on that product you got for a great price will have been completely wasted.

Remember, it's not what you paid for the product that matters. It's what you paid for the nutrients that actually made it all the way to your cells and were used by your cells.

This is why it's important to understand absorption when it comes to a vitamin and mineral supplement. To see a financial example of this where you can see just how much money you may be wasting, click here.

There's two aspects of absorption that you should be aware of. The first is from the perspective of the supplement itself. In other words, has the supplement been manufactured in such a way that as much of it as possible can be absorbed by the human body. More on this in a minute.

The other aspect of absorption is from the perspective of your own body. In other words, just how good a job will your own body do in absorbing the nutrients in the supplement. Here's a way to look at these two aspects of absorption.

Let's say your child swallows a little steel ball bearing by accident. Now your child may have a body that is running just perfectly that absorbs the maximum amount of vitamins and minerals from all the food you provide for them. But because the ball bearing they swallowed was in a form that couldn't be digested or assimilated in any way, the absorption of the ingredients in that ball bearing will be zero.

On the other end of the spectrum, let's say you have a 110 year old person who is nearing the end of their life span. They have lived a full life, their body has served them well but it is old and broken down. Now, you may very well be able to give that person a nutritional product that science has shown to be 98% absorbable.

However, because that 110 year old body's ability to digest and assimilate the nutrients in the supplement you give them is severely compromised because it's old and broken down, that person may only be able to absorb 5% of that nutritional product.

These two examples illustrate that absorption is dependent on two factors. One is how available the supplement's nutrients are to the body. The other is your body's ability to absorb those nutrients that have been made available to it.

So, in order to ensure that you get the maximum value from the vitamin and mineral supplements that you buy, you want to make sure that both of these aspects of absorption are at their maximum.

In the next issue of Foundations of Health, we'll look at the degree to which the nutrients in a particular supplement may be available to the body and how to avoid wasting your money on supplements that don't work.

Till next time,

- Andy

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