Dietary supplements, Bodybuilding, and Vitamins
Personal health is increasingly-dominant in all our lives: people generally exercise more, smoke less, and eat healthier. Vegetarian and vegan diets have become popular with those who know the health risks associated with eating meat. As more people remove certain foods from their diet, they must find alternatives to the nutrients that are so prominent in animal products (protein and calcium). Luckily, there are dietary supplements to fill in the gaps.
Dietary supplements can be vitamins, minerals, herbs or amino acids and they are designed to replace or provide missing nutrients to keep a body healthy. Some people require more nutrients due to certain deficiencies–which can be difficult to achieve through food-intake. Supplements make it easy for people with deficiency disorders to obtain the correct amount of nutrients. Even people with restrictions or allergies (lactose intolerants) should take supplements to keep themselves healthy.
Vitamin C is the most common supplement. Back in the late 18th century, a Scottish surgeon named James Lind found that eating citrus fruits could prevent scurvy (a nasty disease in which collagen cannot form properly–usually resulting in bleeding gums and poor healing). Since sailing expeditions during that time were suffering many casualties due to the illness, Lind’s findings were a blessing. Scientists have since attributed vitamin C, the nutrient found in citrus fruits, as the key preventative measure against scurvy. Unwittingly, Lind discovered the first dietary supplement.
Health supplements have become a large part in athletic training, especially bodybuilding. Protein is the main ingredient for muscle development, yet people get most of their protein intake through meat-eating. If someone’s eating that much meat, they’re more likely to become overweight than develop muscle. Bodybuilders often opt for protein shakes that contain whey. If coupled with a regular workout regimen, whey is supposed to be a very healthy, natural way to build bulk. People prefer dietary supplements over anabolic steroids because they don’t contain hormones, which can have adverse effects if taken recklessly.
Creatine is another popular bodybuilding supplement. Creatine is an organic acid that occurs naturally in the human body. Rather than building mass or bulk, which bodybuilding supplements are known to do, creatine gives quick bursts of energy to muscles–especially valuable during weight training.
In 1994, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which defines a dietary supplement as being a pill, liquid, powder or capsule that is intended to supply nutrients that would normally be absent (due to allergies or convictions). They are classified under “food” by FDA standards and they cannot claim (advertise on the bottle) to cure, mitigate or treat any serious disease. The line between some food and medicine can be blurry, and some activists want more specific outlines of what can be sold without FDA regulations.
Dietary supplements | Bodybuilding | Learning Center | Site Map | Links | Contact | Home
Copyright © 2007