Health Nutrition
How nutrition connects to you individually, how to manage your diet and your health with it.
Most of us want to have an ideal weight, look younger, feel better and always be healthy and maintain our vitality and health in general.
Health Nutrition
Health nutrition is to look at what you eat as a way to enhance your health. Therefore, malnutrition can damage your health. We must intelligently choose the food and nutrient intake are needed by our bodies. We must realize that diet and nutritious food is the key to our health and welfare.
Vitamins
Vitamins are micronutrients that are essential to human health nutrition. Most of the vitamins cannot be produced by the human body and therefore need to be obtained via foods and supplements. Some vitamins are fat soluble and some are water soluble.
Fat soluble vitamins are found mainly in fatty foods such as animal fats, vegetable oils, dairy foods, liver and oily fish. These fats are stored in the liver and fatty tissues for future use and there for when you need them. These vitamins are vitamin A, D, E, K.
Vitamin A can obtained in carrots, tomatoes, mango, red & yellow peppers, spinach, greens, dried apricots.
For vitamin B can be found in wheat, grains, currants, green leafy vegetables, mushrooms, avocado, banana, nuts.
Broccoli, green leafy vegetables, cabbage, green peppers, parsley, potatoes, frozen peas, oranges, blackcurrants contains vitamin C
You can find vitamin D in sunlight on your skin, cereals, non hydronagted margarine
For vitamin E: Olive oil, peppers, tomatoes, wheat, nuts and seeds, avocados and vitamin K can be found in seaweeds, green leafy vegetables, blackstrap molasses, lentils, peas
Water
Water soluble vitamins are found in fruit, vegetables and grains. Unlike fat-soluble vitamins, they can be destroyed by heat or by being exposed to the air; they can also be lost in the water used for cooking.
This means that cooked food, especially boiled, will lose lots of these vitamins, the best way to keep as much of the vitamins as possible inside the food is to eat raw, lightly stir fry or steam, gently grill, or heat on a very low temperature for a longer period of time, any of these will help to contain the water soluble vitamins much more.
Water soluble vitamins are: vitamin B6, B12, C, Niacin, Folic Acid, Biotin, Pantothenic Acid, Riboflavin and Thiamin.
Minerals
Minerals are essential nutrients that our bodies needs. Mineral nutrients consist of two
categories: the major essential elements which are: calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, iodine, and potassium; and the trace elements such as: copper, cobalt, manganese, fluorine, iodine, chromium, selenium and zinc. All of these must be supplied in our food because the body cannot produce their own. The body can only maintain the balance of minerals for a short period. Minerals are necessary to build strong bones and teeth, to control body fluids inside and outside cells and to turn food we eat into energy.
Iron: Tofu, beans, dried apricots, pumpkin seeds, spinach, cabbage, wheat, whole grains, millet, blackstrap molasses, parsley, prunes and dates,
Zinc: whole grains, rice, lentils, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, almonds, wheat, tofu
Calcium: Tofu, green leafy vegetables, parsley, watercress, broccoli, almonds, figs, soya milk.Iodine: seaweeds, green leafy vegetables
Magnesium : green leafy vegetables, soya beans, cashew nuts, almonds, broccoli, whole grains, wheat, bananas, prunes
Phosporus: whole grains, wheat, pinto beans, chickpeas, pumpkin seeds
Selenium: potatoes, yeast extract, brazil nuts, strawberries, tomatoes.
Potassium : fruits and vegetables
Free radical
Free radicals are produced as the result of normal life and body functions such as breathing in and it is usual for the body natural defense system to neutralize the free radicals that are produced. .
The nutritional health can play an important role in helping protect against free radical damage such as when we are dealing with free radicals with antioxidants.
Antioxidant
An antioxidant is the body's natural defense against free radical damage, what we need to stop free radicals damaging our cells! Antioxidants are our friends and are obtained through our diets! So antioxidants conquer the attack of free radicals and therefore keep us from ageing too fast or from unnecessary disease! Eating lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and nuts can supply all the antioxidants your body needs.
Natural vitamin and mineral supplements
Natural vitamins are in a form that occurs in nature while synthetic vitamins are manufactured in a laboratory. The only benefit of synthetic vitamins is that they are cheaper to make, therefore less expensive for the consumer. Natural vitamins are worth the few extra dollars they command.
Synthetic vitamins are usually isolated into one pure chemical.
Determine what events distress you and determine how your body is responding to the stress. Change your stressors by avoiding or eliminating them completely. Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions..
Exercise three to four times a week, eat well-balanced meals, maintain your ideal weight, avoid nicotine and excessive caffeine, mix leisure with work, take breaks and get away when you can, get enough sleep and be as consistent with your sleep schedule as possible.