A bit about micronutirients :) (Road to Healthy part 11)

Hello :)

Today I felt like writing a bit more about health topics, since I haven't had the chance to do so with all the music related posts that we had in line waiting to be written, but here I am again and today I wanted to talk a bit about micronutrients, why they're important and why almost all of us are probably lacking of them to some extent.

I have been on the road to improve my health for a little while now, not because I would have any health related problems at the moment, but because I wish to have none in the future. As anyone, I started my reasearch based on articles online and tried to see how they link to what I've studied and I found out that there's a lot of information, most of which talk exactly against eachother, so it's very difficult to decide what to believe and what not. However as I dig deeper I have found some resources actually worth believing.

Most important thing, when it comes to health, is that you have to eat if you want to be healthy, there are so many diets out there saying that you have to eat way below the recommended intake for the average person, but the problem with that is, that if you're eating so little, then there's no way you're getting enough micronutrients. I can bring my own example, I am rather short and more on the petite side, work out 2 or 3 hours a week and my recommended calorie intake is somewhere around 1800 and 1900 kcal, it's a bit less than the average, but not a lot. However even on my best eating days I don't get enough of all of the necessary micronutrients that I should be getting. So taking that into account, those people that are eating 1500 or less calories a day aren't in any way actually giving their body what it needs.

Being healthy is so much more than just being skinny or in shape. In a lot of cases starting a healthier diet might mean that a person puts on weight, may it be from metabolic damage or just because their ideal weight isn't what they think it might be or they'd like it to be. 

A lot of things go into being as healthy as possible, micronutrient intake is one of those things. Since the main lifestyle nowadays is rather sedentary, then the calorie intake of the average person has decreased quite a bit. For example 60 years ago the average was 1000 kcal more than it is now, but just because we burn less energy, doesn't mean that the body needs less nutrients, it still needs those nutrients to work well and work optimally.

Another thing I would like to touch on briefly in this post is that the nutrient recommendations that we quite commonly see and a lot of people live by are usually the minimal amounts that we need, but that doesn't mean that is the optimal amount. Usually the optimal is a lot higher and the closer a person is to the optimal nutrient intake, the healthier he/she can be. One of the good examples is Vitamin D, the minimal for most of the world is 5mcg, in the areas where there is less sun 10mcg, but the optimal is suggested to be somewhere around 25 to 50mcg, which is quite a difference. Getting that much Vitamin D from food alone is nearly impossible, especially on a day to day basis.

Anyway the main point I wanted to get across with this post is that although we all wish that we would be the exception, that we get all we need from food alone with the calorie intake that we have at the moment, it most likely is not true. Most people are deficient in a few if not all nutrients and that probably isn't a topic discussed enough. One way to increase the micronutrient intake would be to eat more and to eat the right things but for that one has to be sure that enough calories are burnt as well. The other option is to take supplements, which are increasingly becoming more advanced and a lot of them use natural ingrediences as well, which I personally would prefer. Either way micronutrient deficiency is a problem and I wanted to do is rant a bit about it, hope it was interesting to read and I hope I'll have more time to write about health realted things in the near fututre as well.

Kaiela :)