Complementary & Alternative Medicine - SUPPLEMENTS

• Anti-aging Supplements
• Diet & Nutritional Supplements, and
• Vitamin & Mineral Supplements

Anti-aging Supplements addresses how to prevent, slow, or reverse the effects of aging and help people live longer, healthier, happier lives. Alternative medicine and holistic approaches have often been an incubator for approaches initially shunned by traditional medicine.

Leading sources of anti-aging information include the Life Extension Foundation (focusing on research and supplements), the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (focusing on anti-aging physicians and cutting edge treatments), Andrew Weil (focusing on alternative medicine, holistic health, and herbal supplements), the Chopra Center for Wellbeing (focusing on mind-body medicine and integrating Eastern and Western medicine), and the Ageless Lifestyles Institute (focusing on anti-aging psychology).

ANTI-AGING SUPPLEMENTS

Diet & Nutrition Supplements, also known as food supplement are a preparation intended to supply nutrients, that are missing or not consumed in sufficient quantity in a person's diet. Some countries define dietary supplements as foods, while in others they are defined as drugs. In North America, the definition of dietary supplements includes non-medicinal herbal supplements and hormones, such as DHEA, pregnenolone (both steroids) and melatonin.

NUTRITIONAL & DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

Vitamin & Mineral Supplements are the chemical elements required by living organisms, other than the four elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen which are present in common organic molecules. The term "mineral" is archaic, since the intent of the definition is to describe ions, not chemical compounds or actual minerals. Furthermore, once dissolved, so-called minerals do not exist as such, sodium chloride breaks down into sodium ions and chloride ions in aqueous solution. Some dietitians recommend that these heavier elements should be supplied by ingesting specific foods (that are enriched in the element(s) of interest), compounds, and sometimes including even minerals, such as calcium carbonate. Sometimes these "minerals" come from natural sources such as ground oyster shells. Sometimes minerals are added to the diet separately from food, such as mineral supplements, the most famous being iodine in "iodized salt."

Vitamins, which are not considered minerals, are organic compounds, some of which contain heavy elements such as iodine and cobalt. The dietary focus on "minerals" derives from an interest in supporting the biosynthetic apparatus with the required elemental components. Appropriate intake levels of certain chemical elements is thus required to maintain optimal health. Commonly, the requirements are met with a conventional diet. Excessive intake of any element (again, usually as an ion) will lead to poisoning. For example, large doses of selenium are lethal. On the other hand, large doses of zinc are less dangerous but can lead to a harmful copper deficiency (unless compensated for, as in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study).

Dietary minerals classified as "macromineral" are required in relatively large amounts. Conversely "microminerals" or "trace minerals" are required relatively in minute amounts. There is no universally accepted definition of the difference between "large" and "small" amounts.

THE TRUTH ABOUT VITAMIN & MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS

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