Nutritionists tell us that with RDAs, deficiencies are a thing of the past, but is that really the truth? RDAs or Recommended Dietary Allowances are the absolute minimum of a vital nutrient, without which we will get ill and die from a deficiency disease. In a recent article I have cited evidence that RDAs are insufficient to assure optimal health.
Vitamin C is an example. Unlike almost all animals, humans do not manufacture several grams of vitamin C per day in their livers and are thus completely dependent on dietary intake. 60 milligrams of the vitamin as recommended are sufficient to prevent the end-stage deficiency called scurvy, but are woefully inadequate to assure cardiovascular health or proper immune function. An optimal daily intake of Vitamin C of 3000 milligrams (3 grams) has recently been suggested by the National Health Federation in a submission to the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, based on an evaluation of numerous studies.
Remember those 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables the nutritionists recommend we eat each day? The mineral we generally find in fruits and vegetables together with vitamin C is potassium, and what do you know - we may be routinely deficient not only of vitamin C but of potassium as well! Ironically, there is no RDA for this vital mineral, although it is arguably the most important of them all, and potassium dosage in supplements has been limited by the FDA to 100 milligrams per tablet or capsule, although the "population reference" intake set by the EU in 1992 is 3.1 grams per day.
Potassium has no RDA
I have been supplementing both vitamin C and potassium for years and would say that these two substances are possibly the most important single elements that we should add to our food. Joe Vialls who is an investigator - his site is great if you want to look "behind the news" - has experienced a severe potassium shortage himself and has researched and written an excellent article that I suggest you read:
POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY SCAM KILLS AND MAIMS MILLIONS
Deliberately restricting your potassium intake makes you very ill, and thus vulnerable to hundreds of highly profitable medical "cures"
The title immediately suggests to the reader that a giant pharmaceutical atrocity has been inflicted on the poor natives of some far off third-world country, by a predictably greedy drug multinational, but this is simply not the case. By far the largest number of deaths and permanent crippling disabilities from potassium deficiency occur in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other western nations.
How this horrific state of affairs came into being and was perpetuated thereafter, is a very long and frequently confusing story, meaning that we must start at the very beginning if we are to have any real chance of understanding the lethal implications. We first need to understand what potassium ...
read the full article here
Posted at May 3, 2004 08:29 PM
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