Optimize Your Health with Micronutrients & Antioxidants

This is part 2 of a 4-part nutrition coaching series to teach you how to eat healthy and achieve your goals.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand what micronutrients and antioxidants are and why they’re important for your health and quality of life.

Micronutrients

Micronutrients are like all the fluids in your car that aren’t gasoline: oil, engine coolant, and windshield wiper fluid. These are required for your car to work well, and without them, you start to lose functions and break down.

The same happens if your body lacks micronutrients: you feel tired, can’t sleep, you feel depressed, you get sick, you have digestion issues, you lose your hair, you have muscle cramps, etc.

There are 13 essential vitamins and 16 essential minerals that our bodies need.

Eating whole, unprocessed foods allows you to get more micronutrients. The more processing that occurs, the fewer nutrients you get.

To get all the micronutrients your body needs, you can eat “super foods” or take supplements. “Superfoods” are things like beef liver, oysters, eggs, and wild salmon that contain a tremendous amount of micronutrients. Pasture-raised, grass fed products have more nutrients than factory-farmed corn-fed products: more micronutrients and better fats.

Most supplements don’t get absorbed as well as real food (bioavailability), which is why I recommend eating superfoods instead of taking supplements. The supplements I recommend are nutrients that people are most commonly deficient in like vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, and omega-3 fats. Read about vitamins and minerals.

In the United States, supplements don’t need to be proven safe and often don’t contain what they claim (learn more). Look for the USP certification, which verifies the supplement contains what it claims (to see a list of products, check this website). Choose supplements that are the most popular as they’re the most likely to be tested.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants are like the body's cleanup crew.

Your body is constantly being damaged from normal metabolism, sun exposure, pollution, and unhealthy foods. This creates unhealthy cells, called free radicals, which damage our bodies.

Antioxidants help to heal our cells and reduce inflammation; they enhance the function of our immune system. Without antioxidants, you experience more chronic diseases like cancer, arthritis, heart disease.

There are thousands of antioxidants and most healthy foods contain some. Here are my favorite antioxidant sources: blueberries, cinnamon, turmeric, other spices, avocado, etc.

Conclusion

This video explained how to optimize your nutrition with micronutrients and antioxidants. Most people are unhealthy because of what they DON’T eat, ie. their deficiencies, not what they eat.

By including some super foods you enjoy, you ensure your body has the micronutrients and antioxidants it needs to stay healthy and strong. In the next video we’re going to discuss how to create your custom plan.