Vitamins, Minerals and Water.

Your body depends on minerals for practically every process necessary for life. These all-important nutrients fall into two classes: the major minerals and the trace minerals.

Major Minerals

The major minerals are calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride. These are the ones that are present in your body in the largest amounts.

The trace minerals are iron, zinc, iodine, copper, manganese, fluoride, chromium, selenium and molybdenum. These are required in much smaller amounts.

For tips on keeping the sodium in your diet at a reasonable level, go to .

The chart below lists the roles specific minerals play in health and the best food sources of each one.

What About Vitamin and Mineral Supplements?

The best way to obtain the vitamins and minerals your body requires is from food – specifically from a balanced diet. In fact, a well-balanced diet should meet most of your nutritional needs. However, if you are pregnant or do not eat a well-balanced diet or have special nutritional needs, your physician may recommend that you take a vitamin/mineral supplement. 

If you decide to supplement, with individual nutrients in particular, be aware that some vitamins and minerals at many times the RDA can be toxic. As with food choices, balance is an important concept when it comes to vitamin and mineral supplements, too. For example, if you take too much of a particular vitamin, mineral or even some other type of dietary supplement, it could interfere with your body’s ability to absorb or use other critical nutrients.

Although much is known about nutrition and how the body utilizes it, much remains to be discovered about the intricate ways in which nutrients work together. In that respect, balance becomes an important safeguard against consuming excessive amounts of individual nutrients for which the effects at high doses are unknown.

Water

On average, the quantity of water in an adult body could fill 12 one-gallon cartons. Why so much water? Because water is absolutely critical to life. In fact, most cells in the human body are composed of more than 75% water. Without it, none of them would be able to function.

Water has several vital functions in the body. It:

• Delivers to each cell the nutrients needed to carry on the processes of life.
• Dissolves vitamins, minerals, amino acids, glucose and other nutrients.
• Provides a medium for chemical reactions.
• Is involved in the production of energy.
• Lubricates joints.
• Acts as a shock absorber inside eyes, spinal cord and joints.
• Helps the body flush out waste materials.
• Helps maintain the body’s temperature.

Most People Don’t Drink Enough

Although you get about 4 cups daily of water from the foods you eat, this is not enough. Most adults should drink between 8 and 10 cups (8 fl oz per cup) of ordinary water each day. If you are physically active, live in a hot climate, or have an illness that produces vomiting or diarrhea, you may need to drink more than 10 cups of water daily.