Adrenal fatigue can be an expensive business.
Eating the best quality foods you can afford is a pretty big deal if you want to give your body the tools it needs to get you through your day. However, buying organic, seasonal produce can come at a hefty price – especially if you have a family to feed. But is a wholesome organic diet really enough to provide you with all the nutrients you need? Are you throwing your money down the drain?
It’s universally agreed that vitamins are fundamental for a healthy functioning body, but the role of minerals is often overlooked.
What Are Minerals?
Minerals are inorganic elements that are essential to health. Your body needs minerals to perform many vital functions.
There are two types of minerals;
- Macro minerals: These are the ones you’re most likely to be familiar with, e.g. Calcium for bone health and Sodium to help maintain blood pressure
- Trace minerals: Although vital, the body needs less of these. Examples of trace minerals are Zinc and Iodine.
Healthy people need to make sure that they consume a diet rich in vitamins and minerals, but for those struggling with adrenal fatigue, it’s even more important. This is because living in a constant state of red alert can mean that your body more rapidly uses up the extra supplies which are needed not just to function, but to heal and repair.
Is Your Diet as Nutrient Dense as You Think It Is?
The undeniable fact is that modern farming methods are stripping the soils of their natural goodness.
Unlike ancient farmers who would traditionally leave a field fallow (empty) to allow the land to recuperate after a harvest, today’s food producers are on a mission to maximise yield in minimum time. Artificial fertilisers and genetically modified seed strains are commonplace, ensuring that profit takes precedence over health.
This is having disastrous effects, and science has demonstrated that over the last 50 years there’s been a dramatic drop in the levels of minerals found in even organic fruits and vegetables.
In 1927 researchers at the University of London, set out to determine the organic and mineral constituents of foods. This study continues, and the latest results were published in 1991. This ground breaking work has allowed us to glean a unique insight into the declining rates of the mineral content of around 44 common fruits and vegetables.
The reports showed that the rate of depletion was greatest between the years 1978 and 1991. In those 13 years alone, most of the vegetables tested had lost up to 57% of their zinc. However, some of the most worrying results were seen in carrots which had lost 75% of their magnesium, 48% of calcium and almost half their iron content.
Aside from the ever decreasing levels of nutrients in our soil, there are a number of other problems with our food chain today.
- Experts agree that freshly picked fruits and vegetables contain far more nutrients than produce which has been languishing for days on a supermarket shelf. Although the food in your basket may look fresh, there’s no real way of telling how long it’s been sitting on the shelf.
- In most cases, supermarket produce has been picked hundreds of miles away from where it was grown. This means it must be harvested well before it’s naturally ripened so it arrives at the point of sale at the exact moment it’s ready to eat.
You are What You Absorb
If you still think that eating an organic wholesome diet is enough to keep you ticking over, you may want to reconsider. Many people with adrenal fatigue also have underlying digestive conditions which are related to their high levels of stress. Irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut and candida are all commonplace in people who are coping with adrenal exhaustion.
Eating a whole food diet is all well and good when you’re in a position to digest and absorb all of these lovely nutrients, but if your digestive system isn’t in great shape, then you have a further problem on your hands when it comes to ensuring you’re getting all the nutrition that you need. That’s where supplementation can help.
Takeaway
Eating an organic diet sometimes isn’t enough if you want to ensure you’re getting all your daily vitamin and mineral requirements. Taking a good quality mineral supplement may be the one thing that makes a difference to your adrenal fatigue battle plan.
For more information about supplements and adrenal fatigue read our article: Supplements and Adrenal Fatigue.
Very interesting and helpful. Thank you.