Essential Supplements – Part 1

JED WIGHTMAN     PERFORMANCE/SPORTS NUTRITIONIST       ADVANTAGE FITNESS LTD

This article has been written for Canadian Physique Alliance -January/February 2024 Edition

Hello and happy New Year to each of you. I pray that 2023 has been a year of personal growth and development for all of us. Now, here we are again, on the precipice of another year giving us the opportunity to tap even deeper into our potentials. Our ever developing self awareness, education and improvement, mind, body and soul.

So with progress in mind, let’s take a little journey and explore the first of 3 essential supplements we should incorporate into our daily routine.

My last article “Food Dude”. I lay out the essentials of consuming only whole food, real food, and avoiding the processed “food product” wave of influence.

This then leaves the question, can whole food do it all? Can organic matter from animals and plants provide for us every little thing we need to live our best life? Simply and in a word, yes, but also a strong caveat. Our world of broadly available food today is less nutrient and micronutrient rich than ever before in human History. More importantly we eat less unprocessed food. Coming with this is also, the massive amount of toxins, chemical exposure, and immune system assaulting variables, that are part of commercial meat and produce industry production process. Hitching a ride into our body, attacking our health, recovery and longevity from all sides. Making even some of our most available nutrition dense foods not as powerful and impactful to promoting our best health, performance and recovery, as nature intended. So then, supplements?

What are Essential Supplements?

Today in part 1 of this 3 part series, I’m going to cover one of our foundational essentials of health, performance and longevity.

IODINE, one of our bodies, contains nine essential minerals. A mineral critical to humans starting as we are developing in the womb.

It facilitates enzymatic reactions, enables cellular communication, responsible for fetal development, thyroid function, immune health and nervous system, proper cognitive and biochemical development and regulation. The creation of certain hormones, proteins and enzyme activity, even breast health and successful pregnancy. Iodine deficiency in pregnant mothers, and developing children, is very serious.

This is a significant cause of mental developmental problems, including impact on reproductive functions and lowering of IQ levels in developing children. One of the consequences of iodine deficiency during pregnancy is impaired synthesis of thyroid hormones by the mother and the foetus. This can trigger thyroid issues and long-term metabolic effects for the mother, this can instigate long-term metabolic effects for the child “pregnancy induced hypothyroidism”. Moreover the insufficient supply of thyroid hormones to the child’s developing brain, critical. Improper muscle, skeletal development, stagnation in cognition development, slow learning, speech, and movement development. Severe brain damage and irreversible mental handicaps. This is, only to name a few.

For us adults, and the elderly, our iodine is constantly being robbed from the body, and has been since birth. Steadily damaging our immune system, metabolism, our cognition, memory, and even synaptic response as we get older. Yes, think of Alzheimer’s and dementia, shaking and slow, jerky movements. Friends I could go on and on about how damaging it is for us not to have enough iodine. Ok, so this is all health and longevity related stuff, I believe comes first with most importance. Yet, how about performance, growth development, getting shredded and the progression of our physiques. For all of us, fitness freaks out there… We quest for more muscle, less fat, and ever better performance. Well bring it on! if we are iodine, efficient. If not, just consider this inverse equation.

For such a powerful mineral effect, we don’t need much. So here another caveat, You CAN OVERDO it with this very easily and dangerously. So we’re in a bit of a conundrum. We don’t need much if we don’t get much from our “normal diets” at all anymore? Define normal diet Jed? The food pyramid, processed food products contain very little. But they are rich in vegetable and seed oils, these disrupt your body’s ability to absorb iodine. Remember trans and seed oil/vegetable fats are found in all processed commercial food products.

Even look at a healthy nutrition plan with lots of veggies, complete protein and essential fat, cycled natural complex carbs. Yes lacking, especially when considering, only about five or less percent of our population follows effective nutrition, planning. In that small percent we must know specific iodine, rich, natural resources foods to structure our nutrition around daily. So our children and our elderly, who need it most, don’t often eat the best, probably not many on effective nutrition plans, are under iodine depletion assault.

I’ll start with the most basic, the most profuse. Fluoridated and Chlorinated water. Fluoride, which is a halogen, so is iodine. However, fluoride’s elemental negative ion, is highly reactive and easily displaces iodine in the body. In North America our water is, in most communities especially urban, unless you live in a very rare spot, does this treatment process not take place.

“Long-term” exposure to chlorinated drinking water depletes iodine. A Study done in 1993, biased, and pushing the case for national water treatment everywhere, stated “that short term exposure to chlorinated drinking water was safe for iodine levels”. Don’t you love the wording in that lie, “short term”. Water, It’s what comes out of the tap from birth, to death, how is that short term?

Next up halogens, and goitrogens. Whole food plans are most effective for long-term performance, health and longevity. In those Whole Foods and the partitions from what once was whole, may contain goitrogens. One of the heaviest of which is soy, but not limited to, and including cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower cruciferous veggies.

That’s right to all you vegans out there, eating your tofu, and all your soy, and healthy veggies, your iodine is being depleted. This would not be an issue if we got enough iodine from other nutritional sources. But remember we don’t. So this gets way worse on the exposure side. Halogen overhead lighting, saves money, right? Depletes your body of iodine. Also, common mass produced clothing, dies and flame retardants in the clothing and uniforms that we wear, depletes iodine from the body. Drank and fed into our bodies, exposed on skin and illuminating all around.

We cannot synthesize iodine on our own, we must consume it through our diet, and supplementation, if needed to simply get enough. Ergo, why all of us in western culture, and most of the world, besides Japan, are directly iodine deficient. Some of you may be thinking, seaweed? And what about salt?

Yes, great for the Japanese who eat tons of nori. For westerners, There was a program in the 1920s to iodize table salt. The reduced form of iodine called potassium iodide added to 100% refined, superheated mineral devoid salt. Yes, we’re looking again at re-fortification of something at once as nature intended, rich in minerals, then cultivated, pasteurized, de-nutritionalized, re-fortified, and mass produced. So even 100 years ago, we were deficient.

While this was true there was an iodization program, in the 1920s. What we got was a whole bunch of superheated and processed mineral striped sea salt with added potassium iodide. We loved it, and people started to massively over consume table salt. Many things have changed since, most recently salt being considered one of the most over consumed, “condiments” however, with all that salt people were still iodine deficient. Yet the extreme excess of intake is linked to cardiac and blood pressure problems. Also there was not then, nor now, a law or regulatory mandate that enforces companies that produce the salt to actually ionize the salt. That program never went far, and has long since been removed by most producers.

For adults in our health/performance realm, himalayan pink salt, sea salt, and kosher salt. Yes, some iodine, not enough. One of iodine’s biggest roles in the body is to support the thyroid in producing thyroid stimulating hormones TSH and its active metabolites, T3 and T4. Without iodine, the production of these hormones decreases, which eventually leads to hypothyroidism. We want an efficient thyroid, we want to burn fat, build muscle, have energy and performance consistency that we can ever amplify. Do not overlook the importance of iodine.

Circling back, we are inefficient from birth, and it is being depleted from our body throughout our whole life. We can easily overdo it when supplementing, but it is essential! So be sure to consult with a knowledgeable professional before you aphazardly add in iodine supplementation. The specifics are very important to each individual, age and lifestyle demographic. So when I say that supplementation is necessary, this refers to our current state of the food supply chain. If we ate only wild sourced animals, eggs, fish vegetables, and did not drink fluoridated or chlorinated water. We wouldn’t need to supplement.Friends, in this ever changing world it is our duty to protect our children, elders, and ourselves. Education is armour to the influences that would otherwise penetrate deep, and encourage a toxic and polluted mind, body and soul.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, thank you. If not head over to canadianphysiquealliance.com and subscribe and to my website advantagefitnessltd.com and subscribe. Next up, part 2 of our essential Supplements series. Wishing you all and amazing and blessed NEW YEAR no matter what may come…

 

FORWARD FORWARD ALWAYS FORWARD AF.