Why do I need to take a vitamin supplement? Studies show that over 90 percent of Americans are deficient in some vitamin or mineral. Even if you eat a balanced diet, because of the way foods are grown and processed today, you have no guarantee that you are getting the nutrients you need. Soil depletion, pesticides, smog, and food-processing methods, all rob our foods of vital nutrients. Supplementation is essential to replenish the life-giving nutrients which are missing in our foods.TOP

Why are whole food vitamins important? What is the difference between synthetic and whole food vitamins? Whole food vitamins, such as those included in whole food multi-vitamin affect the body and are absorbed and used just as the natural foods would be. Whole foods and whole food complexes are entire composites, not fractions of vitamins. Synthetic vitamins are not really vitamins at all, they are only fragments of vitamins. Pulling apart the constituents that make up a food, fractioning, changes that food into a non-food. These non-food fractions are now foreign and unrecognizable to the body, and actually create drug-like reactions.TOP

What are minerals and why are they important? Minerals are solid substances, natural elements which are not of animal or vegetable origin, "rocks," if you will. Trace minerals are essential to the functioning of the body's systems, particularly the hormone system and the immune system. Minerals also play a vital role in the workings of enzyme reactions, and in producing blood, vitamins and energy.TOP

What is bioavailability of minerals? Bioavailabilty refers to how available a mineral element is for use in the body. Here is where mineral supplements vary widely. While some supplements have a high trace mineral content, those minerals are not "chelated" and so are not absorbable and useable in the body.TOP

What does "chelated" minerals mean? Chelate comes from the Greek word, "claw." Through chelation, an amino acid claws onto, or binds to, a mineral. This enables that mineral to be absorbed through the gut wall. NSI uses only amino-acid chelated minerals from the only company which holds a patent on that process, Albion Laboratories. Other mineral supplements on the market which claim to include chelated minerals are most likely using mixtures, and not these amino-acid chelates.TOP

Are there other ways to chelate minerals? Yes...and no. There are other chelation processes, and companies which claim to use chelated minerals. However, none of them are effective except the chelation process invented by Dr. Harvey Ashmead which involves bonding an amino acid to a mineral in the same way nature does it. Ashmead's patented process is the only way to produce this natural amino acid-mineral complex.TOP