Buy and eat when others eat well? careful! Six Blind Spots in Nutritional Supplement Purchasing

Author＼Smile Pharmacist Pharmacist Liao Weicheng

Regarding the purchase of health food, Smile has shared many related articles with you. This week Smile will target the silver-haired group. family, talk about their current blind spots and problems when purchasing nutritional products.

Faced with the transformation of the body’s metabolic function and social structural factors, many elderly people will use health food to make up for their daily nutritional deficiencies or health care needs, but they often face confusion and blind spots when choosing, as shown by Smile. The following are some common myths, I hope they can help you clarify your concepts.

1. The more ingredients, the better?

When many seniors choose health care products, they always hope that the more ingredients they have, the better. In fact, "If a product has more types of ingredients, the content of each ingredient will definitely be smaller!"

Why? As a simple example, if you take a general capsule that can be filled with 1,000 mg of a substance (usually there is a specific ratio that must be added to the excipients), if the product only contains three ingredients, then after deducting the excipients, if the ingredients are evenly divided, it may 300 mg of each ingredient. But if the formula contains exactly 10 ingredients, will some ingredients be more and some less, or even become a joke of "jack of all trades, loose of none"?

Therefore, Smile advises the public that the more ingredients the better, the better. The formula only needs to meet their own needs, and they should carefully examine whether the content of the health care ingredients they need is sufficient.

2. Eat ginkgo only if you feel your memory has declined

According to international human experimental studies published in 2002 and 2008, ginkgo cannot slow down the deterioration of cognitive function in the elderly, and may even affect the cognitive function of the elderly. Improving memory, language, concentration and other brain functions had no effect. In fact, the main functional ingredients of Ginkgo are Ginkgoflavon (flavonoids) and Ginkgolide A, B, C, M (diterpenoids).

Flavonoids have antioxidant and free radical scavenging effects, thereby protecting brain nerve cells from oxidative stress and reducing nerve cell damage. Ginkgolide is a platelet activating factor (PAF) antagonist that inhibits platelet aggregation and prevents thrombosis.

In addition, flavonoids can inhibit cyclo-oxygenase and lipoxygenase, thereby increasing blood fluidity and improving peripheral blood circulation disorders (ex. intermittent claudication). and poor cerebrovascular circulation.

To put it simply, ginkgo is antioxidant and promotes blood circulation, but it does not help reduce the concentration of common "neurotransmitters", so it has no improvement effect in international research. Perhaps it should be positioned like this: "Ginkgo is helpful in preventing Alzheimer's disease", but eating it may not be effective because it has no effect on increasing the concentration of acetylcholine.

Who is suitable for eating ginkgo?

In fact, ginkgo has a preventive effect. If you feel that your brain power has declined and then supplement it, the effect will usually be ineffective. But there is a group of people with good results, that is, the elderly whose memory has not deteriorated or whose blood circulation is poor and who often feel dizzy (but not anemic). Those who complain of poor memory recently are most likely due to blood in the brain. For those with poor circulation, research shows that supplementing ginkgo can indeed increase blood circulation to the brain.

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3. If you have sore knee joints, buy glucosamine.

Glucosamine is an amino sugar that the human body can synthesize by itself. It is a synthetic glycosaminoglycan (glucosamine glycan). The precursor of Glycosaminoycans (GAG), GAG is the main component of synovial fluid, which can provide joint tissue nutrition and repair damaged cartilage tissue.

However, the effectiveness of glucosamine in treating degenerative arthritis has always been controversial, especially in recent studies, which have shown invalid results. From 2008 to 2013, Treatment guidelines do not recommend the use of glucosamine as an adjuvant treatment for osteoarthritis.

The reason may also be related to the gradual decline in the body's ability to use glucosamine to produce macromolecule hyaluronic acid in the joints during the aging process of the human body. Therefore, the effect of supplementing glucosamine may decline with age. If you wait until you are older and notice soreness caused by joint degeneration before taking glucosamine, the effect will usually be ineffective.

4. It is believed that special nutritional supplements for diabetes can lower blood sugar

Nutritional supplements on the market that are advertised as suitable for diabetes all emphasize low GI (causing small fluctuations in blood sugar after taking them). But it does not help lower blood sugar levels. The correct way to use it is to replace a meal or as a snack. Do not take a serving of adult diabetic milk after a meal, otherwise the blood sugar will be high and cannot be controlled well.

5. To prevent osteoporosis, choose calcium tablets with high absorption.

Calcium tablets currently advertised as having higher absorption usually have lower calcium ion content (such as citric acid Calcium and amino acid chelated calcium have a large molecular weight, so when it is made into calcium tablets, the actual calcium content will be lower). If you want to make a calcium tablet with a calcium content of more than 300 mg, its volume will inevitably It is difficult to swallow, especially for people with silver hair.

When purchasing calcium supplements, some advertise high solubility, some claim rapid disintegration, and some claim fast absorption. In fact, as long as the gastric acid secretion function is normal and those who do not take antacids for a long time, taking No matter what kind of calcium, the calcium ions actually absorbed into the human body by these calcium preparations with different bases will be almost the same over a long period of time.

When choosing calcium tablets, you must first look at the "calcium content" of the product. The calcium ion content of a 500 mg calcium supplement is also marked. Many calcium supplements are marked with "calcium compound" instead of The dose of "calcium ions", calcium compounds will contain different proportions of calcium ions depending on the molecular weight.

Furthermore, calcium carbonate requires the action of gastric acid to decompose ionized calcium. Therefore, for those who have insufficient gastric acid secretion or who regularly use gastric acid inhibitors or gastric medicines, it is recommended to use non-carbonate calcium preparations. Finally, remember not to take more than 500 mg of calcium tablets at a time, because the human body’s single peak absorption of calcium is about 500 mg. If it exceeds 500 mg, the intestinal absorption of calcium will decrease.

6. If others eat well, just buy them and eat them

Many seniors take specific health foods with the attitude of trying them after hearing introductions from friends or advertisements. Take. In fact, buying health food for yourself without professional judgment is like using your own body as a guinea pig for experiments. If you guessed it correctly, Smile is really happy for you, if not...

Everyone knows Fish oil has benefits for cardiovascular disease, especially for people with high blood lipids. However, many people do not know that fish oil can help reduce triglycerides (TG), but may cause an increase in low-density cholesterol (LDL). Consumers often focus on it. "Fish oil can help adjust blood fat..." I swallowed it whole.

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To give another example, vegetarians often suffer from anemia due to a lack of vitamin B12 in their diet. They see advertisements that iron supplements can "enrich the blood", so they continue to buy high-quality iron-containing products. , causing constipation and gastrointestinal side effects. Therefore, Smile Pharmacist recommends that before purchasing health food, you must first seek professional advice.