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Vitamins, like minerals and trace elements, are building blocks that are essential to life. Their range of activities is especially wide and complicated. The human body cannot produce them by itself and needs to take them in along with its food. Some minerals are needed by the body in large quantities, other in much smaller amounts - the so-called trace elements. In a similar way, vitamin requirements can be extremely varied
Even when every care is taken that the food intake is richly varied, one cannot be asbolutely certain that enough vitamins, minerals and trace elements are taken in. Our leached and overfertilised agricultural soil has led to less and less mineral content. Vegetables grown in hothouse conditions do not help. Again, the way our drinking water is purified leads to a lack of minerals. Food preparation methods cause a large part of the mineral, vitamin and trace element content to be removed from our diet.
This development is worrying, since the missing vitamins and minerals cannot any longer play their important role in the optimum functioning of our body. A long lasting inadequate intake of vitamins and minerals becomes noticeable through lack of concentration, tiredness, weakness, lack of appetite and irritability. Increased openness to infection can be one of the first warning signs.
An increased intake is especially indicated:
