Akea Essentials: where ancient wisdom and cutting-edge nutrition meet to bring you great health

EssentialsCan What happens when the power of nature and the latest in nutrition science get together? You get Akea Essentials.

If you care about your health, it’s important that you know why Essentials is so greatly superior to most vitamin and mineral supplements – if not all of them.

Ordinary vitamin and mineral supplements – just ‘expensive urine?‘

Have you ever wondered, as you gulp down a handful of vitamin pills whilst family/colleagues/friends/pet dog look on with one eyebrow raised: Do I really need these – or are they just giving me expensive urine?

There are at least thirteen vitamins and seventeen minerals and trace elements which we need daily, each with a long list of duties to perform. For example, without B vitamins our cells can’t manufacture energy, without iron we can’t make blood, and without zinc our immune system can’t work properly – and that’s just for starters.

We should of course get these vitamins and minerals from our diet, but the junk-food based S.A.D. (Standard American Diet) has lost them somewhere along the way and even a high-vegetable diet is likely to be lacking in them thanks to today’s depleted soil. An orange you buy in the supermarket today can actually contain no vitamin C, whilst magnesium levels in carrots have dropped by around 75 percent since 1940.

The rich and fertile soil in the Longevity Hot Spots and resulting high levels of micronutrients in the people who live there is a major factor in their robust health. But most of us don’t live in Longevity Hot Spots, so what can we do?

Enter the multi-billion dollar vitamin and mineral supplement industry. The supplements they make purport to be there in order to fill the gap left by an inadequate diet. But do they really? Can a handful of pills really provide the same nutrients as a tree dripping with ripe fruit, a row of buxom cabbages, or a salmon leaping from a river?

Do supplements work?

Studies about whether or not vitamin and mineral supplements work are, overall, inconclusive. Some suggest they improve health, some suggest they have no effect, and one, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007, even suggested that taking antioxidant supplements increases mortality risk.

Some vitamins and minerals may be harmful if taken in excess. Vitamin A can build up to toxic levels in the liver, whilst calcium may be deposited in arteries, increasing the risk of arteriosclerosis. Antioxidants, when taken in high doses, may increase levels of free radicals in the body, since they become free radicals themselves when they are used and need to then be neutralised by other antioxidants.

However, some studies seem to reliably suggest that supplements can be of benefit. For example, the Nurse’s Health Study, which looked at over 87,000 women, showed that vitamin E when taken in the long term is associated with lower risk of heart disease in middle-aged women (1). Another study published in the British Medical Journal in 1997 showed that men who had low levels of vitamin C were three and a half times more likely to have a heart attack than those who did not.

There may be times, then, when people can benefit from taking supplements. However, there is so much difference in quality between different products, that some may well be able to resolve a problem whilst others may make no difference at all – or even do harm. So what should you look for in a supplement?

Synthetic versus natural supplements

In nature, vitamins are found in plants and animals, whilst minerals are found in living organisms as well as in soil, rocks and water.

In order to be produced in the industrial quantities required by the majority of supplements companies, vitamins are usually either synthesised or cultured in a laboratory. Synthesised vitamins are mainly made by isolating molecules which already exist in nature, whilst cultured vitamins are grown and extracted from an original food source. For example, vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is usually synthesised from corn starch or cassava, whilst B vitamins are often cultured from yeast. Some synthetic vitamins are manufactured from coal tar derivatives.

In most cases, the molecular structure of synthetic vitamins is identical to that of their natural counterparts. The main exception to this is vitamin E. Vitamin E exists as d-tocopherol in nature and l-tocopherol when synthetic; in a supplement you will often find dl-tocopherol which combines natural and synthetic vitamin E. A good brand will always use d-tocopherol, extracted from nut or seed oil, since d-tocopherol is absorbed by the body whilst l-tocopherol is excreted, which means that fifty per cent of dl-tocopherol will be wasted.

Folic acid is another vitamin which differs from its natural counterpart, folate. Folic acid, which is usually obtained from yeast or liver, is much more bioavailable than folate. Folic acid behaves slightly differently in cells from folate, and there is some evidence to suggest that, unlike folate, it may increase the risk of cancer when used in very high doses, although this is not known for sure.

Other synthetic vitamins have the same molecular structure as those found in nature and should theoretically be used by the body in the same way. However, this is not the case, because in nature, vitamins are never found in isolation in the way that they are in the laboratory. In nature they are always bound with other plant chemicals which are loosely referred to as ‘cofactors’. Vitamin C, for example, is found in fruit along with bioflavonoids. These cofactors enhance the bioavailability of the vitamin – bioflavonoids, for instance, increase the bioavailability of vitamin C by 30 per cent.

It is now known that the body will absorb vitamins much better when they are combined with cofactors found in food. Whole foods actually contain thousands of phytochemicals, all working together in a synergistic way, which vitamin supplements cannot provide. There are many micronutrients found in food which haven’t even been identified yet, let alone produced in a laboratory.

Minerals and trace elements (such as iron, calcium and zinc) are not synthesised in laboratories because they can be harvested from rocks. However, the minerals found in rocks exist in their pure form, which cannot be absorbed by the body. In order to become bioavailable they must be combined with another substance such as citric acid. For instance, magnesium will be combined with citric acid to become magnesium citrate. The minerals in plants and animals are already combined with other substances and so when we eat foods containing them we can absorb them.

A separate problem with synthetic vitamins and minerals is that cheaper brands are likely to use artificial colors, additives and fillers as well as salts such as palmitate. These substances are not food and may cause allergic reactions or undermine health if they are not properly metabolised in the body.

Food-based supplements – superior supplements

Since it is now recognised that isolated vitamins and minerals will not be well-absorbed, a handful of companies in the know are starting to produce ‘food-based’ supplements. These may obtain calcium from sea algae, beta-carotene from carrot concentrate, B vitamins from yeast, and so on. Food-based supplements may use vitamins which have been synthesised but they are then put into a food complex – for example, vitamin C will come with bioflavonoids from bilberries.

Really good brands will use cultured whole-food vitamins and minerals, sometimes with added herbs and superfoods. This is a good step towards providing the micronutrients we need in a way that is similar to how they are found in nature and these high-end brands can provide a good supplement to a healthy diet.

If you want to use a vitamin and mineral supplement, always read the label carefully and if in doubt call the manufacturers. You generally get what you pay for, and are probably more likely to be wasting your money if you get a cheaper brand.

Akea Essentials

Moving one step onwards – and upwards – from supplements is Akea Essentials.

Essentials is a revolutionary new product which captures the power and goodness of whole foods: a whole-food powder containing top-quality organic vegetables, fruits, superfoods and other nutrient-dense whole foods. Vitamins, minerals, trace elements and other nutrients are all present together with thousands of other phytochemicals and cofactors just as they are in the foods found in nature.

Not only are these nutrients better-absorbed than when they are found in ordinary supplements, but also they have extra synergistic power. In other words, being together gives their vitamins and minerals far greater nutrient power than vitamins and minerals in isolation, as they are found in ordinary supplements. For example, the amount of vitamin C found in an apple is comparatively low, but the fact that it comes packaged with other plant nutrients gives it far greater antioxidant power than it would have on its own.

Studies from Cornell show how superior whole foods are when it comes to our health. Their research shows that phytochemicals from fruits and vegetables have measurable antioxidant and anticancer effects, whilst individual vitamins and minerals in supplement form do not produce the same results (2).

Essentials contains a wide range of the vitamins and minerals found in food, some in levels comparable to the Daily Values found in supplements. For example, two scoops provides 40% of the Daily Value for zinc and 54% of the Daily Value for selenium. This is far more beneficial than taking a supplement which gives you 100% of the daily value in a form which you cannot absorb.

Furthermore, the nutrients in Essentials exist in the same perfectly-balanced way in which they exist in nature. There is no risk of overdosing on vitamin A or calcium or antioxidants when you take Essentials.

Not only that, but Essentials has a very important additional property: the foods it contains have been fermented using probiotics. This makes them even more bioavailable in the body, as well as providing beneficial bacteria which are crucial for good gut health, which forms the foundation of good health and slower aging.

If you decide to take Essentials, remember to have it with the healthy diet outlined on the Akea website, and you will be pretty close to having all the Hot Spot ingredients for optimum health. Eating well and taking Essentials is one of the very best things you can do for yourself and your loved ones.

Essentials is organic, GMO-free, soy free, and gluten free.

Here is a list of the nutrients found in Essentials: http://www.akealife.com/essentials/ingredients/facts-panel/

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