Nutrients and Absorption

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You eat healthy foods filled with vitamins everyday, you may even take vitamins or other nutritional supplements, but how do they break down and get into your body so they can be used? The answer is absorption, understanding what it is and how it works, can help you to help your body to get the most out of the vitamins and nutrients that you give it.

There are two major classifications of nutrients micronutrients and macronutrients. Macronutrients include things like proteins fats and carbohydrates, these are the items your body uses for fuel. Micronutrients include minerals and vitamins and affect your body energy level but in a less direct way. Micronutrients will help ‘jump start’ the absorption process of the macronutrients.

Once you’ve consumed the food or vitamin tablets, it makes it was to your stomach. In your stomach acids break down the foods, so it’s ready to travel into your lower intestine, this is where the action starts to happen, as almost all absorption takes place there. The two ways that nutrients enter your blood stream are passive diffusion and transport absorption. This is where the vitamins come in as they are all absorbed through passive diffusion. This includes both water soluble vitamins and fat soluble vitamins (see vitamins how they work). Minerals on the other hand are absorbed through transport absorption. Minerals include things like magnesium and calcium.

The rate at which your body absorbs things will vary. For example if your body was low on calcium or B12 those minerals and vitamins would be absorbed first, when they pass through the intestine. It’s also important to know that your body won’t over absorb something it already has. If your body has enough B6 it won’t absorb any more. That’s why it important not to take too much of one or a combination of vitamins and minerals. Your body won’t absorb them, and you will be wasting your money buying them. Generally speaking it takes between 3 to 5 hours for foods or supplements to pass through your body system and become absorbed. This is one of the reasons it’s usually recommended they you take vitamins with a meal to slow down the digestion time giving it the most time in the body to be absorbed. To get the most out of the foods and supplements you take follow these simple tips.

• Eat a wide variety of foods cooked in different ways
• Don’t eat too much of one food type, vitamin or mineral. Your body will only take as much as it needs
• Give your body a chance to absorb the nutrients before doing hard labor or exercising.

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