People throw around words like vitamins and minerals, but what’s the difference? What exactly are they, and how do they differ from herbs? And, more importantly, what’s the point of them?
Vitamins are necessary for healthy living and naturally found in plants and animal flesh. If you don’t intake enough of any vitamin, this can drastically affect your wellness with various ailments and diseases. For example, without the right levels of vitamin C, you can develop softening of the gums, extreme weakness and fatigue, anaemia, and hardening of the leg muscles, otherwise known as scurvy. You require many vitamins to complete important chemical processes in the body, and important ones to look out for are vitamins A, B complex, Biotin, Folic Acid, pantothenic acid, D, E and F.
When it comes to minerals, your wellbeing depends on them in terms of body development, maintenance and metabolism. Minerals are, unlike vitamins, inorganic substances, meaning they are usually found in the earth’s crust. However, many are also found in plants and animal flesh as a consequence of this. One important mineral is calcium, which is technically a metal found abundantly in limestone. This mineral is very important for building strong and healthy bones, which prevents brittle bone diseases such as osteoporosis, and calcium is also a very important factor in blood coagulation. Other important minerals include chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium and zinc.
Finally, as you may have guessed, herbs are plants, albeit mainly leafy ones without woody stems. Herbs are different to vitamins and minerals in that they are generally used as natural medicines, often for specific conditions. Going as far back as pre-historic times, man has used herbs as medicinal products, with almost every culture, from China to Western folk medicine, developing a unique collection of medicinal herbs.
Plant extracts even form the basis of many modern medicines, some of which can be extremely potent and need to be regulated by the government. Morphine, for example, is an opiate made from the poppy plant and is the most powerful painkiller known to man. Some other examples of popular medicinal Western herbs include cayenne, lobelia, red raspberry leaf, ginger, golden seal, black cohosh, peppermint, licorice, ginseng, chamomile, and echinacea.
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