Micronutrients—Small but Mighty Artwork

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Healthy California

Micronutrients—Small but Mighty

September 01, 2025 • Linda Brown, MPT • Season 1 • Episode 28

0:00 | 23:53

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This week we're zooming in on micronutrients—the vitamins and minerals your body needs in tiny amounts to run big, life-sustaining processes.

In this episode, I break down what vitamins and minerals are, where they come from, and why they’re essential. You’ll hear how vitamins (organic compounds from plants and animals) power immunity, energy, vision, and repair—and how minerals (inorganic elements like calcium, magnesium, iron) support bones, muscles, nerves, electrolyte balance, and oxygen transport. We’ll connect familiar nutrients—vitamin D + calcium, B vitamins for metabolism, magnesium in 300+ reactions, iron for hemoglobin and mitochondrial energy, and vitamin C for collagen, antioxidant defense, and immune support—to everyday health.

We’ll also cover what deficiency can look like (fatigue, cramps, headaches, frequent illness, poor recovery) and when supplements can help—plus the pitfalls: overdosing fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), drug–nutrient interactions, and low-quality products. You’ll get practical strategies: food first (colorful produce, quality proteins, whole foods), smart supplementation, checking if meds deplete nutrients, and foundational habits—hydration, sleep, movement, and stress reduction.

Micronutrients may be “micro,” but their impact is massive. Tune in to learn how to shore up your daily essentials—safely and effectively.

References:

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/druginduced-nutrient-depletions-what-pharmacists-need-to-know

Drug Induced Nutrient Depletion - Doctors Beyond Medicine

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My contact:

Linda Brown, MPT, Doctoral Candidate Functional Nutrition

916-426-2543

linda@heal-throughfood.com

www.heal-throughfood.com

Hello and welcome to Healthy California podcast. My name is Linda Brown and I am the host of Healthy California where my goal is to help educate you on your daily choices. So we all can become healthy. I believe you, your family, your neighbor and your community are all looking for.

Better ways and simple ways to return to being healthy.

Many of you have health issues or have family that's going through tough times that seemingly have no answers. It's frustrating. There are questions about health, environment, foods, exercise and lifestyle, and it can be all overwhelming. And who do you believe and where is the science behind it?

This podcast will unravel the mystery behind being unhealthy and talk about little things that we can do in our lives to make a positive change in our health from all angles.

So to be healthy, we need to have physical health, mental health, environmental, health, financial and social health, and, of course, spiritual health. Let's answer some of these questions to get healthy. What good is just listening to a podcast? I will give you resources as well. Ways to take steps and make positive changes in your life to becoming healthy. This is a journey, not an assignment, so be kind to yourself.

Hello California and welcome back to healthy California. This is Linda Brown, your host of healthy California. This week we are talking about our micro molecules, vitamins and minerals. The last few weeks we talked about our macros which are fat, carbohydrates and protein, and now we're talking about vitamins and minerals, vitamins and minerals are called micronutrients because we just need them in very small amounts.

So let's just break this down. Vitamins and minerals. Well, what are they? They're nutrients we need in small amounts, but are essential for our survival. They're essential. So without vitamins and minerals, processes in our body won't happen. So vitamins typically come from plants and animals. They support immune health, energy production, vision repair processes, vitamins do a lot and minerals the same minerals also come from plants and animals. They're inorganic, so like calcium, magnesium iron.

Burn critical for bones, muscles, blood, nerves, minerals. They come from the earth. So they're like rocks. If you think about it. Metals really. And they're also our electrolytes. So they have a charge to them. When we think of electrolytes, those are typically minerals.

Minerals are inorganic and vitamins are organic.

And so why is this important? Why are vitamins and minerals important? Why does it matter? Well, without them, our bodies simply just can't function properly. Again, we need vitamins and minerals for processes in our body to happen. So for example, vitamin D helps absorb calcium.

Iron prevents anemia and our B vitamins keep our energy metabolism running smoothly. That's why there's eight different vitamins.

Magnesium is vital for over 300 reactions in the body. That's a lot.

Magnesium 300 different reactions. Iron is needed for oxygen transport and electron transfer. Electron transfer is something that happens in our the powerhouse of our cell, called the mitochondria. The mitochondria produces energy with that electron transfer.

So we need iron for that process. You know, iron prevents anemia, it can, depending on what kind of anemia.

Vitamin C, again like magnesium, vitamin C, is responsible for up to 300 different processes like collagen production. Last week I talked about protein and collagen is a protein, but to build collagen we need vitamin C and magnesium really to produce collagen.

So even if we are eating proper proteins, if we don't have vitamins and minerals in addition, we're still not going to be able to build that collagen. So vitamin C and magnesium really is responsible for collagen production, energy production.

Production of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and tryptophan neurotransmitters are our neuron signallers, so if our neurons can't signal, then we are going to be deficient in either in our brain or our in our nervous system, which could be our reaction.

Time, which could be just anything that our brain is trying to tell our body, what to do that is going to be limited.

And vitamin C is also an antioxidant. Antioxidants protect cells from damage and supports the immune function and reduction of chronic disease. And we take vitamin C many times during cold season because it's going to help with that. But vitamin C does so much. When I was younger, I used to kind of make fun of my mom because she would always be giving us vitamin C.

And I used to say to her mom if I broke my my leg, you would give me vitamin C, thinking that it's gonna heal my leg. Well, come to find out. She was right because we need vitamin C for every process, including collagen production. Bone formation? Yeah. So don't ever don't ever question your mother.

Mothers are always right and I'm not here necessarily to tell you everything that vitamins do. I'm just here today just to tell you why vitamins and minerals are so important and I can narrow down the different vitamins at a later date. So then what happens if you are low in vitamins and minerals?

Well, everything that I just mentioned for sure. So if you don't have energy production, you're going to be fatigued, you're going to have an increased risk for injuries because again, if you don't, if you're not making collagen, you're going to have a tendency to get injured, not have a good strong joint support a lot of times when we're low.

In our minerals like electrolytes, salts, salt is a mineral or potassium or calcium. We we our muscles start cramping. So cramping can be also a result of having low minerals. Some people get headaches when they are low in magnesium, increased inflammation, because if you don't have vitamins and minerals to counteract inflammation, then you're going to have increased inflammation. What happens when we have increased inflammation. We have increased in chronic illness because I've said it many times and I know you've heard me say it many times. Inflammation is the cause of most, if not all, chronic diseases.

If we are low in vitamins and minerals, we're going to have increased illness, not just chronic illness, but you know the illness that I had mentioned, just your seasonal illnesses, colds and flus, we're going to have a tendency to be more sick and we're going to have a decreased ability for the liver to detox. So we're not going to be able to get rid of the toxins in our body.

So there's a lot of reasons we need vitamins and minerals. So if you look back at your last week and if you feel like you had any of those fatigue injuries, cramping headaches, inflammation, illnesses that might be something to think about, adding a multivitamin into your diet, or look at your diet and see what you can.

Add into your diet where you can get more fruits and vegetables. So what are the pros and cons.

Let's go through the pros first, because supplements can be very valuable. There's a flip side to that as well.

But supplements can be good because of nutrient gaps. A lot of people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables or Whole Foods, but many times when people do a lot of times, those that produce is deficient in nutrients anyways. Now you hear people say a tomato wasn't as red as it used to be when you were a child.

That's true to some extent because the soil that our produce is growing in is getting more and more deficient in nutrients and if you buy a tomato at the farmers market, it's going to be a deeper color than you would buy at the store a lot.

But at a farmers market, chances are they're not fertilizing their soils with pesticides and inorganic material. I would trust a farmers market tomato over a tomato at A at a store because you just don't know what those large production farms are putting in their soils to get the tomatoes to grow fast.

Not necessarily have a lot of nutrients in them. Vitamins and minerals are good to fill as far as supplementation are good to fill in the gaps from what you're getting and what you're not.

And different life stages may need a way to supplement some of the deficiencies. Like if you're pregnant, you may need more folate. Older adults often need more vitamin D and vitamin B12 medical conditions. People sometimes have absorption issues or get disorders, and they're not going to be able to absorb the vitamins as well as they could. Some restricted diets don't allow for full amount of diversity in the diet. So in situations like that, supplement might be necessary, and so then what are the cons of supplementing? If you were to add a supplement, more is not always better. Sometimes you can over supplement. There are vitamins that are fat soluble.

And a lot of times you'll hear people call it vitamin Dake, DAKE, and vitamin Dake just means just means that vitamins D vitamins, a vitamin K vitamin E those four vitamins are fat soluble.

And fat soluble vitamins can actually build up toxic levels in our body, so we don't want to over consume those. That's a con of supplementing your vitamins is taking too much, so you need to take those as needed and you probably need to take those and let your doctor know that you're taking them. And also over supplementation like iron, you can take too much iron and then that would be stored in your body and sometimes even weigh too much iron. You can cause damage to some of your organs.

And another con of taking supplements is supplements can interact with medications. So for example, vitamin K, which is a coagulant can interfere with blood thinners, which is an anticoagulant. So if you're on a blood thinner, you don't want to be taking vitamin K another con for supplements is the false sense of security. So relying on pills instead of real food can leave you nutrient poor in other areas. A lot of fruits and vegetables have many different vitamins minerals in that one vegetable, let's just say.

One vegetable doesn't just have one vitamin has multiple vitamins and minerals. If you are just supplementing with one vitamin, you're really becoming nutrient poor in other areas. It's really better to have a well-rounded diet where you could get your fruits and vegetables and a more diverse vitamin and mineral makeup and then, you know, let's be honest,

Supplements vary in quality, right? They're they can be expensive and you don't know what you're getting a lot of times you don't know what you're getting. So if if you decide you're going to buy supplements for vitamins and minerals, you want to make sure it's third party tested and it's tested for purity or absorption many times the vitamins and minerals you get at a grocery store is not a good quality.

The grocery store is not there to make you healthy. They're there to make money. The smaller health food stores like, I don't know, like Sprouts or your local Co-op. They're going to have better a little bit better quality and you can go online and and look up some vitamins and minerals that are third party tested.

You don't want to pay the least amount of money for vitamins and minerals because you're going to get what you pay for, which a lot of times is nothing.

Not getting really anything in those vitamins and minerals, there are companies that will go out and randomly test vitamins and minerals and a lot of them that you get at a grocery store don't have what it says it has in there. So you have to be really careful and the supplement industry is very lucrative. There's people out there selling vitamins and minerals online and they claim that you just take this and it's going to solve the world's problems and and people have lost weight and people are changing their their disease process. I don't know that that is true for everybody anytime. One company says that this medication helps everyone. That's a red flag and that's a reason for you to turn around and run.

So just be careful with that. There is also medications that will deplete you of vitamins and minerals if you are on any sort of diuretic that might deplete you in calcium, magnesium, potassium, thiamine. There's a lot of medications that will deplete you of your vitamins and minerals

Let's see what else corticosteroids will deplete you of calcium, metformin. So many people are in metformin these days. That's going to deplete you of your B12 proton pump inhibitors. PPI's are going to deplete you of your vitamin B12. So there is a there's a couple links in my show notes.

That you can click into and you can look up what medication you're on and see what it is depleting you of, and then you can just go to your doctor and say I'm on this medication.

And it's depleting me according to this website, it's depleting the of this vitamin. Can I take this vitamin, pass it by your doctor? Chances are you really need to be taking some some sort of supplement for that. I'm. I'm not always about supplements, but if you are on a medication that's depleting you of it, you might not be able to eat enough to stay sufficient.

All right, So what do you do about all that.

What do I always say? Diet andeExercise.

Diet, real food. You want to eat real food, colorful food, diverse food, seasonal food.

It's always better to eat food to get your vitamins and minerals than supplements. Always, always, always fruits that are good. Let's say in vitamin vitamin C would be like strawberries, Kiwi, papaya, oranges, pineapple.

Vegetables that are are good in vitamin C and I'm just saying vitamin C because that one vitamin C is something we are very deficient in.

And you can go online. You can go into Google, you can go into ChatGPT and just ask what fruits and vegetables are good in whatever vitamin you need. Vitamin C, vitamin D, magnesium, those are all things that were typically deficient in that vegetables, vegetables that have a good source of vitamin C or Peppers. Like green Peppers, yellow Peppers, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, red cabbage, those all have good vitamin C.

And what else can you do about your vitamins and minerals? Exercise. How does that help? Well, exercise uses up vitamins and minerals, right? But it also helps the body become resilient. You need to exercise even though it's using up vitamins and minerals, you want your body to become resilient and you want to kind of fine tune your body. The body was meant to move.

You want to fine tune it so that you can be efficient in all your bodily processes and then hydration. Everything happens easier when your cells have enough water to move things around.

You need vitamins coming into the cell. You need vitamins that leave the cell. The cells are always constantly moving things in, moving things out. But if you don't have enough water inside the cell, things moving in and out, it's kind of like moving through thick sludge.

You don't want the inside of your cell to be thick in its liquid, you want you want enough water in there where things can move in and out easily and then sleep. Sleep is when we heal.

So if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. So if you are trying to heal and you're taking vitamins and minerals because you have an injury and you heard on a podcast that you need vitamin C to help build collagen, then you have to sleep as well because that's when your body's going to actually heal. You get good quality sleep.

And then in addition to that, reduce your stress because stress is also going to deplete you with many minerals, vitamins and minerals and it's going to reduce your sleep. So stress is something that is very detrimental as well. Eating is not the only thing that's going to improve.

Of your vitamin and mineral absorption or intake. Of course it has to come in somehow, so you're going to eat good quality food, but you have to exercise. You have to stay hydrated. You have to sleep and you have to reduce your stress. All that's going to help your body.

So what's the take away on all this? What's the bottom line? Eat a colorful rich diet, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, not processed, and then good quality proteins because animal meat also has vitamins, vitamins and minerals. Don't just come from fruits and vegetables.

Use supplements to fill the gaps and meet specific needs, not as just a replacement for eating healthy. You don't want to take vitamins and minerals, just as a supplement.

You want to replace what you're not getting through your food. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting a new regimen, especially if you're taking medications. So pass that by your doctor and then with supplements. Well, I'm going to say one more thing about supplements. Supplements are just that they're supplementing what you are deficient in supplement is not a medication. You don't necessarily have to take it as prescribed unless you know that you're taking a certain medication and you're chronically taking that. So you're chronically going to be deficient in that.

Then you might want to take that a little bit more regularly, or if let's say, maybe you aren't eating animal products, then you're going to want to supplement with your B12 on a little bit more regular basis.

But in general, if you are eating a healthy well-rounded diet then you shouldn't have to take vitamins and minerals like you would medication. If you skip a day, it's not the end of the world I have boy, I have a a pantry full of supplement bottles and it's pretty amazing.

To see what I have in there. However, it's because I don't take everything all the.

I don't take vitamin C every single day and magnesium every single day I might if I'm feeling a little bit like I didn't eat well. I missed a salad or whatever. I might supplement. I might take an extra magnesium or take a vitamin C, but I don't hold myself to a strict regimen.

Because I depend on my diet so don't feel like if you are supplementing something you have to take it every single day. That's a myth. I want you just to eat healthy and let's just think about it.

Being healthy and the supplements are just that, they're there to supplement whatever it is you're not getting. And if you think about it, if vitamins and minerals are responsible for something like collagen production, you know we have collagen in our skin and in our joints. If vitamins and minerals are responsible for something like collagen production, energy production.

Immune health. Why would you not want to be absolutely sure you have enough vitamins and minerals? I think it's so important that you have it. Why would you not think about it? We really need to be thinking about our vitamins and minerals.

And I just want to end with this final thought. You know, I try to bring a Bible verse in every week and this one is 1 that I it's one of my favorite Bible verses and it's from proverbs 69. And it says the heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. I don't know if I've said this one to you before, but it reminds me of this week's podcast on vitamins and minerals. Because I'm constantly trying to help you plan your way, I guess make good choices.

And we're always trying to plan our future and plan our meals plan, plan on being healthy, but it's a step by step process and we can't just plan and then boom, it's all of a sudden, we're all of a sudden healthy, it's a journey and it's a process and we have to just know that we have to take this one step at a time the heart of man plans his way. But just because you plan it doesn't mean it's going to happen the way you want it to. The Lord is going to establish your step.

And that's just something that you is between you and and God. And if you feel like you need a little help, you can listen to my podcast. But really you need to be going to God for every step in your life on what to do next and just ask for help and and then just stop and listen.

Stay quiet and see what he tells you.

And that's why I like that Bible verse so much. The heart of a man plans his way. But the Lord establishes the steps it kind of takes us out of the equation because we know what we want. But when we're not always going to get it the way we envision it in our head, it's going to happen someday, but not always the way we plan on it. So anyways, that is.

My thought on that I hope that you learned something this week and I hope you stay healthy. California. Thank you for listening to healthy California. I hope you learned something today.

Treatment and healthcare should be proactive and preventative, so getting to the root cause of the disease or illness is so important. the US has a good trauma medicine design, which means you see a doctor when there is already a problem. Let's beat disease before it happens. This podcast represents my opinions based on my research and education and is not intended to be.

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