What Happens When Your Body Can’t Absorb Nutrients?

Everybody knows that the nutrients you consume fuel your body energy and maintain its health. Consequently, a balanced diet is not only a matter of not putting on weight. It is designed to make sure that your body can continue to perform its natural functions.

In other words, what you eat, however tasty that might be, serves a primary purpose: Keeping the machine ticking. However, most people would find it easier to maintain their health if the body were able to absorb all nutrients. Indeed, as there are specific nutrients or vitamins that can’t be digested and passed through the intestinal walls to the relevant organs, there’s an important question to address: What can you do when your body can’t work with the nutrients you consume?

Curcumin and turmeric

Turmeric is an orange root found in the Asian regions. It is naturally rich in a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agent called curcumin. If you’re struggling with acne issues, for instance, you might have come across natural turmeric cream to reduce blemishes. For chronic pain, you can use turmeric supplements that can be taken with a meal. However, according to BioFoundations org, curcumin is naturally difficult to absorb for the body and is rapidly eliminated via the feces. In other words, you need to enhance the bioavailability of curcumin with piperine to benefit from its anti-inflammatory abilities throughout your body, as opposed to locally only.

Fiber

Unless you’ve  been living under a rock for the past few decades, it’s likely that you’ve heard of the beneficial qualities of fiber in your diet. Fiber is one kind of nutrients that can’t be digested by human enzymes, however, it is essential that it doesn’t get digested. Indeed, fiber helps to improve the digestive process by stimulating the production of essential gastric elements and consequently prevents the risks of constipation, calorific meals and even colon cancer. The bottom line is you can’t absorb fiber but that shouldn’t stop you from consuming it.

Calcium

You all know the saying: You should eat your dairy products if you want strong bones and teeth, at least that’s what everybody heard as child. In reality, while calcium is essential to the health of your skeleton, your body can’t absorb it without vitamins D and K. If you want to know more about it, head to this summary article on Healthline.com that explains the role of both vitamins in the calcium metabolism. In short, vitamin D controls the calcium levels in your blood, while vitamin K ensures that the calcium reaches the right destination. Without them, there’s no nutritional benefit in drinking a glass of milk.

Iron and vitamin C

Another infamous nutrients combo in your diet is iron and vitamin C. Iron helps your body to maintain essential function from carrying oxygen to producing energy. That’s why anemia, an iron deficiency, can be life-threatening. However, without vitamin C, your body can’t absorb iron. You need to include at least 25 mg of vitamin C in the same meal.

In conclusion, it’s true that your body doesn’t absorb all the nutrients you eat. In some cases, you can find the right combination of other vitamins and nutrients to facilitate the absorption, as it’s the case with curcumin, calcium and iron. But sometimes, like with fiber, it’s the fact that it’s not digested that is beneficial for your body.