As you may have already experienced, figuring out how to choose a good quality vitamin and mineral supplement can be a confusing and time consuming task.

The purpose of this article is to look at several important factors that you should consider when looking for a good quality vitamin and mineral supplement and to provide you with resources where you can learn more.

CONSIDERATION #1: ABSORPTION Here is one of first questions you should keep in mind:

Will ingredients in vitamin and mineral supplement you are considering actually be absorbed by your body?

There are many steps that ingredients in your vitamin and mineral supplement (referred to as supplement from now on) have to go through in order to make it all way through your digestive tract, into your blood stream and ultimately to location where your body can use them.

It's a complex process and there are many opportunities for process to not go quite right and prevent your supplement ingredients from getting to where they are supposed to. Let's look at some factors that can affect journey your supplement takes and also affect how well your body can absorb a supplement's ingredients.

WHAT IS BIOAVAILABILITY? Bioavailability is degree to which a nutrient is available to body for use. More specifically, for a nutrient to be bioavailable it must be within physical proximity to cell so cell can use it. Also, for a nutrient to be bioavailable it has to be dissolved in some sort of solution so that nutrient can be transported across cell membrane.

From a non biochemistry perspective, here's a simple way to picture what needs to happen; nutrient has to make it all way from your mouth to cell and be in a form cell can use.

For bioavailability to occur, certain things have to happen once you put that supplement into your mouth. Here are two of those processes. One is dissolution which refers to how fast a supplement dissolves. An example to help you picture this process would be taking some sugar, putting it in a glass of water and stirring it with a spoon until sugar disappears.

Another process is disintegration. This is similar to dissolution only disintegration refers to how fast capsule or tablet breaks into smaller pieces so that dissolution process can take place.

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SUPPLEMENT WILL DISSOLVE So how in world are you going to be able to tell if supplement you are considering does all this dissolution and disintegration stuff? Fortunately, it's pretty straight forward to figure out. A good way to know that your supplement is meeting these standards is to make sure there is some sort of "USP" designation on label of product.

USP refers to U.S. Pharmacopeia, an organization that was established to create state-of-the-art standards to ensure quality of medicines that humans use. This includes vitamin and mineral supplements.

An example of kind of USP designation that you want to look for on label of a product you are considering would be something like, "this product conforms to USPXXVII requirements for disintegration and dissolution".

WHAT CHELATION DOES Chelation is very important when it comes to making sure that minerals in your supplement are bioavailable. Chelation refers to a process that increases absorption of minerals such as chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum and zinc.

It can be hard to get minerals all way to that bioavailable state that was discussed earlier. Chelation involves wrapping mineral in an amino acid so that body can more easily absorb it. This can improve absorption of some minerals from only 10% absorption for a non chelated mineral to 45% and more for a chelated mineral.

Coffee : Poison or Health Elixir?

By Stephen Bucaro

Computers are very complicated, so computer professionals need to keep their brain synapses firing rapidly. To accomplish this, many computer professionals consume large amounts of coffee. Studies keep coming out that prove coffee is dangerous to our health. Other studies prove those findings to be false. Is coffee bad for us or not?

Does coffee raise blood pressure?

A 2002 study by John Hopkins University that tracked 1,000 former medical students found that heavy coffee drinking is associated with a small increase in blood pressure, but not enough to increase risk for hypertension.

Does coffee cause heart attacks?

A 2000 Finnish study that surveyed more than 20,000 Finnish men and women about their coffee drinking habits and medical history found no evidence that coffee drinking is connected to heart disease.

The study did find that coffee drinkers have poorer health habits than those who drank no coffee. Those who drank coffee were more likely to smoke and have greater amounts of body fat.