Team USANA’s Choice: Top 6 USANA Supplements

You live an active lifestyle and eat a healthy diet, but do you want to make sure you’re supplementing for optimal nutrition? Elite athletes are the best of the best. They require excellent nutrition and push their bodies to the limits. Who do you learn from? The best. That’s why we’ve gathered the need-to-know on supplements from a few of New Zealand’s elite athletes in Team USANA.

1. Fuel up with CellSentials

The CellSentials® (Vita-Antioxidant & Core Minerals) are designed to provide an essential foundation of optimal nourishment.

“Traveling around the world from event to event through different cultures and different foods, it can be hard to always get the right nutrients in my food to feel my best. This is why Cellsentials is the perfect traveling companion to help fill the nutritional gap that I sometimes might be missing. They give me piece of mind that I’m getting all my nutrients and am keeping healthy wherever I am in the world” – Paige Hareb, New Zealand Surfer

Vita-Antioxidant is an excellent source of vitamins B6 and B12, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid and folate. The vitamins in Vita-Antioxidant are essential to many aspects of our health, including:

• Metabolising fats, proteins and carbohydrates, which plays a role in maintaining energy levels
• Supporting healthy immune function
• Supporting healthy brain and nerve function
• Supporting normal cardiovascular health
• Antioxidants help defend your cells against the oxidative stress caused by sunlight, pollution and stress, which can all prematurely age the skin.

“As An Elite International athlete travelling all over the world it is not always easy to access food with the best nutritional values and nutrients for my heavy workload, even stuff in the supermarket does not always live up to expectations and can harbour some harmful chemicals. This is why I take CellSentials to keep myself healthy and filled up with the good stuff my body needs to keep performing at the highest level possible” – Joelle King, New Zealand Squash Player

Core Minerals is an excellent source of magnesium. Magnesium is a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems that control various natural physiological processes in the body, including:

• Metabolising glucose and protein synthesis;
• Supporting the production of cellular energy;
• Producing protein, and the synthesis of DNA and glutathione.

It is important for proper calcium utilisation, which contributes to the structural development of bones.

Home time.

A post shared by Regan Gough Athlete Page (@regan_gough_athlete) on Sep 23, 2017 at 2:22am PDT

“Cellsentials is an all-round safety net. The food I consume sometimes isn’t of my choice, nor of my nutritional requirements (reality of racing in all sorts of countries). I find taking Cellsentials ensures I am acquiring the required nutritional values to keep performing and remaining healthy when my body is being pushed to the limit.” – Regan Gough, New Zealand Race Cyclist.

2. Team USANA Big on BiOmega

Omega–3 fatty acids are considered necessary as humans cannot produce these fatty acids; for that reason, it needs to be gained through supplementation or diet. Fish oils are an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids that offer numerous health benefits for athletes, such as:

• Support healthy joints
• Support healthy cardiovascular function

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXGsFRMDOg4/?taken-by=regan_gough_athlete

“Omega 3 is a hard supplementary nutrient to acquire in your ever day diet. Taking the Bio Mega capsules ensures I am not deficient in this area and allows my body to perform and recover at its optimum rate.” – Regan Gough, New Zealand Cyclist

Recent studies have shown an unexpected prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in both Australia and New Zealand. Emerging evidence suggests many protective benefits of vitamin D, in addition to its role in bone health. For Australians to achieve optimal levels of vitamin D without putting themselves at greater risk from increased sun exposure, there would be an increased requirement for dietary sources of vitamin D. As vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, BiOmega provides an ideal delivery medium for vitamin D, to ensure a sufficient daily intake.

USANA’s BiOmega^TM is free of trans-fatty acids, and is guaranteed to be virtually free of heavy metals, organic contaminants and pesticides. Each capsule also contains mixed natural tocopherols to minimise oxidation of the omega-3 fatty acids.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaH3mNZhXcx/?taken-by=paigehareb

“Being a pro surfer, I can put a fair bit of stress on my joints, in particular my knees. With a long competitive season, it’s important for me to have my body as healthy as possible all year round. Taking USANA’s BiOmega supports my healthy joints.” – Paige Hareb, New Zealand Surfer

Thus of course leading into our third top USANA supplements for athletes:

3. Gain resilience with USANA’s Vitamin D

Vitamin D is involved in several physiological functions and helps maintain our health in various ways.  Once you begin to list the benefits this fat-soluble vitamin does, you might begin to question if there is anything it doesn’t do.   This amazing vitamin assists in the absorption of calcium. Calcium plays an important role in bone growth and development, immune function, and as we age, muscle mass and strength.

Vitamin D helps maintain a healthy functioning immune system.  This is very significant for athletes with a deficiency in Vitamin D, as they have a tendency to be frequently sick, as they have an intense training schedule. Sick athletes are not winning athletes. Powerful and high quality training could be bettered by improving your immune and bone health.

Diet is a secondary source of vitamin D in that most foods contain only small amounts of this nutrient. It is estimated that average intake of vitamin D for most Australians is less than 100 IU per day from diet alone, leaving a gap in vitamin D nutrition for those with insufficient sun exposure. USANA’s Vitamin D is formulated with maximum strength to help you bridge the vitamin D deficiency gap in your dietary consumption. It provides you with 1000 IU per tablet to support optimal intake of vitamin D.

Stay tuned for our next blog and find out athletes should take the remaining 3 USANA products!

Why Elite Athletes Choose USANA Supplements

References:

Nutrition and Dietetics, 2006, Vol. 63(4)

Vitamin D and adult bone health in Australia and New Zealand: a position statement;

MJA 2005; 182 (6):281-285+

AR, et al. Lipoic acid as a potential therapy for chronic diseases associated with oxidative stress.

2004. Curr Med Chem 11(9):1135-46.

Sreejayan, Rao MN. Curcuminoids as potent inhibitors of lipid peroxidation. 1994. J Pharm

Pharmacol. 46(12):1013-6.

Vitamin supplements should not replace a balanced diet. Always read the labels. Use only as directed.