Bring us this day my daily, Selenium, Zinc, Anti-oxidants

It has long been known that antioxidant nutrition has benefits against cancer and heart disease. Exactly how to get this into our diet, and how to prevent eliminating this from our diet from medications has been less clear, both to you as the patient, and to us as your Gynos. Selenium is usually from plant sources, especially cereals, but the soil they are grown in affects their content signficantly. In our country the high plain grown cereals have the highest selenium concentrations. I just cam across a very interesting study published in the July issue of Contraception (80:(2009): 40-43) authored by a group of Iranian physicians who studied the effects of your contraceptive pills on a woman's blood selenium and zinc levels. They looked at this as earlier studies seemed to indicate that our trace metal levels might be altered by the use of hormonal contraceptives. They found like other studies that zinc levels were significantly and selenium levels were slightly lowered by the use of oral contraceptive pills in their healthy users. While this might be more relevant to a Middle Eastern or halal diet all oral contraceptive pill users may want to consider trace elements when balancing their diets.