Whether you eat a healthy diet or supplement your diet with nutritional supplements such as vitamins and minerals, you might not be receiving the nutrients you think you are getting. Why, because of a condition called malabsorption.

But what exactly is malabsorption? Very simply, it is the inability of the intestine to absorb one or more nutrients from your diet. These nutrients includes fat, carbohydrate, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Malabsorption is not a disease in and of itself, but a symptom of an underlying defect in some part of the digestive system.

Malabsorption can be caused by many things such as disease of stomach, pancreas, liver, and intestine. However, the most common causes are congestion of the gallbladder and clogging of surface used for absorption in the intestine due to compaction of fecal waste. While these conditions can occur in at any age, they are most commonly seen in older adults and seniors.

But what exactly are the causes of gallbladder congestion and compaction of the intestine? They are almost always caused by lack of maintenance of the colon and gallbladder. Yes, you can maintain your colon and gallbladder. How? By doing a colon cleanse and gallbladder flush. These natural remedies are alternative medicine to harsh laxative and gallbladder surgery and can spare you from colon cancer and a host of other chronic diseases.

Part of the process of digestion, is the mixing of your food with bile, which helps the body digest fats. Bile is stored in the gallbladder and is made from cholesterol, bile salts and bilirubin. If the bile contains too much of any of these substance, under certain conditions it will get harden into stones. Because gallstones are just harden bile, they accumulate in the gallbladder.

Over time, the quantity of these stones increases and takes up most, if not all the space in the gallbladder. When this happens, your gallbladder becomes so congested that there is no place to store new bile made by the liver. Since your body needs bile to help you digest fat and absorb nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, gallbladder congestion results in malabsorption.

The final stage of digestion is the absorption of nutrients through the wall of the intestine and colon. Unfortunately, for many people, the colon and small intestine does not work efficiently, mainly due to poor diet and lack of maintenance. Over the years, the walls of the colon and small intestine can become encrusted with compacted waste. This clogs most of the surface area of the intestine that is used for the absorption of nutrients. The result, depending of the degree of encrustation, is your body's inability to absorb vitamins, minerals and other nutrients from your diet.

Because both gallbladder congestion and intestinal compaction are accumulative, they are, therefore, both progressive with age. Consequently most adults will have some kind problems absorbing nutrients - whether from foods or nutritional supplements. These conditions progressively get worse with age until the ability to absorb nutrients such as vitamins and minerals is almost completely lost. This is why older people tend to be much thinner, since they can hardly absorb fats or any other nutrients for that matter from their diet.

Malabsorption generally affects people in their fifties and older. This can be a serious problem for people with osteoporosis and bone density disease. These individuals usually take some form of calcium supplement or medication to help control this health condition. But minerals, such as calcium, need other nutrients such as vitamin D to be properly absorbed in the body. Therefore, these individuals are unable to get the calcium they need, not only because they can't absorb calcium, but because they cannot absorb the support nutrients needed for its proper assimilation in their bodies.

What does this means to you? Well depending on your degree of malabsorption, if you take nutritional supplements like vitamin and minerals, you could be pouring money down the drain, or should I say, down the toilet. Individuals who have done gallbladder flush or colon cleansing, have reported starting to really experience the benefits they expected from their vitamins and minerals supplements.

So next time you take a nutritional supplement, consider the possibility that you may not be getting your money's worth. If you feel like you are not, you have two choices. You can either take more than the recommended dose in the hope of getting close to what your body really need. Or you can boost you body ability to absorb nutrients by getting yourself a colon cleanse as well as a gallbladder flush.