Even though we spend almost TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS a year on this country on nutritional supplements, the sad news is they just don’t do much.
Whoa, Dr. Neal! Hold on there, pard! Are you telling me that my glossy labeled, high potency, designer vitamins are garbage???
Well, uh, basically, yes.
I’m not saying there are no helpful supplements out there. But to know what they are and where to get them takes more than consulting with a good salesperson at Whole Foods. Read on.
Most people are at least somewhat familiar with the idea that unprocessed, whole foods are better for you than refined foods. This fact has never really been argued. Everyone agrees that raw honey is better for you than white sugar or that sprouted grain bread is better than white bread. So why should it be any different for nutritional supplements? And yet, the average well meaning holistic practitioner will go ahead and hand you a bottle full of the supplemental equivalent of these same refined substances!
Just like refined foods, these “fractured” vitamins have been robbed of all of the extra accessory nutrients that they naturally come with as well. In turn, like refined foods, they can create numerous problems and imbalances in your body if taken at high levels for long periods of time. They can also act more like drugs in your body, forcing themselves down one pathway or another. At the very least, they won’t help you as much as high quality food and food-based supplements.
In my practice, I only prescribe whole food supplements, which are what exactly what their name suggests: Supplements made from concentrated whole foods. The vitamins, minerals and foundational elements found within these supplements are not isolated. They are highly complex structures that combine a variety of enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants, trace elements, activators and many other unknown or undiscovered factors all working together as a team to allow this nutritional complex to do its job in your body.
Nutrients from within this complex cannot be taken apart or isolated from the whole, and then be expected to do the same job in the body as the whole complex is designed to do.
Take Vitamin C. A TRUE Vitamin C molecule is a complex structure made out of 20 or so chemicals, only a small part of which is called ascorbic acid. Yet, all the Vitamin C you see on the shelf in the health food store is by and large ascorbic acid. Oh, yes, occasionally they ADD BACK 4 or 5 of the nutrients that the Vitamin C complex was originally made of to make it look all chi-chi and attractive, but for all intents and purposes, it’s a DEAD substance!
As the title of this article suggests, you can drive a Mercedes or you can collect the identical number of parts used to build a Mercedes from a junkyard and put them in a pile, but it’s not a Mercedes and you can’t drive it. THAT is the difference between concentrated, whole food supplements and isolated, fractured nutrient collectives. One’s alive, one’s not.
Isolated nutrients are never found by themselves in nature. Taking these isolated nutrients, especially at the ultra-high doses found in formulas today, is more like taking a drug. Studies show that the body treats these isolated nutrients like foreign substances, offering mustering excessive activity in the form of increased sweating, diarrhea and increased mucus to get rid of them.
On the other hand, whole food supplements never act like this in your body. Like food, what is needed by the body is used, and what is not is simply excreted through normal urinary and intestinal pathways
Oh, and it gets worse. As is common with fractured nutrients, if the parts are not all there from the start, they are taken from the body’s storage depots, the muscles and organs. Wondering why you might feel tired lately?
And did I mention that the process used to isolate these fracture nutrients usually involves toxic chemical processes that often leave residues in the pill?
To sum it up, the car will ALWAYS drive better than a pile of its individual parts. But for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why people don’t follow this logic when examining a nutritional supplement.
So here’s the deal. You now know that much of what you have been told and shown about nutritional supplements is less than accurate. And as a thinking person, you also realize there is information out there that will serve you better. The next step is to find that information and use it to your advantage.
The Torah clearly states “Yishmor es nafshecha,” which means “Guard your soul exceedingly.” The body is the vehicle and the soul is the passenger. Whole body = Mercedes. Nice drive. Long life. Very few service calls.
Unless of course you prefer the junkyard. Your choice.
To discover the most effective way to live a healthier life physically, mentally and spiritually visit http://www.jewishmenshealth.com