When it comes to food supplements, what we don’t know can and so often does hurt us. Many people bring the pharmaceutical, symptom treating drug model into their food supplement discipline and wonder why they don’t get results. Our bodies are complex, wholistic, intelligent organisms that depend on a full symphony of synergistic bio-chemical interactions to function optimally. Any single nutritional deficiency over time can cause multiple symptoms and health related issues.
Consuming whole food based, full spectrum nutritional supplements is vastly different than using Fractional Nutrition, Synthetic Isolates and Magic Bullets!
I’m going to briefly describe the differences, because these differences can make all the difference in the world to our health and well being!
Fractional Nutrition
Just as it implies. This means getting some but not all the nutrients your body requires for optimal health over time. You find these supplement formulas in abundance on retail store shelf’s. They may contain 20 nutrients or so, usually in cheap, synthetic or hard to assimilate form. I consider them the placebo’s in the food supplement industry. They are great for those who take comfort in the idea of getting the nutrition they need without actually getting enough of it, in the ideal form to really do them much (if any) good. Perfect for those who desire to invest as little money as possible in their health and are content living with a false sense of security.
Synthetic Isolates & Magic Bullets
These are the isolated nutrients. Vitamin E, C, B12 etc. They let you play bio chemist with your body. However, remember that nutrients are NEVER found isolated in nature. Various nutritional factors depend on other nutrient combinations to function properly. For instance calcium requires magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin D to be properly metabolized and utilized by the body. I’m not saying isolates never have a place. They do and can be life savers under the proper conditions but ideally they are added to a full spectrum nutrient base in order to get full benefit. Also, our bodies are designed to assimilate nutrients from the food we eat, not from rocks, dirt, metals and other inorganic compounds. Synthetic vitamins can stimulate certain responses but they can’t nourish. They are manufactured by chemists in a lab from coal tar derivatives. Man playing God/Nature. It would be like Frankenstein creating a human and saying it was the same as a natural born person. Common sense should come into play here. Using synthetic isolates under informed, supervised, controlled, short term conditions has it’s place but using them long term as a regular food supplement is a fools game. These are the vitamins we all know about. The main being Centrum, One a Day and Theragran-M.
Natural Supplements
In an ideal world these would be closer to the mark but we don’t live in an ideal world. Last time I checked, you could legally claim a product to be “Natural” if only 10% of the ingredients were actually naturally derived. Does that sound natural to you? The vitamin industry is largely under-regulated and overseen. Many impure, misleading and even dangerous ingreedients have been discovered and removed from the marketplace in the nutritional supplement industry and this is far from being over. My advise is find one you can trust and stick with it… but watch it as well to be sure the company never compromises their values, standards and manufacturing practices.
Professional Grade, Whole Food Based, Full Spectrum Nutriceutical Formulas
I use and recommend the Youngevity 90 for Life Formulas. I’ve gotten great results from a lifetime of using these types of professional grade whole food supplements. While they aren’t considered cheap they do provide the best value as well as measurable results in terms of general health and well being. The term professional grade means these are the types of nutritional formulas used by licensed health care professionals. By health care professionals I mean Naturopathic Physicians, Nutritional Health Experts and those who specialize in natural health care, not those who manage disease, treat symptoms and have very little nutritional or natural health training.
Some people think professional grade, full spectrum supplements are too expensive. My position is quality comes with a cost and how much is your health worth to you? in my experience NUTRITIONAL VALUE the most important factor when considering a food supplement… not just the bottom line price.
The real problem isn’t the price of whole food supplementation, the real problem is our health care system.
Food supplements are cheap compared to drugs, surgery and medial treatment costs (among the leading causes of bankruptcy in the USA).
The major problem we suffer from in the US is health Insurance only pays for drugs, surgery and medical treatments that don’t actually HEAL and only remove the effect of a deeper cause that typically will manifest in some other way, later on down the line unless we address the cause. Insurance doesn’t pay for natural treatments and food supplements that prevent disease and often do reverse or eliminate the symptoms associated with multiple degenerative health conditions.
If we didn’t have insurance and you were to compare the cost of food supplementation with drugs, surgery and medical treatments that could be avoided with proper nutrition.. even the best quality food supplements would be considered CHEAP compared to the medications, medical treatments and medical equipment required to manage a degenerative or chronic nutritional deficiency disease on an ongoing basis.
It’s all a matter of perspective, priority and approach. Many of us play Russian roulette with our health without even knowing it and in the end we all pay in terms of health, happiness and longevity. Personally, I’d rather invest a couple hundred bucks a month in quality food supplements than in health insurance that provides no real choice and does NOTHING to improve or actually protect my health and well being. And that is exactly what I have done for most of my adult life and will continue to do.
I suppose the FACT that I feel great most of the time and haven’t had a sick day or required any medical intervention or medication in over 35years by living this way is pure coincidence, right? Although I do watch my diet and attempt to eat well, I don’t claim to have a perfect diet. What I do, do is make sure I take in ALL the nutrients (including trace minerals) I need every day of my life like clockwork. I’ve done this on and off (mostly on) since I was a teenager.
The Value of Full Spectrum Nutritional Supplementation
You can learn more about my health story on the about me page and also in this blog post.
My wish for you is that you experience a healthy, happy, long and prosperous physical life just like I have. That is the primary reason I continue to use and recommend Youngevity products to everyone I care about and meet… and the fact that it also pays us financially to do so is a value added bonus for everyone who does! As Mr. Spock used to say.. “Live Long and Prosper!”