How many times have you heard people say "Surely if I eat a healthy balanced diet, I will not need to take vitamins and minerals". "Expensive pee!" others claim.
When I started writing about health almost 15 years ago, I thought "Oh, it won't take long for people to change once they know the facts." I was wrong. The Government's campaign encouraging everyone to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day has fallen mainly on deaf ears. A few people have changed but the fact remains that as little as 5% of the Western population eats a truly healthy, balanced diet. The majority talk about healthy eating, but in reality continue to eat too much pre-packaged, refined junk foods that are often packed with salt, sugar, additives and saturated fats. A few people still do not comprehend that the human body is literally made of food molecules, so your body is largely made up from what you have eaten during the last year.
Also, during past five years, most commercial growers, especially from overseas, are harvesting more and more of their fruit and vegetables long before they are ripe. Research in Spain and Oregon State University in America have found that when, for example, cherries are picked before being ripe the vitamin C content is halved. When blackberries were picked early, the green ones contained 74mg of anthocyanins (the blue pigment that is great for your eyes and immune system) compared with 317mg in the naturally ripened fruits. Add to this that most fresh produce is flown half way round the world - and then stored for long periods, which itself hugely depletes nutrient levels - the message is obvious: as much as possible buy more fresh, ripe, locally grown foods.
To survive, the human body needs 50 factors, these are 13 vitamins, 21 minerals, 9 amino acids, 2 essential fatty acids, plus carbohydrate, fibre, air, water and light. As our bodies cannot manufacture these substances, we must take them in from external sources - through our diet and by taking the right supplements. If the body becomes deficient in nutrients, negative symptoms will eventually result.
We can all have treats and really enjoy them - but we must stop living on them. Many times I watched people fill their supermarket trolleys with white bread, pre-packaged meals, cakes, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks. Almost all this refined, pre-packaged and processed food contains virtually no vitamins, essential fats, minerals or fibre. We are bombarded with food advertisements claiming that products are "packed with added vitamins". Have you ever asked yourself why the manufacturers need to add vitamins, if the food is supposed to be nutritious in the first place?
Dr Richard Passwater, who has worked as a research scientist in Maryland, USA, for 40 years, states that refined sugars have had 99.9% of all their natural nutrients removed, and the only reason that there is 0.1% nutritional value left is because the manufacturing companies cannot figure out how to remove the last 0.1%. White and mass-produced oils are the same. Tinned foods are sterilised at high temperatures to kill any bacteria. How many nutrients do you think are left after those processes.
Without doubt I advocate organic farming and the more farmers who switch to organic methods, the fewer the pesticides and herbicides (known to deplete even more nutrients from our food) will be in our food, water and air. And organic food has been proven to contain more nutrients than non organic produce. Fewer chemicals means less acid rain, less pollution and less sickness. GM foods to my mind are another BSE/CJD-scenario waiting to happen - I would never knowingly eat GM foods. Intensive farming methods still use far too many antibiotics for their livestock - which definitely add to our health problems.
Natural mineral levels in soil in many countries, including the UK, are dropping, and if vital nutrients such as selenium, known to reduce the incidence of cancer and heart disease, are not in our soil they are never going to make it into our fruits and vegetables. This is why, in countries such as Finland, selenium has been added to all the fertilisers since 1984. As a result sperm counts have risen and incidence of heart disease are falling.
Unfortunately, some people still compare vitamins, minerals and essential fats in capsule forms to prescription drugs. - but remember that essential nutrients are essential to life.
All these nutrients work synergistically, or together, inside the body. In a perfect world it is always preferable to ingest all the nutrients we need from a varied diet. But most people do not.
Our eating habits have changed drastically during recent years. As little as 50 years ago, it was routine for the family to sit and eat home-cooked meals with freshly picked vegetables and fruits from local farm or allotment. Today, this tradition seems to have all but disappeared. The longer fresh food is stored and cooked, the more nutrients are lost. If you leave an orange in a fridge for more than three days, up to 50% of the Vitamin C content disappears. And, because the modern diet is less than perfect, we need to come to a compromise - hence I take nutritional supplements.
Many governments suggest minimum amounts of nutrients, called RDIs - Recommended Daily Intakes. In Europe there are RDIs for 19 nutrients and yet there are 45 essential nutrients required for health. Confusion is rife as RDIs vary from country to country, so whom do we believe? Initially, the idea of RDIs was to prevent obvious signs of deficiency, such as scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) in soldiers in the trenches in 1941. However, the do not represent the quantities of nutrients we need for optimum health. Nor do they represent the levels of vitamins and minerals we need to protect our bodies from the pollutants and toxins in our modern environment. What is more, RDIs take no account of individual requirements such as age, gender or the health status of a person. For example, the current RDI for vitamin C is 60mg - but to ingest this amount from your diet, you would need to eat 10 apples, 3 kiwi fruits and 2 large freshly picked oranges (and 60mg amount is only just sufficient to prevent scurvy). In the US, the RDI for the mineral chromium, which has been proven to halve the incidence of late-onset diabetes, is 120mcg; yet in the UK or Europe no RDI exists. An to add insult to injury this is one of the minerals that the EU has excluded from its guidance list. This is lunacy. But there is hope. A few years ago, I met a man aged 73 who had been refused heart surgery as his arteries were so blocked. He was deemed a lost cause, totally breathless, he could not even walk across the room. A nutritional physician friend took him on. First, she completely changed his diet, then gave him supplements proven to thin blood naturally, lower cholesterol levels and to help clear some of the plague that had built up in his arteries. Under medical supervision he was also taught yoga. After several months he slowly but surely regained his health. Today he climbs Alpine slopes as a hobby. It's never too late to change. And as Western doctors are now seeing plague in the arteries of children as young as 10, change is imperative.
We all need to start eating food that is as unprocessed and unrefined as possible. Natural, locally grown organic food, without pesticides and additives, plus taking the right supplements is the way forward. There are now more than half a million clinical research papers showing that taken in the right amounts nutritional supplements can, and do, work..."
Sue Croft, a director of CHC Consumers for Health Choice, spends her life lobbying MPs and regulators both in the UK and Brussels., to help us retain our freedom to choose: "... What most people do not understand is that our nutritional products are sold under Food Law: they have to be 100% safe - as safe as a loaf of bread or a tomato. And just because a medicine has a product licence (which allows the makers to make specific beneficial claims, and can cost millions of pounds that vitamin companies just do not have) it does not make them safe. Vioxx, the arthritis drug, was granted a medicinal licence and has been taken by 20 million people. Unfortunately, many are now dead and others are bringing massive law suits against the makers of this drug. There has only been one recorded incidence of death from anyone taking supplements, and that was a small child who swallowed a whole bottle of his mother's high-dose prescription iron tablets. In the past 11 years there have been only eleven reported cases of people claiming symptoms such as tingling fingers and toes from taking certain nutrients to excess, which rapidly recede once these supplements are stopped. Yet more than 40,000 people die annually thanks to prescription drugs."
(Source: "500 of the most important health tips you'll ever need", Hazel Courteney)
Supplements taken regularly in the long term almost always produce beneficial effects, but don't expect miracles in a week. They are not magic bullets, but stimulate body's natural healing process, giving long-term health benefits. Generally speaking, supplementation with nutrients produces improvements in health more slowly than prescription medication, which normally just supresses symptoms. If you start a course in supplements, take them regularly for at least two months in order to see the benefits. Any changes to your health may be subtle.
Some supplements on the market have less than optimum quantities of beneficial ingredients. In general you get what you pay for. The better quality and usually more expensive supplements generally provide better value for money in the long term.
Not all supplements are created equal when it comes to absorption. Some supplements can not be absorbed properly and they can remain undissolved in the colon and can never really be used by the body. So, again, you get what you pay for. The term you want to see is Cellular Nutrition, which many high street supplements are not.
Herbalife is proud to have it's products certified as Cellular Nutrition. One of the main differences between Cellular Nutrition and other nutritional supplements is that supplements are rarely enough! Simply consuming good food and adding nutritional supplements will not make any difference to the way you feel if your body is unable to fully digest and absorb all the nutrition you eat!
Cellular Nutrition makes use of knowledge gained from the botanical world's 6,000 year history and incorporates health building nutritional herbs with the best modern technology to help our bodies cleanse and detoxify so that the cells - the tiniest living units - can be as fully nourished as possible. This allows the cells to grow, repair and to perform their functions with the best possible efficiency so that we feel and look better and are more able to prevent and fight disease. Once the body begins to clear itself of toxins it can more efficiently absorb nutrition.
Herbalife has a range of nutritional products that have been targeted to correct specific nutritional deficiencies. Saying that, the one product worth mentioning is our Formula 2 Multivitamin and Mineral Complex tablets, also certified as Cellular Nutrition. Most health experts recommend taking a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement, with good reason: depleted soils produce harvests with reduced nutrient content, modern fast foods typically have all the goodness "processed out", poor diet, smoking, alcohol, stress, pollution, excess weight, all create a demand for a higher intake of vitamins and minerals. The kindest habit you can adopt for your health is a daily multi-supplement; it's the most authentic all-year-round form of health insurance and Herbalife's Formula 2 is one of the best quality multi-supplement you can find around!
Enjoy health!
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