1. Proteins
2. Fats
3. Carbohydrates
4. Vitamins
5. Minerals
6. Water

Some nutrients are considered essential for life, while others can be manufactured by the body in various amounts or are required in only trace amounts. In determining the quantities necessary for life, animal experiments have often yielded potentially useful clinical data, but animal studies are insufficient to make definite conclusions about the nutritional needs of humans. On the other hand, adverse environmental and socioeconomic conditions (such as droughts, wars and famines) have afforded the unfortunate chance to observe deficiency effects on humans directly and thus help us draw more accurate conclusions as to the nutritional needs we have. Such observations may help scientists assess minimum nutritional requirements for life, but they do not define optimal nutritional needs.

Humans have historically explored a remarkably diverse range of food choices. Of the six Kingdoms of life on this earth (Animals, Plants, Fungi (mushrooms), Protists (seaweeds-algae), Eubacteria (bacteria in fermented foods), Archaebacteria (e.g. some species of gut bacteria) humans widely consume members of the first five.
 

How do we know we are meeting our nutritional requirements?

Each human culture learns to fill its nutritional necessities by observation of elders throughout childhood, and through individual (and sometimes collective) experimentation. Thus we learn what foods are appropriate, under what circumstances they should be eaten, how they should be acquired and prepared, and what (potential) foods are taboo or inappropriate. Additionally, societies prescribe “remedies” for illnesses and injuries that often take the form of ingested substances. Very often such medicine must be associated with incantations and rituals, which infuse a spiritual or emotional dimension to the “treatment”. In this way each culture develops both its own cuisine and medicine, which aims at promoting well-being as well as a cultural identity. The quest for the “perfect” diet has therefore been interpreted differently by different cultures, based not only on the availability, practicality and nutritional benefits of certain foods, but also on cultural, religious and social mores of the people. A culture can find ingenious ways to satisfy its nutritional requirements, but it can also adopt erroneous practices that can erode the health and vitality of its people, even to the point of disaster. The archaeological record affords us a glimpse into the consequences of past dietary decisions, while modern epidemiology can illustrate the errors of our own ways.

The transition from the Palaeolithic era to the flourishing of Neolithic civilisations about 10,000 years ago was driven by the advent of agriculture. Cereal grains (such as wheat, corn, barley, rice) are planted easily, grow quickly, are harvested easily, can be transported easily, can be stored for long periods and resist rotting. Domesticated goats, sheep, cattle and horses provide a docile, controlled, hardy source of fats and protein, clothing and muscle power. Agriculture produces surpluses, freeing up individuals to pursue research into technological advances and providing an environment capable of sustaining rapid population growth (and eventually expansion and conquest). It is no surprise therefore that many of these cultures venerated and enshrined in their cultural consciousness those very foods that afforded them that lifestyle. Whether the shift into farming occurred by chance, or by environmental deprivation (including changes in plant availability and the disappearance of big game animals after the last ice age) is still a matter of debate, but once the process started, significant social and political advantages were obvious enough to perpetuate farming as the dominant mode of food acquisition.

The problem with the rise of  “man the farmer” is that the archaeological record shows that it also coincided with a decrease in stature, decreased life span, increase in infant mortality, increase in iron deficiency anaemia, increased osteoporosis, increased osteomalacia and other bone mineral disorders, increased tooth decay, enamel weakness and jaw bone abscesses, and other diseases. Furthermore, since the industrialisation of food production in the 1900′s, diseases such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, colon cancer, stroke, depression, allergies (including wheat intolerance such as coeliac disease and gluten intolerance), respiratory disorders such as asthma, decreasing libido and fertility rates along with a host of other “diseases of affluence” that were largely unheard of prior to that time have now reached epidemic proportions. While this situation has commonly been attributed to saturated fat intake, much of the emerging evidence suggests that the cause is most likely the excessively high consumption of refined carbohydrates (such as flour products derived from grains and cereals, and particularly refined sugar) and over use of polyunsaturated or hydrogenated cooking oils. The food pyramid we have all been led to believe is healthy and ideal advocates that cereals and grains should provide 60% of our caloric intake, and with the addition of fruit, vegetables and “sweets” this comprises a whopping 75%. This is most bizarre, considering that:

1. Human beings do not require Carbohydrates at all! While fruits and vegetables do provide us with rich, useful  sources of vitamins and trace minerals, the reality is that all of our glucose needs can be met by the conversion of proteins to glucose in our liver. Why should two thirds of all our calorie needs be met by the only food group that is non-essential?
2. Cereals and grains contain antinutrients (toxins) that inhibit digestive enzymes, irritate the bowel lining, change the pH of digestive juices, interfere with absorption of Zinc, Iron, trace elements, vitamins and minerals; they also interfere with normal hormone production as well as stability of brain chemicals.
3. Cereals and grains are generally devoid of nutrients themselves and are literally just “empty calories”
4. Cereals and grains cause sharp elevations in insulin levels, which leads to conversion of glucose into fat.
5. There is no evidence to suggest that our ancestors consumed cereals, grains or legumes in any meaningful quantity until after the rise of Agriculture 10,000 years ago (a very recent event in our history). In fact it is poisonous to eat raw flour, beans or potatoes without first cooking them to minimise the toxins present in them. A small degree of these toxins have been shown to remain, even when cooked. Over time, this is believed by a growing number of experts to be the cause many of the health problems we now see.

Conversely, peoples that essentially remained in the Palaeolithic age (including modern hunter-gatherers) were constrained by the natural productivity of their environment and the difficulty in sourcing, transporting and storing foods that would easily rot or go stale. So by being in a constant search for food they were unable to sustain large populations or support “specialists”. This continuous pressure to find sustenance necessitated the adoption of an enormously diverse array of foods, far more diverse than that of settled farming societies. The archaeological record clearly shows a much lower incidence of systemic disease, developmental anomalies and degenerative conditions in such peoples. The shapes of their skulls, development of their skeletons and quality of their teeth shows no evidence of tooth decay, tooth crowding or facial deformity seen in their civilised contemporaries or descendants.

• The proportion of saturated fat in the diet of modern Americans and Australians has steadily decreased over the last 30 years to levels way below hunter-gather societies.
• In contrast, our use of refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats (margarines) has increased exponentially (they are non existent in hunter-gatherer societies)
• The proportion of carbohydrates has increased markedly (particularly refined, grain based carbohydrates such as flour products, corn syrup and sugar which are non existent in hunter-gatherers). Our Carbohydrate proportion of total calories is about 75% (including cereals and grains, legumes, vegetables, fibre and sweets), which is totally without historical precedent. In primitive societies, whole foods such as vegetables, roots and fruits comprised the total Carbohydrate intake, which equals only about 30-40% of the total caloric intake.
• The total calories we consume has increased from about 1700cal for men to 3000 cal. Again, mostly sourced from refined carbohydrates and use of refined vegetable oils (which we were long told was good for us- and preferable to lard or butter).
• We consume much more Salt than ever in human history.

 

Diet gurus have long argued back and forward about evils of high fat diets. Animal fats were branded as bad for you. They “caused” atherosclerosis, heart disease and cancer. Cholesterol in the diet was particularly singled out for attack. The reality is that there is no credible evidence to back up these claims. In fact more evidence exists implicating polyunsaturated cooking oils than lard or butter.  Take away foods cooked in re-used oils are particularly dangerous. However, it is worthwhile to repeat that the animal fats we eat today have neither the same composition nor nutritional value of grass fed “game” animals and so we should look for quality in our animal fats rather than just increase the quantity. Furthermore, primitive people did not soak a slice of toast, dip a bun, deep fry their protein or coat their pasta in animal fats. Likewise they did not follow their meal up with deserts like cake, doughnuts or ice cream.

To utilise consumed or body fat requires a fuel burning process called ketosis-lipolysis to extract its energy. Eating carbohydrates requires an entirely different energy production system called glycolysis. Your body does not want high levels of glucose in the blood stream, so when you eat carbohydrates it liberates insulin to move this excess into the tissues. Whatever you don’t use reasonably quickly gets converted to fat. The only way to eliminate that fat is to have a caloric deficit (burn more calories than you consume). To kick start this process, you can stop consuming any significant amount of glucose (Carbs), and when your body exhausts its 2 day supply, it will start to burn whatever fat is present (whether it be dietary or body fat). So while the amount of calories you consume are always important, the ketogenic fuel system can take advantage of your dietary fat stimulating the satiety reflex (feeling full) without packing excessive quantities of food into your stomach. Our fuel systems might be likened hypothetically to a hybrid car. Either you run on battery power (fat) or petrol (Carbs). If you run on petrol but dont use up the whole tank by the end of the day, the car magically converts the excess petrol to battery power. After a while the battery becomes over charged (FAT!) and damage can occur. Either you have to use up all of your petrol and have an empty tank at the end of each day, or you have to fill up less at the pump to prevent this from happening. But you can’t run on both at the same time (in any meaningful sense). This ketogenic principle is the basic premise of the Atkins diet and other low-carb, high protein/fat diets. Atkins’ pioneering work has been ridiculed for many years, but as we begin to appreciate the deficiencies of Carbohydrate dominant food culture, renewed interest is emerging in Carbohydrate controlled nutrition. Finding out how many calories your body requires, and how many Carbs your body considers useful, while maintaining appropriate fat reserves is a game of give and take where the thresholds change not only with the seasons, but also with age, stress and state of health. There is no magic formula. Trial and error is necessary.

The problem with weight loss “diets” of all kinds is that they all have good short term outcomes, but pretty miserable long term statistics. People never really get to “know their bodies”. Perhaps the social and emotional aspect of the eating ritual plays a powerful psycho-emotional role in weight gain. Nobody “wants” to be fat or unhealthy, and yet there are often deep seated insecurities and emotional gains that perpetuate the drive to obesity. This needs to be appreciated. However, a far greater culprit is the refined industrialised garbage that we keep shovelling into ourselves without considering its biological necessity or our genetic tolerance for it. It is easier to be outside a cake shop drooling, than to be inside holding a cake in your hand and resisting the urge to eat it. Will power is not an easy virtue to cultivate.

The parallel consumption of refined industrial food and modern disease is too obvious to ignore or brush away.
 

So what are some simple guidelines that are not particularly controversial that can help us all be healthier, live longer, feel happier and produce healthy and nutritionally sound children?

 

• Breast feed your children as long as you have milk to give them, and as much as they ask for it, even if they are two years old. Denying a child breast milk in preference to formulas is ludicrous.
• Don’t eat cereal / grain foods. There is absolutely no scientific or nutritional reason whatsoever for us to eat wheat, corn, barley, rice or other grains. In fact there are plenty of indisputable reasons not to. So you like bread. You love your pasta. Your curry is unimaginable without rice. Deal with it! The only people benefitting from cereals and grains are the industrial corporations that make easy money from it (and the drug companies who sell drugs to manage the diseases that result from such a nutritionally enslaved culture).
• Don’t eat refined sugar (wherever it is found). If your food comes in a package, or in a tin you can bet money its got sugar in it. Stop poisoning your children with breakfast cereals that are upwards of 30% sugar. Feed them eggs, yoghurt and fruits instead. So you like your chockies, snacks, bickies and cake. These delights are the cause of most modern disease and will probably be the cause of your own death. Don’t kid yourself that you can eat them “in moderation”. Have the occasional teaspoon of raw honey over nuts, or a fruit salad instead (but not every day).
• Eat Organic vegetables and fruits whenever you can, and in preference to grains and other processed foods. Some estimates suggest that from seed to table most fruit and vegetables have had upwards of 20 applications of pesticide. Organic produce is worth the extra expense. Whole foods are always best.
• Get over your fat phobia. Don’t trim the fat off your steak, pork or lamb chop! These fats contain important fat soluble vitamins that you cannot easily get anywhere else! The fat will also help satisfy your hunger faster, so you wont be so hungry later and resort to snacking. However, this does not mean you should gorge yourself. Don’t eat your fats with potatoes, rice, pasta, bread or other starchy foods. Have some other organic veggies and salad with some butter or olive oil alongside your meal instead. Remember that farmed animals have lower quality fat (and much more of it) than wild game- so quality is more important than quantity, though quantity needs to increase in a modern diet.
• Eat more meat, fish and crustaceans. Make these protein foods organic (since farmed non-organic animals are exposed to toxins, pesticides, antibiotics and hormones) and buy them grass fed (meat) and wild caught (fish) if possible. Protein is not bad for you. I can’t put it any plainer than that. There is no credible evidence that it will cause you cancer. Again, don’t eat it with Potatoes, bread, pasta or other starchy carbs. It goes well with veggies and salad! Don’t be a vegetarian.
• Don’t use polyunsaturated (refined) cooking oils (such as canola, cottonseed, sunflower etc.) Use light olive oils for frying, or butter or lard. Don’t eat deep fried food (particularly if it is battered or crumbed). Deep fried foods have been linked conclusively with heart disease and obesity. Be warned!
• Eat organic free range eggs. They are nature’s super food. There’s nothing better than a butter omelette with onion, garlic and parsley for breakfast! You’ll not likely need a sugar hit or other snack till well after lunch hour! Your decreased need for a sugar hit (false hunger) will help you minimise your calorie intake.
• If you have dairy sensitivities then stop eating dairy till you have improved enough without grains / refined foods to give your immune system time to settle down for a re-try. In any case you don’t need dairy. No, your bones will not fall apart. There is plenty of calcium in green leafy vegetables, meat, fish, nuts and seeds.
• If you must have a snack, eat a handful of Macadamia nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts almonds or other tree nuts. Don’t eat peanuts. The oils in nuts will satisfy your hunger better than the glucose hit you get from bread or snack bars.
• Don’t salt your food. You eat too much salt already that is hidden in processed foods. You don’t need it.
• Diversify your food options. Take a leaf out of the hunter-gatherer recipe book. When was the last time you ate duck, venison, quail, rabbit, crocodile, emu, kangaroo, goat or “game food”? What about liver, kidneys, brain and other organs. Overcome your dietary taboos. Organ foods (from organic sources) are a rich source nutrients, some of which are rarely available elsewhere.
• Drink plenty of water (at least 2 litres / day). Many people exhibit signs of mild dehydration, which can confuse your hunger response and intensify aches and pains.
• Try to fast at least one day a week. After all, hunter – gatherers didn’t get lucky every day, so why should you?
• Given the kinds of diets people maintain nowadays, as well as the lack of nutritional quality in soil depleted and petrochemically tainted foods, many people may have deficiencies that may need to be (at least temporarily) compensated for with supplements (such as a good multi vitamin/mineral, Cod Liver oil, Omega 3 EFA’s  and probiotic supplements). Buy quality natural supplements and take them on the advice of a qualified health care practitioner. Don’t buy synthetic vitamins- they will usually be the cheap ones for sale.

 

Below are some links you may find useful to explore:

1. The Weston Price Foundation: A site with lots of useful nutritional information and advice.
2. The Price-Pottenger Foundation: A similar site to the above, based on the pioneering work Drs W.A Price and F.M Pottenger Jr.
3. The Palaeolithic diet page: A site with lots of information on primitive diets, recipes and educational links on matters relating to fat, grains and other dietary fallacies.
4. http://paleofood.com A recipe page for people lost without bread, pasta and rice!

What’s a woman to do? Consider natural alternatives.

In the past 40 years, menopause, once unmentioned and borne in silence in Western society, has come to be regarded as one of the key life events that can compromise women’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. With the increase in women’s life expectancy and their expectation of retaining vitality and vigor far longer than their mothers, women initially were offered a solution in the form of hormone replacement therapy. However, HRT is a fairly crude attempt to offset the decrease in natural hormone levels occurring at menopause by introducing a variety of synthetic or animal estrogenic compounds and/or progesterone, at various levels, with dosage largely adjusted by a process of trial and error.

Hormone Replacement Therapy: Risky Business

While initially embraced enthusiastically by women wishing to avoid what they were led to believe was an inevitable decline in “their youth” – changes in skin and hair texture, sex drive and memory – along with mood changes and an increase in hot flashes and night sweats, HRT has now been shown to come with significant risk factors. While there is still no conclusive opinion on HRT’s potential to increase breast cancer and other side effects, many doctors have resorted to using bio-identical hormones and lower dosage forms. However, whether the use of bio-identical hormones will reduce the adverse effects seen with HRT is still open to debate ill only truly be known in the longer term. Furthermore, even with lower dosages, unless a doctor is monitoring hormone levels over the woman’s full monthly cycle and on a regular basis, both HRT and bio-identical hormone therapy rely on a relatively hit-and-miss approach that may take considerable time to fine tune. Other issues are: What form of estrogen should a woman be given? When does she reach an estrogen “saturation point”? What happens when she has a history of breast cancer in the family? How does her estrogen dosage affect the levels of hormones naturally occurring in her body? The list of questions goes on.

Soy and Herbal Alternatives: What Works?

Not surprisingly, female patients have increasingly turned to natural alternatives, including plant-based solutions such as black cohosh, red clover, wild yam and soy-containing compounds. In our clinic we use High Potency liquid herbal extracts to maximise absorption and utilisation of herbs into the body, which has been shown to be much more effective than tablets or loose leaf herbal tea formulas.

Leading the way in this more holistic approach are natural products that work to create an environment for optimal health in women’s bodies, specifically by affecting their own hormone production across the entire endocrine system.

According to recent clinical research, these products may do more than merely increase hormone levels; they also may increase bone density; elevate iron and calcium levels, due to improved absorption of vitamins and minerals; reduce “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) increase “good” cholesterol (HDL), reduce body weight and increase energy.
 

Diet and Lifestyle: Your Allies in the Fight Against Menopause

These holistic effects mentioned above are further enhanced with the recognition that the distressing symptoms that affect 75 percent of Western women at menopause can largely be considered as diet and lifestyle-related. As the baby boomers reach this stage of life, and as wellness-focused care becomes the catch-cry of this generation, women are not only willing and eager to adopt the health-promotion measures that can make menopausal symptoms a thing of the past, but also will seek out the products that best support their own efforts and address their core or foundation health.

So, what exactly is core or foundation health, and what are these self-help efforts? First of all, women should know that all of the hormones, neurotransmitters, endorphins and other factors that can reduce menopausal symptoms depend on an adequate supply of vitamins, minerals, aminos and essential fatty acids. These building blocks come from, or have precursors in, the food and drinks women consume. Unfortunately, most modern diets are unlikely to supply an adequate complement of all those building blocks.
 

Maximize minerals.

One simple way to supply some of them is to replace common table salt with a mineral-laden salt. A further simple step can involve drinking water that is mineral-rich, rather than mineral-deficient.
 

Eat the right foods.

Nutritional status also is compromised by a diet that contains too many carbohydrates and too little protein. Most modern diets are too high in grain-based products, such as bread, cereals, pasta, rice, pastries, cakes and biscuits. However, when women eat the appropriate balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat, they get a host of benefits – normal appetite, emotional stability, mental clarity, more energy and even loss of fat – just from eating the right foods.

Get detoxified.

Women also need to get rid of pre-existing accumulated toxicity. Just like landfill sites that become overloaded and wreak havoc in the environment, bodies can become a toxic waste dump and wreak havoc with health. For example, accumulated toxicity will trigger biochemical processes that tell the body to store fat. And unfortunately, being overweight, with the poor body image that may accompany it, can contribute to the depressed state many women experience during menopause. Good detoxification processes require that you consume an abundance of essential nutrients (particularly antioxidants such as vitamins C, E and zinc) and drink at least 2 liters of purified water every day. In addition, at Synergy we have constructed a multi-pronged detox program that involves herbal medicines, temporary dietary modification and Chiropractic neurological adjustments to help your organ systems work more efficiently.
 

Build lean muscle mass.

Another contributing factor to healthy aging and reduced experience of menopausal symptoms is the amount of lean muscle in the body. In fact, muscle mass is actually the number-one biomarker for vitality and longevity. Muscle does much more than just move the body around; it is a very important organ – as important as the heart, the liver and the kidneys. It is like the engine that powers the car. But without a conscious effort to maintain muscle mass, it is lost at the rate of 3 kg per decade from the early 20s on, and the loss accelerates after age 45. As muscle is lost, fat levels increase. Reduced muscle mass also means poor blood glucose control, with the potential for mood swings and emotional instability – common symptoms of menopause. Reduced muscle mass also means compromised mobility and reduced levels of activity, which further translates into some of the issues of menopause. The good news is that it’s possible to build muscle at any age.

Increase touch.

An often-overlooked factor that adds to the overall burden of menopause is lack of touch. Touch is vitally important throughout our lives, yet it is generally given very little attention in Western society. The sense of touch is the first of our senses to develop and is also the most fundamental. Of course, this offers women and their partners a wonderful opportunity to connect at a very intimate level by giving and receiving a massage, holding one another, caressing and cuddling. This is vital not only in enhancing total well-being, but also in keeping intimacy (often a victim of menopause) alive.
 

Reduce stress.

Women also need to think about stress, since high stress levels will compromise all aspects of health and potentially exacerbate menopausal symptoms. Effective stress management involves reducing the levels of stress to which women are exposed, while at the same time, improving the means by which their bodies cope with stress. Coping better requires good nutrition, a program of regular exercise, meditation or other type of relaxation practice, time for family and leisure pursuits, and time to nurture oneself.
 

GET Regular, restful sleep.

At least eight hours per day helps the body cope better with stress. And satisfying sex is one of the most effective de-stressors of all.

Unfortunately, with diminished libido, which is a common symptom of menopause, women often don’t practice this most fundamental and effective form of stress reduction.
 

Love your life.

A woman’s state of mind also can have a profound effect on her ability to enjoy long-term health and vitality. The best way to nurture that emotional state, or what some refer to as the “energetic anatomy,” is for women to “love their life” and let go of all the hurts and unhappiness from the past. Women can further nurture their energetic anatomy by accepting life as it comes and responding to change as a positive force. This includes accepting the reality of aging. When women accept it with grace, revel in their acquired wisdom, and enjoy being proactive in this new stage of life, they are less likely to resist or resent the loss of reproductive capacity and the passing of youth. This attitude further fosters ongoing health and vitality.

In summary, while the responsibility for a positive attitude rests squarely with women, it is equally important to make lifestyle choices and create an environment conducive to optimal health. There is much women can do to impact their health before, during and after menopause. Talk to your doctor for more information.
 

What’s Wrong with Taking Synthetic HRT?

Many women are given artificial estrogen, alone or in combination with progestin (another hormone), to fight symptoms of menopause. However, for some women, this may increase their chances of getting blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, and gallbladder disease.

But take heart: A recent study involving 3,000 women, more than a third of whom had experienced symptoms of PMS over a 10-year period, showed that those women who consumed the highest amounts of calcium were 20 percent less likely to suffer from PMS than women who consumed the lowest amounts and women with the highest levels of vitamin D intake were 41 percent less likely to develop symptoms compared to women taking the least amount of vitamin D.

Vitamin D and calcium also play key roles in the prevention of another condition many women are prone to develop as they age – osteoporosis. Here’s how to ensure you get adequate calcium and vitamin D in your daily diet:

Foods that are rich in Calcium include Breast milk (!), fresh  Fish, canned fish such as Tuna, Sardines and Mackerel, Spinach, Broccoli, Chinese Cabbage, Beans, Fruit, Tofu, Sesame seeds, Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Pistachios, Orange Juice, Molasses, Edible Seaweeds (such as in Sushi etc.), Oats & Porridge. Many beverages are also fortified with Calcium such as Dairy and Goats Milk, Soy Milk, Orange Juice.

While Dairy Milk is considered to be a convenient source of Calcium, many people have symptomatic or sub clinical (unnoticed) sensitivities to the sugars (lactose intolerance) or proteins (Casein sensitivity) that can lead to chronic and debilitating illnesses ranging from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Asthma, Sinusitis, Chronic cough, Diarrhoea, Cramps, Chronic Fatigue among many others. Dairy is notan essential food for human beings, particularly in our society where such a wide and rich variety of foods is available that don’t irritate the bowel or immune system. Cultures in developed nations that do not consume dairy products at all are no more susceptible to osteoporosis and disease than our own, even in menopause.

Foods that contain Vitamin D are usually fortified such as Soy and Dairy Milk, Margarine. Natural sources of Vitamin D are few, but include Fish, Liver (and pate), egg yolks.

For those who have dietary issues restricting their intake of many of the foods rich in Calcium and Vitamin D, we stock an outstanding practitioner-only prescription Calcium and Vitamin D supplement which will help to maintain stable and readily absorbable amounts of these minerals into the body. Please ask for it next time you visit, or call the clinic on 9822 0588 for pricing.

Tips to maximise and maintain Calcium and Vitamin D levels in your body:

• Strive to eat some of the calcium-rich foods listed above on a regular basis.
• Do some weight-bearing exercise every day, like going for a walk.
• Try to get at least 10 minutes a day of sunshine to maximise production of Vitamin D.
• Eat iron-rich and zinc-rich foods such as shellfish, red meat, turkey, oatmeal, rye bread, lentils, baked potato, green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds.
• Soak whole grains overnight before preparing them to eat.
• Stress management- through reading, recreation, or even counselling.
• Don’t use large amounts of flesh meats, flour products, salt, and caffeine. Sugar is best avoided completely.

There is nothing more valuable than your health and wellness – nothing.

No matter how much you love your spouse, house, car, career, hobbies, leisure activities,etc., your health and wellness are the most priceless commodities you have. Without your health, nothing else matters.
So, why do so many people simply buy whatever vitamin is on the shelf at the grocery or drug store, without determining which is the best? If your health is the top priority, why would you settle for whatever is cheapest, easiest or fastest? You wouldn’t consider using inferior oil in your car. Then why buy a multivitamin with unknown effectiveness?

Eating “right” isn’t enough anymore.

You try to eat pretty healthy. You exercise. You take a daily vitamin purchased from the grocery store. All your bases are covered, right?

Wrong.

Eating healthy falls short of “covering your bases” when it comes to nutrition. Minerals are responsible for more than 300 biochemical, life-sustaining reactions in the human body.

However, minerals are not found in the same abundance today as they used to be, due to the agricultural procedures practiced over the past several decades. Thus, just eating a well-balanced diet no longer adequately supplies life-sustaining minerals. Your health and wellness are at risk unless you replace the minerals that have been diminished in our foods.

According to two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, “Every ailment, every sickness and every disease can be traced to an organic mineral deficiency.” You must ingest the appropriate amount and quality of minerals or you will be vulnerable to illness and disease. People are not getting the proper organically complexed (carbon bound) trace minerals and nutrients to provide homeostasis (body balance) as nature intended. According to the latest research, the body is imbalanced when it is deficient in organically bound trace minerals. This causes disease, which can then manifest in the body with disastrous results.

Dr.Donald Davis, biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered that of the 13 major nutrients found in fruits and vegetables, six have declined substantially over the years. He used 2006 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine there are dramatically lower (as much as 38 percent lower) levels of protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin in current produce as compared with produce from past decades.

The reason became apparent to Dr. Davis when he discovered that farmers had to drive up profits by using the latest techniques to increase crop production. Faster-grown produce does not have as much time to develop vital nutrients.

Farmers are paid by the weight of a crop, not by the amount of nutrients. Dr. Davis calls this the “dilution effect” – as fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S. become larger and more plentiful, they provide fewer essential vitamins and life-giving minerals.

It’s a simple inverse relationship: The higher the yield, the lower the nutrients. Slower-growing crops have more time to absorb nutrients from the sun and the soil. When carbon-bound, organically complexed nutrients, including minerals and trace minerals, in our plants are lacking,
everyone’s health suffers.

Jeff Cronin, at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, concluded that scientists and the USDA often overlook farming practices:

“Breeding plants to improve crop yield at the expense of all other things seems to be the problem, as well as depleting the soil and not rotating crops properly.”

Researchers have discovered that since the mid-1930s, our soils have become progressively depleted of critical organic complexes, polysaccharides and muco-polysaccharides, and other naturally occurring microbes and soil-based organisms. Moreover, the steady addition of toxic chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, etc., has triggered long-term soil imbalances, leading to an inability to neutralize the toxic chemicals and re-create new organic complexes and other critical minerals and nutrients. Thus, our foods have become interlaced with inorganic, toxic chemicals in place of naturally occurring, organically complexed minerals and nutrients. Again, who
suffers? We all do.

For example, research clearly shows that the larger the yield of wheat, the lower the nutrients. According to Cronin, “Even though amounts of nutrients have declined, fruits and vegetables are still the richest source of protective nutrients, much better than eating highly refined foods such as white flour, sugars, and fatty foods.”

So, we need to supplement. What’s wrong with an off-the-shelf vitamin?

We have been eating junk foods and highly processed produce that is grossly deficient in organically complexed nutrients, especially organic minerals.

It’s no wonder we are a nation of overweight, sick people with the highest health costs on the planet. While we spend more than any nation on earth on health care, we are among the least healthy people among modern nations. Why? It’s not for lack of spending money on our health care.

In her book Tired or Toxic?, Sherry A. Rogers, MD, states:
“So food processing has a seriously silent and epidemic effect on our lives. For example, vitamin E has
been removed from most grocery store oils and flours. Exposures to various pesticides and chemicals can cause brain symptoms, which actually mimic Alzheimer’s. The brain is more vulnerable to attack by these when vitamin E is not standing guard at the cell membrane. Vitamin E is necessary to prevent Alzheimer’s.”

Dr. Rogers goes on to say, “To compound our problem of declining nutrient status in this century, nutritional depletion is not readily recognized because of many reasons: (1) there is not interest in it because it is a non-prescription item, so the physician has no power over its use; and (2) pharmaceutical companies cannot patent the products to make a profit. Therefore, there is little interest in nutritional therapies, nor is there money for research. In reality, a single deficiency (because it’s important in a variety of enzymes) can manifest as a variety of symptoms.”

According to Dr. Rogers, if the body is deficient in some nutrient or substance in an area of the body, it will “rob Peter to pay Paul.”

In other words, it will steal whatever it needs from one place to put it somewhere else. She calls this “auto-cannibalism.” And the results are disastrous.

Our soils are depleted and depleted soils do not produce healthy, nutrient-rich plants. It’s also a fact that crops produced in depleted soils are more prone to the invasion of insects, viruses, fungi, etc. It’s important to recognize that insects and infectious organisms were designed to get rid of unhealthy vegetation, and they typically do not attack truly healthy plants. Our industrialized (high-tech) methods of farming have not only depleted our soils, but also have created a vicious cycle, which requires pesticides to protect the unhealthy crops grown in depleted soils. And who suffers? We all do!

Since we are not consistently receiving life-giving, life-sustaining, organically bound carbon in either our food sources or in our nutritional supplements, what are we to do?

Go organic as much as possible.

First, as much as possible, we must be diligent in purchasing foods that are certified organically grown.

However, that is not always feasible for the consumer and, in fact, is not enough.

Second, we must eliminate from our diet the processed and synthetic foods that are so prevalent. Even then, there always is a lack of nutritional completeness – hence the need for proper supplementation.

We must be certain that the ingredients in the nutritional supplement we choose are of the highest quality and are ultra-hypoallergenic (non-allergenic). They must not contain synthetics, inorganic and inert (dead/synthetic/toxic) substances, as well as the following: colloids, fat, cholesterol, wheat (gluten), corn, yeast, soy, dairy, eggs, nuts, caffeine, shellfish, animal products, artificial colors, flavors or additives, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, antibiotics, chemicals, binders, fillers, coatings, excipients, flow agents, starches, or salicylates.

So, what kind of a multivitamin should it be? And how much should you expect to spend to get a good-quality supplement?

Let’s start with the different types of vitamins on the market. Just look at the myriad of choices at your local grocery store, pharmacy, vitamin or health food store. How do you sort through all the marketing and packaging to be sure you are putting the right products in your system? Four basic kinds of vitamins are sold today: natural, synthetic, organic and carbon-bond organic.

Synthetic Vitamins: Scientists have developed synthetic vitamins that are cheap to manufacture. They appear the same in their atomic structure when compared to vitamins derived from plants and other sources. However, they can be distinguished in the laboratory. Similar to looking at your hand in a mirror, you see what looks like your hand, but in reality, it’s not your hand. In fact, it’s the exact opposite! Millions of Americans are taking vitamins that are synthetically manufactured. As a result, they unknowingly might be auto-intoxicating themselves because the body does not process synthetics well, if at all. These synthetic elements end up in extracellular spaces, interstitial fluids and fatty tissue, where they reside, potentially causing toxicity and chronic disease.

Synthetic vitamins are known to be less bioavailable (therefore, less effective) than naturally occurring vitamins. It is significantly easier for the body to utilize natural vitamins. For example, natural vitamin E (i.e., d-alpha-tocopherol) is retained by a 2:1 ratio over the synthetic form (i.e., dl-alpha-tocopherol).

Natural vitamin E might cost two to three times more, but it’s twice as effective.

Since synthetic vitamins and chemical nutrients are designed for cost purposes, they are created from plentiful and inexpensive sources, not from whole foods or plant matter. They are the cheapest supplements to be found. Therefore, you should avoid the lowest-cost supplements on the shelf.

Natural Vitamins: When comparing two supplements, it’s often difficult to determine the difference between synthetic and natural vitamins. However, some define a “natural” vitamin as a concentrated nutrient derived from a quality natural source, with maximum retention of the natural material; no artificial colors, sweeteners or preservatives should be used.

A vitamin derived from a natural source often contains co-factors that come with the nutrient in nature. For instance, co-factors often associated with vitamin C are bio-flavonoids. These are important to health, as they are present in the vitamin C you derive from eating an orange. Supplements should mimic good nutrition from natural whole foods. That’s why it’s important to read labels and determine the sources of the vitamins.

Natural supplements cost more than synthetic, but they’re worth it.

Organic Vitamins: There are two types of organic supplements found in the market. The “grocery store” definition of organic is whole-food-derived nutrients minus the insecticides, pesticides and herbicides; manufactured from ingredients that are certified organic. These supplements, if in tablet form, also might suffer less-than-optimal absorption due to the technology used to press them into tablets. The “scientific” definition of “organic” is related or belonging to the class of chemical compounds having a living carbon basis. A carbon-based organic supplement has living carbon wrapped around its nutrients. These supplements must be cold-processed to preserve the living matter in the product. These nutritional supplements take the longest to manufacture and may derive the maximum nutritional benefit, with no known risks or side effects.

Both types of organic supplements carry significantly higher prices due to higher costs of production and source ingredients. However, according to Randy Miles, CN, co-owner of three health food stores in Texas, it’s worth the cost.

Organically bound supplements with living carbon often cost 50% more, but customers who are knowledgeable about nutrition and health are definitely willing to pay.”

You can find the best source of minerals and supplements. Ask your health care professional. Look for organically complexed (carbon bound) supplements derived from whole foods, minimally processed and made from the highest quality ingredients. Avoid preservatives, synthetics and binders, as they are potentially harmful to the body. It’s better to take no supplement at all than to take a poor one.

Good health ultimately is worth the price. There is no more important investment you can make. At Synergy, we only prescribe superior quality practitioner-only supplements. Our patients can rest assured that they are getting the best quality Vitamins, minerals and supplements on the market. Please feel free to phone the clinic on 9822 0588 for information and pricing.