Nutritional Supplements

"Eating today's food can be
hazardous to your health."

Why take nutritional supplements?

There are two major reasons. One is because of the modernization of agricultural practices. Our modern food supply is deprived of nutritional supplements essential to our health (good timing to be in the health business). In earlier times, when organic food was grown on family-owned farms, crops were regularly rotated in order to keep the soil rich in those specific elements. Needless to say, no chemicals were added to the soil.

Every few seasons a plot of land was left untilled in order to let the soil regenerate. Modern agricultural practices are completely focused on yield, to the detriment of the soil in which crops are planted. Today's food conglomerates practice monoculture, where the same crop is planted on the same plot of land season after season. Eventually the nutriments needed for a specific crop are depleted.

Chemicals are added to the soil, or the plants are given hormones to encourage rapid growth. Once in the supermarket, the vegetable or fruit looks the same as it always has; however, chemicals have replaced many of the naturally occurring nutriments. This in turn deprives our bodies of these nutritional supplements, and our bodies' cells cannot function optimally. This leads to a degeneration process.

The never-ending demands placed on us by modern society mean that our lives are lived at an accelerated pace. Hence why you can get the supplement mailed to your home. supplement mailed to your home. The families that still sit down to a well-balanced home-cooked meal are few and far between. People have to find ways to cut corners, and what often gets sacrificed is the time and energy necessary to cook a healthy meal. Instead, we stop at fast-food outlets, buy snacks, or throw something into the microwave. In addition, many of the nutritional supplements found in vegetables are adversely affected by how we cook them.

Free Radicals

If the required nutritional supplements are not in the fruits and vegetables we eat, then they obviously are not being absorbed into our bodies. The preservatives used to lengthen the shelf life of food, and other chemicals added to make food look more appetizing, also affect the nutritional quality of what we eat. In addition, industrial pollutants and exhaust from vehicles fill the air we breath with harmful chemicals. These chemicals increase the number of free radicals in our bodies.

During the last ten to fifteen years, an imbalance has been created between the nutritional supplements in the food we eat and the free radicals within our bodies. There is an easy way to visualize just how great the disparity has become . . .

Hold both your hands straight out from your body and keep them at the same level. Now pretend that your left hand represents nutritional supplements in the food we eat and the right hand represents the free radicals present in our body. Fifteen years ago, there was a natural balance between the two. Today, there are about a third as many less nutritional supplements being supplied to our bodies (drop your left hand down about a foot).

There are also about three times as many free radicals in our bodies now (raise your right hand about a foot). The large distance between your hands demonstrates an important fact: in today's world, the threat posed by free radicals is three times as great as it was, and there is approximately three times less natural protection provided by our bodies. This is where the degeneration process begins.

It is a depressing fact of life that most of us take better care of our cars than we do our own bodies. Most people would consider themselves highly reckless if they neglected to change the motor oil in their car, or check the tire pressure, or bring their vehicle to a garage for maintenance. And yet this is precisely how most of us treat ourselves.

Our bodies have one objective, and that is to stay alive. We require a precise mix of 59 nutrients daily, including 13 vitamins and 22 minerals. Many of us live an extremely sedentary lifestyle, smoke, drink alcohol, and generally treat our bodies like a rusted old junk heap of a car instead of a fine tuned machine. It's time for us to take control and let's not forget to exercise.

The Need for Supplements

If you have read this far, it is because you have an interest in dietary supplements and improving your health, the health of loved ones, or simply in preventing or reversing the degeneration process. One method of achieving this is by taking nutritional supplements.

There has been negative press on nutritional supplements. Unfortunately, some of it is well deserved. For too many big health concerns, the primary concern is profits. Some companies put more money in marketing and advertising than they do in research and developments. Actual nutritional supplements may exist in their supplements, but they may not be in the proper form to be absorbed by our bodies, or the amount of nutritional supplements supplied may be too great or too low.

For our bodies to assimilate nutrients properly to give us energy, three conditions must be met:... and they can be found here.

You've probably heard the rumors that vitamin supplements simply result in expensive urine. Well, there is some truth to that. However, there is an explanation as to why it is so in some cases. Let us explain . . .

The health industry is a big money market. Many big companies don't really care about you. Let's face it, all they care about is to make some quick cash. Of course, this is not really too comforting to know. But we have to be aware of this.

Since money is their primary concern, they don't spend much time in quality research or new product development. They cut costs in quality control in order to maintain a healthier budget for advertising and branding for their new product.

Here's an exagerated example to help make it easy to understand . . . Take a rock, smash it into powder, and put it in a vitamin bottle. Voila! You have a source of pure calcium to sell.

Common sense dictates that eating a rock isn't good for your health. Right? However, your body does need calcium, does it not? Of course. But it has to be in the right form. This cannot be over-stressed.

This is why it is so very important to make sure that when buying supplements we know who manufactured them and that they can be trusted.