by Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D. and Lyle Hurd, editor totalhealth
Dietary supplements work for
everyone. Nutritional science has
proven that by supplementing our
diets with nutrient concentrates we can experience
health benefits beyond what we get
from our foods. By taking supplements
people experience less illness, less time lost
from work, higher well-being, lowered risk
of disease. Most people now take supplements
every day. But how do they find supplements
they can trust? Building a personal
health care team is an imperative.
The Big Step: Commit to Being Healthy
The first step is to make a commitment to
your health. Take personal responsibility for
your health. Become as good at managing
your health as you are at managing your job
or career. Understand that you have to be the
one guiding your body to good health. If you
don’t take the initiative, it’s unlikely anyone
else will.
The next step is to learn (or relearn) the
basics of how the body works, the brain,
heart, liver, digestive system, reproductive
system, immune system, bone and joints,
other organ systems—what they do in the
healthy body, how they are helped or hurt by
lifestyle, stress, exercise, dietary habits, aging.
What are the things within your power to
support your organ system functions and
your health as a whole? Watch educational
TV, read educational books, visit educational
Web sites, attend health fairs, take courses at
your local educational institution.
As you become educated about your body
you’ll become more convinced of the health
advantages of taking dietary supplements.
You’ll learn to penetrate the smoke and mirrors
around pharmaceutical drugs as you
read the small print of the package inserts.
You’ll also learn that just about anything a
drug can do, a combination of nutrients can
do as well or better. Then you’ll want to take
supplements in a serious way—beyond the
one-a-day habit.
Previously in totalhealth we’ve explained
how vitamins and other nutrients support
the thousands of metabolic processes that
keep us alive, how they protect us from
damage by toxins, viruses, even emotional
stress, how they give us more energy and
drive, so we don’t need artificial mental and
sexual stimulants. Each of us, whatever our
present state of health, should develop a
dietary supplementation program that caters
to our individual desires and our individual
health flaws, whether inherited or (more
often) caused by poor lifestyle or the simple
“wear and tear” of life. To be really effective,
your personal program will be related to your
being educated about the nutrients in dietary
supplements and how they work. Don’t
worry, this is not rocket science and it can be
learned without blowing a mental fuse.
To become educated about dietary supplements
you will need reliable sources of
information. Here the Internet is a mixed
blessing. It carries a huge amount of information
on supplements, most of which is
inaccurate. A great deal of the Internet information
is, well, just plain hype. Often real
experts are “virtually kidnapped” to make
online “endorsement” of products they’ve
never heard of.
So what are better sources than the
Internet for information on supplements?
Most authoritative are the peer-reviewed scientific
papers published by research groups.
However, these are complicated and difficult
for the nonspecialist to decipher, plus the
authors are often pressured to hold back on
making recommendations in favor of supplements
(“further studies are required . . . ”).
Then there are overview articles, prepared by
qualified technical people both from within
the dietary supplement industry and from
outside. Those from the inside can be biased
in favor of supplements; those from the outside
often attack supplements. Here’s where a
personal health adviser becomes useful.
Find an Integrative Practitioner
as Health Adviser
Everyone should have a personal health
adviser. Just as many people have financial
advisers of one kind or another, or one shop
they trust to work on their car, they need to
have trained people they can trust for advice
about their health. Within the communities
are growing numbers of integrative practitioners
(let’s call them IPs). Most IPs are compassionate
professionals, with backgrounds as
diverse as chiropractic, nutritional counseling,
acupuncture and herbal medicine, naturopaths,
osteopaths and MDs who prescribe
both nutrients and drugs.
Most IPs try to do the best for their
patients by combining the best of the emergent
alternative practices with the best of the
mainstream. For patients in remote areas and
unable to come into the office, many IPs will
do telephone consultations. For people with
serious health problems I recommend putting
together a health support team, with
one or two trusted relatives or friends and an
IP as an equal member along with the mainstream/
HMO doctor and whatever specialists
have to be involved. For healthy people, a
smaller team of caring personal contacts and
an IP would also be a good idea.
Integrative practitioners may have to be
paid out of your pocket. Many are not covered
by the mainstream insurance plans
because they don’t do “shortcut” medicine.
But if you’ve come away from your latest 10-
minute slot at your HMO feeling disrespected,
buying an IP’s time might be a good
investment in your health. It just might save
your life. Think about a Medical Savings
Account, a legal way to deduct your IP costs
from your taxes. Get the best IP you can
afford to be your personal health adviser.
As you become actively engaged with
your IP/health adviser, fully disclosing your
health history, cooperatively you’ll both
develop your personal dietary supplement
program. Then you can start shopping
around.
Always beware of products that have
aggressive health claims attached to them.
Use your common sense and work closely
with your adviser; have him or her help you
develop a list of minimum requirements for
the recommended products in terms of
nutrient ingredients, potency levels, quality
concerns and other types of useful questions
to ask. Often your health adviser will recommend
a good local health food store.
The Health Food Store,
Community Health Service
The health food store is the community health service center. When you go in, ask for
the store’s supplement specialist and direct
your questions to them. Whatever questions
they can’t answer right away, they can promise
to make further inquiries about and contact
you later. The supplement specialist can help
you choose between the many reputable
product brands and variations to pick the
products most appropriate for your particular
needs. These aren’t always going to be the most
expensive. Some will be expensive; some will
be surprisingly affordable.
 Some of the best supplements are the most
affordable: the vitamins and essential minerals,
for example. These are the nutrients our body
does not make and must import from the outside.
One such—alpha lipoic acid—is fairly
costly but wonderful for making energy, with
high antioxidant value and useful to help prevent
diabetes. A multivitamin-mineral is the
cornerstone of anyone’s personal supplementation
program; for logistical reasons the effective
intake is minimally three capsules a day.
For tabletted products ask to see a dissolution
test, to make sure it will break down in your
tummy as it should.
Other nutrients crucial to a basic personal
program are vitamin C at 2-6 grams a day (yes,
2,000-6,000 milligrams) and the “fish oil”
fatty acids EPA and DHA at 600-1,000 milligrams.
These long-chain omega-3 fatty acids
are currently the biggest news in nutritional
medicine. Inflammation has emerged through
mainstream clinical research as the main
driving force in most disease, and the omega-
3s are the most effective and safest means to
combat inflammation long-term. EPA+DHA
are the clinically documented omega-3 forms,
superior over alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).
Taking them as supplements protects against
heart attacks and strokes, helps relieve arthritis
and other inflammatory conditions, may
lower Alzheimer’s risk and even may help prevent
cancer. When shopping for these, insist
on seeing a statement from the manufacturer
that the product is free of mercury and pollutant
residues.
For many people, certain other nutrients
are conditionally essential—the body is supposed
to make them but doesn’t, at least not in
sufficient amounts. Of the best-researched
nutrients in this category, EPA+DHA, PS
(phosphatidylserine), PC (phosphatidylcholine),
glucosamine, carnitine and taurine
are fairly affordable, while GPC (glycerophosphocholine),
CoQ (Coenzyme Q10) and
SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine) can be costly.
All these are thoroughly proven nutraceuticals:
the more of them you can afford to take, the
better for your health.
Be careful of the “cut-rate” supplements
you see in the supermarkets, drug stores and
mass-market outlets. With supplements you
get what you pay for, and many of these cheap
products have cheap ingredients and questionable
filler ingredients.
Herbals are not as directly involved in our
biochemistry as the essential and conditionally essential nutrients, but many are clinically
proven safe and effective. For example,
lycopene is valuable for prostate health.
However, many herbal ingredients are chemically
different from the standardized extracts
on which the actual clinical research has been
done, and there is no requirement that this be
disclosed on the product label. This is where
your health adviser or health food store nutritionist
can be a great help.
Organic Foods
are Essential to Your Program
Taking supplements never substitutes for
having nutritious foods in the diet. But our
food supply has been progressively getting
worse and this increases the importance of
obtaining additional nutrients through supplements.
The mainstream beef and chicken
industries don't exactly inspire our confidence.
The mainstream crops are being heavily
treated with toxic chemicals. Besides the toxicity
of the “active” ingredients, the so-called
“inactive” ingredients of herbicides and pesticides
usually do not have to be disclosed on the
label but can be highly toxic to humans. These
types of toxins have infiltrated our food
supply, forcing us to grow our own foods
and/or buy organic.
This makes your health food store a big
player in your daily life. There you can get
organic vegetables, grains and fruit, minimally-
processed “fast foods,” even free-range
organic meats. Sure, they're more expensive,
but not as expensive as becoming diseased or
losing time from work due to eating contaminated
or otherwise inferior foods. Concerning
the tens of thousands of toxins in our air,
water, soils and foods there are no “thresholds”
for safe exposure. Nutrients fight the toxins in
our tissues and organically grown whole foods
have superior nutrient content over their nonorganic
counterparts. Eating superior foods
while taking potent dietary supplements
improves our power to combat the many challenges
of modern living.
Many clinicians and scientists, even
some previously biased against nutrition,
now believe that eventually aging will be
slowed using supplements as part of an integrative
personal strategy. We urge
everyone—young and old, healthy or
sick—to recruit a health adviser and
develop a supplementation program. By
sticking to a good clean diet, taking the
supplements daily, exercising regularly, lowering
our daily stress levels and seeing to
our spiritual development, we all improve
our chances for a long and happy life.
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