“With the way food is today, it’s a fact that you need to consume around 4,000 calories of food per day in order to get all the nutrition your body needs. That is around 3 times more than an average man or woman needs in order to maintain a healthy weight so not only is it expensive, you will get fat in the process.”  Sarah Ross

What is a pill to you?  Medicine?  Food?  Either?  Can some foods be considered medicine?  Should they?

On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.  (Rev. 22:;2b, NLT)

I happened to run across an incredibly insightful article regarding the need to supplement last week and really felt compelled to share it with you.  Unfortunately, I do not know the author, Sarah Ross, nor is the link given at the end of her article functional.  So there is no practical way to contact her to for further permission other than given in the last paragraph of the article.  Nevertheless, I felt the the information Sarah presents is so “right on” that I chose to go ahead and make it available to our loyal DG readers.

The Road to Wellness is Paved with ‘Pills and Potions’

Nutrition and supplementation plays a major role in the overall health process. The 20th century brought about some major medical developments in the sickness industry, which helped fight infectious disease, improved the effectiveness of antibiotics and immunizations and resulted in a doubling of the average lifespan.

However, the older you get the more medication you seem to need and the sicker you become. So where’s the benefit to living longer when your quality of life deteriorates?

The 21st century is focusing medical developments on the wellness industry — helping people live better and live longer through natural yet scientifically developed nutritional supplements.

Wellness is more than just the absence of disease, it causes cellular radiance; radiating good health from the inside out because you are giving your body everything it needs so that every cell functions at its very best.

The foundation of good health is good nutrition which means making sure your body has all the macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat) and micro nutrients (vitamins, minerals, trace elements) it requires to function like a well oiled car.

Our current food supply has some major challenges. Many people live in remote areas and food loses a lot of its goodness and suffers as a result of the lengthy transportation of food to these remote areas. Fast food outlets are everywhere. People are too busy to cook so they eat away from home or choose takeaway foods that are higher in calories, animal fats, salt and sugar. And many foods that are available are so processed that they have minimal nutritional value and micro-nutrients. This is why there’s a strong focus on the importance of dietary supplements to provide what’s missing from our food.

When it comes to micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals, trace elements) it’s important to give your body no less than exactly what it needs or it will not function properly. All those important processes your body performs daily through your liver, kidneys, digestive system, heart, stomach, etc. will labor under the lack of lubrication and nutrition. Just like putting cooking oil in your car’s engine, it may run okay for a while but eventually,

Read the rest of this entry »

“These techniques [industrial farming] give growers higher yields, and consumers get less expensive food. But now it appears there’s a hidden long-term cost — lowered food quality.”  Mother Earth News

Whose report will you believe?

By wisdom the LORD founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.  (Prov. 3:19; NLT)

How many times have you heard people supposedly in the know that money spent on supplements is a waste?  Just eat a well-balanced meal and you will get all the nutrients you need.

I say “supposedly in the know” because the evidence is rapidly mounting that researchers have known since the 1940’s “that yield increases produced by fertilization, irrigation and other environmental means used in industrial farming tend to decrease the concentrations of minerals in those plants.”  Surprised?

Here are some startling stats from today’s link:

• In wheat and barley, protein concentrations declined by 30 to 50 percent between the years 1938 and 1990.
• Six minerals have declined by 22 to 39 percent in 14 widely grown wheat varieties developed over the past 100 years.
• Official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data shows that the calcium content of broccoli averaged 12.9 milligrams per gram of dry weight in 1950, but only 4.4 mg/g dry weight in 2003.
• A study of phosphorous fertilizer on raspberries found that applying high levels of phosphorus caused the yield to double and concentrations of phosphorus to increase in the plants, but meanwhile levels of eight other minerals declined by 20 to 55 percent.

Along those same lines, allow me to quote some from our new book, UNCOMMON Wellness Coaching.  “In 1951, two peaches supplied a woman’s RDA for vitamin A. Today she would have to eat almost 53 peaches to get the same amount of vitamin A. And the same with oranges. Now you would need to eat at least 10 oranges to get the same amount of vitamin A that your grandparents got in one.  So it’s impossible to eat a healthy, balanced diet if the nutrient value in the food is gone.”

Bottom line…supplementation is not an option!

Prayer Power
Father, sadly we must acknowledge that our quest for higher yield and lower costs is now coming back to haunt us.  Just one more example of man thinking that he had a better way than the Original Manufacturer.  Please forgive our presumptuous attitudes.

Industrial Farming is Giving us Less Nutritious Food

Blessings on you as begin to do the research to take responsibility for your own health.

“Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. Pending strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized trials, it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements.”  The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002;287:3127-3129

What have you heard about the need for nutritional supplements?

Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  (1 Cor. 3:16; NAS)

Yesterday, we were excited to announce our coming e-book and seven-part webinar course on one of our most impassioned topics — wellness!  If you were able to be with us, we hope you felt our excitement — if prior commitments kept you from being with us we recorded the session and our link today will give you access to that recording so that you too can feel some of the excitement that was in the air yesterday.

To quickly review, Dr. Randy Peck, Sharon, and I gave an overview of the upcoming weekly webinar course and our e-book that will lead you through the six major factors that determine a person’s wellness.  That series will begin on Wednesday, April 8, again at high noon EDT.  Details on how to be a part of that series are included with the recording of yesterday’s webinar.

Recall that on Monday I briefly discussed water as the first major factor to wellness, Tuesday I covered exercise, yesterday I covered Superfoods, and today, let’s look at the the fourth major factor to wellness, supplementation.

Yes, you do need to add supplements to your daily regimen.  Even the American Medical Association came out in 2002 and reversed their long standing position against the need for supplements.  They now admit that the nutrient value of our food supply has diminished so drastically that it is virtually impossible to get all the nutrients one needs from food alone.  You’ve probably heard that only two peaches a day would have supplied a woman’s vitamin A RDA in 1951.  Today she would have to eat more than 53 peaches to meet this same requirement.  Peaches anyone?   And peaches aren’t the only food to show a loss.

OK, so you need to supplement.  Now you may accuse me of being a little self-serving here, but I do need to let you know that all supplements are not created equal.  In fact, this problem has gotten so bad that Congress has now passed a law that requires a manufacturer to be able to prove that what is advertised to be in the container is indeed in the container.  What a novel idea!  Sarcasm aside, when buying supplements, you have to be aware that the lowest price is usually not the best value.  I’ll leave it at that.

But again, the fourth step is simply to supplement what you eat with a daily regimen of nutrients.  What nutrients you ask, and whose are good?  Bottom line, find someone with enough experience to be credible and then trust them.  Everybody has their own strong opinions about what is best.  But just like with quality food, you must expect to pay a little more for quality supplements.

So there you have it, four simple steps.  There’s a couple more, stress management and rest, that we will cover in the webinar course and in the e-book, but will not cover here in our DGs.  The four we’ve listed this week really are simple, aren’t they?  So simple, in fact, that they’re easy not to do.  Or like most New Year’s resolutions, easy to start with a bang and fall off the wagon a couple of weeks into the game.

The solution?  Tomorrow, I will conclude this mini-series with a discussion of the magic key to the four simple steps.  There is a way to keep you “on that wagon.”  It’s just as simple as the four steps, but at the same time, incredibly powerful.  See you tomorrow!

Prayer Power
Father, the food You provided for us and intended for us to eat is indeed perfect.  But through a number of economic-driven choices, our food supply is no longer able to sustain us as it was intended.  We thank You for giving mankind the wisdom and the ability to supplement our diets with those missing nutrients.

Link of the Day
Access to Recording of Our 4/1 Wellness Webinar  (After 10a ET)

Blessings on you as you purpose to supplement your diet with additional nutrients on a daily basis.