subject: The Secret Of Physical Wellness [print this page] The Secret Of Physical Wellness The Secret Of Physical Wellness
The Secret to Physical Wellness
Today our Healthcare System is in major crisis. The problem is not the quality of our medical professionals or the many advancements that have been made in critical care. In fact, the technology of our critical care is the best it's ever been. The real problem according to the leading experts is that what we call healthcare' has predominately become sick care' which puts all its resources and emphasis on the treatment of poor health, not on the promotion of good health.
This philosophy has proved too ineffective, too costly, too toxic and too unsustainable in its cost. An article in BusinessWeek put it like this, "Our investment in Healthcare in the U.S. is not paying off. There is a massive amount of spending on things that really don't help patients and even put them at greater risk. Everyone that's informed knows it but it's such a scary thing to discuss no one wants to talk about it openly." Now that's a quote from the director of the center of hospital finance at John's Hoskins, Bloomsburg School of Public Health. So how does that make you feel? Our Healthcare system is in crisis because of the unsustainable growth and cost of our current system that is far outpacing our ability to pay for it. So the national debate is centered on how to pay for sick care in the future. Government intervention promises broader coverage but at what cost and what sacrifice? Many of the true visionaries on this subject have come to the same conclusion. We're not focused on the right issue. Instead of debating how to expand the cost and coverage of a system that is focused on the management of poor health we should put a major shift to a philosophy of wellness.
We should put as many resources into keeping people healthy as we do into managing their poor health and in the process add years to their life and productivity while decreasing the cost to the system. In other words create a true Healthcare system. The major problem with a wellness shift is those that profit most from our current sick care paradigm are absolutely determined to protect the status quo.
So what's the best strategy for keeping people healthy? The answer has been the same thing for centuries. In the 1600 Paracelsus, the father of pharmacology said that everything man needs to sustain good health is provided by God and nature and it is the job of science to find it. And actually science has done a great job of identifying the essential or vital nutrients found in our food that are necessary to keep healthy people healthy. That's why we've always simply been told to eat right and exercise. Sounds simple but new data suggests it might be much harder then it seems.
Recent studies have disclosed that due to modern farming techniques, new crop breeding practices and genetically modified seeds all designed to grow foods faster and bigger the most popular fruits and vegetables have all dramatically declined in their nutritional value. For example, a woman has to now eat 53 peaches to get the same amount of Vitamin A then her grandparents got from just 2 peaches. It takes 10 oranges to get the amount of Vitamin A her grandparents got from just 1 orange. And 65 cups of spinach to get the same amount of iron, again, that her grandparents received from just 1 cup of spinach. This nutritional decline is similar in all other 24 fruits and vegetables that were examined.
These facts left one biochemical nutritionist to state, "No matter how well we eat it is not possible to get adequate nutrition" and he went on to say that "I hear people say that you can get all the nutrients you need from food and I ask them, Where is there a shred of evidence that proves that's true?'" We of course add insult to injury by the fact that our #1 choice of food is convenient fast food, which is often processed for speedy delivery. Many of these foods contain higher levels of calories and less nutritional value. It may be hard to realize that even though we consume thousands of calories a day marginal deficiencies of daily requirements can, over time contribute to a multiple variety of poor health conditions. This is why the need to supplement our diet with vital nutrients has become viewed as mandatory not optional. I believe that this is why a recent national survey showed that over 70% of doctors and 80% of nurses take a daily vitamin supplement and even recommend them to their patients.
But here's where things get confusing. Based on new studies that have recently been published for over 50 years we've been told that any form of vitamin or mineral can adequately replace what's been lacking in our diets. Science may now however have proven otherwise. Let's look at what we've learned about minerals.
What we've known for years is that a wide variety of minerals found in our most common foods are essential for the maintenance of good health. Plants absorb minerals from the soil and predigest them so they may be more soluble when eaten by humans. Solubility allows minerals to dissolve in the stomach and in the intestines for increased absorption. A plant also bonds these predigested minerals to other plant molecules like sugars, amino-acids, fats, phytochemicals and other trace elements into what's called a food matrix.
All these co-factors allow minerals to be appropriately utilized by the body. This is the basic design of food. Minerals not predigested by the plant are not very soluble. In fact one report suggested that non-soluble minerals probably pass right through the body without being absorbed leading to the obvious question "What good is it to supplement your diet with non-soluble and non-food based mineral supplements if your body can't utilize them effectively?" Isn't that a legitimate question?
With this knowledge the supplement industry has attempted to improve the quality of plant-sourced minerals. Chemical processes such as chelation, glycenation, Nano sizing and water suspension are a few of the most popular. While these methods represent legitimate approaches to improving the pure absorption potential of a mineral, none create the solubility of a plant or produce a true food matrix quality product and that's how the body ultimately distinguishes fact from fiction. It appears that there's just no good substitute for a food-based nutrient.
Now let's look at vitamins. Many vitamins on the market claim to be the best but they use synthetic materials. New science now suggests that vitamins in their natural forms can be absorbed and utilized more efficiently by your body. Some people say, "Well that's okay, some vitamins are just so expensive, I'll just make sure I take a supplement containing 100's or 1000's of a percent more vitamins more than my daily requirement. That way if they're not absorbed, so what? After all, more is better anyway, right?" Well an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007 shocked the Health Community with the fact that vitamin supplements taken by millions of people every day for their health could actually be increasing their health risk.
The authors of this article came to their conclusions after a review and meta-analysis of 47 of what they called low-bias clinical trials which attempted to show the therapeutic doses of the individual synthetic antioxidant vitamins A, E, C and Beta-Carotene could improve health. Some studies were cancelled before completion because the subjects taking the synthetic vitamins were actually experiencing a higher rate of health related issues then those taking nothing. The authors were accurate to point out that the studies they reviewed used only synthetic vitamin supplements.
Okay, how many people think it might be wise to consider natural food-based nutrients to replace what's deficient or missing in our diets? The bottom line is that our bodies were designed to be best supported by real food nutrients.
Integrative health goes to the heart of our massive 2.4 trillion sick care industry. Researchers have been coming to the realization that a purely allopathic approach to poor health management is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. Because this approach typically ignores and in some cases can actually suppress the body's normal physiological processes of repair and regeneration.
These are the functions of our immune system that can actually compliment standard of care treatment. An effective integrative health care treatment; an effective integrative health strategy would therefore provide the best nutrients for proper immune system support.
This is where glyconutrients come in. Glyconutrients are plant-based polysaccharides that contain high levels of specific sugar molecules that are necessary for the proper structure and function of our cells and play a vital role in the functioning of our immune systems. The value of plant polysaccharides was first noted with the discovery of the bio-active compound in the aloe vera plant responsible for its rich history as the most highly recognized health promoting plant in the world. This immune supporting compound turned out to be a polysaccharide containing high levels of a sugar called manos. But it wasn't until almost a decade later that the new science of glycobiology identified that our cells use 8 specific sugars including manos for proper cell to cell communication. These 8 sugars are the letters of the alphabet that our cells use to make cellular words and these words are critical for the proper functioning of the immune system. In fact, missing or deficient sugars in cell surface words called glycoproteins have been identified as a biomarker of poor health.
Research teams theorized that if stabilized aloe vera gel containing one of the 8 sugars in glycobiology could provide such profound immune support the plant polysaccharide sources of the other sugars or their precursors combined with aloe might represent an entire new category of vital nutrients that could provide the body with unique immune system support not achieved by any other nutritional components.
Some of their benefits would be enhanced cognitive benefits, immune system support, help supporting a healthy digestive tract. The nutritional benefits would generally lead to a longer, healthier life with an increase in the quality of life.
