Dietary supplements as an option for nutrient needs fulfilment

An individual’s diet may contain food items prepared using locally available ingredients that are cooked using conventional methods. These food items are generally rich in carbohydrates and fats but may lack in essential nutrients like fiber, minerals and certain vitamins along with amino and fatty acids. The absence of certain vitally important nutritional components may impose health risks and restrict overall body growth and development.

In order to fill this nutritional void, scientists and physiologists have come up with an idea of a nutritional supplement that maintains an adequate balance of all essential nutritional components, in a single preparation. Along with the daily food intake, and juice drinking this dietary supplement may provide the body with other vitally important nutritional components like vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty and amino acids etc.

In order to boost the metabolism and improve blood circulation, dietary supplements do a great job in terms of providing the right nutrition for body’s endocrine system. A healthy supply of vitally important minerals, vitamins, acids and fibers help in rejuvenating the endocrinal system. This ensures a healthy supply of secreted hormones that are essential for healthy and effective body growth and its sound functioning.

However, there have been apprehensions and ambiguities with regards to the efficacy of these dietary supplements. Certain sections of society consider these supplements to be made of animal fats and organs and hence have boycotted them. Although there is a regulatory authority in every nation that monitors the ingredients and overall quality of such dietary supplements, but speculations about their efficacy surpasses all authoritative measures.

Dietary supplements contain certain natural ingredients like rare herbs, legumes and plant extracts that are capable of delivering miraculous results in terms of health. Physicians and doctors agree that the musculoskeletal development of human body is dependent more upon the protein intake rather than that of carbohydrates and fats. Nutrition, rich in carbohydrates and fats, provide the body with energy sources but lack of proteins, fatty and amino acids resist the musculoskeletal development of the body. This inadequacy of nutritional supply is balanced by the intake of high quality dietary supplements like protein shakes, powders and drinks.

Getting Control of your health

How to get control of one’s own health has been a question asked by many generations. We are bombarded on a daily basis with information on how to treat whatever our health concerns are, and it is a rare day that we don’t read or hear of some herb, supplement, or treatment to take for whatever ails us.

Ancient wisdom and current understanding seems to show that the body is able to heal itself if supplied with the needed nutrients. We have two main nutritional problems as I see it; one is that we get far too many carbohydrate (sugar) calories that cause a chronic elevation of our blood insulin levels, and the other is that we are deprived of plant sugars (glyconutrients) because our diets are deficient in ripe fresh fruits and vegetables.

Glyconutrients are an essential need for cellular health, and, if lacking, interfere with normal cellular function. When our cells are not healthy, neither are we. Organ systems, such as brain, heart, and lungs for example, are made up of many, many cells. Although the cells in each organ have specialized function, they all have similar nutritional needs. This is the reason that glyconutrients have such a great effect on our general health. They don’t treat some part of our body, or help some condition; they help all cells in every organ stay healthy. When our cells are healthy, our organs are healthy, and so are we.

Steps To Take To Get Control Of Your Health

Paying attention to lifestyle and exercising are a big part of getting control of your health. These are not things that are done overnight, but their importance must be emphasized and a personal commitment made toward this goal.

Providing ourselves with the proper nutrition is the easiest thing to do if we think in the term of supplements. Trying to get all the foods we need naturally would be a full time job. Advertising for the many products on the market said to help one health problem or another has bombarded all of us. My odyssey has convinced me that the best way to maintain health is to get the necessary nutrients. The easiest and surest way is to take supplements. With the necessary nutrients available, you can trust your body to ‘know’ how to get/stay healthy.

The 50+ years oddissey of a doctor

Perhaps every young physician dreams of being a ‘healer’. We are rewarded with success at times, but there are many frustrations and disappointments as we pursue this goal. At least, this certainly has been my experience. But, all in all, the practice of medicine has been enormously enriching and fulfilling. My younger colleagues tell me that I practiced during the “golden years of medicine” and I believe that this is true. True, in spite of the continuing proliferation of scientific information and technological advances.

Despite the great growth of scientific knowledge and improved treatment, the business aspects of medical practice have seemed to obscure the caring role of the idealistic physician.

From the old-fashioned patient response of “you’re the doctor” and acceptance of prescription or treatment without question, the present day response is frequently “are there side effects?” and “what do I do to avoid getting sick again?” These questions frequently do not have good answers, but patients are requesting information to empower themselves and their loved ones to keep healthy and productive.

In this day and age, it seems to me, that the patient’s desire for personal empowerment is getting more difficult as medicine becomes more involved and technical. As individual physicians, we must learn about, and instruct, our patients in the basics of good nutrition and healthy life style to empower them to stay healthy and avoid chronic illnesses.

Good nutrition is, I feel, the basis of good health and longevity. Medicine, as a profession, has seemed to overlook this basic fact. We have not defined what good nutrition is, and pretty much have accepted the fact that “the food pyramid” says it all. This web site is my humble effort to empower those who have interest, to understand what good nutrition is, what it can do for us, and how to get it.

See here what I learned in this Oddisey

What I learned in My Odissey

A great part of what I have learned revolves around nutrition; something that I have always told my patients to get, but never really told them how to get it. For the greater part of my practice, I thought of a diet as a certain balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats as seen diagrammed in ‘the food pyramid’. This is the ‘Macro-Diet’ concept. I now know that diets and nutritional concepts revolve around cellular chemistry and cellular nutrients. I’ll get back to this later.

For some reason, not yet well understood, exercise is basic to good health. The interesting thing is that you don’t have to be a ‘jock’ to get enough exercise. Walking is good. It should be done for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week for starters. Getting up to 30 minutes 5 times a week will satisfy the body’s exercise requirement. Those who have concern about exercise or have physical problems can arrange to get professional consults and exercise prescriptions. If you would like to take this approach, you could contact strama@memhc.com is you are in the Medford area. I fill my need for exercise by walking, hiking, or cross-country skiing in season.

Attitude plays a huge role in health. This includes self-image, stress levels, emotions such as fear, anger, frustration, resentment, the capacity to love and to give, and our belief system. This is obviously not something to be handled in a paragraph! I have learned that there is a mind-body or body-mind system that is chemically mediated by substances called neuropeptides. Like it or not, this is a fact of life and cannot be changed. To ignore our emotions is done at great peril to our health. My belief and relationship with God has given me freedom from these harmful emotions. Each person has to address this issue individually to truly have good health.

Getting back to nutrition: We need to learn a new concept about nutrition. We need to think of nutrition as a cellular process on a molecular level to properly understand it. Our metabolism is as individualized as our fingerprints. We are not only controlled by our genetic inheritance but also by how our genes function. The function of our genes is greatly influenced by what nutrients are present in our cells. Our genes are like computer programs that ‘tell’ our cells what kind of protein to make. If the ‘building blocks’ (nutrients) for these proteins are not there, a defective copy will be made.

The low fat, low cholesterol diets, which we have been teaching about, are not keeping people healthy because various sugars have been substituted for the fats. Our sugar intake has been increasing for many years. High insulin levels are the result. There is then conversion of these sugars to fat and our liver is signaled to make more ‘bad’ cholesterol.

Our immune system cannot function properly unless the essential glyconutrients are available for cellular communication. The glycoproteins enable our immune cells to identify invading organisms and abnormal cells within our bodies and destroy them.

About 75% of our immune function is in the white blood cells lining our intestinal tract. This is where our body comes in closest contact with our external environment and there is able to destroy invading organisms and neutralize toxins.

Although it is theoretically possible to get all the needed nutrients by eating plant ripened fruits and vegetables, whole grains and nuts, essential oils and proteins, it is a practical improbability to supply these substances without supplementation. It is especially difficult with all of the processed foods on the grocery shelves and easy availability of fast foods with their ’empty’ calories and high sugars.

The profound health effects of natural products are being recognized more and more. I have been puzzled by the slow acceptance of this information in traditional medicine. I think it is because of the lack of large-scale experimental studies of nutritional approaches. Large-scale scientific studies are very expensive. Obviously it is not in the corporate interest of drug companies to do them. I have seen where they have withdrawn funding from laboratories attempting to do them. The very powerful ‘medical-pharmaceutical complex’ has replaced the old military-industrial complex which we talked about in the forties and fifties. These studies need to be done and our taxes should fund these studies. The tax dollars spent would be repaid many times over with better national health, decreased drug expenses, and getting the information for people to get better personal control of their health.