It is not uncommon for people to come in to my practice for nutritional counseling with a bag, or even bags of vitamins they take on a daily basis. People think that if they load their bodies up with lots of vitamins that they will be super healthy. This isn’t the case.
Taking endless vitamins every day is the end result of having little understanding of what and why you are supplementing your diet. Rather than having a laser-focussed system for determining what supplements are required by your body, most people just guess what they need and take it on a daily basis with crossed-fingers hoping that it is doing them some good. This is a system set up for failure. It is only a matter of time before people lose interest in their guesswork program, get tired of taking pills and stop altogether.
There is no doubt that supplementing the diet is a hot topic. Most of us are aware that we need to supplement our diets for one reason or another. Though most of us have no idea how to do it or what supplements we need. What is the solution?
Medications vs. Vitamins vs. Supplements
The first step is to gain an understanding of what a diet supplement is. First let’s talk about medications. Medications are chemicals, designed by chemists, in a test tube derived for the purpose of altering a chemical process in the body. Medications bypass the body’s normal physiologic processes and force a change… for better or worse. All medications have side-effects. Every chemical in the human body is associated with many chemical processes (not just the one the medication is intended to alter). When one chemical or chemical process is altered, it can literally change hundreds, if not thousands of other processes within the body… the end result… side-effects. Side-effects are often very harmful if not deadly.
Vitamins
This is where things get fuzzy. Many people visit the ‘health food’ store and pick up their vitamins thinking they are doing themselves good. I read last week in reader’s digest that I may need D3 so I’ll pick up some of that. I read that B vitamins are important so I’m going to get a B-complex. My doctor says my iron levels are low so I’m going to get something to fix that. I don’t sleep well so I’m going to pick up some serotonin. Ginseng is the rage so I’ll get some of that to boost my energy. And finally, I get frequent colds and I heard vitamin C is good for that.
Pretty soon you have a cupboard full of vitamin bottles. You are choking down dozens of pills every day. You are not sure if they are what you need… just guessing based on what you’ve read. And most often you don’t even notice a change in how you feel and any health issues you have are still there and are not going away.
Well… here’s where I destroy your natural health paradigm. Vitamins… more properly called nutraceuticals are NOT dietary supplements. When you take a vitamin to increase your levels of D3, or C or serotonin… you are practicing medicine. You are attempting to bypass the body’s normal physiologic processes to increase or decrease a chemical level to produce a result… you are treating symptoms. This is the practice of medicine. Nutraceuticals are NOT dietary supplements… they are medications. They are SAFER medications… though they are still medications. And when you take them for these reasons you are self diagnosing and self prescribing medication to alter the function of your body based on what YOU think is best… not based on what YOUR BODY thinks is best. Who do you think knows better?
Supplements
In my practice I use organic whole food supplements. Whole food supplements are made of food… and nothing more. These whole food supplements are designed to provide the nutrition your body is lacking to allow your body to function normally the way IT WANTS TO. These supplements do NOT bypass the normal physiologic processes of the body. They give nutrition to the body to function properly… the way it dictates.
Example: You have chronic colds and flu. The medical doctor treats the symptoms with medication and ignores the underlying cause. The self-diagnosing vitamin-taker buys Vitamin C, some Zinc and maybe some Vitamin A to force levels of these chemicals to increase within the body and hope for a stronger immune system… regardless of whether or not the body was deficient in these chemicals to begin with. Using supplements and Nutrition Response Testing (discussed soon), we determine there is dysfunction in the liver preventing your body from detoxing toxins properly so we provide the nutritional support your liver needs to restore normal function… thus naturally allowing your immune system to function properly and prevent colds and flus. This is just an example but it illustrates the difference between treating symptoms and the better alternative of addressing the underlying cause of the problem… and using the body’s own natural processes to correct the problem.
Nutrition Response Testing
I use a system of analysis called Nutrition Response Testing. This is a system that allows your body to reveal where the underlying problems are (liver, kidney, heart, etc), what is the underlying problem (environmental chemicals, heavy metals, food sensitivities, etc), and what supplements YOUR BODY WANTS to provide the nutritional support it needs to naturally correct the problem.
This system is a laser-focussed process for determining exactly what supplements you need rather than guessing and filling up your cupboards with half-empty vitamin bottles. Furthermore, these supplements are not meant to be taken for the rest of your life. They serve a purpose. And once the body corrects, not only will you notice the change in your health but you won’t have to take the supplement any more.
In my years of practice I have never seen nearly the amount of success I’ve had since I’ve introduced Nutrition Response Testing. The fact is most of us are starving for nutrition. We live on processed foods and the little real food we do eat has been poisoned with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones and antibiotics… and of course genetically modified. Even people with the healthiest diets, of organic produce and proteins, typically require some dietary supplements to restore proper function to the body. The fact is we live in a time where dietary supplements are a necessity for proper function. Nutrition Response Testing is the answer.
For more information visit my website at http://www.chiropractorwalnutcreek.com or call the office at 925-482-0195.
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I posted a picture of my 3 year old son drinking a green juice and I got a lot of questions from other parents who can’t get their kids to eat any vegetables. To make things easy I made a video of how to make the juice yourself (below). Here is the recipe I use in the video:
