WHY TAKE NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

This article discusses important questions about nutritional supplements including:

Table Of Contents

- Why take nutritional supplements?

- Are they safe or at least low toxicity?

- Are they better than drugs, in general?

- Can they substitute for medical drugs and other medical treatments?

- Can a person die from taking them?

- Why does nutritional balancing not recommend most of them?

- Why are they are needed in very precise dosages?

- Why do we give them in doses, at times, that may exceed the recommended daily allowances or RDA for the nutrient?

- Why do we use a hair analysis to recommend them?

- Must all supplements be food-based and all-natural to work best?

- Are there supplements that are best avoided?

- Can a person just read about supplements and take the right ones?

- What about the use of herbs, homeopathic remedies and other specialty products?

- What about new supplement regulations, and do we need them?

WHY DOES EVERYONE NEED NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS?

Among the many reasons are:

1. Soil depletion has reduced the nutrient content of our food supply. In most areas of the world, the land has been over-farmed and over-grazed. In most of the world, manures and other mineral-rich products are not put back enough on the land. This has depleted the soil quality. In many other areas, the soil is just of low quality and is difficult to improve. This produces food that is low in many minerals, in particular, but also low in vitamins, and hundreds of other nutrients found in food.

2. Hybrid crops provide lower-nutrient food. These are used everywhere today, even on organic farms. They yield more food per acre, but the crops all have a much lower nutrient content than those grown 100 years ago. This is well-documented in US Department of Agriculture statistics and elsewhere.
For example, at least ten times as much rice or wheat are grown on the same land as was grown there 100 years ago. But the land is not stocked with ten times the minerals, vitamins and other nutrients. As a result, in part, today's wheat contains about 6% protein whereas 100 years ago it contained 12-14%. Trace mineral levels are similarly much lower due to high-yield farming methods.

3. Modern fertilizers do not supply enough trace elements. One hundred years ago, manures were used extensively for fertilizer. Today, superphosphate fertilizers have largely replaced manures. These contain mainly nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus and are deficient in the trace elements. This is sad, but true. Our crops are more like a person on steroids – stimulated, but not as strong and safe.
Superphosphates often act more as growth stimulants. This has contributed greatly to depletion of the soil and crop minerals. This includes organically grown food, although it is much better.

4. Modern use of chemical pesticides and herbicides all over the world make food somewhat toxic, and damage soil microorganisms. Both of these also reduce the nutrition of the crops. Soil microorganisms are needed to make minerals and other nutrients available to plants. When these are damaged by Roundup, and hundreds of other toxic pesticides, insecticides and other chemicals put on crops, the soil micro-organisms do not function as well, and the nutrient content of the food becomes lower.

Also, our bodies require extra nutrients to process pesticide residues that remain inside the foods, so the pesticides that we must eat daily also reduce our nutritional status each and every day. Many pesticides are deadly chemicals that severely tax the human system. Some contain lead, arsenic and other toxic metals that slowly accumulate in the body.

Our laws currently allow sewage and even factory sludge to be sold as fertilizer that contains significant quantities of toxic metals. These add greatly to our toxic metal burden and requires that we take in nutrients to help remove them from the body.

5. Long-distance transportation of many foods diminishes their nutritional content. As soon as a food is harvested, the levels of certain nutrients begin to diminish. Today, many foods are grown thousands of miles from population centers. The food may spend a week on a truck or a train before it reaches you.

In addition, some foods, especially fruits, must be sprayed, irradiated, or processed in other ways in order to survive the journey across the world. For example, many people do not realize that much of our food comes from South America, Asia and China. These are miles away and transportation is slow. The food can grow moldy and you wouldn’t even know it.

6. Food processing often drastically reduces the nutrient content of common foods such as wheat flour, rice, dairy products and others. For example, the refining of wheat to make white flour removes 80% of its magnesium, 70-80% of its zinc, 87% of its chromium, 88% of its manganese and 50% of its cobalt.

Similarly, refining sugar cane to make white sugar removes 99% of its magnesium and 93% of its chromium. Polishing (refining) rice removes 75% of its zinc and chromium. This is just the beginning of most food processing, however.

This is why fresh frozen vegetables, and freshly canned sardines are not that bad. At least they are preserved quickly after harvesting or catching the fish, and the preservation method is not that terrible. The best food, however, is freshly harvested or freshly killed and eaten quickly.

Pasteurization and homogenization of dairy products drastically reduces the bioavailability of calcium, phosphorus and some proteins in milk and other dairy products. This is one of the worst insults to our food today.

7. Food additives often further deplete nutrients. Thousands of artificial flavors, colors, dough conditioners, sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, stabilizers, flavor enhancers like MSG, emulsifiers, hardeners, softeners, chemical preservatives and other chemicals are added to most people’s food today. While a few are harmless and may even increase the quality of the food by preserving it, many are toxic and many diminish the nutritional content of the food.

Among the worst are preservatives like BHA and BHT, artificial sweeteners like Aspartame, and perhaps EDTA, a chelating agent, that is added to some frozen vegetables to preserve the color of the vegetables. The way it works is by removing vital minerals from the surface of the vegetable because when minerals oxidize, the color of the vegetable turns dark and ugly. This is like tarnishing of silver.

8. Weak digestion and poor eating habits impair the absorption of nutrients. Almost everyone’s digestion is very weak today. This is due to eating poor quality food, hybridized varieties of foods like wheat, and having to digest and handle so many refined foods and chemicals in the foods. It is also due to low vitality, low digestive enzyme secretion, and imbalanced intestinal flora and intestinal infections like yeast that are extremely common. This is quite a deadly combination.

As a result, most people do not absorb nutrients well at all. This further impairs nutrient levels in the body, and increases nutritional needs. This is why in nutritional balancing programs, everyone is given a digestive aid containing digestive enzymes such as pancreatin and ox bile.

9. Stressful and hurried lifestyles impair digestion and use up more nutrients. These may include calcium, magnesium, zinc, chromium, manganese and many others. Zinc begins to be eliminated from the body within minutes of a stress. This is why many people have white spots on their fingernails, for example. Stress adds to all the other causes of impaired nutrition above to make things much worse for most people today around the world.

Most people do not realize that stress always causes excessive sympathetic nervous system activity. This not only uses up nutrients, as explained in the paragraph above. It also reduces digestive strength and ability. This, in turn, reduces nutrient absorption and utilization even further.

10. Chronic and acute infections and other illnesses most people have also depletes nutrients and increases nutritional needs.

11. Almost all babies are born deficient today. In other words, most people need extra nutrition from the day they are born just to make up for deficiencies present at birth. These are called congenital mineral and other deficiencies, which means present at birth.

It is critical to understand that nutrient deficiencies are passed from mother to child through the placenta. Those who raise livestock all know this, but somehow medical doctors, nurses and dietitians do not.

12. The increased use of vaccines and medical drugs can drastically deplete a person’s nutrition. This is especially true of any drug that impairs digestion or absorption of food such as antibiotics, anti-acids, acid-blockers, aspirin, Tylenol, Aleve, Excedrin and hundreds of other prescription and over-the-counter remedies.

13. Toxic chemicals and toxic metals in the air, water and elsewhere also deplete nutrients and increase the need for nutrition to combat them. This is an enormous problem today. Toxic chemicals are everywhere, in buildings, schools, homes, work places, urban air, and in almost all water supplies, even the purest ones.

14. Some medical procedures also drastically deplete nutrients. These include surgeries of all types, and even some tests such as x-rays. Surgeries cause stress and add more drugs to the system. X-rays deplete B-complex vitamins and perhaps other nutrients such as zinc. This is known in medical circles, but nothing is done about it.

15. Special life situations require extra nutrition. Medical science knows that many life situations require greater amounts of nutrition, including:

· All babies, children, the elderly and all athletes.

· Anyone born with a birth defect may need additional nutrients.

· Anyone who is ill, particularly those with a chronic illness.

· Pregnant and lactating women.

· Anyone who uses alcohol, refined sugar or recreational drugs such as marijuana.

· Anyone following a vegetarian or other restricted diet for any reason such as weight loss or anything else.

· Anyone under extra stress due to financial issues, a difficult job or marriage, or for any other reason.

Add up the numbers in these groups and you have most of the population! Yet few health professionals are taught that all of these situations require extra nutrients beyond that which is available from only the highest quality food, eaten in a healthful manner.

16. Supplements can be used by everyone to protect against disease, eliminate deficiency states, prevent future illness, and balance the body chemistry. These topics are discussed later in this article.

17. The nutritional standards set by governments around the world are much too low. As a result, people do not make an effort to eat a higher nutrient diet. This is a complex subject discussed in the section below.

FALLACIES OF THE RDAs AND MDRs

Government “scientists” meet periodically to decide the levels of the recommended daily allowances (RDA) or minimum daily requirements (MDRs) of common nutrients. Their main concern is how much is needed to prevent deficiency diseases. For example, a vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, a vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness, and a vitamin B1 or thiamine deficiency can cause a horrible disease called pellagra.

While this approach is okay as far as it goes, these recommendations have little to do with optimum health. Their recommendations are more like the minimum nutrition to stay alive. The idea that the RDA is enough is flawed. I would say it is fatally flawed. Problems with the RDAs or MDRs include:

1. It is one size fits all. This alone is enough to discredit this nutritional approach. People’s needs are not all alike.

2. It tends to ignore many subtle aspects of human nutrition such as the effect of stress, chronic illness, pregnancy and other factors on one’s nutritional needs. This is much harder to measure, so the bureaucrats just ignore it. If they considered it, they would not suggest that everyone needs the same amount of any nutrient.

3. Also, the RDAs and MDRs are set up by dietitians, a group of people who are not trained in optimum health, but only the allopathic medical version of good nutrition. They are influenced by the drug industry, as are the medical doctors and the public health officials in most nations. The drug industry wants a sick, malnourished population that will buy their toxic products. Optimum nutrition is their worst nightmare, so it is not taught in medical schools, nursing schools, public health schools or dietetics schools. It is also not taught to public school teachers or college-level education, as that would threaten the entire drug medicine paradigm.

Horrible results of the use of the MDRs. Here are just a few of them:

a) Pregnant women are allowed to basically starve themselves and their babies.

b) Supplement labels cause panic because the amounts of nutrients the tablets contain are compared to the RDA on each supplement bottle. This can cause alarm until one understands why the RDAs are inappropriate, much too low, and often irrelevent.

c) School lunch programs and other nutrition programs set up by the government to feed poor people, for example, do a terrible job because the standards are far too low.

THE FALLACY OF THE ‘FOUR FOOD GROUPS’ AND THE ‘FOOD PYRAMID’ IDEAS

These more modern dietary concepts also do not take into account the problems in our food supply listed above. A separate article discusses these in more detail entitled Food And Dietary Concepts.

2. ARE SUPPLEMENTS SAFE AND DO MANY PEOPLE DIE FROM TAKING THEM?

Nutritional supplements are among the safest products in existence. According to the Poison Control Centers in the United States, for example, there have been less than 10 deaths at all from nutritional supplements since they started keeping records about 23 years ago. Recently, these figures were further analyzed by interviewing people who claimed that death was caused by a supplement. The result was that in fact, there were no deaths from nutrients. Even if the latter is not true, which is hard for me to assess, this is an astounding safety record.

By comparison, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which are just one small class of drugs, cause at least 10,000 recorded deaths each year. Many deaths from them are not reported. Hospital infections probably kill 20,000 per year in the US alone. Other classes of drugs, including insulin and others are far more lethal. Two articles about this subject are Problems With Drugs and Dangerous Drugs on this website.

I must laugh when people warn us about taking vitamins and minerals, or taking too many of them. They are so wrong, and so brainwashed by medical propaganda. They do not realize that there is today a concerted effort to stop the sale and use of nutritional supplements because it threatens not only the drug industry. It threatens the hospitals, the doctors, the laboratories, the medical device makers, and more.

The above industries constitute a cartel or group that controls medical care. The last thing they want is for people to heal themselves with simple, low-toxicity, natural substances that cost pennies compared to their products. This is the truth, and it is available to anyone who looks for it. References at the end of this article give some sources. Life Extension Foundation, and Death By Medicine, a paper by Gary Null et. al., are two recent sources.

We will not detail the safety level of each mineral and vitamin in this article, as there is too much more to write about. Later on, however, in this article, we discuss supplements to avoid. Taking the wrong supplements can impair health, to be sure. But even this is often safer than taking medical and over-the-counter drugs.

3. IS NUTRIENT THERAPY AS POWERFUL AS MEDICAL DRUG THERAPY, AND CAN NUTRIENT THERAPY EVER SUBSTITUTE FOR THE USE OF MEDICAL DRUGS?

The simple answer to both of these questions is yes. Nutritional balancing gets rid of the need for most medical drugs quickly, effectively and safely. We do not use herbs, as a rule, because these are not as safe. Nor do we use bio-identical hormones, which we consider medical drugs. Nor do we use chelation therapy, which we consider a newer medical drug therapy, even natural chelating agents such as zeolite, chlorella, spirulina and others.

Sophisticated nutrient therapy based on a properly performed and properly interpreted hair tissue mineral analysis, combined with a healthful diet, a healthful lifestyle and proper drinking water is usually completely able to remove the need for most medical drugs within a few years or often less time than this.

The major exceptions are if an organ or gland has been removed surgically, and perhaps if one is too old to regenerate the glands and organs fast enough. Vitality decreases with age, so if you want to get well naturally, begin as soon as possible, as it is a process that takes a number of years in most cases, even in children and babies today.

WHY TAKE JUST SPECIFIC AMOUNTS OF EACH NUTRIENT? - BIOCHEMICAL INDIVIDUALITY

For optimum health, one needs newer and more scientific concepts about nutrition than the outdated idea of RDAs and MDRs. One of these is biochemical individuality. This term originated with Dr. Roger Williams to describe his research finding that nutritional needs vary tremendously from person to person. From this perspective, average standards mean very little.

Physicians use many methods to try to figure out people’s supplement needs. Nutritional balancing science uses a rather unique way to assess nutritional needs that involves hair mineral testing. However, the test is used in a very special way that is described in other articles on this website.

It involves learning about each person's oxidation rate, stage of stress, trace element levels, toxic metal levels, carbohydrate tolerance, digestive adequacy, state of the immune system and other factors that can be identified on the test.

One must also take into account each person's age, sex, weight and health conditions including pregnancy and acute or chronic illnesses. All these affect one's nutritional requirements.

ORTHOMOLECULAR NUTRITION

Orthomolecular nutrition is related to biochemical individuality. This term was coined by the late Dr. Linus Pauling. It means to give just the amount of a nutrient that is needed, not an average or standard amount.

Nutritional balancing science often recommends different supplements than those used by many orthomolecular physicians in that we often use foods and nutrients not to directly correct symptoms, but to balance body chemistry. For example, a person in an alarm stage of stress requires more calcium, copper, magnesium, choline and inositol. However, excessive vitamin B-complex or C are harmful for that person.

A person in the exhaustion stage of stress requires more vitamin B-complex and C, and much less copper. By properly combining nutrients and taking into account mineral levels, ratios and patterns, our programs are much more precise. Also, correction deeper and more permanent.

OTHER REASONS FOR HIGHER NUTRIENT DOSAGES IN SOME CASES

Nutritional balancing may also recommend higher dosages of certain nutrients for other reasons. These include:

1. Isolated nutrients and supplements are used to balance cellular mineral ratios. This is a rather amazing use of specific vitamins and minerals that was developed by Dr. Paul Eck, and which I have refined and expanded. At times, rather high doses are needed for short periods of time. They work well, with no side effects, and can balance the body chemistry in amazing ways.

2. Isolated nutrients and foods can be used to counteract or ameliorate specific physical, mental or emotional symptoms.

Thousands of studies have demonstrated that targeted nutrient therapy can reduce and even prevent many types of symptoms.

For example, vitamins A and C, along with zinc and selenium, in high enough doses, can reduce the severity of many infections.

Many mental, emotional problems and neurological conditions such as depression, anxiety, epilepsy and many others also respond very well to nutrient supplementation programs.

This is another area of nutrition that is sadly overlooked by the medical, psychological and modern psychiatric professions. Instead, they are owned by the drug industry. Most also do not understand the connection between nutrients in the brain and behavior. If they did, they would quickly start using nutritional balancing science, as it is so powerful, safe and, in many cases, quite simple to use as well.

If they at least acknowledged the toxicity to the nervous system of common metals like copper, cadmium, mercury and others, we would all be far better off. The medical drugs are a very poor substitute for fixing brain chemistry, which, as stated above, is often not so difficult if one is trained in this area.

In this context, we offer a Diploma program and advanced training if someone wishes to become a nutritional balancing Helper. This is discussed on two web pages, entitled Basic Helping and Advanced Helping.

3. Precise nutrients helpful for trauma, such as rape. We have found that specific nutients in precise dosages can reverse the damaging physical and mental/emotional effects of most traumas, PTSD, rape, anxiety attacks and other related problems. This is discussed in two articles on this website, Rape And What To Do About It and Trauma Release.

4. Precise supplements are helpful for development. A critical benefit of a nutritional balancing program is development. This heals the body deeply, extends life and has many other benefits.

There is a great need for development on planet earth at this time to stop the epidemics and more. This can only happen when enough people are functioning at high enough levels to come up with creative solutions to these vexing problems that affect us all, directly or indirectly. This topic is discussed in several articles on this site entitled Introduction To Development, Ways To Assist Development, Diet and Development, and others.

WHY DOES NUTRITIONAL BALANCING USE A PROPERLY PERFORMED HAIR TISSUE MINERAL ANALYSIS TO RECOMMEND SUPPLEMENT DOSAGES?

Many methods can be used to assess body chemistry and recommend nutritional supplements to improve one’s health. Common ones include blood tests, urine tests, applied kinesiology or muscle testing, the use of various electrical machines, questionnaires, diet analyses, computer software based on diet and symptoms, stool tests, and others.

I have experimented with many of these systems. The most successful for me, although certainly not the simplest or easiest to implement, has been the use of a hair tissue mineral test. The test must be run by a lab that does not wash the hair, of which I know of only two in the entire world. Also, the test must be interpreted properly using stress theory, chaos theory, metabolic types set up by Dr. Eck, and a number of other parameters.

When this is done, the results have been the best, by far, of any method I have used. For details on why the hair mineral biopsy method works so well, controversy with this method, and more, read Introduction To Hair Mineral Analysis and other articles on nutritional balancing science on this website.

OTHER SUPPLEMENT-RELATED TOPICS - HERBS

Commonly used food supplements include over one thousand herbs. Many come from ancient Chinese, Native American or other healing traditions. Herb texts describe many ways to use herbs for healing and nourishment of the body. Dr. Paul Eck, founder of nutritional balancing science, did not use too many herbs for a number of reasons:

1. Inability to balance the body precisely. Because herbs contain many nutrients and other substances, it is not as easy as it is with isolated nutrients to use herbs to precisely balance mineral ratios on a hair analysis. Since this is the basis for today’s nutritional balancing science, the herbs are of less use.

2. They are often a little toxic. For example, aluminum-containing herbs include peppermint, spearmint and wintergreen. They are helpful to settle an upset stomach, but are also somewhat toxic for this reason. A cup of peppermint tea on a regular basis is therefore not ideal though using it once in a while is fine.

All Chinese or Ayurvedic (East Indian) herbs seem to be somewhat toxic. Occasional use is okay, but regular use is not good at all.

3. Quality can vary tremendously. This problem is getting worse as more people want to use herbs, and there are fewer places to grow them that are free of chemicals and other soil contaminants.

4. Since quality varies, dosing of herbs can be difficult. This means that one does not always know how much to take. If the herb is very potent, much less is needed. This can lead to overdoses.

5. Combinations of herbs can be even more toxic or may not mix well in other ways. This is the same problem as mixing medical drugs, to a degree. Herbal combinations can oppose each other or impact one another in harmful ways, although herbs tend to be safer than medical drugs.

6. Cost. Good quality herbs are often costly. Nutritional balancing attempts to keep costs down wherever possible so more people can benefit. This is another reason herbs are not used much in nutritional balancing.

HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES

Homeopathy is a 150-year-old approach to healing that is extremely interesting. It is a type of energetic medicine using very diluted and “potentized” remedies that begin as common minerals, herbs, and every other substance imaginable. They are prepared in special ways so that eventually just the energy of the substance remains, with little if any of the original compound or substance.

When prescribed correctly, which is very difficult, they may have good effects on the body and mind. Homeopathic remedies are generally much safer than pharmaceutical drugs. However, they are not easy to use properly. Other problems with them is they do not balance the oxidation rate or mineral ratios. Also, they are much too yin in Chinese medical terms to be used regularly. An exception in which they can be helpful is for symptomatic relief of a cold, flu or other condition, which is a short-term use.

OTHER SPECIALTY PRODUCTS

Today, thousands of other products are sold as food supplements. Some are excellent and may be added to nutritional balancing programs, at times. For more about some of these products, read the article entitled Specialty Products.

Many products at health food and drug stores, however, should be avoided, however, as most contain toxic substances. A second reason to avoid taking too many supplements is they appear to confuse the body and most are very yin in Chinese medical terminology. This is harmful today, even if the supplement itself is nutritionally beneficial. This is confusing, but is an important aspect of supplementation. For more on this topic, read the articles Yin and Yang Healing, and Yin Disease on this website.

Supplements to avoid. The following supplements are generally okay for a month or two. However, avoid all prolonged use:

· Fulvic and humic acid products. These will give symptomatic results, but they contain some toxic metals and therefore are not good long-term.

· All chelation products. These are often extracts of cilantro, chlorella, bugleweed, yellow dock, and may contain EDTA, DMPS, DMSA and other chelators.

· Clay products such as bentonite, zeolite, montomorillonite, azomite and others. These are popular today as chelators or cleansing products.

· All herbs, as discussed above. A list of safer herbs is given below. Unfortunately, I find very few herbal products that I can recommend besides simple nourishing herbs such as chamomile tea, hibiscus tea and others.

· Most protein powders, cleansing drinks and powders, intestinal cleansers and related products. These tend to be very yin, nutritionally incomplete, often bad food combinations, and should only be used, if at all, for very short periods of time for these reasons. Whole foods are generally much better. For example, one can live on rice for a week if one wishes to do an intestinal cleanse. However, with most nutritional balancing programs, such cleanses and detoxification regimens are totally unnecessary and usually slow down our progress. Exceptions are rare.

· Herbal fruit drinks. A little of these, such as acai, mangosteen, nopal, noni, aloe, goji berry or camu camu, may be okay once in a while. However, all of them are very yin. They may give one a boost in some way, but eventually they make the body extremely yin, which is not helpful at all and prevents deep healing. It does not matter how nutritious they are.

·           Avoid most random and symptomatic supplementation. This is very tempting, but in fact, often slows down progress on nutritional balancing programs and can easily ruin or negate the entire program.
            With nutritional balancing science, these supplements are not necessary or helpful. This is very difficult to understand unless one learns about general systems theory, and the other theories on which nutritional balancing is based.
            Too many supplements negate each other, are too yin, and often upset digestion. Symptomatic nutrition is a completely different approach to healing than nutritional balancing, and the two do not mix. Please do not try to combine these methods.

· All “natural” and “bio-identical” hormones. Unfortunately, these are becoming more and more widely used. They are all drugs, from our perspective, since hormones are supposed to be made inside the body, in very precise amounts that change moment to moment, depending on the body’s needs.
Taking hormones from the outside always upsets the body’s natural feedback mechanisms and, in our experience, always slows or even stops progress on nutritional balancing science. Hormone therapy is part of allopathic medicine, which is a totally different approach to health than nutritional balancing science. Please beware and do not use hormone replacement therapy unless a gland has been removed from the body or destroyed with radiation or disease. Please read Hormone Replacement Therapy for much more on this topic.

· Also beware of alkaline water machines – all brands. One is basically drinking filtered tap water, which is not great. Then the water is passed over platinum and titanium plates. This will impart a little of these extremely toxic metals to the water, as well.
To alkalinize the body, eat plenty of cooked vegetables. Even worse may be alkaline water from water stores. They begin with reverse osmosis water, which is not healthful. Then they add coral calcium, which often contains some toxic metals. The combination drives the toxic metals deep into the body cells, causing severe problems after a year of so.

· Avoid all water from water machines that use reverse osmosis. For more on this, please read Water For Drinking on this website.

HERBS GENERALLY SAFE FOR OCCASIONAL USE ONLY, AND NO MORE

These include acacia gum, agar, alfalfa, aloe vera, angelica root, anise, ash tree, astragalus, balm of gilead, baptisia or wild indigo, barberry, bayberry, bay leaves, bee pollen, bet root, birch, bittersweet, blackberry, black radish and all radishes, black walnut, bladderwrack, blessed thistle, bloodroot, blue and black cohosh, blue vervain, boneset, borage, buchu, burdock root, calamus root, calendula, camphor, capsicum, caraway, cardamom, cassia oil, cayenne, cedar berries, celery root, chia seeds, cinnamon, cloves, comfrey, don quoi, eluthero, dulse, dill, elder flowers, coriander or cilantro to eat but not extracts, corn silk, cranberry, cumin, daikon, dandelion leaves and roots, dill, dong quai, dulse, echinacea, elder flowers, eleuthero, eucalyptus, eyebright, fennel, fenugreek, flax, fu-sho oil, garlic, geranium, ginger, gingko biloba, goldenrod, green magma, gum Arabic, hawthorn berries, hops, horehound, horseradish, horsetail and huckleberry leaf.

Others are hydrangea, hyssop, Irish moss, jojoba oil, juniper berries, kelp, lady’s slipper, lavender, lemon balm, lemon grass, lily of the valley, linseed oil, maple, marigold, marshmallow root, milk thistle, motherwort, mullein, mustard, myrrh, nettles, nutmeg, oat straw, Oregon grape root, pansy, parsley, passion flower, peach, pennyroyal, peppermint, periwinkle, plaintain, pleurisy root, poke, poplar, prickly pear cactus, psyllium, pygium, pyrus communis, radishes (black, white, red, Russian, Spanish and other), raspberry, red clover, red sage, rhubarb, rose, rosehips, rosemary, safflower, sassafras, saw palmetto, senna, shave grass, shepherd’s purse, skunk cabbage, slippery elm, sorrel, spearmint, squaw vine, St. John’s wort, strawberry leaves, suma, sumach berries, sweet basil, tansy, thuja, thyme, tiger balm, turkey rhubarb, turmeric, unicorn root, uva ursi, valerian, violet leaves, watercress, watermelon seeds, wheat grass juice, white oak bark, white willow, wild cherry bark, wild lettuce, wild yam, wintergreen, witch hazel, wood betony, wood sage, wormwood, yarrow, yellow vervain, and yucca.

SUPPLEMENT LEGISLATION

Food supplements in the United States are protected from excessive regulation by the FDA by the Dietary Health and Supplement Education Act of 1994. Though it has been amended, this law essentially classifies supplements differently than drugs as “foods for special use”. Drug companies and their cronies make every effort to regulate supplements out of existence, as supplements often directly compete with drug profits.

Recently, laws were passed in both houses of Congress, led mainly by Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, Hillary Clinton and Henry Waxman. The bill requires supplement companies to comply with the same adverse reporting requirements as drug companies. The cost of implementing this bill could drive many smaller supplement companies out of business. And that is the unspoken goal.

The Codex Alimentarius is a second push by international drug companies and some others to reduce our health status further. This way there will be far more demand for patent remedies, which are drugs.

The Codex would also regulate the supplement industry and perhaps eliminate it altogether unless one has a doctor’s prescription. It could reduce the allowable over-the-counter dosages of all vitamins and minerals to levels so low the products won’t be worth producing.

Food supplements often provide 10 to 100 times the Recommended Daily Allowance of a nutrient. They must do so to offset the poor absorption and extra needs of thousands of people.

The Codex rules are already law in parts of Europe and scheduled to begin to take effect in the United States of America in 2009. If we value our freedom to choose and our health, these and similar efforts must be stopped.

Other articles about supplements on this website are A Basic Supplement Program and Supplement Tips.

References

Many books and websites provide documentation for this article. Listed below are just a few of them:

1. Anderson, M. and Jensen, B., Empty Harvest: Understanding the Link Between Our Food, Our Immunity and Our Planet, Avery Penguin Putnam, 1993.

2. Atkins, R., Dr. Atkins Health Revolution, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1988.

3. Fitzgerald, R., The Hundred Year Lie, Dutton, Penguin Group, New York, 2006.

4. Hall, R.H., Food For Naught, The Decline in Nutrition, Vintage Books, New York, 1974.

5. Hoffer, A. and Walker, M., Orthomolecular Nutrition, Keats Publishing, 1978.

6. Illich, I., Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, New York, 1976.

7. Jensen, B. and Andereson, M., Empty Harvest, Avery, Pnguin Putnam, New York, 1990.

8. Pfeiffer, C.C., Mental and Elemental Nutrients, Keats, Publishing, New Canaan, CT, 1975.

9. Santillo, H., Natural Healing With Herbs, Hohm Press, Prescott, AZ, 1989.

10. Schmidt, M., Smith, L., and Sehnert, K., Beyond Antibiotics, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA,1993.

11. Wilson, L., Nutritional Balancing And Hair Mineral Analysis, 2010, 2014, 2016.

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