One of the most powerful ways to optimize the human body’s intrinsic ability to remain healthy and restore health is through optimizing our diets. Unfortunately good medical studies show that even with good diets even the minimal required amounts of the basic nutrients essential to our health cannot be obtained by diet alone. Studies also show that as we age our ability to efficiently absorb nutrients degrades rapidly in the majority of individuals. The presence of increased exposure to environmental toxins has been shown to increase the need for a range of vitamins and minerals. In the presence of established disease, even minor illnesses, and especially major illnesses like diabetes these requirements are markedly increased.
Because of the remarkable influence, both short term and long term, that nutritional factors have over health we recommend a set of dietary changes and the consistent use of a high quality multivitamin. The RDA system is so inadequate in directing the proper amounts of select nutrients that we educate patients on the proper forms, use and levels of these specific substances above those found even in the best absorbed and finest formulations of multivitamins. Intake of nutrients below the levels described in the RDA standards results in the rapid production of significant disease in a large portion of a human population and studies show that this is exactly what is currently happening even in the U.S. This is precisely how the RDAs for these nutrients were originally established. More recent science definitely shows that slower onset and often more severe forms of chronic diseases are related to these common deficiency states. It is unfortunate that the medical establishment and our government have consistently failed to respond to this emerging science.
We do the research to identify the highest quality multivitamins and understand the best forms and proper use of the specific nutrients required beyond these levels. As an example Vitamin D is universally deficient in our population. Fortunately Vitamin D is among a small set of nutrients for which the deficiency state can be accurately determined by a simple blood test. The majority of the other Vitamins, minerals and trace element deficiencies cannot be uncovered by testing leaving little choice but to try and detect these problems through their connections to symptoms or particular diseases. Complicating the issue is the clear finding that most nutritional deficiencies will not cause immediate symptoms or diseases but adversely influence health only after decades
of insufficiency.
Efforts are made to reduce problems with absorption of nutrients and reduce physical and mental stress to reduce utilization of essential nutrients. By age 80 a full 75% of people have severely compromised ability to absorb most nutrients. This is the only real data point we have for compromised digestive and absorptive function but we feel that by middle age the majority of people have digestive and absorptive systems so weak that eventual or even immediate disease is inevitable. Some people will notice symptoms or develop conditions or diseases easily connected to digestive dysfunction but the majority will not even notice and simply become victims of nutritional deficiency later in life.
Thankfully digestive absorptive function is easy to normalize in most people and we try to teach every patient how to restore this function so they will know what to do if they become ill in the future since it is very unlikely that standard physicians will recognize the importance of these factors.
Human beings are omnivores that inherited a system designed around the consumption of a wide variety of foodstuffs. In the past our food supply was unprocessed offering a wider variety of substances now leached and removed from our food often replaced with a wide range of synthetic chemicals designed not for health but to enhance preservation, flavor, and attractiveness. Biologic systems recognize shapes and the shapes of molecules that are in our food supply determine the messenger activity and chemical tolerance of our systems. Even using the strict definition of a “Vitamin” or hormone thousands of molecules naturally available in foods have these activities an issue mainstream medicine
has yet to even examine. The spice curry looks like the Hormone that is called Vitamin D. Resveratrol the substance in red wine that improves cellular vitality and longevity could be defined as both a Vitamin and a Hormone.
The Essential Fatty Acids, which most people know as “Fish Oil,” are the precursors to locally produced hormones known as autocoids that work to control blood pressure, blood clotting, inflammation i.e. the body tissue repair systems and the immune system in a complex, discrete internal web of action connected to virtually every organ system. They should be classified as “Vitamins” and are universally imbalanced in people consuming the average American diet. There are eight separate Vitamin E substances and six Vitamin K type molecules also essential to seamless coordinated body function. We constantly research the proper use of these critical nutrients.
The old saying “You are what you eat” still applies but it is more accurate to say “You are what you absorb minus what you use.” Remarkable knowledge about the tools we can use to optimize digestive absorptive function can be applied to improve diets and choose supplements that are outstandingly effective disease reversing strategies. The digestive tract is no simply an organ of digestion and absorption but also functions as an immune barrier and an organ of detoxification for foreign organisms and substances. The stomach and intestines stand as the most delicate and critical barrier and immune sensing organ with 2/3 or our immune system focused at this portal. Scientific understanding has expanded our ability to optimize the digestive, absorptive, immune and detoxification systems of our body.
As a highly trained Molecular Biologist and life-long student of human nutrition and biochemistry I am in a unique position to understand and apply the fantastic power of
nutritional strategies for health. I hope you will take full advantage of this knowledge.