I get asked a lot about supplements, which ones are the best, what do I take every day, and how to know which ones you need.

I was once a total supplement junkie - I had 40 bottles of different tablets and capsules on my bench top, and every morning I would take handfuls of vitamins, minerals, herbs and every new wonder nutrient that came out.  It was expensive, and to be honest, I didn’t really notice much of a difference in my health.

That was before I had learnt fully about food as medicine - I had always had a very good diet, but I still thought I needed to take supplements to acheive outstanding health.  Unfortunately, like so many others, I had bought into the marketing and the hype and not looked any deeper than that.

All that was quite a while ago, and now I rarely take supplements at all.  I am much more happy using superfoods, green smoothies, and concentrated green nutrition like chlorella, rather than taking synthetic vitamins that have been created in a laboratory and have very little lifeforce at all.

And my health is better now, than when I was taking all those pills!

There is also the other myth around supplements, and that is that you can still live a lousy lifestyle, eat garbage, never exercise and use toxic personal care and cleaning products - but if you take a multi-vitamin, then you’ve made up for all the bad stuff!

Sorry!  Not to be…  You can’t live an unhealthy lifestyle and think that you are going to find health in a bottle - it just doesn’t happen.

As a naturopath, the way I use supplements with patients is as a medicine to relieve symptoms and correct problems quickly, whilst introducing changes to diet and lifestyle.  They are for short term use only, and if the underlying causes aren’t corrected, then the supplements alone are not going to produce the desired result.

As Ann Wigmore has famously said “The sober truth is, there is no cure for anything besides the body’s inherent ability to heal itself”

And the simple tools for that are whole foods as found in nature, good quality water, exercise, sunlight, good rest and a positive outlook.  Not a bucket load of the latest and greatest supplements!

If anyone nutritionally minded has ever had an argument with someone over whether organic produce is healthier than conventional supermarket fruit and veggies - then all you need to do is stop arguing and just send them to this site: http://www.ota.com/organic/benefits/nutrition.html

The website states “Growing crops in healthy soils results in food products that offer healthy nutrients.

There is mounting evidence that organically grown fruits, vegetables and grains may offer more of some nutrients, including vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and less exposure to nitrates and pesticide residues than their counterparts grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.”

The site then goes on to summarise the results of numerous studies comparing the nutrient content of conventionally grown and organic produce. 

Needless to say there is plenty of evidence out there that will convince even the most ardent non-believer that organic IS better!

Could it happen here?

“A new law being pushed in Canada by Big Pharma seeks to outlaw up to 60 percent of natural health products currently sold in Canada, even while criminalizing parents who give herbs or supplements to their children. The law, known as C-51, was introduced by the Canadian Minister of Health on April 8th, 2008, and it proposes sweeping changes to Canada’s Food and Drugs Act that could have devastating consequences on the health products industry.

Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word “drug” with “therapeutic product” throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is “therapeutic” automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.

The Act also changes the definition of the word “sell” to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved “therapeutic substances.” Learn about more of these freedom-squashing changes to the law at the Stop51.com website: http://www.stopc51.com“ 
Original article from Natural News

Why are the governments in Western society so determined to put such heavy restrictions onto alternative medicine?  Anyone who knows anything about natural medicine understands that it is the safest form of health treatment that we have today, so any attempt to regulate it in the same way as pharmaceutical medicine is completely irrational.

If this same type of legislation gets introduced into Australia, I hope the public puts up a huge fight against it.

We don’t often hear a lot in the media about the deliberate attempts to discredit the natural medicine industry, but the anti-vitamin lobby is working hard to cause doubt in the mind of consumers.

 Whenever a study comes out that shows vitamins in a negative light - it is trumpeted across the media as a victory for the pharmaceutical industry.  What they don’t realise however is that you can’t compare the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that you find in whole foods; with the high dose synthetic versions that are found in studies.  So not only are the studies most often flawed in their design, they are not actually studying the most health giving form of the vitamin anyway.

 I don’t take much notice of these studies for many reasons, but for those of you who may be interested in reading about this subject - you can read this excellent summary of the major points here:

Alliance for Health Freedom Article