Thursday, April 17, 2008

Are Supplements Damaging?

There's a new "study" out about how supplements could shorten one's life span. Here is a link to one of the articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7349980.stm

Another article debunks this study claiming that the participants were probably dying from a disease anyway and they were just taking the supplements on their way out.

http://www.naturalnews.com/023034.html

My opinion? Most supplements are useless to people. Many people go out and take multivitamins and other supplements because they think they need them. A lot of it gets wasted down the toilet in expensive bright colored urine. Much of it is toxic and unrecognizable to the body, getting stored as toxins and may never leave the body if not given the chance.

"Whole Food" Supplements:

In the past 2 months, I was asked the same question about a certain supplement that claims it's made with tons of fruits and veggies, making it a sort of "whole-food" supplement. They claim that taking their supplement is the next best thing to give you a full daily serving of fruits and vegetables. The problem with some of these whole foods supps is that they are made with a ridiculous array of fruits and vegetables that no human would eat in a sitting.

It just isn't natural to be eating 17 different varieties of plant food which has been concentrated, powdered and stuffed into a single capsule. Humans naturally eat one, two or may three types of fruits and veggies together. I personally believe we were originally created in a way to enjoy them that way, not to gather fruits and vegetables in humongous bunches, perhaps even from around the world to enjoy in a single meal.

The problem with the supplement industry is that they try so hard to convince us that we need such a huge variety of nutrients, beyond the scope of what is already available to us in fresh plant foods, that we end up believing it and spending oodles of money on something totally unnecessary.

Are supplements always unnecessary? Maybe not.

Maybe if one is living in an area where fresh plant food was never available, then the purest or least processed, most raw and naturally made food supplement should be taken.

OR if a person is indeed deficient in a nutrient then supplementation could be a temporary solution until the body is clean enough to repair itself.

OR if there is a genetic condition which a supplement would help with, rather than taking risky pharmeceuticals.

No other diet or supplement will give you more useable nutrients than a fresh plant food diet!

3 comments:

Autumn said...

Yeah, I have a friend I've got to get off supplements! He's really interested in going raw though. I just lent him a good book about eatin fruit & hoping he loves the idea. Health nut that he is, he's been afraid of fruit for awhile & so I have to convert him over to the dark side...mmuuaaaahhhhh.

Sarah said...

I was telling someone the other day that I could eat 8 bananas in a sitting (long story) and that started off this long conversation about how you can overdose on potassium. LOL! :)

Great post and very true!

Anonymous said...

well put

Martin