Dan said,
>I do have some philosophical problem with unending
supplementation especially such as the very large
vitamin C intake of the Rath/Pauling protocol
I tend
toward preferring dietary changes as opposed to taking
refined supplements ("Let your food be your
medicine"...etc).<This would a reasonable eating philosophy if it were possible to obtain the nutrients we needed from any food grown today. But the level of soil demineralization in North America is far more serious than most people suppose. U.S. Senate Report #264 declares the mineral-poor soil condition in North America to have reached a serious, even disastrous level. This is even more significant when you consider that this report was published in 1936! If you buy a nice, green head of broccoli from your local grocer, it will have six, maybe eight minerals in it. But your body needs at least 65 major and trace minerals (Dr. Carey Reams said we need 100+). So, by merely eating "good" foods (as they are commercially grown today), you not only cannot replace the minerals your body is lacking, you cannot even maintain pre-existing good health, even if you already had it. To give you an idea of the extent of the deficiency of minerals in modern farming soils, let me demonstrate: I once read a book about the importance of minerals in our diet. (The Healing Power of Minerals, Special Nutrients and Trace Minerals by Paul Bergner) On page 47 was a chart showing the mineral content of apples in 1914 and apples in 1992 (when this book was written). You would have had to have eaten 26 1992 apples to equal the mineral content of one 1914 apple. We are talking about todays food containing less than 4% of the minerals our food contained not even 100 years ago. When I was in training with Reams son in 1984, the question of Good Food arose. Another student asked about the advantages of buying organic vegetables, or growing your own. Reams described a world-wide phenomenon. He said, if a man had a big organic farm, and next to him was another man with a regular commercial farm, the commercial farmland would leach the minerals from the organic farmland (Nature abhors a vacuum). He said that the large expanses of commercial farms throughout North America (where the farmers deplete the minerals in the soil but replace very few) was draining the minerals from the rest of the North American continent. The soil that you might be growing your organic garden in, even though hundreds of miles away from a commercial farm, no longer contains the minerals it did 100 years ago. Obviously, it is still better to eat foods grown in soils into which you or an organic farmer has attempted to replace the minerals (composting, animal manure, kelp, etc.), but the reality is that most of us do not have access to an Only-organic diet. Plus, nowadays, Organic merely means No Bug Spray. It doesnt guarantee adequate mineral replacement. So nutrient supplementation is essential, and when you consider that we are trying to offset a lifetime (so far) of eating foods with 4% of the nutrients we need, the level of supplementation we actually need is significant. To make matters worse, we dont just eat low-nutrient foods, we eat negative-nutrient foods (processed foods). When you eat a food that has had the nutrients deliberately removed (white flour, white sugar, white rice, etc.) in order to extend its shelf-life, your body must come up with the nutrients that are missing from that food. The biggest problem with processed foods is not that they have little/no nutrients, but that they cause your body to steal minerals from itself to make up for whats been removed from the processed food. In effect, your body digests itself. A lifetime of eating processed foods (as most of us have done) causes a nutrient deficiency hole that is very deep and cannot be refilled by simply eating Good Food, organic or not. Some of you may remember Jack La Lane, the famous health guru. When he was 60 years old, Jack swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf (which was supposed to be impossible). He was handcuffed and his ankles were shackled and he was towing a 1,000-pound boat. He consumed a daily diet that included his own specially designed blender mix, including 100+ supplement tablets - desiccated liver, green powder, yeast, etc. He didnt believe in swallowing tablets, said they wouldnt dissolve (true). So he ground them up in his blender. Said it was the most horrible tasting drink he loved to drink. He is almost 93 today, and still works out 2 hours each day. His philosophy was to inundate his body with nutrients and his body would take what it needed and discard the rest. Considering that as a young man, he was a sugar/junk food addict, he seems to me to exemplify what makes a body healthy. But still, 10,000 mg/day of Vit C? (Dr. Linus Paulings recommended dose.) As a lifestyle? You dont find such a Vit C intake level anywhere in nature. But you dont find the state of health that is now average in our society in nature, either. Jack La Lane demonstrated (IMO) that it takes a nearly fanatical nutrient intake to equal what was once found in food as it grew in nature. Weve been conditioned by the One-a-Day mentality. Wed all like to find that one Super Supplement that meets all our bodys needs. But it doesnt exist. Nor is a Balanced Diet, as it is usually defined, enough. Yes, we should eat fresh fruits and vegetables; yes, we should eat organic; yes, we should drink plenty of pure water, but that will not be enough. We must acquire extra nutrients from concentrated foods (nutritional yeast, wheat germ, blackstrap molasses, green powders, etc.) and we will certainly not be hurt from taking added supplements in addition to that. 10,000 mg/day of Vit C? As a therapeutic dosage to combat cancer, etc., sure. As a lifestyle? I guess I am still not sure, but I am still taking a substantial level to stay on the safe side. Terry Chamberlin __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
