23
23
Nutritional Supplements: Don ' t Even Think of Getting Along Without Them!
A growing trend-and one in which I believe I have played no small part-is that more and more doctors are treating their patients( whenever possible) with vitamin and mineral supplements in lieu of pharmaceuticals. Over the last two decades, thousands of physicians and more health practitioners have learned how to practice such nutritional pharmacology.
" Complementary Medicine " combines the best of conventional and alternative medical care. Its basic tenet is that all the healing arts can and should complement one another. And its primary principle is to always select the safest therapies, which inevitably brings the nutritional approach to the forefront.
Harry Kronberg, Mary Anne Evans, Gordon Lingard and many of the other people whose case histories you ' ve read about here were my patients. In each case, I prescribed appropriate vitamins, minerals, herbs, essential fatty acids and other nutritional agents-the group I call vitanutrients.
Vitanutrients can benefit even people at the peak of health who eat an excellent diet.( Unfortunately, no matter how well we eat, our depleted soil no longer provides all the nutrients fresh produce used to yield.) I would go so far as to say that vitanutrients could extend one ' s lifespan. I ' ll cite just one example to prove my point: The antioxidant group of nutrients has consistently proven to protect the body from damage by free radicals-those destructive electrons that have been implicated in cancer and heart disease as well as in accelerating the natural aging process. Even a person who eats the best possible food is not living in a perfect environment. Moreover, air pollution, tobacco smoke and other environmental toxins assault our bodies daily. Consequently, a person can maintain good health longer by taking effective doses of such antioxidants as vitamins A, C and E, plus selenium, glutathione, CoQ10 and bioflavonoids.
However, actually ingesting adequate amounts of vitanutrients can be problematic. Scientific studies seeking the maximum effective doses of all the essential nutrients could lead you to conclude that you should take over one hundred vitamin pills a day. Clearly that is not practical, so I have devised a system of nutritional prescribing that I call targeted nutrition. This allows me to prescribe, and individuals to select, a variety of formulations that target certain conditions. For instance, if a person is subject to frequent colds and viruses, he might opt for an acute infection formula such as the one we at Atkins Nutritionals call Cold & Flu. This formula contains the antioxidant vitamins C and A, plus zinc, bioflavonoids and the B complex constituents. All are nutrients that published studies have shown to make a difference in our ability to handle such microscopic invaders. The nutritional agents are not directed against a specific disease or condition; rather, they provide support, allowing the body to defend itself to the best of its ability against disease.
189