Category: Supplements

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What can Vitamin C do for Your Nerves?

Sorbitol (a form of sugar) travels to certain parts of the body where it builds up. These parts of the body are:

– the lens of the eye where it forms a white milky film called cataracts and

– the sciatic nerve (the big nerve that runs down your leg) where it can cause nerve damage (nerve pain).

Evidence indicates that taking 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C may reduce the production of sorbitol and help strip sorbitol out of the body.

Most of the vitamin C sold in the US is ascorbic acid by itself, a whole food or food based Vitamin C is what is needed.

You can read more about Vitamin C

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Trouble Losing Weight even Though You Diet and Exercise?

Sound familiar? I hear it all the time and have worked on helping people with this problem.

Okay, there is a new educational book by Dr. Eric Berg called The Healthy Keto Plan (his earlier book Body Type Guide and  the 7 Principals of Fat Burning.) The new book has so much information that is written to be easily understood.

Find out what your body type is and what you can do to Get Healthy, Lose Weight and Feel Great.

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Why is What You Eat So Important?

So often I hear from various people that they don’t want to change their diet, they are too old to change what they eat and besides disease is really hereditary anyway

Is it?  I very often tell someone when they complain about the cost of healthy organic food, that they can spend more now or they can pay the doctor later.  Besides the pain, loss of income, and the anxiety of what might be wrong when they get ill, they miss out on all the energy they could have right now.

As an example of what a poor diet can do, may I present an article Diet of The Plague? What Went Wrong?

How does this work?

You have to understand that there are forty nutrients that cannot be made in the body. They are essential fatty acids, 15 vitamins, 14 minerals, and 10 amino acids. Collectively these forty nutrients are spoken of as the body’s requirements. From these our bodies synthesize an estimated 10,000 different compounds essential to the maintenance of health. All the forty nutrients work together. Therefore, the lack of any one might result in the underproduction of hundreds of these essential compounds. Probably no one nutrient is ever totally lacking from an otherwise adequate diet, but partial simultaneous deficiencies of many nutrients is common.

Your body needs these things every day to function. You have to start paying attention to what you eat, and make sure you take those vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids that are missing in your diet.

Rather than have to deal with sickness and heroic measures to save your life (surgery, drugs, etc.).  Isn’t it a better idea to build health?

Understanding what your body needs and providing it is your best Health Insurance.

“We need to shift our focus from treating disease to generating health…” Hippocrates (“The Father of Medicine” 460 BC – 380 BC)

What is a Healthy Diet? 

Health Benefits of Food

Articles about Health

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B Vitamin Deficiency and Neuropathy

B vitamins are the most important vitamins for nerve health. Once the nerve is damaged by the high blood sugars of diabetes, chemotheraphy, toxins, trauma, etc. etc. getting enough B vitamins is vital to building healthy nerves again.

But can a deficiency cause the condition?

Neuropathy can be a result of malnutrition caused by an unbalanced diet and by alcoholism . Alcohol does not allow the normal nutrients of the food you eat to be used.  It does not allow it to be absorbed and metabolized.  Thus, the person using alcohol winds up with malnutrition and the symptoms one normally observes as the result of heavy alcohol consumption. See Alcohol for more information.

Poor diet, vegan diet plans, gastric disorders, severely compromised immunity, etc. are just a few of the risk factors for vitamin B deficiency.

The main reason can be due to the lack of B12 in the diet. B12 deficiency can lead to a number of serious conditions and peripheral neuropathy is one of them. Usually this is more than just B12. These B vitamins work together.

Vitamin D. There is some thought that when a person has diabetes, his D levels go down and that might be a reason for the neuropathy. But that isn’t something that would on its own create the damage. It is the high blood sugars that lead to the nerve damage.

Many doctors after diagnosing someone with neuropathy will take blood tests to see if they have vitamin deficiencies. Because it is believed that neuropathy can be due to B12 deficiency, it is sort of reversed and the deficiency is then looked for.

Very often they can’t find a deficiency, however, the tests used are venous blood which is blood that is leaving the body. It doesn’t seem like a good test to determine what is in the cells. That is where it counts and where the deficiency would matter.

Healthy nerves can be determined as they do not burn, hurt or create coldness, etc. etc. If these symptoms are present the nerves are not healthy.

If the body had all the ingredients to build healthy nerves, they would by using up all the B vitamins and none would appear in the blood test.

However, often the B12 (and other vitamins) found in the blood can be due to laboratory created vitamins that the body cannot use. In fact, there are often a lot of deficiencies created by artificial vitamins found in “supplements” and processed foods. Have you ever seen “vitamin fortified” on a box? These are artificial vitamins made in the laboratory that the body does not recognize and will not use – and, in fact, it can “gum up the works”. See Natural vs Synthetic Supplements

Getting the right nutrients however will give the body what it needs to build healthy nerves again. Once the nerve is damaged it needs certain vitamins to build healthy nerves. An isolated B vitamin will not do that. It needs the various B vitamins to create health in the nerves. It is the nutritional support needed for neuropathy.z

To find out what the body needs for healthy nerves read Nerve Health

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How to Boost the Immune System when it’s Weakened by an Underlying Health Condition

It is important to support the immune system. There is plenty being said about Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc and other things (like sleep and staying away from sugar) to build a healthy immune system.

But for anyone with a degenerative condition or chronic illness, immune system support it vital. For instance, it has been found that most people with metabolic disorders and Metabolic Syndrome have a weakened immune system and this leads to more health complications.

You can get the immune system protection you need by using a potent formulation of beta-glucans

What is Beta-Glucans?

Beta-glucans is a scientifically proven biological response modifier (BRM) (BRM defined as “Substances that stimulate the body’s response to infection and disease”). These naturally help normalize this immune response.

Beta-glucans boosts the immune system in people whose body defenses have been weakened by health conditions.

Note: Beta glucans increases the immune system response. By increasing the immune system beta glucans might decrease the effectiveness of medications that decrease the immune system. Check with your doctor about any medications you are on that decrease the immune system response before taking beta-glucans.

There have been no reported side effects from taking beta-glucans by mouth.

Learn more about this with Immune Defense

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B1 Deficiency, it mimics so many diseases

I have known B1 (thiamine) to be such an important vitamin.  It is so involved with your health.

But then I found an educational video by Dr. Eric Berg, D.C. about what a deficiency of B1 will do.   It is very informative.

I think with so many people depleting B1 by using caffeine, sugar, medical drugs, processed foods etc. etc.  that this is important to know.   I can affect the conditions such as lack of tears, restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, and even memory problems.

 

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Do you want to take a Supplement that Include Herbs? – What you should know

There are a lot of remedies on the market that includes herbs. Of course, the first thing you should check is the quality of any supplement whether herb or vitamin. Cheaper brands are not necessarily going to give you quality ingredients that will give you results. Here is an article on this Buying Less Expensive Supplements – Is it Worth It?

But on the subject of herbs especially regarding neuropathy, one needs to know the following.

Herbs cannot be taken in some cases with certain medications. You need to check with your pharmacist to see if the herbs and your medications are compatible.  Pharmacists have a database that they can check.

As an example: There are no clinical trials showing that any herb can help repair the nerve damage that is neuropathy. Nor can it build healthy nerves. They do have some value in increasing blood flow, or calming the body, but not in the actual repair of the nerve which is what causes the neuropathy symptoms.

There are many products being advertised as helping neuropathy with 4 or 5 different herbs extracts in them. It is questionable whether they have been tested together, and since there are no trials regarding neuropathy, questionable as to whether they will help or not.

A number of herbs taken together often causes stomach problems, such as heart burn.  They can create more problems.

Check out all the herbs in a formula. Remember, this is not like a herb tea, made by boiling the herb leaves, or sprinkled in your salad. These are herb extracts in much more potent amounts then found in nature.

See a Pharmacists Video on How to take Supplements Safely

 

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Why is it important to read the literature that comes with Your Medication

Most people throw it away or stick it somewhere and don’t ever read it. Well, your doctor told you how to take it and the instructions on when to take it is on the bottle, so……..?

The literature that comes with each prescription is not only good to read because it gives you a better idea of what you are taking, BUT it also lists the possible side effects of what you are daily. putting into your body.

Why is it important? What if the side effect felt like something else? what if you thought it just something that happened to your all the time and you took your normal OTC medication to help it. You had a headache and so you took your pain killer. And then it got worse and you don’t know what to do. You never thought that the headache had anything to do with the drug you are taking. Did you read the possible side effects?

Okay, here is the worst case scenario that I know of. (I’m sure there are plenty more). I was working with a mother to help her teenage son to work on getting healthy. He had been put on psychiatric medications. It was hard to get off of them and the doctors were trying different medications to see if they could help him. In order to help him, the added a drug Abilify. He seemed to be okay. His mother called me often to just talk about what she could do to help him build health, like getting him off of sugar, etc. He had been on the new drug for a week or so. She started to tell me some of the things that were happening at that time and felt it was just more “mental problems”. However, I knew the possible side effects of Abilify. He had them all and from what I read this could be very dangerous. She called his doctor right away who immediately took him off of it.

Fortunately, i had read the various side effects and recognized what was actually happening to her son. If she had diligently read the literature for the side effects of the drugs he was taking, she would have recognized it earlier.

So, it is important to read the literature. And if you threw the literature away, you could always go to drugs.com.  They post the literature.