Please read this with open mind and heart.
The value of nutritional supplements in promoting and protecting human health is intensely debated. Some argue that supplements provide a convenient and effective means for supplying the optimal intakes of essential nutrients that people need for good health. Others argue that there is no conclusive evidence that supplements provide any true health benefits at all. The latter argument has been bolstered over the past several years by a steady stream of negative research reports published in leading medical journals.
In Dr. Tim Wood thesis title The Case for Nutritional Supplements, he presents the following anology:
Dentist told us to floss our teeth to prevent tooth decay and avoid the need for root canal surgery. If you were to select a group of people with advanced tooth decay, many who had chronic toothaches and divide them into two groups, telling one to floss regularly and the other to refrain from flossing,what do you think would happen? Would the flossing group experienced significantly fewer toothaches, fewer tooth extractions, and fewer root canal surgeries in short term? Probably not, the flossing come too late in the day to change the course of the existing disease.
Does this mean the flossing is useless? it depends upon our paradigm. Considered within the context of treatment or cure, flossing probably is useless; but, as preventive measure, it is very effective. So, too it is with natural health product.
The values of nutritional supplementation are more in its preventive nature than in its curative powers. For example, epidemiological research supports the belief that Vitamin E acting as an antioxidant over the long term helps prevent atherosclerosis. However, vitamin E maybe completely ineffective in preventing the onset of a heart attack or stroke brought on by the rupture of an existing atherosclerotic plaque. The findings of several clinical studies support this view. As such Vitamin E supplementation may pass muster as an effective long-term measure for the primary prevention of heart disease, yet it may fail the test using standard clinical trial parameters designed to evaluate treatment/cure (secondary prevention). This does not mean Vitamin E is useless.It means we must come to recognize that its value as an agent in preventionis fundamentally different from its value as an agent of intervention.
Consequently, as instrument of wellness, natural health products is outside the acute- care paradigm. For this reason, the efficacy of product and therapies intended for the maintenance of health must not be viewed through the clinical lens of treatment/cure. When they are evaluated within that paradigm, for short term treatment/cure benefits, they often fail. The failures are then publicly paraded by the media, cheered on by the pharmaceutical cartel- as evidence that vitamins, minerals and other natural health products have no health benefit.
CLEARLY-it is time to develop a new paradigm.
If we value our health, it only make sense to take extra step. Begin supplementing our diet with a high quality based spectrum nutritional supplement. It will help us age gracefully. It is not just there to assist us when we fall ill, it is there to keep us healthy in the first place.
0 comments:
Post a Comment