Cellular Nutrition www.herbabodyshop.com
We have no choice but to live in our present environment. Our bodies are affronted daily by excessive production of free radicals caused by our polluted environment, stressful lifestyles, and over-medicated society. Though we can certainly reduce the amount of free radicals our bodies produce by: not smoking, decreasing stress levels, and avoiding toxic chemicals, most of our bodies are still unable to fight the overwhelming daily attack on the natural defense system. Remember balance is the key--we need enough antioxidants available to neutralize the free radicals produced.
Over the past 50 years, nutritional medicine and supplementation has focused on replenishing a nutritional deficiency. Countless hours and dollars have been spent trying to determine exactly which nutrients our bodies are depleted of. Blood tests, urine tests, hair samples, muscle testing, and more have been conducted in an attempt to determine which nutrients we need to supplement. However, we have been aiming at the wrong target. The present problem is not a nutritional deficiency, but rather, underlying oxidative stress. Oxidative stress has now been shown beyond any shadow of doubt via medical research to be the root cause of over 70 chronic degenerative diseases. Diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s dementia, macular degeneration, lupus, MS, and the list goes on and on.
Because oxidative stress is our concern rather than specific nutritional deficiencies, we must determine what is the best approach to preventing or controlling oxidative stress. This is accomplished by bolstering one’s natural defenses through cellular nutrition.
Cellular nutrition is simply providing ALL nutrients to the cell at optimal levels. This allows the cell to determine what it actually does and does not need. I don’t have to worry about determining which nutrients the cell is deficient in. I simply provide all of the important nutrients at optimal levels—those levels shown to provide a health benefit in the medical literature. Any nutritional deficiencies will be automatically corrected over the next few months by this approach and all the other vital nutrients will be brought up to their optimal levels as well.
Cellular nutrition is providing the body with all the antioxidants along with the supporting B vitamins and antioxidant minerals at optimal levels. This is "preventive medicine" at its best because we can literally attack the disease process at its core by preventing oxidative stress from occurring.
You may be wondering if we can control oxidative stress by simply improving our diet and eating more fruits and vegetables. This is definitely a good start. By simply eating 7 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day you can decrease the risk of heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s dementia, and cancer, two to three fold. We certainly want to supplement a good diet—not a bad diet. However, even if you eat a great diet you can barely obtain the RDA level of all essential nutrients. Medical studies have shown that less than 1% of the American population accomplishes this on a consistent basis.
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA):
Research studies reveal standards of recommended daily allowance (RDA’s) have absolutely nothing to do with chronic degenerative diseases. RDA’s were developed to avoid what are known as acute deficiency diseases like scurvy (deficiency of vitamin C), rickets (deficiency of vitamin D), and pellagra (deficiency of niacin). In other words, if you consumed the RDAs for vitamin C, vitamin D, and niacin, you would not develop any of these illnesses.
Admittedly, the RDA’s have done their job—how many people do you know suffer from these diseases? RDA’s first developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The list of nutrients included in the RDAs grew over the next two decades and in the early 1950s, the definition of RDAs expanded to include the amounts of nutrients needed for normal growth and development. Despite the fact that RDAs have proved useful, most physicians and laypeople tend to assign more meaning to RDA standards than they should.
After researching medical literature on the topic of oxidative stress and the amount of nutrients needed to prevent it, I found the optimal levels of nutrients known to provide health benefits are significantly greater those suggested by RDA levels. For example, the optimal level of vitamin E is 400 IU. The RDA is only 30 IU. That being the case, you may consider eating 400 IU of vitamin E. You would only need to eat 33 heads of spinach, or 27 pounds of butter; 80 avocados will do, or an alternative 5 pounds of wheat germ each and every day to obtain that level of vitamin E.
Similarly, the optimal level of vitamin C is approximately 1200 to 2000 mg daily, while the RDA is only 60 mg. To eat the optimal levels of vitamin would need to consume 18 oranges, or 17 kiwifruit, or 160 apples. Put in this perspective, it becomes clear that the only way to obtain these levels of nutrients is to supplement our diet. And this requires more than a generic multiple vitamin. One-a-day multiple vitamins are primarily based on RDA levels, thus providing no measurable health benefits. Significantly more potent supplements are needed each day to provide the optimal levels to provide cellular nutrition.
By Ray D Strand M.D.
