Vitamins and Other Food Supplements : Part 1

How and When To Be Your Own Doctor
by Dr. Isabelle A. Mose, Steve Solomon

(Page 7 of 14)

From The Hygienic Dictionary

Vitamins. The staple foods may not contain the same nutritive substances as in former times. . . . Chemical fertilizers, by increasing the abundance of the crops without replacing all the exhausted elements of the soil, may have indirectly contributed to change the nutritive value of cereal grains and of vegetables. . . . Hygienists have not paid sufficient attention to the genesis of diseases. Their studies of conditions of life and diet, and of their effects on the physiological and mental state of modern man are superficial, incomplete, and of too short duration. They have, thus, contributed to the weakening of our body and our soul. Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown.

I have already explained the hygienist's view of why people get sick. The sequence of causation goes: enervation, toxemia, alternative elimination, disease. However, there is one more link in this chain, a precursor to enervation that, for good and understandable reasons, seemed unknown to the earlier hygienists. That precursor is long term sub-clinical malnutrition. Lack of nutrition effects virtually everybody today. Almost all of us are overfed but undernourished.

I have already explained that one particular head of broccoli does not necessarily equal another head of broccoli; the nutritional composition of apparently identical foods can be highly variable. Not only do different samples of the same type of food differ wildly in protein content, amino acid ratios and mineral content, their vitamin and vitamin-like substances also vary according to soil fertility and the variety grown.

These days, food crop varieties are bred for yield and other commercial considerations, such as shipability, storage life, and ease of processing. In pre-industrial times when each family propagated its own unique open-pollinated varieties, a natural selection process for healthy outcomes prevailed. If the family's particular, unique varieties carried genes for highly nutritious food, and if the family's land was fertile enough to allow those genes to manifest, and if the family kept up its land's fertility by wise management, their children tended to survive the gauntlet of childhood illness and lived to propagate the family's varieties and continue the family name. Thus, over time, human food cultivars were selected for their nutritional content.

But not any longer! These days, farming technology with its focus on bulk yield and profit, degrades the nutritional content of our entire food supply. Even commercial organically grown food is no better in this respect.

Sub-clinical, life-long, vitamin and mineral deficiencies contribute to the onset of disease; the malnourished body becomes increasingly enervated, beginning the process of disease. Vitamin supplements can increase the body's vital force, reversing to a degree the natural tendency towards degeneration. In fact, some medical gerontologists theorize that by using vitamins it might be possible to restore human life span to its genetically programmed 115 years without doing anything else about increasing nutrition from our degraded foods or paying much attention to dietary indiscretions. Knowing what I do about toxemia's effects I doubt vitamins can allow us to totally ignore what we eat, though supplements can certainly help.

More than degraded nutritional content of food prompts a thinking person to use food supplements. Our bodies and spirits are constantly assaulted and insulted by modern life in ways our genetics never intended us to deal with. Today the entire environment is mildly toxic. Air is polluted; water is polluted; our food supply contains traces of highly poisonous artificial molecules that our bodies have no natural ability to process and eliminate. Our cities and work places are full of loud, shocking noises that trigger frequent adrenaline rushes and other stress adaptations. Our work places are full of psychological stresses that humans never had to deal with before.

Historically, humans who were not enslaved have been in control of determining their own hour to hour, day to day activities, living on their own largely self-sufficient farms. The idea of working for another, at regular hours, without personal liberty, ignoring or suppressing one's own agenda and inclinations over an entire lifetime is quite new and not at all healthy. It takes continual subconscious applications of mental and psychic energies to protect ourselves against the stresses of modern life, energies that we don't know we're expending. This is also highly enervating. Thus to remain healthy we may need nutrition at levels far higher than might be possible through eating food; even ideal food might not contain enough vitamins to sustain us against the strains and stresses of this century.

And think about Dr. Pottenger's cats. Our bodies are at the poorer end of a century-long process of mass degeneration that started with white flour from the roller mill. Compared to my older clients I have noticed that my younger patients seem to possess less vital force on the average, show evidence of poorer skeletal development, have poorer teeth, less energy, have far more difficulty breeding and coping with their family life, and are far more likely to develop degenerative conditions early. Most of my younger patients had a poor start because they were raised on highly refined, devitalized, deficient foods, and grew up without much exercise. Their parents had somewhat better food. Some of their grandparents may have even grown up on raw milk and a vegetable garden, and actually had to walk, not owning cars when they were young. Their great grandparents had a high likelihood of enjoying decent nutrition and a healthful life-style.

Unfortunately, most of my patients like the idea of taking vitamins too much for their own good. The AMA medical model has conditioned people to swallow something for every little discomfort, and taking a pill is also by far the easiest thing to do because a pill requires no life-style changes, nor self-discipline, nor personal responsibility. But vitamins are much more frugal than drugs. Compared to prescriptions, even the most exotic life extension supplements are much less expensive. I am saddened when my clients tell me they can't afford supplements. When their MD prescribes a medicine that costs many times more they never have trouble finding the money.