Confessions of a Supplement Junkie

Yes, I admit it.  I'm a supplement junkie.  But I could think of worse things to be maniacal about.

I  sometimes get asked what supplements I take personally.  I often wonder if people ask me these questions to see if I really believe in all this stuff I market.  Well, the truth is that I believe in it so much that I spend a ridiculous amount of money per month on supplements for me and my family.

And here's why.

I eat at least one meal in a restaurant nearly every day of my life because of my travels.  I realize that restaurant food is not the best in the world, although I do always make good choices and never eat in fast food restaurants, unless you factor in places like Chipotle and such.  But "food" from McDonalds and Burger King never touches my lips.  When I eat at home, we make very good choices, but it's not always organic, and I do get concerned about the pesticides and other chemicals on my food and how much nutrition is lacking in commercial produce.

I also don't exercise as much as I should, although exercise was once a big part of my life.  But being a father, and now a grandfather, a busy businessman, an author, and a pastor have gotten in the way of exercising as much as I would like.

So since I often have to compromise in the areas of diet and exercise, supplements is something where I don't have to cut corners.  Yes, I do have to make a financial sacrifice to supplement like I do, but I feel like my health and the health of my loved ones is worth it.

What I Take and Why

My day usually begins around 6:30 am when I get up to read, pray, and meditate before I start the business part of my day.  I fire up my Bullit blender and throw in a raw egg, a little almond milk, water and ice, and then pack in a scoop of Ultra Clear Plus (medical food for detoxification), a scoop of Meta Fiber, a half teaspoon of spirulina, and a half scoop of Perfect Protein.  Believe it or not, it doesn't taste too bad, although the spirulina powder turns the drink green.

But it doesn't stop there.

Then I open up the cupboard to start  popping open bottles, as follows:

• Ultra Potent C powder - half teaspoon
• Celapro (phytochemical blend) 
• Concentrated Ultra Prostagen (Prostate support; yes, I'm at that age.)
• D3 5000
• Adreset (Adrenal and HPA support for my morning giddyup!)
• OsteoVantiv (Joint support. Stop laughing at my age, I'm a former athlete.  I ache sometimes!)
• CoQ10 ST 100 (more energy, cardio, and antioxidant support)
• Ultra Flora Spectrum (multi-strain probiotic)

That's just my Phase 1 supplement regime.  After a couple of hours I'm ready for a full breakfast before I leave the house, and Phase 2 kicks in.  With breakfast I take...

• PhytoMulti (micronutrient and phytochemical blend)
• EPA DHA 720 (fish oil)
• Spectrazyme Complete (plant-based enzymes)

In the evening I repeat Phase 2 at dinner and may add a Cal Apatite w/ Magnesium sometimes to make up for the mineral loss when I drink coffee.  But since I don't drink that much coffee, Cal Apatite is not a daily thing.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not overdoing it, and I suppose you could make that case.  But then I have to look at my health at almost 51 years of age, and I have believe I'm doing something right.  In spite of not eating a "pure" diet by some people's standards, and in spite of not getting the exercise I would like, and in spite of a workload and stress level that I wish were a little lighter, I'm still very fit, I'm almost never sick, I'm energetic, and I'm somehow able to manage a crazy schedule without imploding.  And when the younger family members or friends come come calling wanting to play some basketball or frisbee or touch football, I can keep up with them!

I have attended the funerals of school mates -- people my age -- who have died of cancer.  I have visited hospital rooms where people my age went down with heart attacks and nearly died.  I have counseled with people with all kinds of health problems that really come down to nutrition -- what they put in their bodies and what they DON'T put in their bodies.  It saddens me to see people suffer so needlessly when they could change a few things about their lifestyles and completely turn around their health.  I realize that lifestyle is not the only reason people sometimes get sick, but lifestyle is a BIG part of the picture.  In fact, a Surgeon General Report back in the 90s stated that 7 out of 10 leading causes of death in America are preventable because they are diet and lifestyle related.  SEVEN OUT OF TEN!

So when I see all the suffering around me, I do believe that my maniacal supplement regime is worth it.  If I lived 100 years ago when the environment was much cleaner, the stress levels were not as high, and the food was pure and nutritionally sound, then I probably wouldn't need to supplement at all.  But that's not the world we live in now.  When you consider that over 6 BILLION pounds of chemical toxins are released out into our environment every year, on top of the immense amount of stress our culture piles upon us, and add the horribly flawed food we are forced to ingest, then we have a health picture that is very different that in times past.  Yes, I believe that supplementation can make up for some of that.

Now if only there was a supplement for hair loss that really worked, I would be set!  ;-)


  

China Adopts Western Diet; Birth Defects and Cancer on the Rise

According to state-run media reports in China, rates of breast cancer and birth defects are on the rise there, largely due to the increasing adoption of a Western-style diet and a boom in coal mining, respectively.

Citing an article in the "China Daily," rates of breast cancer in Shanghai have increased by 31 percent in the last 10 years, to a current rate of 55 per 100,000 women. Rates in Beijing have increased by 23 percent over the same period, up to 45 per 100,000.

Concurrently, the number of obese Chinese has reached 60 million. While that is less than five percent of the population (compared with 30 percent in the United States), it is nevertheless equivalent to the entire population of France.

"Unhealthy lifestyles are mostly to blame for the growing numbers," explained Qiao Youlin of the Cancer Institute and Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Among the lifestyle factors that Qiao cited are poor diets, increasing pollution, and stress. The Chinese diet has changed dramatically in the past few years, as people have increasingly adopted the high-fat, high-junk food diet common in the West and begun rejecting the traditional high-nutrient diet rich in vegetables, grains and soy.

At the same time, China's rapid industrialization has led to a new threat of environmental pollution. Birth defects in coal mining areas of the country have also skyrocketed in recent years, according to a report by the Xinhua News Agency. The rate of birth defects in China increased by almost 50 percent between 2001 and 2006, up to 145.5 defects per 10,000 births, or nearly 1.5 percent. But according to Xinhua, the rate is substantially higher in the coal mining regions of Shanxi province.

The most common varieties of cancer in China are breast and cervical cancer.

The message to Americans is clear: our diets, our stress, and our environment are killing us. While we may not be able to do much about work or family stress or our environment, we can at least begin eating more whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and less of the calorie-rich, nutrient-depleted, highly processed junk foods. Additionally, since Westernized farming methods are partly responsible for a toxic environment, and since the same methods result in crops that are nutrient deficient, it is imperative that we supplement the diet with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that make up for what is lacking in our diets.

An article published in the November 1995 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled, How Phytochemicals Help Fight Disease, stated, “Detailed studies at the biochemical and even molecular level are providing new information about the role phytochemicals, the active compounds in dietary fruits and vegetables, play in preventing, and sometimes treating malignant disease.” The article went on to quote Dr. Pamela Crowell of Indiana University’s School of Medicine, who said, “It would be impossible to achieve therapeutic levels [of phytonutrients] by altering the diet alone. For example, limonene is present only in orange peel, not in the rest of the fruit or juice. We worked out how many oranges you would have to eat [daily] in order to get the needed therapeutic levels of limonene. The answer came out to be about 400.”

The conclusion? Eat right, yes. But supplement the diet with phytochemicals as added protection.

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