Supplement

“ On a water fast the body is much more sensitive to any substance introduced, so as a general rule it is not a good idea to take more than one half your regular dose of food supplements. Most fasters do fine without any supplements. Many people get an upset stomach from supplements on an empty stomach, and these people should not take any during a water fast unless they develop symptoms of mineral deficiencies (usually a pre-existing condition) such as leg cramps and tremors, these symptoms necessitate powdered or well-chewed-up mineral supplement. ”

“ A lot of these very same medical gerontologists nourish their own bodies as thoroughly as the laboratory animals they are studying, taking broad mixes of food supplements at doses proportional to those that extend the life spans of their research animals. This approach to using supplementation is at the other end of the scale compared to using supplements to prevent gross deficiencies. In the life extension approach, vitamins and vitamin-like substances are used as a therapy against the aging process itself. ”

“ Last, and usually least in effectiveness in my arsenal, are orthotropic substances (in the form of little pills and capsules) commonly known as vitamins or food supplements.
Interestingly, acceptance of these methods by my clients runs in exact opposition to their effectiveness. People prefer taking vitamins because they seem like the allopaths' pills, taking pills demands little or no responsibility for change. The least popular prescription I can write is a monodiet of water for several weeks or a month. Yet this is my most powerful medicine. ”

“ The best I can say about Organic food these days is that it probably is no less nutritious than chemically-grown food while at least it is free of pesticide residues.
The Poor Start
For this reason it makes sense to take vitamins and food supplements, to be discussed in the next chapter. And because our food supply, Organic or "conventional," is far from optimum, if a person wants to be and remain healthy and have a life span that approaches their genetic potential (and that potential, it seems, approaches or exceeds a century) , it is essential that empty calories are rigorously avoided. ”

“ Holistic support will not only lessen the side effects of the medical treatments but will speed up healing and often reduce the required dose of prescribed drugs. I have had several clients with cancer who chose to have surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but stayed on a raw food diet and took high doses of supplements throughout the treatment. ”

“ The same suggestions regarding dosage of supplements for a water fast are also true for a juice fast or vegetable broth fast. On a raw food cleansing diet the full dose of supplements should be taken with meals.
There exists an enormous body of data about vitamins; books and magazine articles are always touting some new product or explaining the uses of an old one. ”

“ Care should be constantly exercised to provide substantial foods of high fuel value. But the nutritive foods should be wisely supplemented by such foods as fruits, whose real value is one of indirect rather then direct service. ”

“ Many people want to know whether or not they should take their regular food supplements during a fast. On a water fast most supplements in a hard tablet form will not be broken down at all, and often can be seen floating by in the colonic viewing tube looking exactly like it did when you swallowed it. ”

“ Young healthy people from weaning through their thirties should also take nutritional supplements even though young people usually feel so good that they find it impossible to conceive that anything could harm them or that they ever could become seriously sick or actually die. ”

“ It rather looks as if the fiction were concocted as an advertisement in the days when the electuary was a proprietary medicine, if it ever was.
The earliest formula traced in the correspondence referred to was given in Gray’s Supplement, 1821. This ran:—Pulv. gum. guaiaci, ʒi; pulv. rhei, ʒij; pulv. pot. bitart., 1 oz.; flor. sulph., 2 oz.; one nutmeg, and 1 lb. of honey. Of this, the dose was two tablespoonfuls night and morning. Sometimes pulv. pot. nit. is substituted for pulv. pot. bit.; probably a mistake of a copyist. In other formulas mustard appears instead of nutmeg ”

“ These people also regained their health, but it took them a year at minimum, and once well they had to remain on a diet tailor-made to their digestive capacity for the rest of their life, usually along with food supplements. ”

“ However, when I am supporting a body with supplements and dietary reform, have put that body on a raw-food cleansing diet or even a raw food diet with nuts and grains that hardly detoxifies, and then the person has had chemotherapy and radiation, the medical doctors in attendance are inevitably amazed that the side effects are much milder than anticipated, or non-existent. ”

“ The sicker you are, the more supplements you will require; as health is regained, the dosage and variety of substances can be reduced. In chronic illness, megadoses of many nutrients are usually beneficial. Any sick adult should begin a life extension vitamin program unless they are highly allergic to so many things already that they can not tolerate many kinds of vitamins as well. In addition to the life extension program, vitamin C should be taken by the chronically ill at a dose from 10 to 25 grams daily, depending on the severity of the condition. ”

“ In fact the odds against most people receiving adequate vitamin and mineral nutrition without supplements are very poor as demonstrated by the following chart.
A genuinely healthy person almost never becomes acutely ill, and does not have any disturbing or distracting symptoms; nothing interferes with or handicaps their daily life or work. A healthy person has good energy most of the time, a positive state of mind, restful sleep, good digestion and elimination. ”

“ Concentrated substances—substances, I mean, consisting of pure nutriment, or that which is nearly so—such as oil, sugar, gum, &c.—do not afford the right kind of exercise to the stomach; for it is the appropriate work of this organ, and of the other internal organs—and not of machinery of human invention—to separate the nutritious part from that which is innutritious; and, therefore, that food affords the best sort of labor to the stomach which contains, along with a full supply of nutriment, a good deal of innutritious substance. ”

“ What are the true nutritive requirements of the body? How much food and what kinds of food does the ordinary individual doing an average amount of work need each day in order to preserve body equilibrium, and to maintain health, strength, and vigor under the varying conditions of life? What amount of nitrogen or proteid, and what the total calorific value154 required to supply the physiological needs of the body? ”

“ But there are foods which are more valuable to the body than others, in that they supply a greater number of the substances which it requires, and such are known as compound foods, while others, which supply but one element, or which are incorporated without change, may be termed simple foods. ”

“ I will not venture to assert, that there does not exist a medicine which shall supply, at least in some degree, the place of the labour or exercises, whose usefulness in consumptions has been established by the facts that have been mentioned. ”

“ We should learn to select and combine food materials in such a manner that they supply all the needs of the body in the best possible way and thus insure perfect health and strength without the use of medicines. ”

“ An eloquent speaker and an ardent but always fair fighter, he exercised a wise and salutary influence on civic polity. He successfully resisted the efforts of a powerful English syndicate to obtain control of the water supply, the adequacy and efficiency of which under municipal management were his special care. He was chairman of the joint schools committee, a member of the city improvement trust, and a fellow of the university. ”

“ To the public and to the food purveyor there is a definite problem in how to best supply the preventive and how best to concentrate and preserve the sources of this vitamine without injury to its potency. ”

“ Pathological conditions, involving an abnormal waste of tissue, require, indeed, an extra supply of nutritive aliments, and the patient may claim the right to indulge his appetite in regard to the quantity of his food, but he should earn that right by restricting himself in regard to the quality. ”

“ When a substance of a recognized quality commonly used in the preparation of a food or drug product is replaced by another substance not injurious or deleterious to health, the name of the substituted substance shall appear upon the label. ”

“ It is true that marks have been added in the edition employed here, which serve to distinguish them; but what are we to think of a standard practical author on Materia Medica, who at one time omits to designate the proper doses of his remedies, and at another to let us have any means of knowing whether a remedy has ever been tried or not, while he is recommending its employment in the most critical and threatening diseases? ”

“ The subject of nutrition was given a prominent place. The more elementary chemical substances constituting the principal natural food products were shown in glass bottles and, further, shown by charts to which the percentage number of each elementary substance was attached, with the daily amounts of each required by man. Against a wall, there were arranged the quantities of water, salts, proteids, fats and carbo-hydrates which man consumed in a year and in the form of natural foodstuffs. ”

“ This example is also given to impress upon the mind of the practitioner the great importance of proportioning nutritive elements in diet so that the patient will not be overfed on some elements while underfed on others. It is absolutely essential, in order to know what effect a substance will have in the laboratory, or in the body, to know not only of what it is composed, but with what substances and in what proportions it is combined. ”

“ Vitamins a New Factor in Nutrition.—But recent investigation has proved that something more is essential for the maintenance of growth and well-being than protein, carbohydrates, fats, and salts; that food contains a minute portion of accessory bodies, and that when they are deficient or absent from the diet the immature body does not grow, the mature body does not maintain its condition, and there are manifestations of more or less serious disease. ”

“ In a classification we do not so much consider the peculiarities of single remedies, as the points in which large numbers agree together. These points of resemblance we gene [Pg 20] rally find to be of the most importance. I have to consider three sets of authors in the second chapter. The first set treat of the general or ultimate effect of a medicine on the system; and classify medicines accordingly. A second set of writers have arranged therapeutical agents according to the organ or part of the body to which their action is especially directed. ”

“ But if the Dose were greater, the Operation will be more evident, by Sweat, Urine, Spitting, and sometimes by Stool, according as you please, by encreasing or lessening the Dose; and if the disposition of the Disease comply, it is cured by a small quantity of this Medicine, without ocular observation; but being radicated, requireth a manifest operation, if it refuse to yield to a small Dose acting invisibly; because both in preparing and using this Medicine, regard is to be had, that you neither err in excess or defect, but by observing a Medium, you shall obtain both Profit and Honour. ”

“ Consumptives are warned against the many widely advertised cures, specifics, and special methods of treating consumption. No cure can be expected from any kind of medicine or method except the regularly accepted treatment, which depends upon pure air, an out-of-door life, and nourishing food. ”

“ Such Men as are of riper years, may daily use the Dose of one, two, or three grains, and it will profit them. If not daily then may they repeat it every third or fourth day at least, and so continue untill the Disease being subdued pass away: ’Tis needless for them to use any other kind of thing, onely to observe this direction, viz. that day that they do use this Medicament, let them shun the cold Air, and abstain from Food three or four hours at least. ”

“ When any substance which does not reduce, lower, or injuriously affect its quality or strength, is added to a food or drug product, other than that necessary to its manufacture or refining, the label shall bear a statement to that effect. ”

“ We have seen that certain elements are necessary in our food for the proper replenishment of the waste that is perpetually going on, and that they must be combined in proper proportions, so that no one part of the body shall be over-nourished at the expense of the others—no organ overtaxed, but that all may be harmoniously developed. ”

“ But it is not to pure chemistry alone that we are indebted for the elegant dosing of the present day; progressive pharmacy, with its tablets, its coated pills, and its capsules, has put to shame the old-time purveyor of galenicals. ”

“ Hence our food-supplies, whether natural or prepared, offer increased variety of flavor, if not of nutritive qualities, and foods which were formerly restricted to the few are now commonly found on the tables of the many.
"Scientific research in every civilized nation has also diligently busied itself in the elucidation of the subject, and our knowledge has been increased in reference to the chemical composition, preparation, and physiological effects of food. ”

“ Chemistry, in its lighter moods, promises us, in the future, pills containing the concentrated essence of food. These cunning compounds, the product of our laboratories, would not end our longing to possess a stomach no more burdensome than our lungs and to feed even as we breathe. ”

“ It is self-evident that the smallest amount of food that will serve to keep the body in a state of high efficiency is physiologically the most economical, and hence the best adapted for the needs of the organism. ”