Understanding Whole Food Nutrition

Chiropractic is a unique profession with a philosophy that sets it apart from mainstream health care. The underlying principal in chiropractic is that the body is able to heal itself through an inner intelligence often referred to as the Innate. The doctor of chiropractic respects the power of the body, and works with it, to promote a state of health and wellness. Whole food nutrition, like chiropractic, is unique in the nutritional world because it relies on the innate healing power of the whole, intact food source. Thus, whole food nutrition can be an important clinical resource for chiropractors to create health in patients from the inside out.

I am interested in providing the best care for my patients, and I am obligated to address the issue of nutritional deficiencies and the effect it has on their well being. Until recently, it would not have mattered to me whether vitamins were food based or synthetic. The only thing I looked for in a supplement was how many milligrams of a given ingredient it had. I soon came to realize that in fact quantity does not equate to quality. What we should be focused on is effectiveness and potency – two things that set whole food nutrition apart.

The issue of nutrition has fascinated me and it is clear that food is medicine, and conversely, food can be poison. What we put in our mouths is as important as the thoughts we put in our heads. It is easy to show that modern food sources are deficient in life-sustaining nutrients and that if we want long-term health, we must be diligent about what we choose to put inside our bodies.

As a chiropractor I will be a healer, a communicator, and a teacher. And with the position of being called “doctor” comes a great deal of responsibility. My experience as
President of the Applied Kinesiology Club at NWHSU has helped open my eyes to the importance of being balanced – structurally, chemically, and emotionally. The triad of health is a way to understand and correct the source of the subluxation using adjustments, nutrition, and a compassionate heart. Since receiving a Standard Process® test kit, our club has been able to branch out drastically, investigating how different whole food nutritional supplements can change the energetics of the human body. All of this has served to expand my awareness of the energetic effects of the different foods and supplements we put inside our bodies.

I believe that treating the subluxation, while ignoring the underlying causes of neuro-musculo-skeletal stress is not doing enough. In the most general sense, stress causes disease - with much of that stress coming from the food we eat. Personally, I view the subluxation as multifaceted phenomenon where visceral dysfunctions, caused in part by a lack of adequate nutrition, are capable of causing subluxations that chiropractors discover in their spinal exams. Our nutritional health is directly related to our skeletal health. From that perspective it is important to aid the body's self-righting mechanisms with correct nutrition. By addressing patients nutritional needs along with their structural and emotional concerns, I firmly believe that chiropractic is more effective. I have an obligation to patients to get them well as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and whole food supplementation is part of that process.

If we accept our responsibility as doctors to “first do no harm”, then we must be certain that our nutritional therapies are supportive of health and do not cause secondary issues of their own. Nutrition is a very popular topic today and there is no shortage of products on the market. On some level most people accept that adding nutritional supplementation to their diet may benefit them. The real question is which supplement and in what form should it be taken. It comes as a surprise to many that not all vitamins are created equal.

The difference between synthetic and whole food supplements could be likened to the differences between symptom-based and wellness-based healthcare. Both approaches to healthcare are interested in getting the patient well. However, just as symptom-based approaches will miss the underlying causes of disease, synthetic vitamins will provide a narrow-range of nutrition that may be lacking in other critical factors necessary for health. This happens because every synthetic vitamin must first be extracted or created chemically, and in doing so it enters body without natural co-factors and usually in high doses.

Whole food nutrition is important because the human body is designed to get all its necessary nutrition from the diet – i.e. food and drink. Everything that cannot be created internally must be accounted for in the diet. The benefit of whole food nutrition is that only the water and fiber has been removed, leaving intact the other known and unknown life-sustaining nutrients,. This means that the original energy of the food is preserved, along with low doses of specific vitamins. The idea is that it is easier for the body to optimize nutrition if it is given in a natural food-based form. Providing the body with a vitamin complex, with original food source still intact, yields a potent supplement that heals both nutritionally and energetically.

Another reason whole food supplementation is important is that science has not identified every part of the food that is beneficial. So by providing only select nutrients and discarding the rest of the food source, synthetic supplementation may create deficiencies as the body attempts to metabolize high doses without accompanying food factors. This concept is important to me as it would be difficult to explain to a patient that the vitamins I suggested had actually created a new problem of their own. I also believe that because of the fact that science hasn't uncovered every necessary co-factor for a given vitamin, that it is more conservative to provide said vitamin intact with the food source. Being conservative with my chiropractic treatment is essential for patient health, and it is the same for my nutritional therapies

Given that whole food nutrition addresses patients needs holistically, with food sources intact, it is a perfect tool for chiropractors. I will use whole food nutrition in order to help my patients heal their visceral dysfunction while I work diligently on their structural concerns. I will use Applied Kinesiology techniques, lab testing, symptom surveys, and patient histories to guide my nutritional therapies. Most importantly, I will use my knowledge of why whole food supplements are effective to give me the confidence that my patient's are getting the best nutrition available.

No Cause for Alarm

pan·dem·ic (pn-dmk)

adj.

1. Widespread; general.

2. Medicine Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population: pandemic influenza.

n.

A pandemic disease.

from TheFreeDictionary.com

Main Entry:

¹pan·dem·ic

Pronunciation:

\pan-ˈde-mik\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Late Latin pandemus, from Greek pandēmos of all the people, from pan- + dēmos people — more at demagogue

Date:

1666

: occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population <pandemic malaria>

from Merrian-Webster.com



H1N1 Flu is now considered to be a pandemic. We can all rest assured, however, that the powers that be are "on top" of the situation. The CDC, the government-sponsored disease authority, has posted the total infected and the total deaths so far in all of the United States (all 50 states plus territories) due to the H1N1 virus. At this moment there have a grand total of.....303 deaths in the USA. Hmm...303 deaths total since this whole scare began back around mid-April during Obama's trip to Mexico. Thats roughly about 3 people per day since the outbreak in the USA. 303 people have died out of a population of over 300,000,000! This breaks down to about 0.0001% of the population of the United State that has died from H1N1 flu virus. Does this data support the use of the word Pandemic (see definitions above)?

Compare that number against the "normal" flu. According to the CDC each year in the United States over 36,000 people die from the "regular" flu. That works out to around 0.12% of the entire population that dies from the flu each year. If we multiply the 3-month outbreak of H1N1 by 4 we would then have 0.0004% of the population (assuming similar death rates for the year). Looking at H1N1 against the "old, not-headline-worthy" flu, we can see that the "boring, business-as-usual" flu that has been with us forever is actually 300x more deadly than H1N1. Does this data support the use of the word Pandemic (see definitions above)?

Suffice it to say that the results as of July 24th, 2009, just don't seem to justify the alarm. Some have suggested that by increasing the amount of panic and fear in the general population that we are being distracted from other things - wars, unemployment, destruction of the middle class, the rise of facism, etc. Clearly there are many things we would be better served to pay attention to than the hysterical propaganda coming out of the government-sponsored disease center.

The Associated Press recently broke a story regarding the H1N1 flu, vaccines, and immunity. Except that upon reading the article one quickly realizes that immunity is not being offered for sick and suffering Americans. No, legal immunity is being given to makers of H1N1 vaccines. It must be nice to offer a product for sale, have the government demand that everyone has to purchase it, then to be granted immunity from damages should the product forced down everyones throat actually turn out to be harmful.

Remember that in the 1970's there was a swine flu outbreak. And over 300 deaths occurred - from the vaccines themselves. History doesn't always repeat, but it usually rhymes. Things are coming to a head, a sort of crisis on many levels - economic, ecological, and spiritual. Staying healthy is the best defense against whatever "bug" is out there.

Click here to learn about a petition against mandatory vaccination. Mandatory vaccination by the federal government would be taking another gigantic step down the road towards a fascist dictatorship. When we are no longer free to say no to being injected with dangerous, experimental vaccines.....what are we then?

Yours in Health,

Andrew

Toxic Town

We credit the alchemists for coining the phrase "as above, so below". This simple yet powerful statement reveals that the there are universal laws and truths operating at all levels of reality. The planets in our solar system rotate around the sun just like atoms whirl around the nucleus of an atom. There are solar winds traveling through space just like there are jet streams in our atmosphere and ocean currents in our seas. Nations organize human beings into systems just like living things organize cells into organs. What the alchemists were alluding to is the fact that similar phenomenon exist at all levels, micro and macro.

Consider then the community of cells we call the human body. Our cells respond to toxic food, excessive stress, and emotional suffering just like human beings respond to fear, violence, and poison. Lets consider what would happen to normal, healthy individuals in the following scenario:

Imagine a dense urban environment, called "Toxic Town", where we remove all the nutrition from the food supply and replace it with processed sugar only; place drugs into the drinking water; pollute the air; tear down the lines of communication to the rest of the world; and finally wall off that part of the city. What do you think the health of those citizens would be like in a few days? A few weeks? A few months?

We took normal, healthy people and changed their environment. In this walled-off part of the city people suffered greatly from dis-ease as they were unable to escape the health negative effects of their environment. Anyone subjected to the above reality would likely experience degeneration and dis-ease. Without the ingredients for health available in the immediate environment, and without the ability to flee, is there any doubt as to the fate of these imaginary people?

Keeping with this train of thought, how might today's medical authorities deal with this situation? If we follow the orthodox medicine point of view then our remedy would be to send in ANTI-BIOTIC foot soldiers to "wipe the floor" with these sick people. Or perhaps a SURGICAL air strike would effectively wipe this dis-eased Toxic Town right off the map. When we consider that cells are like people, orthodox medicine becomes violent very quickly. And how are we going to heal each other, if we practice violence against ourselves?

The citizens of Toxic Town didn't do anything wrong and obviously don't deserve to get obliterated by medical intervention. They became victim to their environment - an environment that made it impossible to experience health. In our own bodies it is not the fault of our cells that they become diseased, anymore than it is the fault of the people in Toxic Town. And like the people stuck in this toxic part of town, our cells cannot up and move to a cleaner part of our body.

We should consider then how vitally important is the environment. Whether we are an individual human being or an individual cell, our health and our fate is fully dependent upon the support of the immediate environment. Mother nature has made it simple for us to keep our cell environment healthy. All that is required of the average person is to avoid things which are made by people in labs and factories and to eat fruits, veggies, and meats growth in an organic and sustainable manner. By selecting foods rich in vitamins and minerals we will be assuring that our cells are awash in the biochemicals they depend on to function at their best.

We have all heard that the body is our temple. That means that if we respect, cherish, and love life that we will keep that temple clean and healthy. No one benefits from living in a Toxic Town. And no cells can thrive living in a toxic body. We can change cars when we wear them out. We can move into a new house if we wreak the one we have. We have but a single body and it needs our love, respect, and attention.