Are you taking supplements?
Wednesday, September 16th 2009 @ 12:15 PM 
(2 ratings)
I wasn't brought up taking supplements and was very resistant to taking anything more than vitamin C.
I believed that nature provided everything we needed and even though we weren't eating from our own garden we were ordering organics as much as possible and trying to do the right thing most of the time.
Now I seem to be hearing more and more how our soils are mineral deficient and we need to be supplementing our diets with the necessary components of nutrients to reach optimal health.
I heard the other day that you now have to eat 6 carrots to get the same amount of nutrients as a single carrot from 50 years ago.
I wonder what a carrot from 50 years ago looks like?
I wouldn't say that I was always healthy when I was younger, I think I was "hardy" and able to persist through a lot.
Until I was 28 I'd filled my body with as much rubbish as I could and it wasn't until I'd read 'Fit for Life' and started following the principles of eating mostly fruit and veggies that I really reached a new level of health and fitness.
About three and a half years ago my son gave me Chicken Pox (we share everything in our family) and it was bad, really bad. Honestly, you don't want to see the pictures...
Afterward, for the next few years my immune system was way down, I constantly seemed to have colds and would get the flu only to flush it out with Himalayan Salt baths.
At the beginning of this year I started getting ill and I knew that my body was craving something. We'd been given a couple of bottles of Body Balance the previous year and my body responded well to it, so I had it in my head that this was what I was craving and I had to get some.
At the time I placed my order I felt awful; really low energy, runny nose, coughing, I could feel myself declining and by the time I received my order I just wanted to neck down a whole bottle.
I resisted chugging it down and measured out myself 40mls at a time, for 4 times on that first day or so.
Within 36 hours I was back to 'normal' again and I haven't looked back!
We put our children on it and my son who is susceptible to colds which deteriorate quickly into Asthma, for the first time went through a whole winter with nothing more than a cold.
If his nose started running we simply poured another 20-30mls of Body Balance down his throat and away he went again.
The kids love it actually.
As a testament to keeping them healthy on it they only missed one day of school this whole winter!
We'd just run out over the weekend and were waiting for our next order to come, once we received our order on the Monday and started giving it to them again, their energy picked up and were well enough to go back to school next day.
Plus, for the first time since having children I went through a whole winter without any illness.
I don't see taking Body Balance as a quick fix, with patience, nature can do what it's supposed to do and create miracles.
In Optimum Sports Nutrition, Dr. Michael Colgan explains why patience is the key:
"A principle of nutrition you need to know is physiological dynamics. Unlike drugs, nutrients do not have rapid effects. No quick fix. The business of nutrition is to build a better body. That has to wait on Nature to turn over body cells. A blood cell lasts 60-120 days. In 3-4 months your whole blood supply is completely replaced. In 6 months almost all the proteins in your body die and are replaced, even the DNA of your genes. In a year all your bones and even the enamel of your teeth is replaced, constructed entirely out of the nutrients you eat."
This time course is well illustrated by the course of deficiency diseases. If I remove all the vitamin C from your diet within 4 weeks blood vitamin C will drop to zero. But, you will see no symptoms of disease at 4 weeks. You will have to wait until enough of the healthy cells have been replaced with unhealthy cells. It is another 12 weeks before the symptoms of scurvy start to ravage your body.
So when you implement an optimum nutrition program, don't expect to see rapid results. In one of our studies at the Colgan Institute, runners were supplemented to try to improve their haemoglobin, hematrocit, and red blood cell count. After one month of supplementation, there was no improvement at all. After 6 months, however, all three indices were significantly increased."
A simple example: If you take a neglected houseplant and start feeding and watering it, the leaves may perk up a bit from the improved nutrition. But you have to wait for the old leaves to die off and new leaves to grow before you get a really healthy plant.
It is the same with a human body.
When you start feeding it better, you have to wait on physiological dynamics of the body to grow new, improved cells in the improved medium. After 18 years in sports nutrition, the shortest program we will give any athlete is six months".
So, depending upon your diet, lifestyle, drug usage, stress, fitness level, genetics, toxins, etc that affect your biochemistry, some people will respond more rapidly than others to improved nutrition.
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
Body Balance is a made up of a mixture of sea vegetables and Aloe Vera that comes in liquid form.
It's available from Lifeforce International and is by referral only.
I've got 8 bottles to give away (you pay freight only) to anyone in the USA, Canada, Australia and of course New Zealand, so go to my website at; http://www.mylifeforce.net/stephengrantjones and click on the link near the bottom if you'd like to try it for yourself.
Here's to good health! [clink]
Love and blessings
Stephen
