Nutrition
Nutrition and health cannot be separated. Our modern food supply is plentiful, but it is also depleted of many of the nutrients that we need to be healthy. Having an excellent diet of a variety of plant materials and quality protein sources is ideal. But even then, many of our farming practices have left the soil depleted. The nutrient content of many fruits and vegetables is only a fraction of what it was 50 or more years ago.
It's becoming apparent that many common diseases are really nutritional problems. Even things we don't think of as being “nutritional problems” may very well be. For example, not long ago the Discovery Channel hosted a program called ‘The Truth about Food.’ One segment showed a test on a woman that submitted to a small intentional, but controlled UV burn on her skin to establish a baseline. Then she at 4 tablespoons of tomato paste every day for 3 months. Then they repeated the same dosage of UV that caused her skin to burn 3 months earlier. The result: the second exposure caused 30 percent less UV damage to her skin. It's thought that the lycopene in the tomatoes increases resistance to UV radiation. It may very well be that the epidemic of skin cancer we see is really not the result of UV exposure as much as it is nutritional deficiency.
There is no doubt that many common health problems are nutritionally based. In spite of all the interest in the genetic role in disease most of our common problems are quite preventable through our own diet. When it comes to clinical technical expertise, chiropractors receive 4 years of clinical nutrition training. It may come as a shock, but most medical doctors receive no formal nutritional training at all. It's estimated that as few as 5% of medical doctors have received any formal nutrition education. It makes far more sense to trust your chiropractor for nutritional guidance.
Vitamins vs. Whole Food Supplements - What's the Difference?
More to come...
