I have been involved in a private family practice for over 30 years. For over 23 years, I did everything possible to keep my patients from taking nutritional supplements. After all, this is how I was trained at the University of Colorado Medical School. Even though I really did not receive much, if any, training in nutrition during my medical school years, I certainly remember my professors telling us that supplements only created expensive urine. They insisted that patients only needed to eat a healthy diet to receive nutrients necessary for optimal health.
During the past 12 years, I have researched the medical literature and the scientific studies to learn if there are really any health benefits for my patients who take high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements. This was certainly not something I heard from the pharmaceutical reps who were always invading my office. This is something I had to research on my own. I will be presenting the medical evidence that demands a verdict—should you be taking nutritional supplements? These “Health Nuggets” will allow you an easy, convenient way to learn how to become proactive in protecting your health or even possibly regaining your health.
The Enemy — Free Radicals 15 May 2008
In the process of creating energy within the furnace or fireplace of a cell, occasionally a charged oxygen molecule is created called a free radical. A free radical is an oxygen molecule that has at least one unpaired electron in its outer orbit. This literally gives the molecule an electrical charge, which creates very rapid movement as it tries to find an electron from the tissue around it. If it is not readily neutralized by an antioxidant, it can go on to damage the cell wall, vessel wall, proteins, fats, and even the DNA nucleus of the cell.
The medical and scientific literature has shown us beyond a shadow of a doubt that the root cause of over 70 chronic degenerative diseases is the result of oxidative stress from excessive free radicals. These are diseases like heart disease, diabetes, strokes, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration, and the list goes on and on. These diseases concern us, and we would certainly like to avoid them. You will learn in future emails why taking nutritional supplements gives you the best opportunity to prevent or delay these diseases.
The Number of Free Radicals You Produce is NOT Steady 18 May 2008
There are a certain number of free radicals produced when you simply metabolize your food. However, there are many things that increase the number of free radicals you produce:
· Excessive Stress
· Excessive Exercise
· Pollutants in our air, food, and water
· Sunlight
· Radiation
· Medication
· Cigarette smoke
Because of our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment, and over- medicated societies, this generation must contend with more free radicals than any previous generation. This leads to a problem known as oxidative stress, which will be the topic next.
Where Do We Get Our Antioxidants? 25 May 2008
Our body has the ability to make some of its own antioxidants. We are also able to get additional antioxidants from the foods we eat, especially from our fruits and vegetables. This is why you will usually see the recommendation of consuming 6 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day. However, today we are now able to get optimal levels of antioxidants by supplementing a healthy diet. Remember it is all about balance. To avoid oxidative stress, you want enough antioxidants to handle the free radicals produced.
There is solid evidence that our food supply is depleted in nutrients. Because of our depleted soils, green harvesting, cold storage, processing, and food preparation methods, our foods have a significant decrease in nutritional value. This is certainly true of the micronutrients, especially the antioxidants. The decreased nutritional value of food is definitely a good reason to supplement your diet; however, our next email will explain what I believe is the main reason we need to supplement our diets.
The Medical Evidence that Demands a Verdict – Should You be taking Nutritional Supplements? 29 May 2008
You will hear the argument that we need to supplement our diet because of the depleted nutrients in our food today. This is true; however, it is not the main reason to supplement your diet. The main reason is because of the tremendous number of free radicals we produce. Our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment, and over-medicated society causes this generation to handle more free radicals than any previous generation. Remember, it is about balance. You need enough antioxidants available to manage the number of free radicals you produce.
The medical literature now shows us that the optimal level of the antioxidants and their supporting nutrients needed to prevent or decrease the risk of chronic degenerative diseases is much greater than the amount we can obtain from our depleted food supply. Our best option to prevent or slow down this process of oxidative stress is to take high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements the rest of our lives.
A Great Illustration 1 June 2008
When you look at a wonderful wood fireplace it usually burns just fine. However, occasionally a spark or hot cinder shoots and burns a little hole in your carpet. Over the months and years, you will have a damaged carpet in front of your fireplace. Look at the fireplace as the furnace of your cell and the hot cinders as free radicals. Your carpet is your body. Whatever part of your body wears out first is the type of disease you will develop. If it is your brain, you could get Alzheimer’s dementia or Parkinson’s disease. If it is your eyes, you could develop a cataract or macular degeneration. If it is your arteries, you could develop a heart attack or stroke.
You are not defenseless against this process. Antioxidants are like the fine wire mesh or glass doors you place in front of your fireplace. The sparks are still going to fly; however, your carpet—your body—is protected. This is the key. To protect your body, you want enough antioxidants on board to handle the number of free radicals you produce. The best way to achieve this goal is to take high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements.
RDA's versus Optimal Levels 5 June 2008
One of the reasons most physicians do not recommend supplements for their patients, even though studies show that nearly 70% of physicians are taking them themselves, is because they have been taught that all we need are the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of micronutrients. If you consume a healthy diet, it is certainly possible to get this level of nutrients. However, you must understand the origin of RDA’s. These RDA’s were developed in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s to establish the minimal amount of micronutrients required to prevent acute deficiency diseases like pellagra, scurvy, and rickets.
You Can Get Everything You Need from a Healthy Diet 8 June 2008
I told my patients for years that they did not need to take supplements and that they could get everything they needed by eating a healthy diet. When I began to realize that RDA’s had nothing to do with the types of diseases I was trying to prevent, I had to rethink my decision not to recommend supplements. As I mentioned earlier, the optimal level of vitamin E is 400 IU. Why just not have my patients eat 400 IU of vitamin E. They would only need to eat 33 heads of spinach or 28 pounds of butter or 5 pounds of wheat germ each day to get that much vitamin E. The optimal level of vitamin C is about 1000 to 2000 mg daily (the RDA is only 60 mg). My patients would only have to eat 18 large oranges or 80 avocados to get that amount of vitamin C from their diet.
I certainly believe that we must supplement a healthy diet with 8 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables along with those good fats and good proteins. However, there was no way my patients could receive health benefits from optimal levels of nutrients without supplementing their diet. It became very obvious to me that my patients needed to supplement their diet with high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements for the best protection against chronic degenerative diseases.
Take the Cheapest Supplements You Can Find? 12 June 2008
Early in my career, I remember telling my patients who were set on taking supplements to just take the cheapest ones they could find. The reason I made this comment was that I really did not believe that supplements had any value anyway, so why not just buy the cheapest ones? At least, they would not cost my patients too much money. In contrast, now that I realize all of the health benefits my patients can receive by taking supplements, I want to be sure that they receive high-quality products.
One of the greatest frustrations in becoming a specialist in nutritional medicine is that I work with such an unregulated market. The FDA looks at nutritional supplements the same way it looks at foods. This entire industry is really not regulated, and a nutritional company can pretty much put any amount of nutrients in their tablets. In other words, the amount stated on the label is not necessarily what is in the tablet. Unless a nutritional company voluntarily produces its nutritional supplements in a pharmaceutical-grade method, the consumer has no assurance that what is on the label is in the tablet. Why sell your health to the lowest bidder? Taking high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional are the least expensive health insurance policy you will ever purchase.
Pharmaceutical-Grade Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) 15 June 2008
Presently, nutritional supplement companies are not required to follow any standard of quality manufacturing. They are basically unregulated. Even if they follow what is known as food-grade Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), they are only required to have about 20% of what they say is on the label actually in the tablet. Unless you take supplements from a nutritional company that follows pharmaceutical-grade Good Manufacturing Practices, you really have no assurance that what is on the label is actually in the tablet. Companies that voluntarily (they are not required by law to do this) produce their products in a pharmaceutical-grade fashion are required to have 100% of what is on the label in the tablet. In fact, some will even guarantee their potency.
I always encourage my patients to take pharmaceutical-grade nutritional supplements. This is the only way I can be assured that my patients receive what I recommend. When my patients bring a particular bottle of supplements into my office and want me to evaluate what they are taking, I must first determine that the supplements are pharmaceutical-grade. If they are not, there is really no need for me to even look at the label. There is no way I could actually know what patients are getting.
Do Your Supplements Dissolve? 19 June 2008
As a physician, I really did not think too much about whether the nutritional supplements my patients were taking actually dissolved or not. All of the drugs I prescribed, whether or not they were brand-name or generic, were required to follow USP (US Pharmacopeias) standards.
This means that the quality and dissolution of the tablet was regulated. This is not true for the nutritional supplements industry; again, it is basically an unregulated industry.
When I was doing research for my book, What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know about Nutritional Medicine [Thomas Nelson 2002], I found a study done at the University of Maryland. Here 9 different prescription prenatal vitamins were studied. Researchers did not look at what was in the tablet; they simply looked at whether the tablet dissolved or not. To my amazement, only 3 of the 9 prescription prenatal vitamins dissolved. What good does it do to have the right nutrients in the right amounts if your tablet doesn’t even dissolve? You are just wasting money. It is imperative that any supplements you choose to take must follow USP guidelines. This is the only way you can be assured that your tablets are dissolving.
Cellular Nutrition 22 June 2008
I have promoted a concept in my medical practice for years that I call cellular nutrition. What I learned early on in my research and in nutritional medicine practice was that almost all of these studies evaluated only one nutrient at a time. For example, the study evaluated only vitamin C or vitamin E or selenium or calcium or alpha lipoic acid. This is just the way we do research. However, vitamin E and vitamin C are not drugs. They are nutrients from foods; however, today because of supplementation we are able to get them at levels unobtainable in foods. All of these nutrients work together in a synergistic way.
Vitamin E is the best antioxidant in the cell wall. Vitamin C is the best antioxidant in the plasma. Glutathione is the best intracellular antioxidant. All of these antioxidants need the so-called antioxidant minerals and B-cofactors to do their job. I not only want my patients to receive all the health benefits that these nutrients can provide, but I also want to be sure that these nutrients to the cell are provided at optimal levels. Therefore, cellular nutrition is defined as providing all of these nutrients to the cell at optimal levels or to those levels which provide a health benefit according to medical literature.
Synergy 26 June 2008
It has always been amazing to me that the overwhelming majority of studies that just look at one nutrient alone show a definite health benefit. The reason that this is so amazing is that nutrients are not drugs. They really work together in a synergistic fashion. For example, vitamin C can actually regenerate vitamin E so that it can be used over and over again. Alpha lipoic acid, another potent antioxidant, not only regenerates vitamin E, but also glutathione, which is that very potent intracellular antioxidant. As I stated earlier, these antioxidants also need the so-called antioxidant minerals like selenium, magnesium, zinc, and copper to do their jobs. In addition, they also need optimal levels of the B-cofactors in their enzymatic reactions to be effective.
When you provide all of these nutrients at these optimal levels in supplementation, you create synergy. In other words, one plus one is not two, but instead, eight or ten. Remember, it is all about balance. You want to have enough antioxidants on board to handle the number of free radicals produced. The ideal way to best protect your health as you create synergy is to take an antioxidant and mineral tablet which is complete and balanced and also meets the pharmaceutical-grade and USP standards.
The Health Concept of Cellular Nutrition 29 June 2008
As you study the medical literature, you begin to realize that there are several different kinds of free radicals that are found in various parts of the body. When you study vitamin E, which is probably the best antioxidant within the cell wall, you will generally see a definite health benefit from taking this nutrient. However, when you see a study that combines vitamin C with vitamin E, you will usually discover that the participants receive even a better health benefit. It becomes very obvious that you want to take a variety of antioxidants that will work in various parts of the body and against different free radicals. It also becomes obvious that these antioxidants need the supporting minerals and B cofactors to perform at their optimal level.
When you provide all of these nutrients to the cells at their optimal levels via supplementation, the cell can decide what it needs and does not need. Over time (usually 6 to 12 months), the body is able to totally replace any deficiencies and bring all the other supporting nutrients up to optimal levels. This will not only optimize the body’s natural antioxidant defense system, but it will also create the synergy that is so critical in preventing oxidative stress.
It is just a Matter of Time 3 July 2008
There is a major misconception about supplementation. In this era of medication, people believe that they should notice differences within a few days to a week or two. However, nutritional medicine is totally different from allopathic or traditional Western medicine. Nutritional supplements are simply nutrients the body uses in its normal enzymatic reactions. They are not medicines. They are nutrients from our foods, but supplementation allows us to get them at optimal levels that diet alone cannot provide.
It takes between 6 to 12 months to replenish any nutritional deficiency and optimize the body’s natural immune system, antioxidant defense system, and repair system. If you are over 30 years of age or already have a chronic degenerative disease, it may even take longer. This is why I stress over and over that you need to give nutritional supplementation a minimum of 6 months, or even better a year, before you evaluate the benefits. When my patients tell me that they will try using my recommended supplements for a month, I tell them not to even start. If you are not willing to try my recommendations for at least 6 months, you should not even begin.
My Conversion 6 July 2008
People always ask me why I changed my mind about recommending nutritional supplements. I simply tell them that it was my wife’s fault. My wife has suffered from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia for over 25 years. She thought when she married a physician that her health would improve. She was totally wrong. No matter what I did or prescribed, her condition became worse year after year. In 1995, she came down with a serious pneumonia. Even though this eventually cleared, she was left with a serious fatigue. She was only able to get out of bed one or two hours a day and this condition lasted several months, in spite of seeing 4 different specialists and taking nine prescription medications.
It was at this time, my wife began taking some nutritional supplements that were given to her. Within days, she felt better and within a couple of months she was off all of her medication. She began doing better than she had done in years. It was truly amazing to me. There is nothing harder as a physician than to see your wife suffer and not be able to do anything for her. Now this fear was replaced with the fear that she had improved because of some vitamins. This contradicted everything that I had believed and taught my patients for the first 23 years of my practice. It is also what launched me into this intensive research about the health benefits of nutritional supplements. If something existed that could help my patients, I certainly wanted to know more about it.
My Personal Clinical Trial 10 July 2008
After I had seen my wife’s miraculous recovery, I contacted my five worst fibromyalgia patients and asked them to take the same supplements my wife took. They all agreed because they were not only miserable, but they also realized that all traditional medicine had to offer was symptomatic medicine and encouragement to find a support group to learn to live with it.
They did not respond as quickly as my wife had. However, within 6 months they all thanked me for allowing them to get their life back. My wife and these patients still have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia; however, they have regained control of their lives. They all had noted gradual improvement in their fatigue levels, sleep patterns, and pain symptoms. I have now been able to help literally thousands who are suffering from this disease by sharing my specific recommendations through my online medical practice located at www.drraystrand.com.
Physicians are Disease-Oriented 13 July 2008
Physicians are basically disease-oriented and drug-oriented. After all, this is how we are trained. In medical school, we spend all of our time learning how to diagnose and treat disease. Even what we call preventive medicine is really just about early detection of disease. When I did a wellness physical on any of my patients, I was really looking for those silent diseases like elevated blood pressure, early diabetes, or elevated cholesterol. Pap smears, mammograms, and PSA's were done to detect early cancer. If I didn't find any disease, I would simply tell my patients that they were fine and that I did not need to see them for a couple of years.
As I began to research the medical literature about nutritional medicine, I realized that I was really doing nothing to actually prevent disease. I was merely just diagnosing and treating disease. Certainly, I was able to help most of my patients improve the quality of their life; however, with many of the degenerative diseases, I was merely treating symptoms and not changing the course of the disease. Could there be something that I was not aware of or did not learn in medical school that could be beneficial to my patients? After seeing some amazing health improvements in my patients who began taking high-quality nutritional supplements, I began to research the medical literature with a newly found zeal.
True Health Care Provider 17 July 2008
When I received my M.D. degree from the University of Colorado Medical School, I believed I had become that true health care provider I always dreamed I would be. This is certainly how my patients viewed me. They would ask me any question about their health and how to protect it, and I would quickly answer them with the authority my M.D. degree gave me. However, if I were honest with myself, I really did not know much about how to protect their health. However, after researching the medical literature about the health benefits of taking high-quality nutritional supplements during the past 13 years, I realized that I had really just been a "Disease-Care Expert." I understood disease, how to diagnose it, and how to best and most effectively treat it.
When I understood the consequences of oxidative stress and that it was the root cause of over 70 chronic degenerative diseases, I realized that our bodies give us the best chance of avoiding and preventing these diseases instead of the drugs I can prescribe. When you consume high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements, you build your body's natural immune system, natural antioxidant defense system, and natural repair system. This gives you the best chance to protect or even regain your health. I am now that "True Health Care Expert" I have always desired to become. These "Health Nuggets" are designed to share the simple, but effective lifestyles that can best protect your health.
Living Too Short and Dying Too Long 20 July 2008
I attended a lecture given by Dr. Myron Wentz, an immunologist, virologist, and biochemist. He made an amazing statement when he said that most of us are living too short and dying too long. We are primarily suffering and dying from chronic degenerative diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, MS, and the list goes on and on. These diseases seem to be developing in my patients at younger ages. Even though we place them on a tremendous amount of medication, we do not seem to change the course of their disease. What good does it do to live to a ripe old age of 93 if you haven't been able to recognize your family or spouse for the last 10 years because of Alzheimer's dementia, as was the case of former President Ronald Reagan? Look at Mohamed Ali or Michael J. Fox. Have we been able to effectively help them with their Parkinson's disease?
My patients are no longer as concerned about the years in their lives as they are about the quality of life in those years. Quality of life is the issue. Because of our stressful lifestyles and poor lifestyle habits, we are suffering earlier from these degenerative diseases. Michael J. Fox developed Parkinson's disease at 32 years of age. Nearly 45% of our children who develop diabetes have the adult onset or type 2 diabetes. We are certainly living too short and dying too long.
