REAL Foods: The Most Effective Way To Fight Disease And Stay Healthy

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Another reason why whole foods should be your first choice for meeting your nutrition needs is that certain vitamins and minerals work synergistically with one another and must be kept in balanced ratios in the body. For example, Potassium and Sodium are one combination that must remain balanced at certain levels. Another is Vitamin D and Calcium. If you are supplementing with an individual nutrient, there is a chance you can throw off these delicate chemical ratios in your body, since it’s very easy to take too much.

There is also the possibility of overdose. Vitamin A, for instance, is an essential vitamin found in foods like spinach, kale and beef liver. In high enough doses, however, Vitamin A can actually cause serious health problems or even death. With supplements, a careless user could easily take too much of a given vitamin or mineral and cause unintended complications.

Conversely, it simply isn’t possible to overdose on Vitamin A from eating too much salad or too many juiced veggies. When you consume a vegetable or fruit in itsnatural form, you get just the right amount of a given nutrient.

The purpose here is not to make you swear off all medications or supplements forever. Prescription and over-the-counter drugs certainly have their place. Supplements are useful or even necessary for treating a serious vitamin deficiency. Mega-dosing with specific ones like Vitamin C can indeed be very effective against certain diseases.

But barring any critical health issues, it’s just a better overall philosophy to get most of your vitamins from natural foods and prevent most health problems from occurring at all. Many drugs simply mask the symptoms of an illness rather than eliminating the disease itself, and some supplements have only been on the market for a few years. These have not had adequate testing done on them, and the long-term effects of taking these supplements or combinations is unknown.

Equally important but rarely discussed is the importance of NOT eating unhealthy, processed foods. The typical American diet is loaded with complex carbohydrates, corn syrup and refined sugars. Replacing this diet with healthy, vitamin-rich whole foods will do far more good than neglecting your health and later having to get treated for diabetes.

The bottom line is that people only take medicine or supplements to treat a disease or compensate for a nutrient deficiency. But it you’re eating a diet rich in REAL foods, it’s unlikely you’d experience illness or deficiency in the first place. Switch to a whole food diet and save yourself from illness and malnutrition (and probably lot of money on healthcare too)!

References:

www.huffingtonpost.com

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