Disease Without Symptoms

80% of us will die of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, or diabetes. It's a rude awakening for those unprepared. A serious look at these and other deficiency-induced illnesses showed that they develop slowly and subtly, results of decades of dietary and lifestyle abuses.

Consider arthritis, high blood pressure, prostate problems, memory loss, obesity, periodontal disease, and poor circulation. These conditions do not appear overnight. They are not even results of the natural progression of aging as many age without getting these diseases. Many of these illnesses can be traced to or exacerbated by some nutrient shortfall that has persisted for decades. 

While Americans are overfed in terms of calories, they are malnourished in terms of nutrients. No wonder they ranked 17th in terms of life expectancy, despite having the best doctors and most modern medical technology in the world.

In an overfed but malnourished nation, this problem is an epidemic because 80% of the adults are afflicted, whether they are aware of it or not. Furthermore, it is silent because the symptoms of deficiency-induced illness take 10-20 years to surface. During this silent period, we are all lead to believe that we are in a state of "normal" health, supported by "normal" laboratory test results. The reality is that we are in a sub-clinical phase of illness with abnormalities where current laboratory test is not sensitive enough to pick up.


What Can You Do?

The average American consumes 2 pounds of food a day. This equates to over 20 tons of food over a lifetime. If your body does not have access to the optimum amount of building blocks it needs when it needs them, the aging process accelerates.

It would be wonderful if the body comes with an internal alarm clock that monitors levels of all important nutrients and alerts you when their levels are low. Since this alarm system does not exist, it is impossible to accurately anticipate what the body's demand is for each nutrient on any given day or week, much less correlating this information with an intake. 

You can be chronically deficient in many nutrients and not know about it for years. By the time the symptoms surfaces, the disease have often already progress beyond the stage of reversal.

Providing the body with abundant supplies of right nutrients is therefore critical. The combination of eating healthful foods - foods of plant origin, which are rich in essential nutrients, antioxidants, and phytochemicals - and taking nutritional supplements guarantees efficient cellular protection, repair, and replacement.


Consider the Evidence

Thousands of studies have shown that nutritional supplementation enhances life expectancy and prevents diseases if taken at the optimum dosage. Complete testing will take decades more, and even then, no one will be sure due to the many interacting factors. Review of significant research done so far, however, paints a picture with overwhelming supporting evidence that supplementation works.

Here are just a few studies:

• In a landmark article published in Science (2000 Sep 1;289:1567-1569), researchers have found that drugs that mimic some natural antioxidants are able to extend the life-span of worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) by nearly 50%. The scavenging compounds also restored normal life spans to a subgroup of nematodes that would otherwise have aged and died prematurely due to a genetic defect linked to oxidative stress. The drugs are synthetic versions of the oxygen-free radical scavengers superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase.
  
  
• Common and more well-known antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, work by interrupting chain reactions that would otherwise result in oxidation of cells caused by release of substances, from cell membranes. Dr. Irwin Fridovich, PhD, professor of biochemistry at Duke University, notes that "Antioxidants like vitamin E are called chain-breaking antioxidants, because they react with one of the species that's going to propagate and stop the chain reaction. So instead of a process that might involve a hundred molecules, if you have vitamin E around it might stop after only five, so it inhibits oxidation by breaking the chain, preventing the propagation of chain reactions." According to the study's authors, "It appears that oxidative stress is a major determinant of life-span and that it can be counteracted by pharmacological intervention."
  
  
• A study of 11,000 Americans showed that intake of 300 mg a day of vitamin C adds 6 years to a man's life and 2 years to a woman's life and decreases cardiovascular disease by 40%.
  
  
• Subjects who take 11,000 IU of beta carotene a day (1/4 cup of carrot juice or 5 carrot sticks) have a 22% lower risk of heart disease than those getting less than 3,000 IU a day in a Harvard study.
  
  
• A Harvard study of 16,000 women and 9,500 men showed those who take 700 mcg of folic acid a day had two-thirds the risk of getting pre-cancerous polyps in the colon compared to those taking only 166 mcg a day. The average American over 50 years old takes in 130 mcg a day.
  
  
• 24 percent of people over 69 years old are deficient and 40% of those over 80 years old are deficient in vitamin B12, which produces pseudo Alzheimer's symptoms. Simple oral supplementation of vitamin B12 is all it takes to reverse the condition.
  
  
• A French study of 3270 women over age 80 showed that those took 1,200 mg of calcium daily plus 800 IU of vitamin D3 had 43% less fracture of the hip and 32% less fracture of the wrist, arm, and pelvis.
  
  
• Chromium supplementation has been shown to normalize blood sugar and reduce insulin resistance in diabetic patients.
  
  
• Ascorbyl palmitate (a fat soluble form of Vitamin C) in conjunction with L-lysine and L-proline, has been show to reduce atherosclerosis and reverse already existing plaque as demonstrated by serial ultrafast CT scans.
  
  
• A University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study found that taking 800 IU of vitamin E for 3 months slashed LDL ("bad") cholesterol oxidation and heart disease by 40%.
  
  
• A large scale Harvard study of 87,000 female nurses showed those taking 100-250 IU of vitamin E a day for 2 year have a 41% lower incidence of major heart disease compare to the controlled group.
  
  
• Monkeys fed 108 IU of vitamin E a day for 3 years showed only a 20% blockage of artery despite a high-fat diet in a study conducted at the University of Mississippi's Atherosclerosis Research Laboratory.