CAN WE GET ENOUGH NUTRITION FROM FOOD?

Evidence We Need Nutritional Supplements to be Healthy.

 

I stumbled across a book review of a new book called Naked Calories, by Mira Calton CN and Jayson Calton PhD, and they provided an interesting observation on modern nutrition. Their key thesis, based on Jayson Calton’s PhD dissertation, was to look at a variety of diet plans to see how close they came to providing the Recommended Daily Intake values of calories and micronutrients. They only looked at what was available in foods, not incorporating any nutritional supplements that may be advised by some of these diets.

 

They looked at a low carb diet (Atkins), a low fat diet (Best Life), a low sodium diet (DASH), the Mediterranean diet, and the basic USDA diet advised for U.S. citizens. The highest amount of required daily micronutrients that any diet could provide was 56% (“Best Life” a low fat diet).

The title of their book Naked Calories, refers to how modern farming and food processing techniques have stripped foods of their nutritional value, leaving us with empty calories leading to disease and obesity.

The main criticism of this book is that the authors are involved in selling nutritional supplements, and this may compromise their objectivity as authors.  Nonetheless I feel that their information is valid and accurate.
And here is the kicker. They did the math required to determine how many calories we need to eat in order to consume the amount of 27 micronutrients recommended by the USDA. That total is 27,575 calories. The main theme of their book is that no diet can possibly provide all of our nutritional requirements.

 

This does not even take into account the fact that the recommended amounts of nutrients were based on the U.S. RDI, which, like the amount of nutrients recommended by the Canadian Health branch, are far lower than many in the nutritional field believe are required for optimal health.

(Amazon link to Naked Calories)

 

A NEW APPROACH TO COLD SORES

This is an anecdotal tale, but since I know the person I feel it is worth passing on. A close friend of mine has been plagued with cold sores for most of her adult life, and in the past few years they had gotten so bad that she would have a breakout every month. She had done the obvious treatment of taking copious amounts of L-lysine, an amino acid that can very often reduce and control outbreaks. She also used the topical creams and ointments, usually based on L-lysine, zinc and other antibacterial and antiviral herbs. None of this seemed to help at all; neither reducing frequency, nor duration of the outbreak. She also could not see a link between high stress, or low immunity, in her life, triggering the outbreaks, as is commonly believed.

 

One day, dealing with the problem yet again, she had a thought outside the box. She realized that the spot on her lip where the outbreak occurred never varied; the breakout always occurred in exactly the same spot. She then had the idea that the virus was harbored in that surface location and from that point on she took a different tact. She had already tried using Colloidal Silver internally, since it is an anti-viral agent (as well as antibacterial and antifungal), but it hadn’t really solved the problem. That being said, there are testimonials online from people who found that taking the silver internally did eliminate the herpes virus from their blood.

 

Now, she decided to apply the liquid Colloidal Silver to her lips daily, targeting the spot where the breakout occurred. She did this a few times daily for about a month and now does it about 3 times daily, three days a week. Since she started this process she has been free of outbreaks for over 3 months, something that would have seemed impossible a year ago.

 

If you or anyone you know has a problem with cold sores, give this approach a try. And let me know if it works for anyone else out there. It would be nice if we had enough anecdotal information to confirm that this is an effective approach, even if it only works for some people.