Nutritional Supplements: How Necessary are They?

written by David Russell, Ph.D., D.Sc |

Most Western health practices promote the need vitamin and mineral supplements in order to be healthy. This concept, however, reflects a misunderstanding of what nutrients are and how our digestion metabolizes them. All the natural nutrients our body needs to maintain its health are found in foods. The nutrients in a carrot, for instance, are bound in a very complex relationship to all the cells and tissues in the whole carrot. This relationship of biochemical and energetic components is the real nutrition of the carrot, not its separate ingredients. If we extract vitamin A from the carrot and take it as a supplement, the vitamin A is no longer a part of the relationship of elements that makes it truly effective.

Classical medicine uses whole food supplements . This means that if you need extra vitamin A, for example, you make carrot juice (with the pulp), increasing your intake of a food that contains vitamin A but without compromising the effective relationships that determine how the vitamin will be used by the body.

The body is programmed to respond correctly only to things that are found in nature—there is no such thing as a “vitamin A tree.” When we extract substances from nature, we compromise the way we digest and utilize the nutrients. When our systems encounter un-natural substances like extracted vitamins and minerals , the immune system must activate in order to integrate the “foreign” substance and our digestion has to alter its normal procedures to deal with them. The net result is less rather than greater health.

The only exception to this is working with terminal patients. When the body is no longer capable of supporting its vital processes or re-establishing their normal functions, intervention in the natural processes may be necessary to enhance the quality of life. In this special circumstance, nutrients that are no longer being digested properly...

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