Most people truly do not understand the concept of nutritional medicine and fewer yet understand the concept of cellular nutrition. This article will give you a better understanding of how I approach my patients as a specialist in Nutritional Medicine. Hopefully, this will give you a better understanding of how and why you can better protect your health or even regain your health by applying these concepts to your own life.

Concept of Oxidative Stress

Even though oxygen is necessary for life itself, it is inherently dangerous for our existence. In the process of utilizing oxygen within your cells to create energy, you also create a by-product referred to as free radicals. Free radicals are charged oxygen molecules that are missing at least one electron and desire to get an electron from the surrounding area. If it is not readily neutralized by an antioxidant, which has the ability to give this free radical the electron it desires, it can go on to create more volatile free radicals, damage the cell wall, vessel wall, proteins, fats, and even the DNA nucleus of the cell. So the same process that turns a cut apple brown or rusts metal is causing you to rust inside. In fact, the medical literature now shows us that over 70 chronic degenerative diseases are the result of this process. Diseases like coronary artery disease, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, arthritis, macular degeneration, MS, lupus, among others are the result of small oxidative changes that occur over a long period of time.

It is all about Balance

The number of free radicals you produce is not steady. In other words, some days you produce more than others. Because of our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment, and over-medicated society, this generation must deal with more free radicals than any previous generation that has ever walked the face of the earth. If you want to prevent oxidative stress, you need to have more antioxidants available along with their supporting nutrients than the number of free radicals you produce. You see, we are not defenseless against this process. Antioxidants are the answer. The question is whether or not we are able to get all the antioxidants we need from our food. This was the question I had to answer for myself and the reason that I wrote my book What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know about Nutritional Medicine. After spending over 2 years reviewing the medical literature, I concluded that the only way you have a chance of preventing oxidative stress is by taking high quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements that provide, what I refer to as, cellular nutrition. If you have not read my book or listened to any of my CD’s on this subject, I would certainly encourage you to do just that. The medical references are detailed in my books and provide the medical evidence that demands a verdict—should you be taking nutritional supplements?

History of Nutritional Medicine

Over the past half century, nutritional medicine has been practiced with the belief that you had to determine what nutrients in which you were deficient and then supplement that particular nutrient. It became very obvious to me early on in my research that the underlying problem most of us are facing is not a nutritional deficiency, but instead, the result of oxidative stress. It was also apparent to me that medication, which actually increases the production of free radicals, would never be the answer to preventing any of these diseases. Also if this was the case, the goal had to be to provide the nutrients that were necessary to build up our body’s natural antioxidant defense system so that you did not develop oxidative stress. It became so apparent to me that our bodies, not the drugs I could prescribe, were the best defense against developing any of these diseases. The problem is NOT a nutritional deficiency. The problem is oxidative stress.