Vitamins: Yes or No?

by

Danny Vierra of Modern Manna Ministries

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Vitamins: Yes or No?

 

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If you do not know it already, I was the owner of two health food stores for over 25 years. Therefore, I believe I am qualified to give an intelligent opinion on whether or not a person should take vitamins supplements.

 

     I grew up on vitamin pills. My grandmother would put five or six pills in front of me and tell me to swallow them. I especially liked the Vitamin E capsules because they looked like little footballs. My mother took vitamins most of her life and looked very young for her age. My grandmother lived to 100 years old and attributed her good health and longevity to vitamin pills.

 

    On the positive side, I have seen vitamins and minerals help many people. I have seen skin heal, bleeding gums heal, and bruising stopped from customers taking Vitamin C (1,000 mg. or more a day). I have seen blood sugar levels improve from taking chromium picolinate, high blood pressure lowered with garlic pills and magnesium, arthritis pain lessened from glucosamine sulfate and MSM, the sense of smell return from zinc, energy increase from brewer's yeast capsules, and muscles grow from creatine and growth hormone enhancing amino acids. And yes, I used to take handfuls of supplements while I was a bodybuilder.

 

     But even though I still recommend supplements ("to add to something or supply a deficiency") when necessary, I quit taking all those pills once I learned to eat a healthier diet -- one that includes lots of whole plant foods and juices -- which provides all my nutrients. I still take herbs and superfoods, even an occasional vitamin or two made from whole plant foods, but not synthetic nutracueticals if I can help it.

 

     Now I have customers walk into my office at Modern Manna carrying a ziplock, gallon-size bag full of of vitamin bottles and say: "I take all these vitamins and minerals every day and I still feel terrible." "Evidently," I answer, "the pills are not working very well, and adding one more miracle pill that you read about in Prevention
Magazine are not going to fix the problem either."

 

      I do not agree with some enthusiasts who push the idea that a fix for everything that ails you is available in a high-priced bottle, nor do I agree with the natural enthusiasts who argue that you cannot assimilate any of the nutrients in a vitamin pill. If that were true, I would not have seen the dandruff stop from B-Complex vitamins, the cramps stop from magnesium supplements, and the bleeding gums stop from taking Vitamin C. I do believe that many people, especially the elderly have a hard time digesting calcium and other supplements because of a lack of hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes, but that doesn't mean everybody is going to pass their pills with the next bowel movement.

 

     But let me now say that I do believe the best way to get your essential vitamins is to get them from your food. God put all the nutrients we need in plants and He is the Master Designer. Ever since I quit eating the standard American diet of meat, cheese, dairy, refined carbohydrates and sugar and donuts, and started eating fresh fruits and vegetables, whole beans and legumes, drinking fresh juices juices, and following the other health laws, I haven't been sick in 17 years.

 

     Too many people spend loads of money on vitamin pills and this will not end as long as there is a vitamin business. The latest craze is starch and fat-blocking supplements, because so many overweight people want an easy way to lose pounds. The industry will constantly search for new super nutrients like the news-worthy Resveratrol. "One pill equals 1,000 bottles of wine," says the advertisers. Good, maybe it won't encourage more wine drinking but grape eating. Yes, I think Resveratrol, an antioxidant from grapes, is a good thing, but so are pycnogenol from the white pine and grapeseed extracts from grapes. Get your antioxidants in the selection of different foods. I tell people to eat the whole plant because the nutrients work synergistically. Resveratrol is only one ingredient, and one nutrient may need another to activate its healing potential. Only God knows.

 

     First there were  antioxidants like vitamin E, C, beta carotene, zinc, selenium, germanium, but more and more super foods are being discovered and sold for a huge profit. Everyone seems to be looking in the fruits these days and especially the exotic ones. Locate a new phytochemical or antioxidant and bottle and market it and make a million dollars. This will never end. But just because they feed you all the hype and exaggerated claims doesn't mean the nutrient is a cure for all your health problems. You can read Resveratrol as being a cure from diabetes to cancer; just like they said about Noni Juice, Mangosteen, and all the others. And watch out for the multi-level gurus that tack on another $25.00 to pay themselves. Nothing---I repeat, NOTHING is going to substitute good living practices incorporating Gods' eight laws of health!

 

      Here is my take on the subject. I believe the Dear Lord gave us all the antioxidants in the garden. Blueberries, strawberries, grapes, oranges, plums, garlic, chard, mangoes, and every plant food contains them. But as long as their is a market for supplements, their will be new claims and discoveries of products that work healing miracles. Take them if you want for they can be beneficial, but they may come with a big price tag. I believe in eating them in their whole form combined and not separated and isolated from each other. God is complex and so is His Farmacy. Keep the foods in their whole form and enjoy them. You may never notice a difference from taking Resveratrol, anyway, but all the hype will convince you that you should take it or die.

 

     There is a good magazine called Life Extension. I read it from time to time and like many of their products. But after you read the magazine you are so convinced that you need everything they are reporting and health cannot be maintained any other way. Save your money and get your nutrients from healthy organic produce. Put your hard-earned dollars into the foods God gave you for building and repairing your bodies. Nothing works better than His whole food. If you would simply eliminate all the processed foods and replace them with organic whole plant food, you will probably need one- tenth of the supplements you are now taking.

 

     If you would exercise, drink pure water, eat organic food and drink organic juices, take a whole food super formula of the most powerful foods on earth like in our SuperManna, and cleanse your elimination organs regularly, you will be a Super American and escape most of the diseases caused by toxicity and deficiency. Don't make the mistake that supplements will take the place of good food or make up for your wrong lifestyle practices. Sooner or later it will catch up with you. But if you cannot change your child's diet, give him a good whole food supplement and grandma a whole food liquid vitamin and mineral supplement. If may be good assurance in this day and age to take a whole food concentrate supplement and extra Vitamin B complex when you are under stress. I will recommend certain supplements for certain conditions to get someone over the hump at times, but I always educate them to follow God's laws of health first. After all, how long do you think it will take science to identify all the phytonutrients God put in the garden? Eat rainbows and a wide variety of organic whole plant foods. They are the best vitamins money can buy. After all, all these miracle products come from the garden anyway.

 

Danny Vierra, The Elijah Prophecy, Issue 37, July 10, 2009

 

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