Snake Oil Salesmen

                                         Swallowing the Supplement Pill Hype

I recently read that studies are now demonstrating that all the anti-oxidant pills we are taking don’t reduce free radicals, but actually may be promoting more.  We began down the path of swallowing the “big lie” centuries ago, but our big gulp was in the fifties when Monsanto said “better life through chemistry.”  We even dream of being master of life itself.  It doesn’t surprise me that our synthetic approach to good health is not doing what it says it will.  I suspect perfection in a pill likely will remain a myth forever.  (And I’m truly concerned about all the seeds Monsanto makes with herbicides and pesticide properties built in to grow our food.  We’ll leave that discussion for another time.)

I think we were designed to function well and be healthy, and most of how that is to be accomplished is revealed by the body itself.  For instance, look at the teeth.  They are mostly the kind that are designed to eat vegetables and not the kind of teeth carnivores have.  I suspect that means we are supposed to have a diet high in grains, fruits and veggies.  Do we do that?  The 16-ounce Diamond Jim Brady prime rib is still the gold standard for dinner.  How can we expect to be healthy when we still pursue that ideal?

Like a campfire or a car, the body is a fuel-burning machine.  It takes carbon compounds and oxidizes them.  Having a blood stream that effectively carries oxygen, carbon based fuels, and successfully cleans out the wastes generated by that burning makes for an efficient machine.  It’s not much different than the engine in your car.  Remember how they always tell you, you have to really run your car and get it hot to burn out all those carbon deposits when all you do is short trips from one parking lot to another.  So, maintaining a system that flows highly oxygenated blood effectively through your vessels is a top priority like any efficient healthy machine. Think trains…one goes by every 10 minutes along Interstate 40.  Imagine if it only had 4 cars on each train, or if they dropped it to one train an hour.  Los Angeles would collapse.  That’s what happens to our bodily systems without the cardiovascular carrying capacity for oxygen and wastes.

It’s all about circulation and oxygenation.  That means EXERCISE.  Sure, control your diet and don’t eat too much fat and sweets.  But the biggie is we weren’t designed to sit in front of a TV or computer all day.  We were supposed to get out and grow and gather food and run faster than the lions could that wanted to use their carnivorous teeth to eat us.

Keep your weight in check and your fitness level high.  We need proper body nutrition from natural foods, weight in normal range and cardiovascular health…not a bunch of supplement pills.