Nutritional Advice

THE ISHTA HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTRE

BASIC NUTRITION

Are You Getting Enough?

There are approximately ninety nutrients the body needs on a daily basis: up to sixty minerals, sixteen vitamins, twelve amino acids and three fatty acids. There are other things that the body would like but at a push it can make them from the other ninety.
Now the body can only repair itself from the raw materials you provide for it, so if you have any doubts about being able to provide those ninety nutrients on a daily basis you may want to consider taking a good nutritional supplement, at least in the short term until you recover.
So does your diet provide those ninety nutrients on a daily basis? Well, if you ate a fresh, local, organic diet of which 75% was raw you would need to eat about thirty two different foodstuffs a day to provide those ninety nutrients. Not many people’s diets are that broad.
The easiest answer is to support your diet by taking good nutritional supplements, but what constitutes a good supplement?
We believe that everyone needs to address their nutritional needs in three areas. The first is in taking a broad spectrum nutritional supplement, the second is in increasing your antioxidant levels, and the third is to make sure your essential fatty acid profile is correct.
The following will give you information on what to look for on the labels when addressing these three areas.

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS

So why would anyone need a nutritional supplement if they were eating a balanced diet? Can’t we get everything we need from our food? In an ideal world we would, however, we don’t live in an ideal world.
There are three main reasons why we don’t get what we need from our food. The first is that most people’s diets are not broad enough. The second is that most of the food we buy has been treated in some way to prolong shelf-life and/or storage times, which removes nutritional factors. And the third is that our soils have been over farmed so there is little in the way of minerals left in the soil. Unlike vitamins and amino acids, plants can not make minerals. If they are not in the soil then they are not in the plants that grow in them.

Most people in this culture need supplements.

So how can you tell if a supplement is any good or not? The form that the supplement is in is often a good clue. For instance if they are solid tablets the absorption rate is often poor, as low as 4% in the case of some metallic minerals. That means 96% is excreted! Chelated minerals are a bit better in that about 40% are absorbed, but that still leaves about 60% of them to be excreted. By far the best absorption rates come from ionised sub-colloidal minerals, up to 98%, and these are only available in liquid form.
Also its is more effective to take small amounts of broad spectrum nutritional components at the correct ratio to each other than it is to take large amounts of them not at the correct ratio. These ratios can often be quite tricky to work out from the label information.
We can give you advice about choosing a good supplement that contains all ninety nutrients at their optimal ratios. We also have a cassette on this topic. If you wish to borrow a copy please ask.
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ANTIOXIDANTS

Oxygen free-radicals are rogue oxygen molecules that are missing an electron. They cause all sorts of damage in the body. They are implicated in over 60 causes of death, responsible for degeneration of the body and speed up the ageing process. So if you want to add years to your life and life to your years you need to protect yourself from the ravages of oxygen free-radicals.
Antioxidants protect against free-radical damage. The body manufactures antioxidants, such as superoxide dismutase, which neutralise the free-radicals. However, as we age the body’s ability to make these antioxidants diminish, and this is one of the reasons why young people heal faster than older people. To overcome this shortfall the body will recruit antioxidant vitamins away from their biological processes to neutralise the free-radicals. This then has a knock-on effect to other areas of the body, which are now short of their vital nutrients.
So if we are getting our 90 nutrients on a daily basis why do we need additional antioxidants? The body is brilliant at coping in the environment we evolved in. Unfortunately our present environment has pollutants in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Pollutants cause massive numbers of free-radicals to challenge our bodies.
What constitutes a good antioxidant supplement? Broad spectrum is the answer. It should contain super antioxidants such as oligomeric proanthocyanadins (OPC’s for short), which are water soluble and fat soluble, beta-carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E, flavanoids and, if possible, curcuminoids.
Ask us if you would like more information about choosing a good antioxidant supplement or ask to borrow a cassette on the subject.

ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS

Do you experience poor concentration, poor short term memory to long term memory transfer, feeling of “spaciness”, water retention or inability to lose weight? Yes? Then you may need to get your essential fatty acid profile balanced.
Essential fatty acids are the good fats that can help to keep you slim, clean your arteries, increase your energy levels, make skin soft, reduce blood fats, enhance your immune system and increase brain function.
The subject of essential fatty acids is a very complex one but we have a brilliant cassette about it which will tell you all you need to know and demystify the issue. If you wish to borrow a copy please ask.
As essential fatty acids are often processed out of our food we can also offer advice on what we consider to be a good essential fatty acid supplement.

BASIC NUTRITION

Every body needs good basic nutrition. You know, having adequate nutritional resources is rather like having a lot of money in a current account. Most of the time you don’t need it there but when an emergency happens you have the resources to draw upon. When our health is challenged, having a good nutritional status gives you the best start to a full and fast recovery.
If you want more information ask us for a copy of a cassette on why we need good nutrition.

There are two other nutrients to take into consideration when talking about the body and they are water and oxygen.
Water is very important. Are you getting enough? Virtually all the biochemistry in the body takes place in an aqueous environment and is dependent upon the surface tension of the water. The greater the surface tension the more difficult it is for the biochemical processes to flow easily. The lower the surface tension the easier it is for them to flow. The more dehydrated you are the greater the surface tension is.
So you can see that it is very important that you drink enough water, and we do mean water. A lot of the things we drink are diuretics, that is they make you lose water. Things like tea, coffee, cola, carbonated beverages, alcohol and drinks containing sugar all dehydrate us.
Drinking water, then, is the key. Most authorities agree that we need approximately two litres of water a day. However, remember that this is a guide line only. Your requirements may be more or less than this. If you've not been used to drinking a lot of water then increase your intake gradually until you reach a level that feels right for you.
Oxygen is also very important, are you getting enough? A stupid question maybe because if you're not getting enough you wouldn't be reading this, but how much is enough? Well certainly you are getting enough so that you aren't suffocating but many people don't get optimum amounts for their biochemistry.
So what happens when there is a lack of oxygen? Simply put, the body doesn't burn it's fuel as efficiently. Incomplete combustion of the body's fuel can lead to an accumulation of toxic by products of metabolism which can have an adverse affect on your health.
There are two reasons why you may have reduced oxygen levels. The first is that the partial pressure of oxygen in the air that you are breathing is reduced, for example because you are somewhere where there is high levels of pollution. The second, and by far the most common, reason is that you breath too shallowly. This has the added disadvantage of not removing the waste gasses of respiration which can contribute to a condition of acidosis in the system.
The answer is to breath deeply and rhythmically which has the added benefit of "switching on" the parasympathetic nervous system so countering the stress response.

So, basic nutrition, are you getting enough?

You can obtain basic nutritional advice from Sue Weller or Allyn Edwards.
We have free audio downloads about nutrition which will give you a basic nutritional understanding.
The kind of supplements talked about above can be obtained from our On-Line Store.