Until then we never really made the connection on just how important food was to our health - duh! In fact, today most MD's don't see the connection. ???
So the more I learned, the more changes we made in our home. We ate out less, we bought less processed foods and we bought more organic, which, at that time, was hard to find and very expensive.
I started researching different companies and what they had to offer in the nutritional supplement area. I found out some interesting facts:
1. Many vitamins and supplements are not made from real food. They are synthetic and don't digest well.
I met a woman who worked for a port-a-potty company (I guess someone has to) and she showed me an article from their trade magazine (never would have thought) and it showed literally heaps of vitamins (like you would see snow piled up in the winter from snow plows). They were all vitamins that had been eliminated and had to be disposed of by the company. The names of companies could easily be read. Millions of dollars are being spend on vitamins that do not absorb into our bodies. They are being eliminated right out every single day.
2. Many vitamins and supplements contain ingredients that are actually damaging to our bodies at the cellular level. Things like artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, etc. Studies are showing that these ingredients are wrecking havoc in our intestinal tract. Our entire digestive system is disrupted and not able to function properly. GERD, IBS, Acid Reflux, Crohn's and more are the results many are dealing with today. Not to say that the vitamins are causing it, but they contribute to it and certainly don't help fix the problem like they should be doing.
For something to work it must be absorbed and it must have the nutritional power to do the job.
In my search (which was very long and exhausting), reading hundreds of ingredient lists, researching different ingredients and how formulations are made I came to this conclusion. In order for a product to actually have a positive effect on your body is must have these two factors:
1. Ingredients. There are differences in ingredients in even the same plant. Take for instance the St. John's Wort plant. The plant is huge yet only a small portion of the plant is considered effective. When you purchase a supplement that contains St. John's Wort you really have no idea what part of the plant it comes from and unless it comes from that small part, then it has no actual value to your body.
Ingredients, to be absorbed and used by your body, should be pure and of the highest quality.
Seriously - does anyone think that spending $10 on a jar of 60 capsules that it has anything good in them? Especially when you take into consideration all of the costs involved the company is probably only spending about 50 cents on the actual ingredients.
2. Formulation. I never knew or thought much about how things are put together. But formulation is huge. How ingredients work together. Do some actually work if they aren't put with other ingredients? If you are using good quality plant extracts does the company go to the expense of cold pressing or do they just use heat extraction which kills the nutrients? These are questions that I researched.
If I'm going to buy nutritional supplements for my family I want them to actually work! What a concept!
After all of these long hours I was at a loss. I didn't think I would ever find a company that did things right. It seemed that all that was important to them was making money and using the cheapest ingredients to make the highest profits. I refused to spend my hard-earned money on junk so we used nothing.
Finally one day I stumbled upon a company called Arbonne. Doing my due diligence I set to work to prove they were just like all the rest. What I found was they set their standards according to European standards, not U.S. (which, sad to say, is one of the worst in the world when it comes to anything food related).
They used the finest ingredients from around the world formulating them with the highest standards anywhere in the world.
Finally - a company that did what I wanted! I was thrilled beyond anything!
They even taught me some things such as petroleum ingredients and how manufacturers and formulators put it in a lot of American skin care AND in our food as well. YUCK!
So now that I've told you my life story.....bottom line is that you have a choice to make. What are you willing to put into your body? What are you going to do today to give your body the nutrition it needs? To give your gut what it needs to keep you healthy and strong?
Every bite you take is a decision for or against your health.
I know you are going to make the right choice today!
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