Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life,
which fade and are tasteless without it.
-Seneca
Health literally creates some of the best experiences.  Every time my health has been in the tank, I haven’t enjoyed it very much.

My concern is that people are sacrificing what they have for the illusion of something better and in most cases, people can save a ton of money, eat better and get more bang for their buck with a whole food vitamin and better food.

But to understand the great vitamin lies, I need to make sure I talk about the importance of vitamins, how they are used, lost, made, and ultimately how they can make your life better.  I know my health and subsequently my life are better because I learned about food first, then vitamins second.

“Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.”
- Hippocrates

That may have been true a few thousand years ago, but our current food supply is very stressed.  There are two main problems with our food.

#1 The commercial processing of our food.
#2 The commercial farming of our soil.

Let’s start with processing, or should I say killing and completely destroying nature.

Most Americans are eating at least some processed food everyday.  Universally, Americans are not eating enough fresh vegetables and fruits, and most of the grains are processed.  Start thinking cereal, pasta, toast and donuts.

Let’s pick on wheat for a moment, only because it is so common in most people’s lives.

Grains are processed for one reason only…shelf life.  So what happens when you shred a grain apart.

#1. Take a kernel of wheat, filled with vitamins and minerals, bran and germ.

#2.  Rip everything of value out: the bran, germ, vitamin E, calcium, manganese, copper, zinc, and potassium, and leave us with the starch.

#3.  Bleach it, so it looks pretty.

#4.  Spray some artificial B vitamins (often derived from coal tar) and iron on it. (called enriched) Enriched is a great term to make you think you are getting something great, but you are really getting ripped off.

#5. Package it up so it can sit on a store shelf in a pretty box.  Unable to spoil, because not even bacteria can live on it.  This process includes packaged breads, rolls, muffins, donuts, cereal, pasta, and all those yummy cakes and cookies in boxes. 

That brings up a fundamental question of commonsense.  If bacteria can’t spoil a product, there is nothing alive or of value in it.  Your body can’t use it either.  “Non-perishable foods” are just that.

Modern milling rips all the nutrition out and leaves us holding an empty bag.  If you follow the modern food pyramid, you’ll be getting 6-11 servings of grains, most of which is processed, empty and dead.   If you see the words enriched or bleached it is definitely processed.  If it is white, you’re in trouble.  Here is a good project for you to get rid of any white bread you have laying around and are now not going to eat.
“Best use of white bread and a $1.41 “

Sadly and quite amazingly this has been going on for a long time.  About 1901, Harvey Wiley M.D. the chief of what we call the FDA now, started fighting for a law to prohibit this kind of adulteration of food.  He actually was able to get a law passed in June of 1911, forbidding “the addition of deleterious substances by the manufacturer.”  “The abstraction of any valuable ingredient also is an adulteration”.  As published in the Washington Post by Dr. Wiley in 1912.

Dr. Wiley also said in 1912 “The manufacturers of our food supply, and especially the millers, would devote their energies to improving the public health and promoting happiness in every home by the production of whole ground, unbolted cereal flours and meals.”

After that, Dr. Wiley was no longer able to rock the boat.  He was removed as the chief of the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry (todays FDA) in 1912.   Too bad, he was on a roll.

Essentially after WWI (1918) food became universally processed, refined, preserved, and general tampered with.  Today almost all food in a grocery store is processed.  Don’t start to panic, help is on the way.  We’ll talk about how to fix it.  I am hoping you are starting to see an emerging picture of why whole food vitamin supplements started to emerge in the 1920’s.  Vitamin deficiencies were showing up back then.

The following headline is the exact reason this book is so relevant.  You shouldn’t buy most multivitamins.  Most vitamins on the market are bad for you, or at the best worthless.  Does that mean you don’t need extra vitamins?  Absolutely not.  This article also highlights why it is so incredibly difficult to study vitamins.
Feb 9, 7:48 PM EST

Huge study boosts disappointment on multivitamins

Image via Wikipedia

By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer

“CHICAGO (AP) — The largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women found the pills did nothing to prevent common cancers or heart disease. The eight-year study in 161,808 postmenopausal women echoes recent disappointing vitamin studies in men.

Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamins to boost their health. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease in particular because of evidence that diets full of vitamin-rich foods may protect against those illnesses. But that evidence doesn’t necessarily mean pills are a good substitute.

The study’s lead author, researcher Marian Neuhouser of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, offered this advice: “Get nutrients from food. Whole foods are better than dietary supplements,” Neuhouser said.

The study appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

They are almost 100% correct.  You do need a multivitamin, but you don’t need a artificial, synthetic one.

They are absolutely right when they say you need to get your vitamins from food.  Vitamins give the body strength, power, and the ability to function.  Vitamins in food have many different pieces all put together, like a 1000 piece puzzle that takes days to do.  Vitamins in most dietary supplements are like the naughty kid who scrambles up the puzzle before Grandma can put the last piece in.  The pieces are strewn about randomly and violently.  So violently, that now all that work is gone and some pieces are missing down the air ducts, never to return.  Get your vitamins from food.

What they missed was separating out the people taking “whole food” multivitamins vs. everything else.  There is a monumental difference.  It is the difference between having the puzzle completed into a beautiful mountain scene or a random mess of turned over pieces.   It was nice to see the recognition that people may need some for of supplementation for poor eating habits.  Unfortunately, that’s most, if not all of us.

Vitamins aren’t drugs.

I know…shocking news.  What I mean by that is a drug is an isolated substance that forces the body to do something, whether it wants to or not.  Thus, it is easier to do double-blind medical research tests with drugs than vitamins.  Vitamins in a food are complex, and depending on the health and nutritional status of the person, vitamins will be used differently.  The body decides what it wants to do with them.   For example: vitamin C may be used to help repair body tissues, to prevent scurvy or it may be picked up and used by the white blood cells to help fight an infection.

Would you like a simple way to find out?

You could save a bunch of money every month and get even healthier to boot, all in about 15 minutes. Easy.

Odds are, that you aren’t using muscle building supplements  or Hcg supplements or any other highly specialized product. But, you are likely taking a multiple vitamin, maybe some B’s, E’s, C’s, calcium, or vitamin D.

So are you better off taking them? Depends.

Here’s my spin on this topic. If I could no longer get whole food supplements I wouldn’t take anything. That’s right, vitamin supplements can be bad for you. They can also save your life. It just depends on what you take.

Would you like to eat the orange peel and not the inside? or maybe the banana peel instead of the nice sweet inside. That’s exactly what happens when you take an antioxidant. OK, don’t quit reading just yet.

Antioxidants are important for protecting the precious vitamins inside the fruit not for protecting your body. Much like the way a peel protects the whole fruit.

I’m slightly off topic but I’m going to attempt to reel it back in. Vitamin E attracts a lot of attention as being good for the heart and other muscles. Now if you go look at a bottle of vitamins you’ll likely see…

• d-alpha tocopherol or


• dl-alpha tocopherol

These are regarded as vitamin E by most people. In reality, they are just antioxidant rings and really only one of many that normally exist in nature.

If you go whack open a wheat berry in your grain grinder you’ll be eating natural vitamin E as it was intended to exist and buried down deep inside the vitamin matrix is the mineral selenium.

This is why the average vitamin bottle on the shelf really stinks for making you healthier and wastes a ton of your money. A really cheap vitamin E supplement will only have alpha-tocopherol and no selenium so you body now becomes the doner.

You will now slowly become selenium deficient the longer you take the artificial stuff. Just for fun, look up “Selenium Deficiency” in Google.

This concept is pretty important along with many other little things that make supplement buying a little tricky. It all boils down to getting a whole, natural, unadulterated product.

If you want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly, I’ll answer any questions you have about supplements for free through out the month of February.

When an average patient brings in 10 bottles of supplements 2-3 are good, 1-2 are acceptable, and the rest fall into the ugly and dangerous category.

I’m in the office Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (mornings). Just bring in your bottles, even if you aren’t a patient of mine, I’ll give you the straight scoop and potentially save you a bunch of money every month and make you healthier.

I know what your thinking. “Fine, I’ll just take nothing, right.” Wrong, one of the most improtant things I do every day is take whole food supplements and herbs. They are tremendously helpful and neccessary by almost every one. I have yet to meet someone who doen’t need some kind of supplementation.

Let me help you be healthier,
-Dr. Altman
Подаръциikoni

Let’s start with a basic test and see if you need a detox diet. It won’t be graded and no one will see it. Two months ago, we had a patient with chronic pain do a very simple cleansing diet. I mean very simple, and it even with just diet changes it was amazing.

Within 5 days, she had no pain.

I meet patients every month that have no idea what life would be without pain, OR they have had pain so long they think it is normal. Yes, some people think that everyone has low back pain, or that everyone has headaches, or…. (fill in the blank). This will prep you for the test. A lot of people may have those problems and it may be “common”, but it is not normal.

Dr. Altman’s super fantastic 2011 detox diet test.

Just answer Yes or No

Y / N -Headaches

Y / N -Fatigue

Y / N -Digestive Problems

Y / N -Food Cravings

Y / N -Weight gain

Y / N -Low libido

Y / N -Low mental focus

Y / N -I drink alcohol

Y / N -I drink soda

Y / N -I eat fast food

Y / N -I drink tap water

Y / N -I don’t eat organic food

If you circled “Y” for any of them, you may want to keep reading. If you had all “N”s, then you have lived a good year and deserve a medal. Stop in, I think I can find one for you. Seriously though, if you answered “N” to all of these come in or email me, and I’d like to interview you.

If you have one or more of the problems, they may be related to all the crud you have been eating, drinking, or breathing this past year.

• What goes in, must come out, right? Not so.
• What goes up, must come down
• But not in and out.

If your diet has a little partially hydrogenated oil in it, (check packaged food labels), it may take you 102 days for your body to get rid of ½ of it.

If you aren’t buying organic meat, you will most likely eat estrogen hormones with your meat. For the women reading this I, especially, encourage and beg you to read November 2008 Bruce West newsletter on our website www.docaltman.com or pick up a copy in the office. These estrogens are significant cancer causers, and the only way to get them out is through the liver.

The researchers found that eating kale and Brussels sprouts increased the livers ability to detox estrogen by an average of 500%.

The only way the liver can get them out, is by using nutritients in certain foods. When you eat something that isn’t good for you, your liver jumps up, takes over, busts the garbage up and tosses it to the curb.

Here’s the rub. I’ll bet you probably don’t eat a lot of kale every day or even every week for that matter. I know I don’t.

Some of these liver cleaning power foods such as artichokes, beets, Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, and broccoli just to name a few, just don’t appear on the plate everyday. Even once a week isn’t really good enough. If you eat one of these everyday you may be excused.

My point is that we are surrounded by chemicals. 87,000 new ones since WWII. That isn’t going to change. It is impossible to live a chemical free life. No matter where people live on the globe, researcher have found chemicals in their bodies.

So here is what I think.

There is no point in worrying about things you can’t change. So I accept that, and focus on what I can do to combat that.

The best alternative I have seen is to supplement with something for my liver everyday if I don’t eat the foods above. I do something to help my liver clean my body every day. Considering that the rates of cancer are out of control, this is a very important habit.

Also, I think it is mandatory for all women to do something to clean the liver every day, because estrogen chemicals are everywhere. If you read November 2008 Bruce West, it drives the point home that the estrogen chemicals are breast cancer causers.

So, here are some detox choices for you.

1. Eat the foods above everyday. (Fresh or frozen)
2. Once a day I take either SP Cleanse or SP Greenfood or LivCo or Livton or Cruciferous Complete. I generally rotate through them so I get some variety.
3. I suggest the Purification Program. I have done this numerous times. I’ve lost track of the number of patients who have done it. It is a feeding frenzy for your liver and / or cleansing organs such as your kidneys. Just think of what could happen if you flood your body with good clean water, veggies, fruits, and proteins.

The Purification Program was developed and has been clinically tested to activate phase II liver detox, which is normally very hard to do. It was published in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. No medical journal would publish something as outrageous as healthy food in healing the body. No that would be crazy talk.

Nuts and bolts of the Program:

• 3 weeks of Clean eatin’
• 3 Supplements and Protein shake.
• (SP Cleanse…20 different whole foods that fuel cleansing)
• (Gastro-Fiber…keeps the guts healthy and moving)
• (SP Greenfood…5 major players in liver cleaning)

“Once I did the Purification Program, I crave vegetables and fruits now.” -Dana Shaver

This is a powerful program. You need to talk to me first before you can do it. For most people it drops cholesterol and blood pressure rapidly and we need to talk about that if you are taking meds. Also, it is fun to track weight loss. A little more on detox diets and getting skinny.

If people need to lose weight, women average 8-10 lbs, and men average 10-15lbs. The last time I did it I lost 7 lbs. the first week, and my cholesterol dropped about 30 points.

There is more to that story, but you need to ask me. If it is something you want to do and I think you can handle it, it is on sale this month for 20% off.

If you need help just email. If you need supplements just email docaltman [at] gmail [dot] com or call our web based order line and just leave a message, 612-BE-GREAT (612-234-7328).