LpVitamins Wellness News

The best defense is a good offense, right!  Especially, when it comes to your immune system. By practicing healthy lifestyle habits and reducing exposure to infection (offense), you can better help protect against illness (defense).

Why you get sick or not - or not?
Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp were both keenly aware of the same things you and I experience every year: during the cold and flu season, some people get sick and some people don’t.

Pasteur devoted his life looking for what makes sick people sick, and Bechamp spent his looking for what keeps healthy people healthy - and how we can be like them! Both men settled their argument with the discovery that illness visits people with poor habits much more frequently than those who care for their health.

As the beast in nuture prefer to pay on the weak, so microbes prefer to wreak their havoc on people with compromised immune systems.  Even simple things can compromise our immune system, including:

• An imbalanced diet
• Alcohol and caffeine consumption
• An argument with someone you love

Pasteur and Bechamp discovered, more than a century ago, that our health depends more on a healthy lifestyle than on the virulence of a microbe.

Help protect against illness
The phrase that describes our vulnerability or resistance to disease is “biological terrain.” Your genetics, your environment and, most importantly, your lifestyle make up the terrain of your health. Vigorous application of the 10 Essentials yields the healthiest, most disease-resistant terrain. Skipping even one of these principles will change your terrain and leave you vulnerable to infection.

• A base of healthy nutrients
  Establishing a base of healthy nutrients can provide a very resilient terrain. The more dense the base is, the more disease-resistant your terrain will be. Taking a multiple vitamin and mineral supplement every day is an excellent start. Many physicians recommend an Omega-3 supplement as well. If your terrain is being remodeled by stress, you may need adaptogens to help you cope while remaining disease-resistant. Indeed, the long-term studies of adaptogens in Russia clearly demonstrated that these plants help you resist infections and speed healing.
• Vitamin C
  Vitamin C is a favorite for protecting against and even treating viral infections. Russell Jaffe, MD, former director of the National Institutes of Health, recommends a loading dose of Vitamin C: one teaspoon of Vitamin C crystals every 15 minutes until you “flush.” By this, he means a complete bowel evacuation. After the flush, he recommends a daily serving of Vitamin C (for one month) that is equivalent to 75% of the amount it took you to flush. This should really improve your terrain!
• Echinacea
  Echinacea is used in a similar way. Significant medical research from Germany suggests that an hourly dose of Echinacea will help reduce symptoms and may help shorten the duration of a virus infection. Taking a gram of Echinacea every hour for three days may even “abort” an infection that has already begun. Continue taking Echinacea three times daily for up to two weeks afterward to protect against a relapse.

Reduce your exposure
Here are some great recommendations for reducing your exposure to infection:

• Wash your hands
  First, the largest contributor to infection is unwashed hands. Washing your hands with soap every few hours will reduce the chance for pathogens to gain access to your system. You should also make sure they are completely dry. Then, use the disposable towel to open the door out of the washroom. Many ugly microbes lurk on door handles - usually from people who have not properly washed and dried their hands.
• Clean surfaces
  Next, disinfect surfaces that are shared by many people. For instance, public telephones bring you within kissing distance of hundreds or even thousands of people. Who knows what their hygiene habits were? In a typical day we may be exposed to germs from as many as 150 countries or more!
• Reduce stress
  Reduce stress. Stress decreases the effectiveness of your immune system. Your immune system may begin to overreact or not react in time to stop an infection when you are under stress. The source of the stress really doesn’t matter. Job stress and an injury may seem like entirely different stresses to your mind but they are treated exactly the same way by your body.

Remember, building up your terrain and reducing your exposure are keys to a great offense… which will help improve your defense!

                                              Take Charge of Your Health

• Aggressively apply the 10 Essentials
• Take a “base” of nutrients:
  • A multiple vitamin and mineral supplement
  • An Omega-3 fatty acid supplement
  • A stress-specific antioxidant supplement
  • Vitamin C
• Reduce your exposure
  • Wash your hands every few hours and dry thoroughly
  • Disinfect common area surfaces

Learn More… The proper way to wash your hands

Aloe vera juice has been used for a least four thousand years to treat successfully a multiplicity of human ailments. It contains over 200 ingredients that seem to affect thousands of biomedical actions in the body. Many researchers believe that Aloe vera is the single most important treatment one could use to fight disease.

We find in the Aloe vera plant at least six antiseptic agents: lupeol, salicylic acid, urea nitrogen, cinnamic acid, phenol, and sulphur.  These substances are all recognized antiseptics. Their presence explains why Aloe has the ability to eliminate many internal and external infections. Lupeol, salicylic aced and another ingredient, magnesium, are highly effective analgesics.  They make Aloe vera an effective pain killer.

Aloe vera contains at least three anti-inflammatory fatty acids (cholesterol, campesterol and B-sitosterol), making Aloe an effective treatment for burns, cuts, scrapes and abrasions, as well as for rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic fever and ulcers of all kinds, both internal and external. The presence of these fatty acids may explain why some experts feel Aloe is highly effective for many inflammatory conditions of the digestive system and other internal organs, including the stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, kidney and pancreas. The presence of these fatty acids, B-sitosterol in particular, could explain why Aloe vera juice is a treatment effective for allergic reactions and acid indigestion, and why it helps, in association with a low fat diet, to lower harmful cholesterol levels.

It’s this synergistic relationship between the elements found in the plant that explains why Aloe works, and why through the ages lay persons and physicians alike have proclaimed that Aloe vera has the ability to heal, alleviate, eliminate, or even cure, a monumental list of human diseases and disorders, and deserving the name “medicine plant.”

Our bodies make millions of new cells every day: heart cells, brain cells, bone and blood cells. Every time a cell dies it should be replaced. If you do not have the right amount of nutrients to construct a new cell you will either make an incomplete cell or none at all. The outcome is bad in either case, so we really need to keep all nutrients on board at all times. This is why we suggest a multiple vitamin and mineral supplement. This helps ensure we stay on top of our nutrient reserve.

Supplements
The word supplement means to add more – to make up for a deficiency. Vitamin and mineral supplements should be taken in addition to a healthy diet. They make up for the deficiency we face due to the poor nutrient density in our foods. Supplements also help make up the difference when our diet is less than perfect.

The simplest way to help support your nutrition is to take a general multi-vitamin and mineral supplement that provides a broad range of nutrients at standard nutritional levels. However, please remember the following points:

1. Some supplements contain very high doses of certain nutrients. When you take nutrients in extremely high doses, you are no longer in the world of nutritional supplementation and have passed into the riskier world of “megadose” treatment.
2. Calcium and magnesium are very bulky minerals, and few multi-vitamin/mineral supplements provide the daily requirement. These minerals generally must be taken in the form of additional pills. Note: It isn’t possible for your body to absorb a day’s worth of calcium in a single dose. At least two doses are necessary.

Common nutritional deficiencies:

Very few of us are so deficient in these nutrients as to show symptoms of obvious malnutrition. However, subtle deficiencies may increase the risk for a variety of conditions. For example, insufficient intake of calcium and Vitamin D may increase your chances of developing osteoporosis, and inadequate folate and Vitamin B-6 may speed the development of heart disease.

Besides vitamins and minerals, intake of essential omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids is often inadequate.

A plan for everyone
Finally, keep in mind that food contains many substances other than vitamins and minerals that may enhance your health.

Supplements won’t overcome bad dietary choices. We simply must commit ourselves to eating more fruits and vegetables. However, the reality of life is that we don’t always attend to our diet perfectly. So, appropriate nutrient supplementation can help make up for the deficiency we face because of poor nutrient density in our foods and an imperfect diet.

Learn More…

• How to start eating more fruits and vegetables

 For as long as I can remember, cranberries have always been part of the Thanksgiving and Christmas festive celebrations.  I have fond memories of making cranberry “chains” to decorate our Christmas tree and of course there was always a bowl of cranberry sauce on the table for both the Thankgiving and Christmas feast. I especially liked the whole berry kind.  In more recent times, I’ve learned there is more to the cranberry story.

The Cranberry’s Healing Power

This wholesome fruit has a delicious taste and many important health benefits as well. The cranberry is very high in several important nutrients, in particular, a variety of important antioxidant vitamins. Nutritionists and other experts often talk about the many benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and cranberries are an excellent way to fit five or more servings a day of fruits and vegetables into even the busiest lifestyle.

Is The Cranberry Really Nutritious?

The cranberry has a role in optimizing overall health and fitness, but it is thought to play a role in reducing the occurrence of urinary tract infection. This effect is thought to be the result of the proanthocyanidins (PACs) contained in cranberries. These PACs have been shown to prevent certain types of bacteria from adhering to the walls of the urinary tract.

The PACs contained in the cranberry may also help prevent gum disease and stomach ulcers, using the same anti-adhesion mechanism.

The evidence continues to increase showing that the phytonutrients and antioxidants contained in the cranberry and other fruits help to protect against a variety of diseases, including such potentially life-threatening conditions like cancer and heart disease.

Antioxidants contribute their healing power through their ability to fight the harmful effects of free radicals in the body. Free radicals are part of the normal cellular processes of the body. They can also be the result of environmental pollution of our air, food and water, and they can be quite damaging to our health. Antioxidants work to mitigate the damage caused by free radicals. Therefore, they are believed to play an important role in the prevention of degenerative diseases and perhaps even retarding the aging process.

If you want to include more cranberry products in your diet, these products are plentiful, inexpensive and available all year long. Fresh cranberries are available in grocery stores and supermarkets for the majority of the year, and when they are not available, there are plenty of canned and frozen cranberry products to take their place.

In addition to fresh, canned and frozen cranberries, there are a number of excellent cranberry based products on the market. You’ll find the cranberry sauce that is part of every traditional Thanksgiving celebration, cranberry juice and even cranberry pudding. With all these choices, it’s not hard to fit more cranberries into just about any diet. And with all the health benefits cranberries contain, there is good reason to enjoy more of this tasty treat.

To further support your immune system, try TriVita’s Adaptogen 10 Pus^TM. It contains 10 plant and herbal extracts with adaptogenic qualities, each one chosen for its ability to help the body “adapt” to stress and stressful situations quickly and efficiently.

TriVita has launched on their corporate web-site several new product offers and packaging. These new products can be reviewed and purchased at Trivita.com.

NutraFruits™
NutraFruits is the quick and easy way to help you get the right amount of fruits and vegetables each day.

• An ORAC value of 4,954 per serving — it’s like having 8 servings of fruits and vegetables in every scoop
• A low calorie powdered drink, containing the vital
  nutrients from over 30 of the healthiest fruits and vegetables on the planet
• Supercharged with the antioxidant power of some of nature’s most exotic fruits, including Mangosteen, Goji Berries and Acai Berries
• Probiotic blend to support the health of the gastrointestinal system and help boost the immune system

The recommendation of the health community is that we should get 8 or more servings of fruits and vegetables every day. This seems like an interesting alternative to eating a basket full of produce every day; think of all the time and work involved.

I’d rather mix a tall glass of NutraFruits in mere seconds. It costs a lot less, too!

Shingles outbreaks (rashes or blisters on the skin) are associated with the virus, Varicella zoster. Usually, people are exposed to this virus when they get the chickenpox. Other people contract the virus but never have an outbreak or symptoms.

Although there is a strong association between the virus and the disease, this association is far from “cause and effect,” because many people who test positive for the virus never get chickenpox or shingles. And, only a tiny fraction of the people who have the virus ever get shingles.

So, the pertinent question is, how can you reduce your risk of getting shingles?

Read the complete article to learn more.

Toxins or poisons collect in your body over time and can damage your health. They collect in your lymphatic system and this can affect your body’s ability to heal itself.

Toxins can pile up in your lymph nodes where two-thirds of your immune system resides. If the lymph nodes are full of toxins, your body will not respond correctly to new stresses. This includes the changes that occur when you begin a weight loss program.

A process called a “Vitamin C flush” can help your body get rid of this waste and prepare your body to achieve maximum benefit of the weight loss program.

The Vitamin C flush
The Vitamin C flush can help stimulate your lymphatic system and help you calculate the maximum amount of Vitamin C that your body can use every day. Read more…

Last year, consumers spent over $5.1 billion for just one popular acid indigestion medicine. This amount was for just this one medicine; it doesn’t even include all the dozens of other prescription and non-prescription medications on the market.

Sadly, many of those who took this medicine saw their symptoms get worse. Let’s look at some natural strategies for relieving the many digestive disorders we face today?

Resolving poor digestive health begins with reducing your response to stress. Deep breathing is an effective approach to stress management. Simply taking three deep breaths can break the cycle of chronic stress. Ten minutes of deep breathing is even better; this can often reduce your stress levels by 50 percent. After 20 minutes of deep breathing your brain begins releasing the hormones that repair your body – including your digestive tract. It’s best to practice deep breathing 10 minutes before each meal and 20 minutes at bedtime.

It’s important to select the right foods. High fiber and high water content fruits and vegetables are the foundation for good digestive health. Chew your foods completely. Don’t swallow until they are completely liquefied. Many nutritionists suggest eating starchy carbohydrates and proteins at different times. For example, steak and potatoes is a poor food combination for the same meal. Most adults cannot digest milk products. If you are unable to tolerate dairy products, avoid them. Also, gluten-containing grains (wheat, rye, oats, etc.) should be avoided if you have gluten sensitivity.

Supplements such as digestive enzymes can be a real “lifesaver.” Many people take as many as three tablets per meal for relief from poor digestion. But remember, you should always address the problem’s root cause. If it’s chronic stress, then stress reduction is the best strategy. You can bolster your defense against stress with Vitamin B-12 (necessary for digesting protein) and adaptogens.

If you are thinking about purchasing a liquid vitamin supplement, you may be wondering why people prefer liquid vitamins over pills.

Three Reasons Liquid Vitamins Are Preferred:

Most reasons given for the preference of liquid vitamins over pills can be categorized in one of three reasons:

Convenience
Optimum health comes from having a balance of many different nutrients. A liquid formula allows you to take one single serving of one supplement per day instead of servings of multiple supplements. It takes less thought and less time to take your vitamins in liquid form.

Easy to take
Many people find it difficult to swallow pills or capsules. A liquid vitamin formula avoids this problem completely.

More for less money
The processed foods we eat these days means that many people are at risk for multiple nutritional deficiencies. Taking vitamin supplements is more or less considered a necessity by many health practitioners. Taking multiple supplements in pill or capsule form is expensive. The cost for getting all the anti-aging nutrients contained in a single liquid vitamin formula can cost more than $300 per month if purchased in pills or capsules.

You can purchase To Your Health Liquid Vitamins for less than $50 per month.

Besides the desire to lose weight, the number two quesiton I hear: “is there anything I can do got get more energy.”

One way you can increase energy is to consume about 50 to 65 grams of protein per day. Proteins donate five times more energy than sugar. but you need to be aware that you can only digest about 25 grams at at time. So, pass on those sixteen ounce steaks.

There is a dark side to protein metabolism found in a particular form of nitrogen: ammonia. Excess ammonia can be formed in your body and brain if you eat protein but lack enough nitrogen to complete the energy process. This is often seen in people who experience bloating or an uncomfortable fullness after a healthy, protein-rich meal. It may also be seen in those who experience excessive fatigue after a meal.

You need to replace your supply of nitrogen since processing protein uses up large amounts of available nitrogen. Nitrogen in its active form, nitric oxide, is perhaps the most important source of energy for the heart, vascular system and immune system.
Read more…