What is Your New Year Resolution???

It is the exciting time to look forward to a new year and to personal improvements to go with it!

What is your New Year Resolution?

Is it for better health, more wealth, a better life?

My resolution for this year is for focus. For laser focus on my wellness business. To share the gift that was given to me with everyone I come in contact with. As I reflect on what my health used to be it is almost scary to think about what my life would be like without them.

If you seek to improve your life in any way then it is really important for you to take action and visit here to find out how: http://www.optimalhealthsecret.com

Cheers for the New Year!
Mary

How to Select the Best Vitamin and Mineral Supplement

It can be quite confusing to go shopping for vitamins and minerals these days. They are in every store. They come in every shape and milligram. Some having thousands of milligrams. Here is a brief history of vitamin and mineral supplements to help you better understand what the best choice is for you.

The history of vitamins and minerals goes way back to the discovery in the 1930’s. At this time certain deficiency diseases were recognized as being caused by a lack of vitamins and minerals. When this was realized the development of Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) came about. In a nutshell the RDA is the amount of essential nutrients from food that is needed to keep a healthy person healthy.

What does this little history have to do with vitamins and Minerals?

The first generation of vitamin/ mineral supplements were developed using synthetic versions of vitamins and minerals. These supplements were created in the laboratory to provide an inexpensive and standardized way to meet RDA requirements. In fact the vast majority of vitamin and mineral supplements are still made using synthetic vitamins and minerals. This includes some of the most popular brands (the ones advertised regularly on the TV).

The major disadvantages of supplements made like this are: Synthetic vitamins are not food so our body cannot uptake and utilize these at the optimal levels. Dirt and Rocks are not food. The solubility of minerals and their uptake and utilization in the body are critical factors.

A first generation vitamin may list 100% or more of the RDA for a given nutrient. But this does not mean your body will be able to absorb and utilize any or some of that nutrient. In other words synthetic vitamin and mineral salts are less expensive but they do not provide effective support for our body to bridge the nutritional gap in our diets.

The next generation of multi-vitamin and minerals is from whole food extracts. They are food and vegetable extracts and or single exotic plant or fruit products, e.g. Aloe Vera, golgi berries, etc. Whole food supplements have nutrients that the human body is able to utilize.

While whole food supplements are better than synthetic vitamins they also have some disadvantages. The reality of our current fruits and vegetables is that they are often deficient in important nutrients. Whole food supplements cannot be standardized for the amounts of vitamins, minerals or phytochemicals they may contain so they cannot be labeled for nutritional values. No single fruit, vegetable, or plant can meet all RDA requirements. Most plants are very high in vitamins but they are generally very low in mineral levels. Whole food supplements are a step in the right direction but since they cannot be standardized they can be significantly deficient in some of the critical nutrients we need for maintaining wellness.

The next major advancement in vitamin and mineral technology is here. The newest generation of supplements has many advantages including standardized natural vitamin complexes, standardized plant-derived minerals, standardized plant-derived phyto-chemicals, and all sources of these individual nutrients are specifically identified and labeled.

So how do you find the third generation of vitamin and mineral technology products? Really you have to be very careful when shopping and label reading. If the label says “whole food” or “plant sourced,” make sure you look closer to see if chelated minerals or mineral salts are in the ingredients. Those would indicate that they are not a whole food source. Another common claim is colloidal and liquid minerals are better absorbed by the body. These minerals are still rocks and the body recognizes them as such. The key factor for absorption is a plant source. The best way to make sure you are getting the best nutrient is to ask questions of the seller/ merchant. Ask them until they tell you all the advantages I listed above of the third generation vitamin and mineral supplement.

Best Vitamin and Mineral Supplement

Wellness: Vital Information

Copyright © Mary Thayer

The body is an incredible multi-tasking functional creation. It continues to surprise scientists all over again. Just when they think they have figured something out they find out they have just barely scraped the surface. Wellness occurs when our body is balanced or in a more scientific word homeostatic.

Sadly it seems that in today’s society less and less people are experiencing the privilege of wellness. If you turn on the news or pick up a newspaper you can see some kind of story about how our country’s health is declining faster and faster and at a younger age. It has been reported that my children’s generation is predicted to have a shorter life span that mine. That is sad.

The great news is that we don’t have to be sad. We have to be armed with information. We have to take action for our own wellness. While most have bought into a society of early detection many have forgotten about early prevention or health promotion. Today’s society has become reactive rather than proactive in many different ways.

My daughter’s new favorite book is “Too Much Junk Food” written by Stan and Jan Berenstain. (It’s funny that both my husband and I loved that book as kids too!) This book covers wellness in the most basic sense. With common sense that has been lost somewhere in time. The book starts with Mama Bear noticing that Brother and Sister Bear were getting chubbier. So being the smart bear that Mama Bear is, she takes ACTION. She takes away all the junk food. What a concept. Can you imagine how great it would be if more parents were as smart as Mama Bear? She then takes her family to the very smart Dr. Grizzly. Dr. Grizzly shows the bear family all the systems in the body and she ends their visit with this statement “I’ll do my part to keep you healthy if you’ll promise to do your part by eating the right foods.” She then tells sister the problem with junk food is that most of them aren’t very nourishing. So instead of helping build and strengthen our bodies, they just pile up as extra fat. She then reminds them that exercise is very important to be healthy as well.

Hope you enjoyed that brief book review. My purpose in reviewing that is to remind you in your quest for wellness an easy step for you to take is to eat less junk food and replace it with more nourishing food. For example lots of raw fruits and vegetables for starters. Also, to exercise daily.

It would be great if we could get all the nutrients we needed from a well balanced diet. Besides the fact that most of us do not eat a well balanced diet, our food is over processed and lacking vital nutrients that we need. There are many reasons our food is lacking nutrients. The soils nutrients are deficient, most fruits and vegetables are harvested green so they do not have any taste or the critical nutrients they get from the vine, and of course the use of chemicals to grow them. Our food is lacking in nutrients before it gets over processed which strips the nutritional value even more.

The Good News!

The body has the ability to heal, repair, and correct itself. That is an incredible statement. Can you imagine that if you give your body what it needs, it will repair itself! Wow! Just break a bone once and watch the healing take place. The only thing a doctor can do to help you is to set it back in the right spot. They cannot give you any medicine that will tell your body to heal itself. Your body knows what to do. The problem in our body healing itself lies in the body not receiving adequate nutrients, not enough exercise, and to much stress on it.

Besides the issue of our food lacking nutrients we also have the issue of Too Much Stress. As a society we are busier than ever. Our schedules are overflowing. We also have environmental stress. Toxins in the air, toxins in our water, toxins in our homes, some we don’t even know about yet!

Well all this sounds rather morbid that we should just accept sickness into our daily lives. That is not the correct answer. The answer lies in supplementation to our diets with good quality nutrients that our body can utilize. Emphasizing good quality supplements adding to that note food supplements. Supplements that our body recognizes as food and can utilize as food.

There are five major areas we need to support in our body. They are our cells, immune system, endocrine system, fuel supply (vitamins and minerals), and the digestive system.

1. Cell to cell communication. When it comes to our health if we support our cells and have healthy cells that makes healthy tissues= healthy organs=healthy systems=healthy you.

2. Support the immune system. The immune system is constantly being attached in our bodies by free radicals from stress in our lives and from all the toxins we are exposed to on a daily basis. When we support the immune system with antioxidants it provides much better protection for us.

3. Support the endocrine system. Everyone has hormones, yes even men, and they to have to be supported on a daily basis. The endocrine system keeps our body in check and when the endocrine system is not in check we do not feel good.

4. Put the right fuel in the body: vitamins and minerals. This seems basic because you can buy vitamins and minerals at any old store relatively cheap. It is very important that your vitamin and minerals are in food form and can be absorbed by your body. If they are not in food form our body cannot utilize them. That is why you see products with a gazillion mg of vitamins because our body cannot utilize much of any of the nutrients.

5. Keep the colon clean and healthy. Our colon houses a high percentage of our immune system so we want to keep it functioning at its optimal level.

Keep an eye out over the next few days as I will cover how we can support each area in our body and how you can experience the vibrant health I get to enjoy on a daily basis. If you want more information now go to my wellness pick.

Wellness: It's Your Choice

Wellness has always been a passion of mine. In high school I knew that I wanted to help people achieve wellness so I went to college to become a Registered Nurse. Through out my RN classes my favorite subjects were always health promotion and wellness. After graduating and getting my first job as a nurse I realized that I was not in the wellness/ health promotion industry. I was in sickness care.

At the ripe old age of 22 I became victim to sickness just like all the patients I took care of. After receiving the traditional treatments for my ailment my doctors told me I was cured but they could not explain why I didn't feel well. That is when I began my real pursuit of wellness. I began to educate myself on all aspects of wellness. At this time I also began supplementing my body with the nutrients it had been missing. It seemed almost magical that I could feel vibrant and healthy again. When I say wellness is your choice I really mean it is up to you. Early detection of health problems is the latest craze, but what I really am passionate about is early prevention through health promotion!

Stick around to find out more about how you can Feel Great, Look Great, and Live Well Today!