What Your Doctor Doesn't Know...

What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You.... That's the name of the awesome book by Ray D. Strand, M.D. that I am currently reading. After years of suffering from a debilitating chronic degenerative disease from which doctors could provide no relief, Dr. Strand's wife Liz turned to nutritional supplements in hopes of finding some help. Dr. Strand, admittedly knowing next to nothing about nutrition or nutritional supplementation, in spite of his doctor-like bias against nutritional supplements, consented, "Honey, you can try anything you want. We doctors certainly are not doing you any good."

Dr. Strand explains in the first chapter of his book that "only approximately six percent of the graduating physicians in the United States have any training in nutrition.... The education of most physicians is disease-oriented with a heavy emphasis on pharmaceuticals--we learn about drugs and why and when to use them" (pg. 5). But after witnessing the dramatic transformation nutritional supplements brought to his wife's life, Dr. Strand embarked on what would become a seven-year quest to research the facts behind nutritional medicine. His findings have completely transformed his practice, and he now prescribes nutritional supplements as a way to truly prevent the chronic degenerative diseases which are the top killers in our nation today as well as to improve the health of those already suffering from these diseases.

After explaining what free radicals are, where they come from, and the oxidative stress they cause, Dr. Strand outlines the importance of antioxidants and supporting nutrients in "winning the war within." And unlike what many medical doctors tell their patients, we truly are not able to achieve optimal levels of these nutrients which are needed to win the war within simply through the foods we eat. Recommended daily allowances (RDAs) when first started in the early 1920s were given as "minimal requirements of ten essential nutrients that could help us avoid acute deficiency diseases" such as scurvy, rickets, and pellagra (pg. 179). "In the early 1950s the definition of RDAs expanded to include the amounts of nutrients needed for normal growth and development" (pg. 180). RDAs are not the guideline for optimal health, and as Dr. Strand says, "have absolutely nothing to do with chronic degenerative diseases" (pg. 180). Dr. Strand says that if you desire to decrease your risk of developing a chronic degenerative disease, you must supplement your diet. That is, "you must take significant amounts of high-quality antioxidants and minerals (not multivitamins, which are primarily based on RDAs!) if you have any desire to prevent or slow down the chronic degenerative diseases described in this book" (pg. 182).

I highly recommend Dr. Strand's book to anyone even slightly interested in doing just that. And as for nutritional supplements, I recommend those by USANA which Dr. Strand endorses and which I personally have been taking for over four years.