Do we need vitamins and minerals in our diets?

Do vitamins and minerals do any good? Can’t we get everything we need from a healthy diet? Aren’t we just wasting our money on vitamins and minerals, peeing away our hard earned money? These are common questions and ideas promoted by Colleges, healthcare providers and well meaning friends. But did you know there are at least 16 essential vitamins, 12 essential amino acids, 3 essential fatty acids and 8 essential sugars. You don’t need herbs, you don’t need drugs, you need all 90 essential nutrients to live a disease free life. Vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients are not just a nice idea they are absolutely  vital to a long and sickness-free life. Let me give you a few examples.

My wife Shary had sever bleeding problems at every birth except one and she almost bled to death more than once. After those births it took weeks for her to regain her strength. So what was different at that one birth? It was when our son Nathan was born, Shary had bled a lot with our first three kids and doctor Peter Bours decided that he would give her a shot of vitamin K, right before the birth, hoping it would help. While she was in labor he gave her the shot and virtually no bleeding took place at that birth. Why did it work so well? Vitamin K is one of the necessary nutrients needed for blood clotting. All essential nutrients have specific roles in our wellness. Another problem associated with sever bleeding is that it causes the person to become anemic.

Iron suppliments are routinely prescribed by doctors when people become anemic. Common symptoms of anemia are; (fatigue, pale skin, weakness, shortness of breath, chest pain, frequent infections, headaches, dizziness or lightheadedness, cold hands and feet, inflammation or soreness of tongue, brittle nails, fast heartbeat, unusual cravings for non-nutritive substances, such as ice, dirt or starch, poor appetite, especially in infants and children, uncomfortable tingling or crawling feeling in your legs, restless leg syndrome)1. A great source of Iron are raisins, the iron in raisins is almost 100% digestible. Most Iron supplements are made from ground up iron, which can cause internal bleeding and are mostly indigestible. If you have been taking iron supplements and your iron levels are not going up, try raisins. The best minerals are from plant derived sources.

Vitamin D   According to Pubic Health Review; “Early in the twentieth century more than 80 percent of children in industrialized Europe and North America were ravaged by the devastating skeletal consequences of rickets. fortification of dairy products with vitamin D and widespread use of cod liver oil eradicated rickets as a significant health problem by the late 1930s. Many countries mandated the fortification of milk with vitamin D to prevent rickets during wartime shortages. Vitamin D deficiency has again become a major public health interest with its association with osteoporosis, osteomalacia, fractures, and more recently with prevention of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses.”2  Why the uptick in vitamin D deficiencies? Because most people have been taught that whole milk is bad so they drink skim milk or 2%. Vitamin D is stored in the milk fat so we now have a generation of people who again are suffering from Vitamin D deficiencies. Once again we find that if we eat our food the closest to the way God made it, we will be better off.

In College my wife and I were told that there was, “no need to take vitamins and minerals, it was just a waste of your money. You can get all you need by eating a healthy diet.”  That one statement is so outrageous and so uneducated that the people who say such things are either lying or they are completely unaware of the world around them. Virtually every one knows why sailors of old got scurvy, and what to do about it. They were suffering from a Vitamin C deficiency. It is almost impossible to buy milk that doesn’t have vitamin D added because a lack of vitamin D would cause an epidemic of rickets.

Ingredients

Bleached Enriched Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour (Improves Yeast Baking), Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid.

It’s almost impossible to get white flour that is not enriched with vitamins and minerals, because without those vitamins we would again, have an epidemic of pellagra. Before the addition of vitamins and minerals to white flour, pellagra was the worst epidemic to ever hit the U.S.3

Let me reiterate if someone tells you that you don’t need to take vitamins and minerals in our society, that person is mentally, a couple of fries short of a happy meal. If you are suffering from anemia everyone knows you need Iron supplements. If your child has rickets they will be given vitamin D supplements. The idea that we do not need to supplement our diets with vitamins and minerals is foolish if not a crime.

I was talking to a man I met in California, while attending a wedding. When I found out how old he was I asked him for his secret, he looked half his age, maybe even younger. He said he didn’t have one so I asked him if he exercised and he told me he had a Fitbit that made sure he walked a certain number of steps each day. I asked him if he took vitamins and minerals and he said well sure, quit a few each day. So he didn’t have a secret he just did what any intelligent person would do, moderately exercise each day and take vitamins and minerals to supplement their diet.

So how do you know what to take and how much?

In the seventies, I went to school to be a dairyman. In that school we were taught to spot symptoms in dairy cows and then to treat those symptoms with vitamins and minerals.  There are veterinary books that describe symptoms and corresponding vitamin and mineral treatments.  They work!  One time Shary was complaining of all the symptoms that dairymen called “milk fever or cow fever”. I chose my words carefully making certain that I did not use the word “cow” and explained to her that she was experiencing a vitamin and mineral deficiency. We purchase what  she needed and it worked, all the symptoms where gone. So should you get that dairyman’s manual? Nope, we are not cows, though some deficiencies diseases are common among all mammals, you need to get a vitamin and mineral reference for you.

Dr. Joel Wallach has produced a corresponding volume for humans called Lets play Doctor. Another great book is Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis A. Balch

Purchasing one or both of these books is a must for anyone who wants out of the “system” and is ready to take charge of his or her own health.  There must be something wrong with the system when American citizens are paying 1.2 trillion dollars in health care each year.  And the American people are less healthy than almost all other industrial nations.  According to Joel Wallach we give our dogs 40 essential minerals in Science Diet dog food.  We give lab rats 28 essential minerals in Purina food pellets and we only give our human babies 12 minerals in their baby food.  And we wonder why young children have poor health and are getting autism, cancer and other horrible diseases in unheard of numbers.

I make a lot of references to Dr. Wallach, because he is one of the few health experts that rarely gives advice about food that is contrary to the teachings of the Bible. He has also done some of the most extensive research we have ever seen. The wonderful thing is that through research he has come to some of the same conclusions that we have come to by studying the Scriptures. True science is not in opposition to the teachings of the bible. The world of God is not in conflict with the word of God. The more scientist study, the more they find that the God of the bible is the God who created man and the earth.

Almost everything we have tried, that Wallach has suggested, has worked..

Here is another American problem of epidemic proportions.

Arthritis and joint problems are at epidemic proportions and are some of the easiest problems to fix. They include Aching hands, knee problems, hip problems, rotator cup and shoulder problems, disc and back problems, foot and arch problems. The reason we in the States have so much trouble with this is because we do not eat all the connective tissue in meat. We also rarely boil soup stock any more with bone in it. Both of these practices provide us with cartilage material and calcium in our food.   I have lost count of the number of people I have helped to get rid of these unnecessary afflictions. The long term solution is to boil our meat with the bone on it and drink the soup stock.

But; the quick fix is a packet of Knox gelatin, (ground up connective tissue) which can be purchased at any grocery store for very little money, mixed in a glass of calcium enriched Minute Maid orange juice, once a day, along with a vitamin and mineral supplement that contains all 90 essential nutrients. (You can get that at American Youngevity). The younger you are the quicker the cure. If you are over 30, it just takes a little longer.  By the way, we stole this idea from Dr. Wallach.

Your body needs raw materials to do its job.  If you are having joint problems your body needs Calcium and joint material.  A friend of mine, who had stopped playing soccer because of knee pain, told me that his knees had swollen badly and he had to take painkillers every day just to walk and move around.  I suggested he try Knox gelatin.  He took my advice, in about a month, he told me that he was pain free, without medication. A high school freshman told me that he couldn’t run track because of knee problems, I suggested Knox gelatin. He was running in only a couple of weeks and by the end of the season, he had improved to the point that he took fifth in the one-hundred-meter dash at the state track meet. Another young man told me that he couldn’t pitch on the high school baseball team anymore because of a rotator cup problem. You guessed it. He did it, and he ended up pitching through the entire season. The following year he pitched his team to a state championship. Doctors will tell you that it is impossible to regrow cartilage and they are right, that is, if you do not give your body the raw materials it needs. I am not using these examples to show that you will improve your athletic ability, but to show that people who are using their joints to the maximum can not only improve their joint health with the addition of proper nutrients, but can also thrive under even the most rigorous conditions.

In the September 24, 1993 edition of the Denver Post, the Harvard Medical School and Boston V.A. Hospital published a study. They did the study to prove Dr. Wallach wrong. Dr. Wallach was prescribing the above, inexpensive formula, to people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and knee and other joint problems.  Harvard picked arthritis sufferers for their study who had failed to respond in any way to standard medical treatment.  The only thing left for these patients was joint replacement surgery.  They were asked to postpone their surgeries and suffer 90 more days. 59 volunteers were found (Not sure I would have volunteered). 28 received Knox gelatin only, and 31 received placebos. The 31 who took placebos got worse.  So what happened to the other 29?  After 10 days all the pain and inflammation was gone. In 30 days they had full use of their hands, and after 90 days they had maximum return of function.  Harvard’s report was that “The DRUG had been beneficial.”  In 90 days Knox gelatin had become a drug. So what did Harvard Medical School do? They patented their discovery, and are selling it to their patients at an unbelievably exaggerated price.4

If anyone tells you that taking vitamins is a waste of time and money; they either trying to sell you prescription drugs instead, or  they may be rowing but they don’t have all of their mental oars in the water. Anyone who thinks you don’t need supplements, couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. So if you want to live a long sickness free life in our society, drugs are not the answer, essential nutrients are. God has told us what food is good, what food is bad and how to treat the land so that our food will meet our needs. God says that refined foods are so bad for you and me that eating them is like cutting our own throats with a knife (Proverbs 23:1-3) and according to John chapter 1 and Hebrews 1:2; Jesus created the heavens and the earth and everything in them. Everything includes Man and Food for man. His instructions are in his Word, the Bible, for our benefit. Happy eating.

Next week we will look at more common nutritional deficiencies and how to fix them.  We will also talk about how to read highly misleading food labels.

 If you have any questions or comments about this or any other Wellnessgospel article, please feel free to contact me at chrisschauermann@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

If you believe God knows best, join us and the Wellness Gospel team and spread the word, share this with your friends on social media and may God bless you richly.

If you want to keep improving your health and enjoy this biblical view of scientific information then I would like to recommend three must-read books.

1. “None of These Diseases” by S. I. McMillen, M.D. and David E. Stern, M.D.
2. “Let’s Play Doctor” by Dr. Joel Wallach
3. “God’s Guide To Biblical Health and Healing” by Rev. Chris & Shary Schauermann

You can get all these books at Amazon.com

1. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iron-deficiency-anemia/basics/symptoms/con-20019327
2. http://www.publichealthreviews.eu/show/f/35
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446222/pdf/10800421.pdf
4. http://www.chickencartilage.com/harvardstudy/