Alice Feinstein - Nutricures: Foods & Supplements That Work with Your Body to Relieve Symptoms & Speed Healing

Alice Feinstein

and the Editors of

2010 by Rodale Inc.

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Book design by Joanna Williams

Cover design by Carol Angstadt

Portions of this book were previously published by Rodale Inc in 2009.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feinstein, Alice.

NutriCures : foods & supplements that work with your body to relieve symptoms & speed healing / by Alice Feinstein and the editors of Prevention.

p.cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13 9781605299013 paperback

eISBN-13 9781605290669 ebook

1. Diet therapyPopular works. 2. NutritionPopular works. 3. Dietary supplementsPopular works. I. Prevention (Emmaus, Pa.) II. Title.

RM216.F416 2009

615.8'54dc22 2009034167

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This book is intended as a reference volume only, not as a medical manual. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor. If you suspect that you have a medical problem, we urge you to seek competent medical help.

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

Just how important are vitamins and minerals? In a word, very.

Essential nutrientsthe vitamins and minerals at the heart of this bookare labeled essential for a reason. Your body needs them in order to function properly. If you dont get enough of each and every one, your health could suffer for it. That much is clear.

What isnt so clearand what continues to drive much debateis just how much of these nutrients is enough. Were blessed to live in a country where food is abundant and a healthy diet should satisfy our bodies basic nutritional needs. But a growing number of nutrition-minded doctors and health professionals would argue that the essential nutrients can do so much more for us. In optimum amounts, they not only can help us treat an array of existing conditions but greatly improve our odds of staying healthy and disease free.

To illustrate this point, Seattle-based naturopath Ryan Bradley, ND, offers a beautifully thought-provoking analogy. If you were preparing for a spectacular hike into the Rocky Mountains, which of the following would you shove into your pack?

A. Just enough food to keep you from starving, along with the bare minimum of clothing to keep you from freezing to death

B. Enough food to provide nourishing, satisfying meals and snacks for the duration of the trip, plus sufficient clothing and blankets to keep you dry and toasty-warm no matter what the weather

B seems like the best choice, dont you agree? Yet if we apply this analogy to the current accepted nutritional standards, were much closer to the bare necessities described in A.

To some extent, the discrepancy can be traced to the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), which are now part of the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). The RDAs reflect the minimum amount of a given vitamin or mineral that an average person should consume in order to prevent deficiencies. These values were never intended to represent the optimum amounts of vitamins and minerals that you require to achieve your best possible health.

So when we talk about whether the RDAs are enough, we really ought to consider what we hope to gain from them. Sure, they can help us to avoid scurvy, pellagra, and other deficiency diseases that today are almost unheard of in developed countries. But if we want to get the most from our essential nutrients, if we want to experience their full therapeutic potential, then we really should be looking beyond the RDAs.

When you want a specific therapeutic dose of a single nutrient to help treat or prevent a particular condition, your first instinct may be to look for a supplement that delivers exactly that dose. But the very best source of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients is food, not supplements. In fact, during the interviews for this book, nearly all of our experts asserted that eating the right foods in the right amounts is the ideal way to get a full spectrum of healing nutrients.

Whats more, despite their diverse backgrounds and specialties, our experts offered nearly identical dietary advice.

Eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, plus whole grains and fish.

Concentrate on putting a rainbow of colors on your plate at every meal.

Keep sweetsespecially anything containing high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)to a minimum. (Well talk more about HFCS throughout this book. Its in many processed foods, which can make avoiding it a bit of a challenge.)

Avoid hydrogenated fats and trans fats; youll find them on the labels of all kinds of processed and packaged foods.

Consider taking a multivitamin to cover your nutritional bases, just in case you dont get the recommended 5 to 7 servings of fruit and vegetables every day. (Even those of us who know better often fall short of the mark.)

If you do all of these things, youll lay a solid nutritional foundation for optimum health. Then add on those supplements recommended in this book for any health concerns you have that might benefit from an extra nutritional boost.

Each of the condition entries in Part 1 of the book ends with a section called NutriCures Rx. Here youll find a summary of the nutrients that experts have cited as most beneficial to support healing or prevent the condition in the first place. Ideally, you would get enough of each nutrient simply by eating more nutrient-rich foods. But that may not always be practical, depending on the recommended dosage. So make food your first choice and use dietary supplements to make up the difference.