Dietary supplements, why do you need them?

“A shortage of minerals or trace elements actually no longer occurs in Western society, unless there is unilateral eating habits, long-term illness or chronic use of medication.”

According to the Nutrition Center on their site.

Together, these risk groups - chronically ill people and people who eat unilaterally - are already millions of people.
So being flippant about it, as the Nutrition Center does, is unjustified. It's a little more complex. A simple yet long story.

Double pliers

Why should you take nutritional supplements?
The answer to this question is twofold: on the one hand, the burden on our body as a result of stress, smoking, pollution, particulate matter, synthetic nutrients and additives, pesticides, and medication use has increased enormously in recent decades. On the other hand, the quality of our food has declined dramatically over the same period. We are in a bind and it is practically impossible to do anything about this in a normal way — by going to the store and preparing your meals yourself.

Older but not healthier

Although we are all getting older, the number of years that we live healthy is declining. In other words, we are getting older in a bad way, not to mention the pain that many have to travel later in life before they finally die. According to the CBS, compared to 35 years ago, the expected number of healthy years of life for a boy or girl born today has been reduced by 7.7 and 13.1 years, respectively.

Figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS)

For women, that means they are expected to be chronically ill for more than half their lives.

Other figures also show this shocking reality.
In the Netherlands, just over 5 million people suffer from one or another chronic illness today. That is almost one third of the population and that will not be much different in other Western countries. We take that for “normal”. Taking a pill is very common. For high blood pressure, for your cholesterol, for your diabetes, before sleeping, for pain, for your depression.

priceless

This trend of an increasingly unhealthy population will only continue. An unsettling prospect. All the more so that the costs involved will be completely out of hand. Healthcare as we are used to today is becoming unaffordable.
According to the 2018 Public Health Future Exploration trend scenario commissioned by the RIVM, healthcare costs will double to an unprecedented amount of €174 billion by 2040.
Per capita, health care spending will increase from €5100 to €9,600 by 2040.
It is clear that to reverse this trend, attention must shift from combating symptoms to prevention through a healthy lifestyle. Less smoking, less stress, more exercise and better nutrition are the motto.

Let's delve a little deeper into it.

There are two major trends that determine our health: the increase in the burden on our bodies and the inflation of our food.

Body overload‍

Rust on the cells

Free radicals attack cells. It's like rust on the cells.
And as a result, cells start to inflame.
In itself, this is a normal phenomenon and a healthy body with a healthy immune system knows how to cure these low-grade inflammations at an early stage. If, on the one hand, the immune system is weakened due to a lack of nutrients and, on the other hand, the number of free radicals increases as a result of stress and pollution by toxins, there comes a time when the body is no longer able to stop the inflammations in time and adequately. Scientists agree that these inflammations are the harbingers of (chronic) diseases.

It's interesting to mention that you don't notice much of these inflammatory processes until it's too late. Everyone knows the examples of people who have always felt good, go to the doctor one day because they suddenly feel unwell and are told that they only have a few months to live.

Stress

Our bodies are increasingly stressed and this has been going on for decades. That starts with our hectic life full of stress.
We've gotten so used to it that we don't notice it anymore.
Just like the fish in the troubled waters that no longer knows that it is swimming in troubled waters. It is therefore difficult to summarize in numbers, but I think everyone can see that, compared to 50 years ago, the
the amount of stress in our lives has increased enormously. More and more people are burn-out at an increasingly younger age. It is almost beginning to take epidemic forms.
Stress is very stressful for the body. As a result of stress, the body produces large amounts of free radicals that can affect cells, leading to low-grade (cellular) inflammation.

A toxic world

Since the strong rise of the chemical industry about 100 years ago, our environment has slowly but surely become polluted with the remains of an endless row of toxic substances that are difficult or impossible to degrade.
It is unclear how much it really concerns. According to a list by the US TSCA, some 85,000 chemicals have appeared on the market since 1979. Not all of them are still available so the actual number is lower but people don't know exactly.

However, these numbers are nothing compared to the list maintained by the American Chemical Society. She registers 12,000 (!) new chemical substances and, according to their data, there are more than
45 million (!) commercially available chemicals.

Because we humans are at the top of the food chain, these substances slowly but surely accumulate in our bodies.
Particularly worrying are those substances that act like hormones in our body. And, of course, those that are produced in large volumes and occur every day in our lives.

Aren't fabrics safe?

Are those substances not being tested, you might ask?
The substances used for medicines are extensively tested before they are allowed to go on the market. To a lesser extent, this also applies to substances intended for human consumption.
However, those substances that are used for other purposes are much less extensively tested. Many of them end up in our lives that we later have to conclude are not so safe for humans. That is a big deal. Precisely because the tests that are used do not work well for substances that imitate the effects of hormones. The question is even whether these substances can even be tested reliably in a practical sense.

At the top of the food chain

There is no denying that we live in a toxic world and precisely because humans are at the top of the food chain, the remains of these chemicals will slowly but surely work their way up to the top of the chain and eventually accumulate in the human body, as there are:

Smoking ‍

If you think about it, it's crazy that you're consciously inhaling highly toxic substances in concentrations where everything else pales in. It has been calculated that in the Netherlands 20 (!) hospitals could be closed if everyone were to quit smoking. Nothing has as big an impact on health as smoking.
But not only for the smokers themselves, but for everyone who - whether wildly or not - smokes.

Medications‍

The active substances in medicines are by definition toxic and come with a list of side effects that is much longer than those for which the medicine was originally designed.
Medicines with all their limitations are important inventions that can save lives in acute situations. But whether they can also provide relief for long-term chronic illnesses is a topic of lively debate.
Taking medication every day for the rest of your life involves major risks, the consequences of which are difficult to foresee. And that's not to mention the effects that drugs can have on each other. It is a fact that a significant proportion of patients die each year as a result of medication use, and an even larger proportion who have become seriously ill.

The problem is that pharmaceutical companies have a very difficult time predicting how drugs metabolize in the human body — or, in other words, are converted from foreign substances into the body's own substances.
After all, the design of the body is the same for every person, but the state it is in is different for each person.
If the drug does not metabolize or metabolizes poorly, the body suddenly sees these substances as life-threatening instead of life-saving and a violent immune response can be triggered with all the associated health risks.

Pesticides and Herbicides‍

These are widely used in intensive agriculture and horticulture to protect crops against insects and weeds.
Cide means to kill in Greek. In other words, we are dealing with poison here. If something is toxic to insects and plants, are they also toxic to humans?

Residues of these substances enter our lives directly or indirectly. Perhaps the amounts are so small that, according to toxicologists, they can't do much harm (and that's what you often hear). But because these substances accumulate in the human body over the longer term, they may eventually become harmful according to the same toxicological standards.

Anyway, these are still toxic substances that can affect our cells, just like the cells of plants and insects.

There is no way around:

• Sky
  The problem is that we all breathe the same air. Even though many measures have been taken in the West to reduce emissions of harmful substances, much less, if at all, in the rest of the world. And the wind blows like the wind blows...
• Water
  Although we have very clean drinking water in the Netherlands compared to the rest of the world, the water treatment companies admit that they cannot purify the water of all substances, for example drug residues and PCBs...
• Nutrition
  Many substances used in the food industry do not have to be listed on the packaging because, by law, these substances are only used to optimize the preparation process and are therefore not ingredients. However, that does not mean that they end up in our food.
• Cosmetics and body care products.
  The skin is by far our largest organ and our 'first line of defence'.
  Our care products contain a lot of substances that are made from petroleum and they penetrate our body through the skin. Precisely because we use these products on a daily basis, the long-term consequences cannot be underestimated. We wash away some of these substances with water and thus end up in surface water. Tiny silicone balls to make your skin and hair shine are so small that they cannot be filtered out of the water.
• Household products
  Such as cleaning products, sink unblockers, solvents, etc. Even though the packaging contains the necessary warnings, it is impossible to prevent us from simply coming into contact with these substances during use.
• Plastics
  Many softer plastics, including packaging materials, contain carcinogenic plasticizers that slowly “sweat out” and thus end up in our lives. But also consider plastics such as Teflon, which consist of highly toxic fluorine compounds, which, of course, we coat our cooking pans with.
• Fire-resistant fabrics
  For fire safety reasons, many products are now treated with carcinogenic chemicals such as bromides. How cynical.

The truth is not easy to prove

According to toxicologists, all these substances are not dangerous because the amounts in which they are used are too low for that. In other words: no conclusive and direct (with a nice word causal) can be made between these substances and an unnatural death.

However, what is conveniently forgotten are the long-term effects of prolonged exposure to these seemingly harmless substances and the effects they have on each other and the human body. The accumulation of all substances and long-term use.
This is not taken into account by policy makers for the simple reason that there are no practically feasible measurement methods.
But what cannot be measured does not mean that it does not exist.

The inflation of our food

It is gradual and that is why it is not so noticeable, but the quality of our food has declined enormously in recent decades. In other words, we are getting fewer and fewer essential nutrients. Substances that the body needs to function optimally. What we still get today is a fraction of what was in our food fifty years ago.

Complex machine

When you stop to think about it, it's not hard to realize that the human body is an incredibly complex machine where every human invention falls into thin air. The intestines contain more (very necessary) bacteria than the Milky Way stars. New scientific studies show that those who have the wrong bacteria in their gut get fat more quickly. But man is not an unwilling victim of his bacteria.

We can influence which bacteria will rule in our gut, for example by avoiding antibiotics and smoking. And good food, for example:) We can be happy with the discovery of the DNA. But the different lengths and the different combinations run far into the thousands of billions of possible combinations, almost as many as there may be stars.

Although science now knows a great deal about the human body, there is much more that we have no idea about yet.

Notes don't make music yet

Science has great difficulty in scientifically proving the simplest principles of nutrition. That's because food is so much more than the sum of its parts — the individual chemicals.
All these substances work together synergistically and all influence each other. Compare it to a Mozart symphony: you have the different instruments, each with their own sound, the scores consisting of separate notes, and some of those things.
When everything works well together, it becomes pleasant to listen to and can even thrill you. In other words, one note doesn't make a symphony. Far from it, in fact. Everyone understands that.

Your body knows better

And so it is with food.
Of course, one substance that a biochemist has managed to isolate and recreate from a plant is not the same as the much more complex original, let alone the entire plant. Makes sense, isn't it? Unfortunately, the marketing of the food industry and science makes us believe it's exactly the same thing.
Your body knows better!

Your body is like a very precise machine capable of incredible performance, but it needs to get the right substances in the right amounts. And the more it is taxed, it listens even more closely.
Just like a Formula 1 race car. You don't throw in regular gasoline and lubricating oil from the hardware store either. The engine wouldn't even work.

Your body doesn't give up easily

Compared to this, the special thing about the human body is that it can take a lot before it gives up.
On the one hand, this shows strength and, on the other hand, also weakness.
Because if you give up, you're usually too late. People who haven't learned to listen to their bodies will easily ignore the signals and ruin themselves. It's no longer in there.

But back to our food

So your body needs these substances, but if they are no longer sufficient in our food, you can imagine that can cause problems. And that is exactly what is happening on an increasingly large scale now. |Since the Second World War, intensive agriculture using artificial fertilizers has increased crop production enormously.
The yields per hectare are unprecedentedly high. But at what price? Due to the intensification of agriculture, the soil has been depleted. I would like to write more about it next time.
Many trace elements and minerals that can only enter our body via plants are simply no longer in the soil.
The continued increase in production has meant that, although the yield of our crops has increased enormously in quantity, it has declined accordingly in food quality.

Food for transport

For transport and storage, techniques are also used to make fruit and vegetables last longer.
For example, bananas are picked unripe, refrigerated in large warehouses and only artificially ripened when an order is received. As a result, many valuable nutrients are lost compared to bananas that have ripened on trees.

More filling than food

All this has meant that the distribution of food has improved enormously over the years and in Western countries, everyone has been provided with affordable fruit and vegetables.
Where fifty years ago we only ate seasonal crops, today's consumers have access to every imaginable fruit or vegetable in the world all year round. Superficially, for example, it seems that we have made enormous progress in prosperity, but appearances can be deceiving. Although everyone can buy beautiful, perfect-looking fruit and vegetables for nothing these days, unfortunately there is not much of value in them. It's all more filling than food.

Geigy, a pharmaceutical company from Switzerland, researched the nutritional values of fruit and vegetables in 1985, 1996 and 2002. This showed that these have declined dramatically. Remember that we are already 16 years later...

Industrial kitchen

The food processing industry has also contributed to impoverishment. Encouraged by consumers who no longer have the time, desire and/or skill to prepare their own food, the industry has developed a range of ready-to-eat meals and semi-finished products. After all, convenience serves people, isn't it?
What consumers don't realize is that preparing food industrially is nothing like preparing it in a regular home kitchen.
First of all, it happens at much higher temperatures and under much higher pressure than you are used to at home, with the result that the already not high nutritional value decreases even further.
And as a result of these high temperatures and pressures, complications all arise that must be combated with what are called food technologies. In other words, all kinds of exotic chemicals are added to keep the production process efficient — and therefore cheap — and to convincingly spice up the tasteless and grey-looking end products so that consumers have the idea of eating something similar to what they could have prepared in the kitchen.

In the aim to maximize profits, many synthetic ingredients that are very cheap to produce are added to replace the much more expensive natural ingredients, whose use also leads to fewer complications in the production process.

Very useful for the manufacturer, but what the consumer gets out of it remains a question of conscience. At best, the body can't do anything with it; in the worst case, it's downright harmful. In all cases, it contributes nothing to the nutritional quality of what is offered, quite the contrary.

In short: consumers are being completely fooled.

Labels of deception

Unfortunately, a large number of these ingredients do not have to be listed on the packaging. This is how it is regulated by law.
Of course, the industry has tried very hard to do this and has convinced the legislator that these chemicals have no harm to public health. Even though people have no idea what effects all these substances have on each other and what the long-term consequences will be.

Progress is decline

In summary, there are several causes that contribute to this decline:

• The use of artificial fertilizers that deplete arable soils.
• Plants need to grow faster so that they can harvest more often.
• Long-term storage and transport of fruit and vegetables, resulting in the loss of valuable nutrients.
• The industrial processing of food into semi-finished products and ready-to-eat meals, which means that even more value is lost.
• The use of so-called production agents, synthetic substances that aim to optimize the industrial processing of food.
• Finally, replacing natural ingredients with synthetic ingredients and additives brings nutritional value to an absolute minimum.

Food as Mother Nature intended

A long piece, I realize.
And you're no closer to the solution yet.
Just saying that supplements are not necessary, as the Nutrition Center lightly states, is an unjustified conclusion.

But the real answer is, of course, food as mother nature intended. Then you wouldn't have to worry about whether everything is in there at all. And you don't have to take nutritional supplements either. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it is no longer the case. Because of the way agriculture has been done for hundreds of years, which has accelerated in the last 60 years due to mechanization and artificial fertilizers. This way of farming means that the oh so important minerals are no longer in the soil and therefore no longer in our food.

The crops are therefore weaker and susceptible to diseases and insects, and contain little nutritional value. This in turn leads to the excessive use of pesticides. These crops have to be pimped up in the factory to make them still taste like something. With — you guessed it, chemicals.

And that leads to a situation where people don't get enough nutrients. The shortage of minerals, in particular, is a major problem. Chronic deficiencies lead to chronic diseases.

So the real answer is agrarian reform where the vitality of the soil is the starting point. The crops are only as good as the soil on which they grow. It will be a while before all farmers deal with the soil in a more intelligent way. Fortunately, there are already a growing number of pioneers who farm in a fundamentally different way. And we are going to help them! But that is long term.

But we are also realistic. And for the short term, we therefore recommend one dietary supplement: SMPL72. From SMPL, of course. This contains all 72 minerals that a person needs and much more. 100% natural. Nothing, no fuss.

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