Dear Advisor,

This communication begins a 3 part series on The Need for MT (metabolic typing) Supplements. Part 1 makes a case for the need for supplementation in this day and age in order to obtain and maintain good health. Part 2 gets to the nitty gritty of why supplements customized for your metabolic type are so significant. And Part 3 is a Q. & A. segment that provides answers to the most frequently asked questions on the subject.

Your body has a genetic need for certain amounts and balances of nutrients in order to function efficiently. Fail to get what your body needs and degenerative disease is almost assured. Meet that need – the requirements of your Metabolic Type – and you run an excellent chance of staying healthy, trim and energetic for a lifetime.

But, do you really need to take nutritional supplements? Why not just eat a good diet and obtain all you need from your food? This is an important question for your health and deserves careful consideration. Here's the inside story:

If the food that's available in today's market indeed provided all the necessary nutrients, it might be possible to use only food to obtain and maintain good health. The sad state of affairs however, is that most of the food that is available today is not of the same quality that it was 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, or even just 100 years ago.

Our Food - Not What It Used To Be

For many reasons, our food today is sorely lacking in vital nutrients. Methods of storing, processing and preserving food often severely devitalize the food of its nutritional value. In addition, many of the modern techniques used to grow food faster, larger and on nutritionally depleted soils has destroyed the original, natural quality of our food supply. What appears to be an ear of corn, or a tomato, is in many cases quite different from the corn or tomato of 100 years ago. Some research into the differences between organic and inorganic foods has shown as much as a 2000% difference in some of the nutrients.

Our food today simply does not contain sufficient nutrient content to meet the demands of our modern lifestyles and to keep us in a state of good health. But suppose that you had the rare possibility of obtaining all of your food from natural, organic sources -- beef and (raw) milk and butter from range fed cattle; fertilized eggs and chicken from home-raised, non-chemically fed or hormonally-treated chickens; fruits and vegetables from organic gardens and orchards comprised of soil, brimming with all the nutrients that should be there; and homemade bread from whole, natural, organically-raised grains. Certainly such would be an excellent source for your food supply, although for most people it would be impractical, if not impossible, considering the time involved -- not to mention the expense of eating only organic foods. Even if it were possible, the chances would still be slim that you'd be able to obtain all of the necessary nutrients from your food, particularly if you have a health challenge. There are several reasons for this:

• First, the genetic requirement for nutrients varies tremendously between people. There can be a 2, 5 or even 10 fold difference in the need for certain nutrients. To meet this wide variation in need through just food could be quite difficult, particularly for someone facing a major health challenge.
• Second, a busy, on-the-go lifestyle makes it almost impossible to eat your wonderful, organic foods at all of your meals on a daily basis. Factors such as time away from home, eating on the go, and eating while traveling, all sabotage your efforts at regular, healthy eating.
• Third, if your health is not optimum, the chances are excellent that there's some deficiency in your capacity to digest and assimilate your food. So, if your food is already lacking in nutrients, and if the food you eat is only partially digested, and if what you digest is only partially assimilated, then you'd need to eat an awful lot of food to meet your optimum nutritional requirements, particularly if you're already suffering from faulty digestion and assimilation.

It is important to understand that there's a big difference between just getting enough nutrition to keep you going and in getting optimal nutrition for your Metabolic Type on a daily basis. The sky-rocketing rise in degenerative diseases over the last 100 years is clear evidence that most people are not meeting their optimal nutritional requirements, even though they are not lacking in caloric intake.

Take Advantage of Supplements

In view of this predicament, nutritional supplements potentially have a lot to offer -- they supply a concentrated form of nutrients which can easily compensate for the lacks in our food supply, when used as an adjunct to a proper metabolic type diet. Supplements may also provide many additional advantages as well:

• Help Meet Daily Requirements If you have a lacking appetite, nutritional supplements can provide an excellent means of making sure that you get enough nutrients on a regular basis, without having to eat a large amount of food.
• Conserve Your Energy A major factor in building health is the creation and conservation of energy. The digestion of food, particularly if you consider the large amounts that may be needed to make up for a deficiency, requires far more energy than the digestion of a few nutritional supplements.
• Overcome Food Aversions Supplements are an ideal way for you to get certain necessary nutrients from foods which you might find objectionable in taste, such as liver or bee pollen.
• Compensate For Lacks Many people, due to the nature of their work and their fast-paced lifestyles, find it difficult or even impossible to eat whole, natural food. They must often eat out, and may not be able to totally fulfill their Metabolic Type dietary requirements. Nutritional supplementation can compensate for such deficiencies in their diet.
• Stimulate, Substitute, & Support Nutritional supplements recommended in our metabolic programs work to stimulate weak areas, as well as to support rebuilding processes by supplying required raw materials. In addition, supplements can substitute for some function in the body that is currently inefficient. For example, hydrochloric acid supplementation can be used if your natural hydrochloric acid secretion is insufficient -- a very critical issue. Without sufficient hydrochloric acid, it is very difficult for your body to digest and assimilate valuable nutrients, especially minerals.
• Avoid Reactive Foods If you have digestive weaknesses or allergic reactions to foods, nutritional supplements can allow you to readily and easily acquire nutrients which you may otherwise have considerable difficulty in getting. For instance, if you require certain amino acids available in red meat but you've lost the ability to efficiently digest and assimilate meat, you could acquire the amino acids in supplement form.
• Neutralize Environmental Adversities Compared to the pure and pristine world of less than a century ago, our modern environment itself poses a challenge to your health. Industrial air pollution, over 10,000 man-made chemicals that have been added to our food supply for which our bodies have no use and which are either toxic or otherwise disruptive to metabolism, sick-building syndrome, holes in the ozone layer, chemically-treated drinking water, electro-magnetic pollution from appliances, cell phones, computer monitors, etc., chemical exposures in the workplace and at home, and high stress lifestyles, all place an increased demand for nutrients on your metabolism that may only be met through nutritional supplementation.
• Adjust Biochemical Processes Supplements, by providing concentrated forms of single nutrients, can provide delicate, fine-tuning adjustments to your body's fundamental control systems. Your Metabolic Type not only needs sufficient raw materials from your diet, but it also needs specific balances of nutrients to activate your enzyme systems which control all of your body's biochemical processes. For example, the Fast Oxidizer Metabolic Types need plenty of protein and fat in their diet, but the oxidative processes within the cells must have specific quantities and balances of nutrients in order to function efficiently -- something which supplements can often provide when food can't.
• Zero In On Metabolic Processes The various nutrients in specific formulations can be attached to different "carriers" which can target them to specific sites and processes in the body where they are needed.
• Maximize Your Rate Of Progress Everyone wants to be healthy and everyone wants maximum out of life, including the maximum, optimum health, energy and vitality possible. In some cases under the right circumstances, one might be able to reverse degenerative disease and achieve optimum health on food alone. But in most cases, this is not likely. In this way, supplements not only assure the achievement of your goal, but they also maximize the rate at which you'll achieve it because they can provide for optimal nutritional intake on a daily basis.
• Customize Your Nutrition Finally, and perhaps of greatest significance from the standpoint of balancing your body chemistry, nutritional supplements allow for the capacity to design multi-vitamin / mineral formulas that address the needs of the specific Metabolic Types, correcting imbalances in all the Fundamental Homeostatic Controls that are unique in each person.