I’m 100% confident that, as a professional group, among our highest values about healthy, preferable, food choices, would be characteristics like: ‘as close to nature as possible’, ‘unrefined’, ‘unprocessed’, ‘unadulterated’. Tell me I’m wrong.
So, when I keep hearing about NEW! “Never seen before” (read: never in nature) modified (read: more processed, adulterated) nutritional supplements: water soluble vitamin D, fat soluble C, bioflavonoids with unprecedented (read unnatural) bioavailability
I’m left wondering what these companies are missing about their customer group (because we are clear about our valuing of nature & what’s natural & have a desire to minimise exposures to things that are not, right?
or what are we missing here, in the clear conflict of our core values these constitute?
I think if we find ourselves forsaking this core value & prescribing highly modified, unnatural supps, it’s the result of both hype & fear. The hype is self-explanatory and I’ve written recently on how modifications exponentially increase profit margins for companies, all the while possibly reducing ours because patients are spending more on product and therefore there is less left over for the practitioner fees 🙁 [The ones spending hours with them face to face, not to mention years & thousands on our training] The fear is perhaps less apparent, more insidious. The fear is that we’re not using the best, being the most effective, and deeper still, inevitably that we will fail to action our patients return to health. This is a big one. I think it’s pervasive, if not omnipresent, and works as a motivator for many positive actions by practitioners – like engaging in further education, reading that latest journal edition on your lonesome laptop when you could be streaming some series on a shared sofa. But this same fear can also undermine us, overwhelm us and shake our tree of trust, that we believe to be so firmly rooted within us, of the healing power of nature.
So while my position sometimes makes me feel very ‘old school’, I’m not suggesting we return to nutritional prescriptions composed exclusively of bee pollen & brewer’s yeast and I absolutely recognise and respond to an individual who has very specific barriers to benefiting from nutrients in their natural normal forms.
But let’s be clear, they are a minority.
Some of you will know naturopath Dawn Whitten & know that she is one of my mentors. I’ve had the benefit of speaking with her over the years about herbal prescriptions but also about the principles & philosophy behind our practice & in one of many conversations she told me that a key objective she has with her patients is to rebuild their trust in their body, their own biological resilience (I love this concept and that’s a talk for another time!) and ultimately in nature. Well jeepers Dawn – how did you get to be so wise so young? But isn’t that central to vis medicatrix naturae? Maybe that Naturopathic Nanna’s club isn’t so fuddy-duddy after all. Want to join us?
Speaking of using nutrients in their most natural state for the best health outcomes – the best B3 is probably not what you think!!….
The Balance of B3
Most of us have been taught to ‘balance the Bs’ when supplementing, which discourages the use of single B vitamins in case this interferes with the regulation and roles of others. In reality, outside of a couple of dynamic duos like B12 and folate, there is little concrete information & evidence of this. In the case specifically of B3, however, we now know, the risk of an excess of the most common B3 forms found in supplements and fortified foods, results not only in disruption of other nutrients but imbalanced B3 biochemistry itself. Given B3, in its coenzyme form NAD+, is regarded as highly valued currency in the prevention of many diseases, as well as the key to our optimal health and longevity, it’s critical to understand the different forms and functions of the various B3 sources.