To David Christopher, President of the School of Natural Healing, the oldest licensed herbal college in the United States, “…natural means: ‘as nature intended.’”
So I decided to pose a few thinking questions for you, the consumer:
- Do you have a standard for natural, or must it only be in a health food store?
- How do you define natural?
- What supplements are the best and how do you know?
- Which supplements fit your philosophy of health (assuming you have a philosophy of health)?
- Why do certain supplements fit your philosophy while others do not?
The issue today is certainly not one of what is right or wrong, good or bad, but rather one of: what do you want and why do you want it?
This bit of consumer education is wholly or mostly absent today.
Consumers instead tend to jump from supplement to supplement, having, as Nedra did, almost a suitcase full of supplements, not sure what to use or throw out.
In other words, would you even know if a new product on the market fit your philosophy and what it would cost you to find out? In the case of Aspartame, some consumers were actually crippled because of it and some appear to have developed brain tumors as a result of it. That is a high cost, and yet Aspartame was developed from Asparagus, a natural and healthy food!
This highlights the need for more consumer education that will help them to decide what products they will accept as “herbal” or “natural” and what they will reject.
Many ingredients in a supplement may actually be “natural”, other things may simply come from nature at some point but may not resemble that form anymore.
In an effort to help out with this lacking education among the general public, Aubrey Organics has produced a “Natural Ingredients Dictionary” which they will supply to you for free, in hopes, (I am sure) that you will find their products acceptable once you know what they contain and what those words really mean. I, for one, use Aubrey Organics products myself.
Far more education on the function of different ingredients is needed:
Which preservatives are inert in the body and which ones actually inhibit enzymatic activity in the body as they do in the product? Which fillers are helping and which are merely clutter, diluting an otherwise good product? Which isolated nutrients benefit your body and which, like petroleum-based ascorbic acid, actually increase the rate of tumor growth?
These are questions needing answers. I believe that these questions are important if the consumer is to protect him or herself from everything from wasted money, to weak results, to really toxic ingredients that appeared okay at first. There are a few natural healing schools around today that work to spread this kind of education. I hope to see more materials emerge as the need for consumer health education becomes more apparent to teachers and consumers.
About the authorKal Sellers, MH is a lifelong student and practitioner of the natural healing arts. Kal is a Master Herbalist, a Massage Therapist, Technician of the Rolf Method of Structural Integration, Iridologist, Mind-Body Medicine Practitioner, Mental Re-programmer, Life Coach, Natural Nutritionist, Reflexologist and more. Kal is currently attending Life University in preparation for chiropractic school.Kal currently operates and maintains www.KalsSchool.com, an on-line school for natural healing and herbal medicine.
Kal also maintains www.BestFoodist.com as the website for the distribution of his and his wife's books on natural nutrition and companion recipe book (Traci's Transformational Kitchen Cookbook and Traci's Transformational Health Principles).
Kal and Traci have five children, the last three of which were delivered at home, the last by Kal. They live now in Powder Springs, GA where they maintain live classes on food and medicine for anyone choosing to master medical independence and life-long optimal health!
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