We believe that education is the key to understanding and living a healthy life-style. This section includes pointers to articles which we find relevant to healthy living. If you find articles that are of interest, please send them to Wayne.
Nutritional Supplements Comparison
Know the quality of the supplements you take. Nutritional Supplements are one of the four legs of this program (please see the Live It! tab for a description of these four legs). We use Lyle MacWilliam’s Nutrisearch Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements for the best nutritional supplements on the market. Lyle MacWilliam is an educator and microbiologist. As a Member of the Canadian Parliament, he worked with the Canadian Ministry of Health to create standards for judging nutritional supplements. Mr. MacWilliam then took this investigation one step further and tested 1500 nutritional supplements available in North America. Judging against the Gold Standard that he helped create for the Ministry of Health, Mr. MacWilliam found a handful of products that met the nutritional guidelines. Of that group, four companies were willing to submit to independent tests to verify the quality of those products. Please send Wayne e-mail if you are interested in more information.
CAUTION: Be sure to choose only one of the listed lines, some companies may have additional lines that are not of as high of rating in the Nutritional Comparison Guide.
NOTE: Vitamin A can be included either as straight Vitamin A or as Beta Carotene, which the body then converts to Vitamin A. Extremely high levels of straight Vitamin A can be toxic, so be careful of how much you consume. With normal dosages of Vitamin A, there are no problems.
Children’s Health
Children need exercise and good nutrition as much, if not more, than adults. Look at the activity level of children in school these days. Physical Education has been cut in many schools, along with children not getting out to play in their yards and playgrounds when they are out of school. Look at what children eat. How processed is the food and how nutritious is it? Do they have artificial sweeteners. If they take supplements, what is the quality of those supplements? Do their supplements contain iron? For excellent advice, we often turn to Dr. Christine Wood’s Kids Eat Great website. Dr. Wood is a California pediatrician who became concerned about what children are eating. Additional information on Children’s Health is also available.
CAUTION: Be careful with children’s supplements that contain iron. It is best not to purchase supplements with iron, unless your doctor specifically prescribes the iron (and then buy it as an individual supplement). The problem is that most children’s supplements are sweet and there is a potential that a child might treat the supplements as candy and ingest too much iron, thus causing iron poisoning.
Food Pyramid
Researchers have been looking at the USDA Food Pyramid carefully. Is there a correlation between the Food Pyramid and the increase in obesity and Type 2 Diabetes? As a side note, Type 2 Diabetes used to be called Adult Onset Diabetes because it used to be so rare among children. One of the better food pyramids and description of what is important, can be found at the Harvard University School of Medicine website.
Sleep
We all need the right amount of sleep is vital to our health and longevity.