Total Health Online continues to share with readers the precepts of “self-managed natural health.” From the basics to the cutting-edge, we present nutrition through diet and supplementation, coupled with a regular exercise program, a positive mental attitude and an active philosophical commitment as the keys to achieving optimum health, natural healing and a productive lifestyle. While each ingredient in the proactive prescription for natural health is integral, nutritional supplementation is at its core. As total health science adviser Parris Kidd, Ph.D. States: “Vitamins aren’t a luxury or an invention of the vitamin industry. Vitamins are substances the body must have to survive. Taking vitamins is not a choice for humans. The only question is, how much vitamins should we take?

“This is important for the health conscious consumer to grasp, as week by week science demonstrates that vitamins and other nutrients are not just safer to take but can actually work better than do many drug treatments.

“Most of the vitamin supplementation over and above what we get from our diet is necessary, since the ‘Standard American Diet’ (SAD) fails to provide amounts sufficient for us to derive the maximum benefits to our health that vitamins can provide. Hence the rationale for developing a personal vitamin program, one crafted as carefully as a career development plan or an investment planning program.”

Dr. Kidd presents a compelling case for incorporating nutritional supplements in our daily diet to counteract the insidious impact of environmental toxicity on our systems. He states, “We live in a toxic world. Wherever we reside, wherever we work, wherever we play, wherever our kids go to school, our bodies encounter substances that can damage us, make us sick, even kill us. So many of the things in our lives that we take for granted—the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe—can betray our health. Other things we read warnings about—prescription drugs, recreational drugs, lawn and garden chemicals—turn out to be more toxic than we would have guessed. Toxic substances poison our organs, drain our energy and cause cancer and other killer diseases.”

Dr Kidd also explains that in addition to supplying the basic nutrients necessary to sustain life and combat environmental insults, supplements as nutraceuticals and immunoceuticals play an important role in avoiding disease.

The term “nutraceutical” refers to a nutrient that can be taken by mouth to treat a disease condition. For instance, nutraceutical therapies are used in conjunction with other therapies as part of a truly integrative strategy for cancer management. The excellent benefit-risk profile characteristic of the nutraceutical now makes possible a truly integrative strategy for cancer management. In some cancer cases nutaceuticals would be used as stand-alone treatment, while in others nutraceuticals would be used in combination with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, heat treatment, psychosocial intervention and other treatment strategies.

Nutrients are now in the process of being transformed from fringe curiosities to center stage players in the medical management of cancer and other killer diseases. In many countries nutraceutical medicine already is in the mainstream people’s medicine. Now in North America, a great reintegration of people’s medicine with modern high-tech medicine is a foot, with all of us likely to benefit. We must each do our part to hasten this much-needed transformation while steadfastly protecting the rights of the health consumer.

Immunoceuticals are nutraceuticals which can potentiate the immune system to move from the defense mode into the offensive mode to go after the cancer cells and kill them.

The immune system is the body’s major defense against any and all agents that threaten its survival. The healthy immune system is a highly integrated network of single cells, cells grouped together in tight coordination. Acting as sentries for the system are macrophages, single cells which are distributed throughout the tissues. The macrophages are trained to detect mutated or other abnormal cells as the pop-up on the radar, then immediately alert the other immune system warrior cells to go on the attack against these cells and eliminate them. The immune system, if damaged, weak or misdirected, is likely to be poorly self-regulating and hampered in its efforts to eliminate cancer foci, whereas if potentiated by immunoceuticals, it could attack more aggressively and buy time for the body to further mobilize against the cancer.

By potentiating the immune system, that is raising its functioning to a higher level, immunoceuticals can help the body mobilize a lifesaving response against cancer. The driving force of immunoceuticals is helping the body’s immune system to help itself: The Chinese traditional healers called this Fu-Zheng therapy. The best immunoceuticals help the immune system to attack cancers, as well as to re-build and re-mobilize following chemotherapy or radiation therapy, interventions which are immunotoxic and damage immunity.

With nutritional supplementation being recognized as an imperative to establishing and maintaining optimum health, as effective and fortifying the immune system against disease, it is also being proven as a viable, intelligent alternative to many conventional medical and pharmaceutical therapies.