Juice Plus+® Health News

Vitamin D Showing More Evidence for Health

There are plenty of studies showing the benefits of Vitamin D, or at least the risk of not having enough Vitamin D in your diet. Too many vitamins and nutrients are missing in too many diets, which is why many physicians are recommending Juice Plus+ to get added nutrients from a variety of sources.

An important member of Dr. Oz's anti-aging checklist, vitamin D plays a number of roles in our bodies, including:

 Promoting absorption of calcium and bone health
 Boosting immune function
 Reducing inflammation
 Healthy neuro-muscular function
 Protecting against some forms of cancer

For such an amazing nutrient, vitamin D doesn't always get the attention it deserves, perhaps because very few foods in nature contain vitamin D. The best sources are salmon, tuna and mackerel (especially the flesh) and fish liver oils. Beef liver, cheese and egg yolks also contain small amounts. (source...)

But there are also many reasons that we should be getting our nutrition from whole food fruits and vegetables, and if we do need to supplement our diet why we should avoid synthetics vitamins...almost all of the time.

Even Dr. Mercola agrees that synthetic vitamins are a waste of money --

If you shop for your supplements at discount stores you may be seriously shortchanging yourself because those products typically use cheap synthetic isolates. Millions gorge themselves on synthetic vitamins, only to acquire and die from degenerative diseases. You see, isolated vitamins are partial vitamins, combined with other chemicals. They're a low-end alternative to whole, real complete food. When you remove a part from the whole, you get ‘Synthetic,' ‘Isolated,' or ‘Fractionated' pieces of the whole, but it's simply not the same.

There are four problems with synthetic vitamins…

1.Nature intended for you to consume food in WHOLE form because all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and enzymes are together in one package. They work synergistically to give your body the nutrition it requires for optimal health.
2.Your body only absorbs a small percentage of an isolate form of vitamins and minerals – and it utilizes even less. You get the best bioavailability in whole food form.
3.Synthetic vitamins often give you massive quantities of some nutrients (usually the most inexpensive ones) and insufficient quantities of others, not balance.
4.You can experience side effects of synthetic isolates from the additives and the unnatural state of the synthetic supplement. (source)

Comments:  Also, beware if you are obese or overweight: the so-called "sunshine vitamin" is initially absorbed (through either sun exposure

or the consumption of such foods as oily fish and fortified milk), the body must then convert it into a usable form, called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D. This conversion process, however, seems to be short-circuited among obese people, complicating efforts to gauge their true vitamin D health.

You've heard it before… Fast food and a sedentary lifestyle can be a disaster for your health, adding weight and possibly resulting in obesity. Don't let your multivitamin add to the collateral damage. In fact, you want to be sure that your supplement makes a real and significant contribution to your health, especially if you're already living a healthy lifestyle.

Another Reason to Consider A Whole Food Nutritional Supplement Like Juice Plus+ A number of carefully controlled studies have provided startling evidence that by the time the food reaches your table, serious nutrient content could already be lost. Some estimates report the nutrient value lost at over 50%! This is largely the result of conventional farming methods that rely heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which deplete the soil of nutrients... nutrients that must be absorbed by plants in order to be passed on to you. And it does not necessarily end there.

In many cases, it's likely you unknowingly further deplete the nutrients in your food -- just by the way you prepare it. For most food, cooking it will seriously impair its nutritional value. So, realizing that you cannot always obtain the whole unprocessed foods you need -- and knowing how easy it is for valuable nutrients to be destroyed -- you now know adding Juice Plus+® or other whole food nutritionals supplement to your diet is a good move.

The Health & Wellness Institute, PC

Longevity - Good Health and Some Luck Required

While we try to emphasize a healthy diet rich in whole food fruits and vegetables, and also recommend Juice Plus+ for those who fall short of the minimum of those foods that should be consumed each day, there are other factors that play a part in your health and longevity.  For example, daily exercise is important; so is avoiding the things that can cause illness and disease. But aside from that, there just are no guarantees that doing everything "right" in life will lead to a long life.  The following is an example of that (reprint from ocregister.com) --

I’ve known Mary Ann for more than half a century.  She has never been overweight.  In fact, she is the most organized, focused, determined friend I have. Both of us did the life expectancy calculator (see livingto100.com) designed by Dr. Thomas Perls, who has spent his professional lifetime studying longevity.  I was lucky to reach 90 on the calculator.  Mary Ann topped 100.  And I wasn’t surprised.  I expect her to dance at my funeral.  She never loses control.  She never over-indulges in food or drink.  She never loses her place on the life-page.

So what happened?

She tripped, she told me last week when she could still talk.  She fell in her driveway and hit her head against the stucco at the edge of her house.  She lay there, hoping the mailman or someone would come along.  But no one did.  So Mary Ann, the widow, got herself up and walked into her home, up a short flight of stairs to the first floor, used the chair lift installed for her late husband to reach the second floor of the house, and went to bed. Around midnight, she says, the pain was so intense she called paramedics.  She even has her house organized so pushing a few buttons by her bed lets her open the garage and door.  They rushed her to the hospital and found out she had broken three vertebrae in her neck. 

When she woke up, she was in a halo medical fixation device that prevents her head and neck from moving while the vertebrae heal.  And she’s healing well, the doctors told her brother.  She spent Thanksgiving flat on her back in an assisted living home.  She told me she would be there until February.  That was about a week ago.  Then she stopped breathing.  Literally.  They slapped an oxygen mask on her face and called the paramedics.  Mary Ann has developed clots in her lungs.  Big ones.  She’s back in the hospital and for a few days, her prognosis was not very good.

Meanwhile, I’m reading that two-thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.  Overweight begins at a BMI (body mass index –  a measure of height and weight) measurement of 25 and obese at 30 and morbidly obese at 40. (read on...)

Comments: The bottom line is that we never know what life has in store for us no matter how hard we try or the effort we put in.  But we do know that the odds go up in our favor when we make healthy choices - eating a healthy diet, living a healthy lifestyle; and that they go down when we don't.  But the message here is to appreciate and be thankful for today, for the family and friends you have, for the opportunity that has been given, because you don't know when circumstances can suddenly change. 

Keep that in mind for the Holiday Season. Tell someone how much you appreciation them.

The Health & Wellness Institute, PC
Official Juice Plus+ Independent Distributor

Increased Availability of Healthy Nutrition for Kids

One of the biggest issues facing the health of our nation is the lack of good nutrition for children. The solution for the obesity epidemic starts with getting better nutrition for the younger generations. One of the solutions offered by Juice Plus+ to help more children and young adults get better nutrition is the Children's Health Study program whereby a child any age 4-18 can get Juice Plus+ with an adult order of the Fruit and Vegetable capsules. While this is just a way to help motivate families to eat better, exercise more, and live healthier, the percentage of people who are overweight and obese still continues to climb. The government is trying to intervene and provide a way for kids to get better nutrition, although it may fall short of what's needed to make a significant impact. Here's more --

Congress gave final approval on Thursday for to a bill set to expand school lunch programs and provide for healthier, better quality fair for our kids.  Michelle Obama lobbied for the bill, touting it as a way to fight both obesity and hunger.  The first lady has long been a proponent of teaching children to eat fresh, healthfully balanced diets  and this bill, which she calls ” a groundbreaking piece of legislation” according to the New York Times, will put an emphasis on adding fresh fruits and vegetables to school provided meals.

Though the new bill may seem like a clear win for kids, and for the health of the nation, it comes with a serious catch.  About half of the $4.5 billion dollar cost of the bill will be paid for by cutting the food stamps program starting a few years from now.  Some House Democrats and advocates for the poor fought the bill in September, pointing out that expanding child nutrition programs by cutting money out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program simply takes important resources from one group of needy people and gives them to another. (more...)

Comments: While on the surface this may seem like a benefit to kids' nutrition, the legislation may just be a bandaid and political posturing to get voter support. The real issue is getting kids off fast foods, processed foods, and soft drinks, and eating more fruits and vegetables and plant-based foods. The campaign to families and incentives to eat a diet that includes more healthy nutrients from those foods is where the time, attention, and dollars need to be allocated. We find that families who are eating more of those healthy foods each day, have less sickness, less days absent from school or work, and less visits to the doctor. Therefore, their overall health care costs are less and are enjoying a better quality life.  Start getting your nutrition from more fruits and vegetables today, and everyday.

The Health & Wellness Institute, PC
Official Juice Plus+ Independent Distributor