Stephen, my grandson, has just come into the house elated and flushed with success: he reports proudly that he “came in second in a contest to see which of the kids could keep their hands in ice water longest”. It’s a dumb kid thing done by a normal, eager and healthy kid. I look at Stephen and I see the hope and life in his shining eyes. And then I see in my mind’s eye what CODEX at its worst will mean to my grandson and to his future. I look past his smile and I remember that a friend has just told me that he received a letter from a supplement company here in the United States stating that they have reformulated their supplement line to meet the ultra-low, clinically ineffective standards of the European Union’s Food Supplement’s Directive and they will not continue to manufacture the high potency nutrients that can only be sold in the US..
Do you think that this company will be the only one? Companies are in business to sell. How many supplement companies will continue to sell to a small market when they can sell to a large one? How many will continue to make supplements for the US alone, especially when the US market is bombarded with junk science to convince it that vitamins and minerals, fish oil and herbs are at best ineffective (think echinacea) and at worst deadly (think Vitamin C, E, Beta Carotene, etc., etc., etc.)? Each of these articles and studies (and literally hundreds more) is trumpeted in large print “showing” or “proving” that the substance is bad for you. In the fine print, however, is the distortion, the scientific error, the substitution of synthetic material (harmful) for the natural stuff (safe) or the use of a dose so low that it could not have had an effect? The tricks are abundant: the science is flawed and the result is predictable: drugs are good for you (think Vioxx and its dozens of thousands of associated deaths, think 783,936 deaths per year caused by conventional drugs in the US)but nutrients are bad, bad, bad for you leading to absurdities like a baseball team telling its players that supplements were forbidden substances!
Let’s look at the realities: Nutrients are not toxins despite the fact that it would be convenient for the drug industry if they were (since optimally nourished people, those who get enough nutrients, are far less likely to need drugs). Optimally nourished people have optimally functioning immune systems so they don’t get sick very often. Optimally nourished people, however, are bad for sales of things like antibiotics since they fight off infections on their own. Vitamin C, for example, has no toxicity when properly administered since the body gets rid of what it does not need and needs more under stress than it does at other times. You will find plenty of poison press about Vitamin C . You will read that Vitamin C can switch from being an anti-oxidant (good) to a pro-oxidant (bad) unless vitamin E is present. Ah! That’s the point: when the junk science is carried out, do you think that the researchers add Vitamin E to the regimen? Nope! They make sure that the results will be what they want: they will trumpet their findings and tell you that Vitamin C causes “hardening of the arteries” at doses greater than 500 mg*. Not with Vitamin E present, it doesn’t! The researchers had every reason to know that if they knew anything at all about Biochemistry. They also had every reason to know that synthetic vitamins are not the same as natural ones and that isolated nutrients skew the biochemical balance upon which health and resilience depend.
But this calculated onslaught is preparing the people of America to give up, without a protest, the high potency nutrients which offer them optimal nutrition in the face of toxins which increase the need for nutrients sharply and stress which does the same.
What happens if your innate right to make your own health choices is taken away by a multinational organization which does not value the inalienable rights which the American Constitution recognizes that you have to make your own health choices based on your best judgment. You need to be free to take niacin for hypertension, Co Q 10 for cardiovascular disease, malic acid for Fibromyalgia, licorice for adrenal fatigue or any of the thousands of safe, effective and natural ways to create optimal health for yourself.
If our food provided enough nutrients in our toxic, stressful world (which means that our food would be pure, hormone-free, chemical free, not genetically modified, grown locally without pesticides or herbicides, rushed to our tables without irradiation or treatment) nutritional medicine would not work. Giving someone with congestive heart failure beta-carotene (vitamin A), vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium, three of the B-vitamins: vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and folic acid calcium, magnesium and coenzyme Q10 and L-Carnitine can often mean the difference between life and death for them. Such a regimen can allow them to move freely and breathe easily. If food were a sufficient source of these nutrients, why would they get better when they took them as supplements? They would not. And yet people DO get better when nutrients of high quality, and balanced properly, are added to their regimens.
And people stay healthy when they take the supplements they need, too. They are not as likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease, for example.
I could go on but you know the drill: nutrients are not toxins despite the assertion by the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses. Pharmaceuticals are toxins, despite the assertion by docs and ads that they are really good for you. CODEX is guilty of New Speak: say an untruth long enough and it becomes a truth!
Think about my grandson’s future health (and your own, for that matter) if there are no effective legal doses legal for, say, CO Q 10 and L-Carnitine Vitamins A, C, D, E, fish oil, B vitamins, etc. etc. etc. to protect against stress, environmental toxicity and a nutritionally deficient food supply.
It’s the old two step sucker punch: Take down nutrients internationally with CODEX and take them down domestically with legislation to take away our protection. What to do? Get active. Tell Congress not only no, but no way whatsoever! and take our action steps to keep America free from CODEX.
My grandson, your wife, my husband, your nephew, my son, your father, me, and you: we all have good reasons to make sure our health freedoms are not abridged by multinational organizations serving their masters, the multinational corporations.
Stay alert, take action, take your supplements and stay well! Oh, and say, “Hi” to my grandson if you see him on the soccer field!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director