Your Health

When it comes to natural supplements, how do you assess what you need?

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

December 31, 2020

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

Readers of this column know, the Gifford-Jones natural health philosophy is built on the premise that the medical establishment should not be your first stop for staying healthy. Doctors are best as a last resort. Tragic bad luck aside; your first defense should be Mother Nature in combination with good lifestyle choices. But what does this mean as you age?

Natural supplements are low-cost and widely available, but they are not marketed with the same multimillion-dollar budgets as most pharmaceutical drugs. So, a good starting point is to adopt common sense.

Unless your doctor has a strong rationale for putting you on drugs, and a plan to get you off them, you should ask more questions and do more homework. Have you, for example, enquired about the root causes of the ailments that age inevitably brings? Where can you turn for options?

Experts in your local natural health food store can help. There are some natural supplements that are easy to understand and the choices are simple. A good example would be vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is common, especially during the winter months for those who live in the north. We know vitamin D fortifies our immune system and the range of advisable dosages is clear. There is little difference, one brand to another.

Other vitamins and minerals are more complex. It’s worth your while to get good advice.

Vitamin C is one of them. Vitamin C at very small doses will protect you from scurvy. But at much higher doses, it fortifies your body’s immune response and protects your cardiovascular system from build up of plaque in the arteries. Vitamin C is best when combined with lysine. Why? Because vitamin C is required to manufacture healthy collagen, the glue that holds coronary cells together, just like mortar is needed for bricks. Lysine, like steel rods in cement, makes collagen stronger.

Experts will know the research. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel laureate, claimed it takes a mere 10 milligrams of vitamin C to prevent scurvy, but several thousand to prevent heart attack. Williams Stehbens, Professor of Anatomy at Wellington University in New Zealand, proved Pauling was right. Stebhens’ research showed that coronary arteries closest to the heart are under the greatest pressure. This causes collagen to fracture resulting in the formation of a blood clot and death.

What about other supplements? How should you assess what you need or should try?

Let’s take a common issue. It’s a fact that aging leads to wear and tear on our bodies. Joint pain is a common complaint, the result of osteoarthritis. Oftentimes, waiting too long to recognize this problem is the bell that tolls for a medical solution.

Surgery to fix knees, hips or shoulders comes with significant risks. The smarter approach is to address these joint problems before they require surgical procedures.

Experts in naturopathic or alternative treatments may have good remedies for you. Keep in mind the fast pace of scientific research on the complex interactions that nutrients have in our guts and metabolism. New findings are published in scientific journals everyday. Fortunately, even natural remedies are gaining more attention in research labs.

That pain in the knee or other joints may benefit from organic sulphur, an essential mineral and natural component of soil, and in turn, our food. Healing Earth is a supplement that combines this mineral with humic acid. These ingredients act together to alleviate inflammatory conditions and relieve the pain of osteoarthritis. Clinical studies confirm its efficacy.

The bottom line: think about the root of your health problems, get advice from experts who focus on prevention of disease, and make daily good choices to keep yourself away from needing medical interventions.

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Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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