 The Proven Plan to Prevent Disease and Premature Aging, Optimize Weight and Live Longer
Joseph Mercola, M.D., Brian Vaszily, Kendra Piersall, N.D., Nancy Lee Bentley.
2003
Mercola.com is one of the largest and most-visited health sites on the web, featuring tons of searchable articles written by Mercola and other health researchers on numerous health topics. He posts current news articles and comments on them. He has a good health newsletter. Mercola is also very alert to the research about dangers of products which you may never hear about in the conventional media because of the power of corporate interests. You may not agree, but you should be aware that researchers are warning against use of unfermented soy products, cell phones without protection, proliferation of cell towers, fluoride, mercury in vaccinations and dental amalgams, taking flu vaccinations, and cooking food in a microwave oven.
He does sound a little excitable at imes, but I must say that after researching these topics myself, it is hard to remain calm while watching the large majority of the American people blindly fling themselves into unecessarily stress-filled lives, adopt every untested electronic gadget that comes down the pike, eat sugar-and-additive-rich fake "foods", eat pesticides and breathe hundreds of other toxins --and then take dangerous pharmaceuticals or submit to surgery in a futile effort to "cure" the degenerative diseases that result.
The book itself is an organized summary of the material on the website, and more than half of it is recipes which follow his dietary guidelines.
Mercola Essentials:
1. No matter what your health challenge is, you should eliminate or at least significantly reduce the sugars and grains, particularly the processed forms, in your diet.
2. Despite what some of the fad diets out there have insisted, you need carbohydrates, protein, and fat in your diet. None of these are evil, as some "experts" have made them out to be.
3. You have a unique biochemistry, or metabolic type, and certain types of "nutritious" food are healthier for your metabolic type, while other types of "nutritious" food are actually less so. You must know your metabolic type if you truly want to optimize your health and fitness. (The short version of this test, which is what is in the book, is also available when you subscribe to his website newsletter. For a longer version you need to get The Metabolic Typing Diet by Wolcott, or you can get the clinical version of the test and personalized plan on Mercola’s site for $179.00)
4. Your emotional and mental well-being is directly tied to your physical health and your dietary success. Negative emotions such as cravings and addictions, low self-esteem, and past traumas will impact your ability to overcome disease and overweight/obesity issues, but there are solutions. (He suggests the Emotional Freedom Technique - Mercola is one of the few nutritionally-oriented doctors to fully embrace and promote these powerful new energy therapies.)
5. You will not need to consume a shopping bag full of supplements because the healthy recipes and foods recommended in this book will typically provide you with most of the nutrients you will need. The only exceptions are: the few supplements that nearly everyone needs such as fish oil with Omega 3, and specific supplementation for those with specific health challenges.
6. Making certain other lifestyle choices are essential to your health success. This includes drinking plenty of pure water, getting proper sleep, exercising, and learning how to bypass the influences of institutions fostering the overweight and chronic disease epidemics for their own profit and power.
You will have to experiment to see if this particular typing system works for you, but it is definitely an intelligent plan to pay attention and adapt your diet to your individual needs.
Regarding supplements, based on what orthomolecular physicians say, whether you need them depends on the state of your health, how rigorously you are willing to pay attention to your diet, possible lifelong deficiencies, and individual differences in metabolism and uptake of nutrients.
Some people object that since Mercola sells products on the site and recommends them in his book and in his newsletter, he can't be trusted for objective information. Some are affiliate products, many are products he has researched and developed to try to provide higher quality than is available elsewhere. Now he does require that you sign up for the newsletter in order to access the site.
Here's my take: Mercola's "life’s passion and mission is to determine through committed investigations and practice the true 'ideal diet' to help people prevent chronic disease and weight issues and to reach their highest potential living a long life full of energy and free from pain."
I pretty much buy this. He is pitting himself and the Internet against the corporate powers that be by providing information that they don't want us to have because it is a direct threat to their profits. The amount of time and money it takes to maintain a website of this size is enormous, and the amount of free information he offers on the website justifies making whatever income it produces. The products that I have bought are good quality, and the information is useful. If the site becomes more and more commercial, perhaps I'll change my mind.
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