Denver, CO

Here’s a paragraph that makes the argument for supplements to your already healthy (I assume…) nutritional diet.

“…the American Health Care System. Health care plans and Medicare are going bankrupt. A growing population of retirees has forced politicians to cut back on health benefits in order to stave off the complete collapse of Medicare. The only way to keep health care costs from bankrupting the entire country is to lower the incidence of disease…

“In 1988 only 0.003 percent of U.S. Health dollars went toward prevention, a figure which hasn’t changed significantly over the past decade. Health care providers aren’t directing their patients to the health benefits provided by nutritional supplements…The massive daily use of multivitamins has been proposed as a method of getting health care costs under control. For example, the National Defense Council Foundation indicates the federal government would save up to $6.3 billion annually by the provision of vitamin supplements to retired military personnel. If all Americans took a multivitamin daily the number of yearly hospitalizations would be expected to drop and the insurance industry would save an estimated $5.5 billion which would result in lower insurance rates. A report in the Western Journal of Medicine suggests vitamin supplements would reduce hospital costs by $20 billion annually.” –article from book The New Truth About Vitamins and Minerals by Bill Sardi, page 22

image from http://www.childrenfirst.nhs.uk/teens/health/healthy_eating/healthy_eating/vitamins_minerals.html

Are you getting enough healthy foods in your diet? Even if you eat well—whole grains, fruits, vegetables, etc.—you may want to add a multivitamin to the mix. Especially when including a healthy diet of intense exercise, your body will need all the nourishment it can get to rebuild, restore, and heal itself. As the above excerpt illustrates, we need to accept responsibility for our own health and take care of our bodies instead of relying on the American (or any) Health Care System. It is just one more aspect of leading a healthy lifestyle.

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for more on health care in the U.S., click here for a documentary recommendation

This week begins the about-denver focus on health care and health issues in the U.S. There are far too many to cover in a week, but I’ll try to focus on broad issues concerning many, many people. An example of one is universal health care, something Al Gore briefly talked about during his presentation in Denver last month.