Many people are under the misconception that all they have to do to be healthy is take their vitamins. However, this is not true. According to Doctor Wallach, there are about ninety different vitamins and minerals that constitute a healthy person. There are thirteen essential vitamins, twenty essential amino acids, and that means that there are about fifty seven trace elements that are essential for proper health. An example is the element iodine.  Without enough iodine, you can feel fatigued, lose mental clarity, lose excessive weight, or even develop a goiter. Iodine used to be in bread, but the bread industry removed it for longer shelf life because they want to make more money.

Now it is in the salt that we consume, but that is only enough to keep from getting a goiter, and not enough to be healthy.  However, you can find it in Seaweed and in some herbs, which brings us to the topic of this article. PhD C. Leigh Broadhurst wrote an amazing article that speaks eloquently of the necessity of having herbs and other forms of plant life in our diet.

In my prior example with the seaweed, Doctor Joel Wallach documents a case in his book, “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” where Japanese people living on the coast were fed Chinese cabbage, turnips, buckwheat, noodles, 2.0 mcg iodine, soy bean, or seaweed. Everyone developed a goiter except for the ones who consumed seaweed. In fact, on the coast of Japan, people seem to get goiters regardless of consumption of iodine. Perhaps it is something in the environment that causes this phenomenon, but the point is that even the iodine by itself was not needed. It was the seaweed that had something particularly better that prevented the goiter. Herbs have something extra that you cannot get from simply ingesting vitamins or even the minerals by themselves.

This is precisely what PhD C. Leigh Broadhurst discussed in her own article. In a very colorful manner, she outlines exactly what is so special about the herbs and plants. Some of the key factors that she discusses are their antioxidants, probiotics, prebiotics, carotenoids, and cleansing capacities. The antioxidants help protect the liver and many other organs from breakdown that comes naturally from the presence of oxygen.

The liver has even been documented to be saved from the destruction brought upon it by those who have alcoholic tendencies. Moreover, people such as PhD Wallach believe that the human capacity is to live as long as 140 years (documented cases as found in his book “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”) if we were to have everything that we need in our diet, such as the types of things that PhD Broadhusrt discusses in her brilliant article. One of the key aspects in her article is the herbal cleansing. One benefit that she mentions is that the liver will be much healthier when it does not have to do as much work as it will not absorb as much from the intestinal tract.

For further reading click on the link below:

http://www.alive.com/articles/view/22334/herbal_cleansing