It is probably my own vintage that makes me interested in the problems, fears and regrets that old people often seem to have as they age. Some common problems include physical health issues which adds to the fear of losing independence and eventually becoming dependent on others for basic daily tasks.

Other regrets are about relationships they wished they had fostered, appreciated or in which they had more fully committed. 

Or the unbalanced lives they had with time spent at work, chasing a career or being away from significant others, often mentally if not physically.

We do need to keep checking on what is really important to us as we zip through the years and investing in the ways to extend your healthspan and lifespan gives us a chance to fix things before it is too late.

For myself, I know my passion is in the wild foods of Australia and their value to us in modern times. Equally, I am committed to realizing opportunities for the Indigenous Australian clans, who have managed the ecosystems in their Country for millennia. 

I am grateful that my proof of the analytical discovery of the Kakadu or Kalari plum as the World's highest fruit source of vitamin C facilitated the wider appreciation of wild foods. This went from commercializing a range of wild foods for chefs to begin to create an authentic Australian cuisine and on to supplying manufacturers with ingredients for retail products with a wild twist.

My next step was then circling back to nutrition, my recognition of the incredible characteristics of wild foods with respect to their phytonutrient profiles and the benefits these impart to our health.

All this and 45 years has lead to the Holy Grail to Health and a mass of people who have recognized that they need better nutrition than modern foods can provide.

The Age of PhytoMedicine 3.0 is here.

My life purpose is to help as many people reach their ideal health as this is what I have been embracing and continue to do for myself.

If it means locking horns with Institutional health care then so be it. I hope that I have your support.

It is criminal to see that people are dying from easily avoided conditions, particularly when it should be obvious that these are diseases of nutrition and not some new or exotic illness that needs chemical weapons instead of appropriate food (with a little support from some wild foods), a healthy lifestyle (exercise and solid relationships) and to live life with passion and purpose.

But let's take a look at some of the chemical weapons and the strategies of our opponents:

Step 1. Get us hooked on multivitamin supplements

The multi-vitamin and mineral supplement market is the easy was to build addiction to pills and potions. Luckily, science is proving that all we do when we take these chemical concoctions, is to make expensive urine.

A friend of mine was telling me about his experience setting up a race track in Macau (aka the Las Vegas of China) some time back. He made an interesting observation after the veterinarians had dosed the race horses with a concoction of vitamins (eg B12 and D), minerals (including magnesium and selenium) and other permissible stimulants to super-charge the horses for their up-coming races.

He noted that the local rats which were living in the stables with the dosed horses grew in size to something more akin to a rabbit or domestic cat.

We know that like the horses, we also just pee out the multivitamins in supplements and can see the bright yellow of several water-soluble B-vitamins mere seconds after swallowing our part of the 1.5 to 2 billion dollars spent in Australia each year, on chemical 'nutrients'.

$12 billion goes down the loo every year in the US.

Some people still pop those pills each morning yet still see themselves ageing poorly.

They still catch all sorts of illnesses going around.

They gain weight yet lose muscle mass easily if the effort to hold or build muscles is not a dedicated routine.

We all get to our 40s and 50s and we seem to have adopted 'our doctor' as a health care professional. This is even though they embrace often useless pathology tests followed by drug recommendations from representatives of public companies. These drug pushers have as their passion and purpose, the goal to increase returns to shareholders annually by growing the number of addicts as much as possible.

Unfortunately, 'our doctor' seems to get most of their nutritional knowledge from the Woman's Weekly or one of the free produce and product magazines from the supermarkets in which they present recipes and ways to use their less than healthy foods.

Back in the 1980s, I presented my nutritional analysis results on the wild foods I either collected myself or had supplied by Indigenous women from various communities around the country. 

In order to continue the research I had to pitch the findings to a 5 panel board of the National Health & Medical Research Council in a bid to secure my research funds for the next few years. 

I mentioned the discovery and proof of analysis that I had done on the Kakadu plum supporting our claim that it was as the World's highest fruit source of vitamin C. One of the top medical scientists on the judging panel piped up and said; "Oh yes. My wife showed me an article about that in the Woman's Weekly."

We got the money.

And little has changed.

Luckily scientists are catching up. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the USA recently reported their conclusions:

Step 2. Modify our food and some critical nutrients

You might have read recent reports on omega-3 fatty acid supplements that are also falling from grace.

A systematic review on the topic of omega-3 fatty acids and particularly EPA and DHA which focused on their alleged  cardio-protective qualities concluded:

As I wrote in the last edition of Health Talk, it is over-dosing with calcium that is the causative factor in heart disease, heart attack, stroke and a host of neurodegenerative conditions as well as cancers and stones and other diseases of nutrition.

Calcium deposits in our soft tissues and the calcification of those tissues are behind the development of a myriad of diseases of nutrition.

So neither omega-3 fatty acid gel capsules or multivitamin supplements will help any of these conditions in any significant way. On the downside, some will make the situation worse.

The problem with omega-3 supplements is that like multi-vitamins, they are not regulated nor labelled sufficiently well.

The fish oils are extracted via a 'purification' step which converts the fatty acids into what are called ethyl esters. These are not absorbed well but are still fish oil. The more expensive fish oil capsules are re-processed and the fatty acids are reformed. This is ultra-processing of what was once food and is now a food fragment.

We get so much more from the original food source including proteins, magnesium, selenium, vitamins D, B, E and a host of other micronutrients.

Naturally, the recommendation is wild-caught fatty fish (salmon or ocean trout) rather than farm-raised as the omega-3 content depends on what the salmon eat. Farmed fish diets are improving from a decade ago but nano-plastics from coastal outfalls are an on-going problem (with much of our food, for that matter).

Here's a document from Huon Aquaculture and another from Tassal Salmon. Note the inclusion of chicken byproducts and chicken fat, both very high in omega-6 fatty acids. I plan to ask both companies how and how often do they test the EPA levels in their farmed fish. 

I guess that we should take heart in the constant improvement in the farmed salmon diets and while wild caught would clearly be superior in nutrition, if not food miles, our local farmed salmon is still hugely better than gel caps of ethyl esters we can't utilize or various unregulated qualities of fish oils that might even be rancid.

So Where to From Here?

I covered multivitamins and omega-3 oils as areas of concern for those of us wanting better health and also mentioned an alternative strategy:

1. a healthy diet of whole foods with a daily nutritional top up with products such as LIFE (Lyophilized Indigenous Food Essentials)™ for its phytonutrients; Karuah ChancaPlus™ for calcium balance; and paired with Karuah Active Magnesium™ to address our deficiency of this important mineral; and finished with Karuah Activated Turmeric™ for its anti-metaflammation benefits
   
   
2. a network of solid relationships of friends and close associates, family and significant others as a support team and to keep each other on track with our passion and purpose
   
   
3. an exercise plan which should be something you enjoy doing every day and which is high intensity, full body and while it will take all you can give for 3 to 5 minutes a day, it should change you physically and mentally. Also add some weight training for core and bone strength maintenance too.
   
   
4. also, recognize that modern foods and particularly ultra-processed ones that are often high in bad sugars and bad fats, are not up to par for our health goals. We need high quality omega-3 fats from whole foods (our brain is 60% structural fat and needs omega-3 fatty acids to function) and we need to reduce the omega-6 fats we consume from most refined oils and processed foods. Bad sugars are also key and they stop us from getting healthy.
   
   

But wait. There's more.

Many people seem to find that they are challenged in the way they think, how they interact with others, with inanimate objects and with trying times or situations. Ever suffer from road rage or do you stir people until they react and you get a dopamine hit from the interaction? It sounds crazy but is very common.

We set goals but are frustrated that they are not realized.

We succumb to 'hopium', an addictive driver of doing the same things and expecting a different result. Or we begin to see a little change but then slip back to old habits and the status quo prevails.

Our Frankenstein Mind and primal ways seem to win over our Einstein Mind and a position of power, creativity and confidence. Which wolf do we feed?

We hold beliefs as to how things should be. Some are limiting and based on fear or inadequacies or frustration or overwhelm. These influence our thoughts and ways of thinking and the decisions we make which lead to the emotions we create. These might be hope, anger, illness, inadequacy, susceptibility to failure or constantly expecting negative outcomes. 

There are ANTs which stands for Automatic Negative Thoughts and this can affect the way we view our world and can influence the power of our life directions. We need ANT-rid for our mind.

Actions we take are the next step in getting to where we want to be and they dictate the results we get.

Ironically, our results typically reflect our beliefs and we begin another Groundhog Day. (Find the movie on-line if you haven't seen it.)

If we want change, if we decide to pursue our passion and purpose, we might need to work on our beliefs as the very first step.

What would you say if I told you that our nutrition, the phytonutrients we get, the calcium we move from our soft tissues, the magnesium we get that is so critical to our health and lastly, the whole-body metaflammation our modern lifestyle causes, all need to be addressed as we change what we believe.

The 4 points I covered above are worth re-reading. Click here to go back to them.

Remember that our flagship product is LIFE and if you decide to begin to change your health and tune your mind, improve your health and begin to live your best life, start with it. You can progress to the remaining Holy Grail range when you are ready to embrace what I have discussed in this issue of Health Talk.

My intention is to explore the neurobiology of our brain-body relationships in future issues of this blog and how to lead a more peaceful, directed and successful existance and confidently expect a better healthspan, a longer lifespan and a higher quality of life.

Thanks for reading and please leave your comments below.