資料來源
http://mannatech.com/DMNews_14Articles.asp
標題
Building Blocks (8/6/2006)
副題
The way to health is through the stomach
In Italy, when people are looking ahead to a busy day or a daunting challenge, there’s an old saying to guide the way: “First, we eat.” Given the culture has produced some of humanity’s greatest advances, who could argue with the “Italian way”?
Unfortunately, for many residents of modern cities, such sensible principles have fallen by the wayside. In a world where fast is good and instant is even better, millions overlook what should be one of life’s top priorities: providing the body with the nutrients it needs to function and to repair itself.
“In the industrialized nations, the vast majority of the population has unhealthy diets,” says Stephen Boyd, M.D., Ph.D., senior medical director at Mannatech, a Coppell-based manufacturer of innovative
nutritional supplements. “For example, fewer than 5 percent of Americans eat the recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables. And to make matters worse, the nutritional value of most of the fruits and vegetables we do eat has been compromised by mass farming techniques.”
Yet Mannatech’s leaders, including Dr. Boyd, are well aware that a proper diet can be very difficult to maintain. That’s why the company is dedicated to the proposition that wellness is the reward of a well-rounded lifestyle including proper nutrition, exercise and other healthy choices — it’s not something that comes as a quick fix.
“Mannatech has taken the lead in researching and developing unique supplements that help restore important nutrients in the diet in their most bioavailable form,” says Dr.Boyd. “But in addition to that, we would like consumers to realize that their own actions and lifestyles choices determine, to a great extent, when and how they might fall ill.”
Mannatech is hardly alone in taking this stance. For decades,scientists have been saying that ailments we consider a normal part of aging — heart failure, stroke and diabetes, for example — are in fact “diseases of civilization”brought on by frantic contemporary lifestyles. Comparisons of disease rates show that in pre-industrial communities surviving in remote parts of the globe, those ailments are
relatively rare.
Among culprits regularly cited as contributing factors in the poor health of “civilized” cultures are stress, lack of exercise, smoking and pollution, along with extreme dietary imbalances. Alcoholic drinks and preservatives in processed foods are also thought to be responsible for killing beneficial, essential bacteria in the digestive system.
The message finally seems to be sinking in, gaining wide acceptance among the population.
“The entire baby boom generation is making wellness one of its top priorities,” says Mannatech’s CEO and founder, Sam Caster. “Thirty years ago, supplements were like a closet industry. Today, 66 percent of Americans take some form of dietary supplementation, and there’s
an explosion in the number of people exercising and in upscale grocers selling high-quality foods.”
Riding the wave, Mannatech has started to branch out into other offerings capable of supporting a healthy lifestyle. In addition to its preservative-free Optimal Skin Care System, which was launched in Japan this summer, Mannatech will introduce the nutrition industry’s first supplement containing fully standardized and completely plant-based
vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.
