System 4 Oil relates to supplements in the human body. This is a system that is kind of a subsystem because it is related to your fuel but it's not the same as your fuel. You have to have oil to keep your engine working properly. It’s also part of maintenance because you have to change it routinely and which oil you use depends on your vehicle, much like your fuel and other required maintenance.

Systems 2, 3, and 4 all have an interconnectedness but I break them out because they each have a different purpose, schedule, and focus.

Oil is what I refer to as supplements. It supports the fuel system and it helps the engine to work optimally. Good oil and clean oil really help your system run well. If your oil has leaked out and you keep driving it, your engine has the potential to burn up.

That is the analogy I use for supplements. Can you run without supplements? Yes, for a short time but you can’t have optimal performance.

Not all oil is created equal. Not all supplements are created equal.

Supplementation is important because our food does not provide us with all of the nutrients that our bodies need. We have greater demands to offload toxins because there are more toxins in our modern society. Additionally, because a lot of the foods are nutrient deficient it takes a greater amount.

As your life season changes (teen versus adult versus a senior) your bodies metabolize differently and absorb nutrients differently. Therefore, you need more of certain things at different times of your life. Additionally, if you are sick you are going to benefit from supplementation. It’s not meant to be something that you do all the time, like fuel. That’s where understanding what you need and when you need it to build up a system is important.

The reason that over the counter, run-of-the-mill, traditional multivitamins (think Flinstones or Centrum) don’t work is that the body doesn’t absorb them. Is it better than nothing, yes. Is it optimal, no. Of course, with Living WOW, you want everything to be optimal because you want to heal systems that are broken down, maintain them and thrive, not just survive.

When you are looking at supplementation you want to make sure you are addressing bioavailability. Can that supplement get into your system and do what it is designed to do? The problem is that so often when we take the 15 vitamins that we know are good for us and isolate them, it fractionates them. I talked about the importance of the whole food matrix back in System 2 Fuel. Food has thousands of nutrients in a single apple, or in a single broccoli, or in a single leaf of spinach. Those foods offer different benefits and when they are eaten as a whole food it works like magic in your body.

Not only is it bioavailable but YOUR body uses the whole food matrix to support it exactly where it needs it, you don’t have to guess what nutrient you need to support your brain or your heart or your liver. The whole food matrix is again like magic in that it knows and supports what you need, not just what is recommended.

Science has tried to recreate that benefit by extracting the most recognized vitamins and minerals like vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E, calcium, magnesium, or beta-carotene and putting them in the optimal recommended daily allowance into a multivitamin. So convenient. You take them and think you have your bases covered.

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