It’s normal in Western culture today to eat foods that make us sick and then pop pills with nasty side effects to make us “better”.
But what if we could stop this cycle by being more careful with the foods we eat so we avoid the ill-effects of fast-food and overly-processed junk before they made it to our stomach?
Well, Terry Lemerond, CEO of natural supplement company Europharma believes we can do exactly that by treating food as medicine and supplementing with natural products to boost our health even further.
We spoke with Terry about how he got into the natural supplement industry, why our food supply is tainted, and what we, as consumers, can do to improve our health. Terry also shared some of his tips for living a successful life and reaching your goals.
So pay attention, because this former Marine and current health expert and CEO knows a thing or two about living well.
What got you started in the natural health industry?
It started many years ago as a result of my own poor health. I’m only 5’7, and at one time I weighed over 250 lbs. I had severe hypoglycemia and depression. I was very unhappy, and it was all related to the diet that I was consuming; it was high in sugar, refined carbohydrates and junk food.
I joined the Marine Corp and met a captain who changed my life by getting me interested in health and nutrition. Once I began to do that I saw changes in myself that I thought were amazing.
When I left the Marine Corp I started working at a health food store, and, long story short, I bought the store and starting manufacturing products I thought were more effective than the product I was already selling. I eventually started a new company, and now I like to help other people become healthy.
What do you attribute the health problems in America to?
Our diet a hundred years ago was a natural diet; it was without chemicals and preservatives and sprays and pesticides. It was grown naturally and locally, and then big business came along and started changing everything.
The American diet has changed more in the last hundred years than the past three million years, and commercial interests are behind that.
There’s been a dramatic increase in refined carbohydrates, refined and processed packaged foods, the consumption of sugar, alcohol and tobacco, and all the things that are detrimental to our health.
With that, all our diseases have increased dramatically: heart disease, cancer, asthma, allergies, inflammation, obesity. The increase in these diseases is correlated directly with the change of our diet.
As consumers, what can we do to protect ourselves and make healthy decisions?
The first thing you can do is to start becoming more educated, and understand what food really means to us.
We’re not trained to eat properly and correctly, and not enough people eat the right things. Most Americans eat foods for three reasons: price, convenience, and taste. They don’t realize that hey, what I’m eating is really going to become a part of me, it will change my health, and its going to make me who I am.
Food is our medicine; food drives our health as gas would drive our car.
Genetics only account for 2% of diseases, but epigenetics account for 98% of the changes that can take place in our bodies, because they’re based on environment and diet and lifestyle changes, and that can change our genetics- can change our DNA.
People could feel better, have more energy, think and focus better, they wouldn’t have this cold and flu every season, and they wouldn’t have type two diabetes, if they improved their diet.
So what role do you see supplementation playing in conjunction with eating right?
Supplements are complementary – not to medicine, but to diet.
We still should have the basis of our foundation be a healthy and nutritious diet to the best of our ability, to the best of our education, to the best of what we know is good for us, and then supplement. And I think that if you have good quality, high grade supplements that are made based on scientific information, those supplements will rival drugs.
So the supplements can become the natural medicines of the future, but without the side effects.
Today people take drugs for every kind of condition and disorder that are really based on nutrition, and are based on not getting the right food and getting too much of the bad food. And so we have disorders like GERD, type two diabetes, heartburn, colds and flus, allergies and asthma.
All of these conditions are related to diet and the inflammation that is caused by the American diet.
Tell us more about inflammation – how does that impact health?
Inflammation is caused by refined sweets, refined sugars, carbohydrates, too many omega 6 fatty acids in relation to omega 3 fatty acids, and stress.
Inflammation is not bad when its temporary, but is bad when its chronic, and people suffer from this in a wide range.
We could be reducing all of those diseases; 80% – 90% of which experts believe are related to our rates of inflammation. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancers, asthma, bronchitis, arthritis, are all inflammatory processes that are brought about by our lifestyle. We are eating our own inflammation.
What are your tips for personal and professional success?
An important thing to me is goal setting. I use goal-setting for everything I do. One year, five years, ten years; I decide what I want to have in my life, whether it be spiritual, financial, or physical. Everything I’ve accomplished in my life has been based on that.
I don’t have an education, I don’t have any degrees in chemistry or science or business, so its based on what I dream.
I fulfill those dreams because I set those goals, I write those goals down, I think about those goals everyday; I dream about them, I speak about them. My language is related to my goals. I have mental movies in which I see myself accomplishing those goals.
You’ll see that every great athlete that stands at the podium as a champion that they’ve been dreaming about this all their lives, and that’s how we accomplish goals – by dreaming about them and thinking about them and speaking about them. Our goals become our focus, and our focus becomes our reality.
We can make great strides by knowing where we want to go. Every ship that leaves port has a destination, it has a crew, it has a captain. But if you set out a ship without a captain, without a crew, its not going to go anywhere. We are the captain of our ship, we are the captain of our lives.
Featured photo by gifrancis