September Time Capsule: A Look Back in History
September 1, 1939— At 5.30 a.m., Hitler's armies invaded Poland beginning World War II in Europe. During the invasion, which lasted one month and five days, there were 66,000 casualties, 133,700 wounded, and 694,000 captured.
September 2, 1666— The Great Fire of London (pictured above) began in the house of King Charles II's baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Over the next three days, the fires raged, destroying most of London. Miraculously, fewer than twenty people are reported to have died in the fires.
September 3, 1838— In his second attempt to escape slavery, Frederick Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore disguised as a free black sailor. Twenty-four hours after embarking on his journey — in which, he wrote in his autobiography, "Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight" — Douglass arrived in New York where he came under the protection of the Underground Railroad.
September 4, 1609— Henry Hudson "discovered" Manhattan. On the same day, nearly two-hundred years later, the city of Los Angeles is founded by the Spanish Governor of California, Felipe de Neve. The original name was El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels).
September 5, 1997— Mother Teresa died in Kolkata, India at age 87, where she had lived her life serving those in extreme need — including lepers, the homeless, and the poorest of the poor — through the organization she founded, the Missionaries of Charity. "The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved," she said.
September 8, 1974— A month after resigning the presidency in disgrace as a result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon was granted a full pardon by President Gerald R. Ford for all offenses committed while in office. "It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it," Ford said. "I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."
September 9, 1776— The Continental Congress gives our country the name by which we are now known, renaming the United Colonies, The United States.
September 11, 2001— The worst terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred as four large passenger jets were hijacked then crashed, killing nearly 3,000 people. "U.S. Attacked," reads the New York Times coverline the following day. "Hijacked jets destroy Twin Towers and hit Pentagon in day of terror."
September 12, 1953— In the social event of the season, future president John F. Kennedy, 36, married Jacqueline Bouvier, 24. There were so many guests, it took the couple two hours to greet all of them in the receiving line.
September 14, 1927— Dancer Isadora Duncan was killed in a freak accident when her long scarf became caught in the spokes of a car wheel in which she was riding in Nice, France, strangling her. The same day, fifty-five years later in 1982, Grace Kelly died when her car her car plunged off a winding mountain road in Monte Carlo.
September 16, 1620— The Mayflower departed from England's shores with 102 passengers and a small crew, reaching Provincetown, Massachusetts on November 21st.
September 19, 1893— After two decades of campaigning by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, New Zealand became the first country to grant women the right to vote.
September 20, 1973— At the Houston Astrodome, 55-year-old tennis player Bobby Riggs is defeated in three straight sets by 29-year-old Billie Jean King in the much-hyped "Battle of the Sexes." "Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt," Billie Jean King said, "I knew that I wanted to change the sport."
September 25, 1690— The first single and only edition of America's first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, appeared in Boston, Massachusetts. The paper was intended to be published monthly, "or, if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener." Four days later, on September 29, the paper was shut down by British authorities.
September 30, 1955— Actor, heartthrob, and Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, died in a head-on collision in California while driving his brand-new Porsche 550 Spyder. He was 24.
Where Do the Vitamins and Minerals In Your Supplements Come From?
Nature Made, in other words, is a bit of a misnomer.
Andrews shines a spotlight on the issue of vitamin sourcing in his article as he calls one company after another:
"I called Centrum. They don't have any information on where the nutrients in their products come from. They told me that their 'vitamins are synthetic and the minerals are derived from natural sources.'
I called Bayer (the maker of Flintstone's Vitamins) two times. They didn't provide any response about where their vitamin supplements are derived."
Such is the case with many vitamin supplements — synthetic or partially synthetic, and made, processed, or extracted using a host of petrochemical ingredients — the sourcing of which is on par with the crystal industry in terms of transparency.
Naturopath Robert Thiel told The Australian that many companies use petroleum extracts in the extraction process and use coal tar derivatives, chemically processed sugar, acids, and industrial chemicals when processing their supplements. And while this may sound extreme, it's not all that uncommon, Australia's RMIT University professor of complementary medicine Marc Cohen told the paper. Petrochemicals are also commonly found in cosmetics, shampoos and medicines. Most standard vitamin supplements on the market today are "bio-identical," meaning a supplement is synthetic but mimics nature, with a molecular structure identical to the same nutrients occurring in nature. Manufacturers often prefer this process because of the cost and scarcity of natural resources. Lesley Braun, associate professor of integrative medicine and director of the Blackmores Institute, says rather than slaughter countless cows to get coenzyme Q10, it's made in labs by the Japanese. "It's bio-identical and proven very effective," she says.
But it's also possible to pop a food-based supplement whose origins came from the ground and not a test tube. Whole food supplements are made with blends of concentrated, dehydrated whole foods, sometimes with additional vitamins and minerals. Because the nutrients are combined as they are in natural foods, advocates argue, the body can use and absorb them better than nutrients in isolation.
The drawback of whole food supplements is their relatively low-potency. "The small doses often used in whole-food supplements are unlikely to confer significant benefits, given how easy it is for the body to rapidly use up micronutrients as a result of exercise, insufficient diet, stress, disease, environmental toxins, and genetic weaknesses," Jonathan E. Prousky, ND, chief naturopathic medical officer at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto told Delicious Living.
Which brings us back to what probably got you thinking about vitamin supplements in the first place. Are you getting enough? And can a vitamin help make up any deficit?
The USDA reported that the nutrient content of vegetables has fallen since 1973 due to the degradation of soil by fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, and other unsustainable farming practices. Of the vitamins we do ingest from whole foods, absorption can be as low as 20 percent. There are some supplements whose benefits have been well-studied, including: folic acid for pregnant women; iron for those with anemia; B-vitamins for those dealing with alcoholism; vitamin D; vitamin C; magnesium and CoQ10. What vitamins won't prevent is cancer or cognitive decline.
"Vitamin supplements have never been shown to provide the cancer and heart disease preventing effects of a healthy diet," David Cutler, MD, family medicine physician at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, CA told Prevention. In fact, the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine published an article (with the cutting-to-the-chase headline "Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements") noting there was no evidence that multivitamins had any effect on cognitive decline, heart disease, cancer, or overall mortality.
In 2006, the final word at the National Institute of Health State-of-the-Science Conference was that, "The present evidence is insufficient to recommend either for or against the use of MVMs [multivitamins/minerals] by the American public to prevent chronic disease." The Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics (AND) recommends that the best nutritional strategy for optimal health and reducing the risk of chronic disease is to eat a wide variety of whole foods. In the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the UDSA made the following recommendations:
- Adults over age 50 should take a vitamin B-12 supplement
- Older adults, people with dark-colored skin, and people who don't get much sunlight exposure should take a vitamin D supplement
- Women who may become pregnant or are already pregnant, and are planning to carry their fetus to term, should take a folic acid supplement
"Taking a multivitamin is not a substitute for healthy eating," Alana Biggers, MD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical medicine at University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine told Prevention. The best way to get the vitamins and minerals you need is to eat a well-balanced diet of fruits, veggies, whole grains, and protein.
"The best has always been whole, organic food, in season and locally grown," professor Marc Cohen said. "Nature has being doing its job for years." The closer you can come to consuming nutrients in their natural form, the better, he added.
Exercise common sense in your kitchen and medicine cabinet by balancing a healthy diet with supplements, understanding that the more you can find out about the sources of both, the better.
How to Live Well In a 24/7 World of Bad News
"Compassionate people are overwhelmed now with the deluge of terrible news," Krista Tippett said recently on On Being. "The pictures are too present and too vivid. The news cycle is too relentless. I see pictures of children in faraway places that wreck me for a day."
What can the compassionate person do?
What we're experiencing now, Roshi Joan Halifax told Tippett, is "empathic distress." "When we are more stabilized, then we can face the world with more buoyancy, more capacity to address these very profound social and environmental issues," she said. Here are some ideas for what that can look like in your day-to-day life.
Limit your news—and be strategic
Instead of considering your phone and its news alerts an extension of your body, set aside time—at lunch, say—to check in with what's going on in the world. We're big fans of NPR's "Up First," a 10-minute podcast segment that tells you what you need to know to start your day. Loretta Breuning, author of Habits of a Happy Brain, advises banishing the news from your bedtime routine.
Whatever you do, don't feel guilty about creating distance between you and the news in the name of emotional wellbeing. "It's important to maintain healthy boundaries, practice self-care. It's your life. Time is really precious," Kriss Kevorkian, who teaches classes on trauma, crisis and disasters in the Master of Social Work program at Walden University, told Quartz. If people find you selfish, she advises reminding them of the airplane air mask principle: "Tell them, 'Yeah, I am, because I come first.'"
Too many of your devices provide access to breaking newsNew York Times
Ask the right question—and then move on
When the news triggers your compassion ask yourself once, and only once, What can I do to solve this problem? On Tiny Buddha, Lori Deschene emphasizes the importance of thinking small. "Whether you have grand plans or not, I think it's important to play small every day—even while keeping your eye on a larger goal. The little things make a huge difference, both for us and the people whose lives we touch." Try not to ruminate and spin your wheels in compassionate distress. "If you can't think of a plan or solution that's realistic, rational, and logical, move on," Saltz wrote.
Go to a holy place
The news whirs, buzzes, drones, and whirls. Replace it with quiet and stillness. "I think there are many antidotes, actually," said Roshi Joan Halifax. "A setting...which is so physically beautiful and psycho-socially safe, is important. I think there are houses of worship in many denominations here, so people can go and touch into the stillness and, as well, into the inspiration." For you, it may be a Quaker Meeting, group meditation at the candlelit yoga studio, or a woodland grove. "This is coming back to the value of a contemplative practice," said Roshi Joan Halifax. "Within any tradition or non-tradition is that when you are in a state of deep internal stillness, you see the truth of change, the truth of impermanence that's constantly in flow, moment by moment. And so that becomes a kind of insight that liberates you from the futility of the kind of grief that disallows our own humanity to emerge."
Practice loving kindness
This form of meditation extends feelings of compassion, love, peace, and safety from the sitter to the greater world. Begin by extending blessings to yourself: "May I be happy. May I feel love. May I have peace." Then, visualize people you love—your mother, your best friend, your spouse—and extend blessings to them, eventually expanding the circle of compassion until it encompasses your town, country, and the planet. "May all beings be happy; may all beings feel love; may all living beings experience peace."
Broaden your field of vision
It's not only spirituality, meditation, and nature that can restore our feelings of interconnectedness and equanimity. This is also the dominion of great art and literature. "We've turned our vision to being so superficial and outward," said Roshi Joan Halifax. In addition to turning your attention to the wider world, focus your attention on works of art and beauty. News isn't the only form of media; remember verse, sculpture, sonnets? Artists have been working through questions of compassion and meaning in novels, poetry, and painting for centuries. Be restored by the answers there.
The takeaway
"There's a potential for a new kind of enlightenment in our time," said Roshi Joan Halifax. "And that is, I think, a yearning that many of us experience, as we see the world distancing itself from its own heart." Seeing this yearning, this desire, fills her with hope rather than futility. Follow the longing you feel. Reframe your discomfort as vital information—your body and soul are telling you they want to reconnect to the heart of the world.
