In many situations, we behave with a preventative mindset: we anticipate potential misfortune, and do our best to avoid it. If we’re about to head out on a run, we stretch beforehand to prevent pulled muscles. If we’re about to hit the road for a long trip, we check the gas so we don’t run out along the way. Looking out the window at a threatening sky, we put on a raincoat or bring along an umbrella to keep from getting soaked. Yet when it comes to health, how many of us think preventatively? Judging by the leading causes of death in the United States — the majority of which are due to preventable causes — not as many of us as should be.

Would you say to yourself before running, “Nah, I don’t need to stretch; I’ll just deal with a pulled hamstring along the way?” And you wouldn’t get very far on that road trip if you were to think, “I don’t need to check the gas; I’m sure someone will come along who can drive me to the nearest gas station if I run out.” Or on your way to the office, you probably wouldn’t tell yourself, “I’m happy to let my business suit get drenched and arrive at the office looking like a drowned rat; I’ll just towel off once I get there.” No! Yet this is exactly what millions of people say to themselves when it comes to their health! They wait to get sick instead of doing anything to prevent getting sick in the first place!

“I don’t need to pay attention to what I’m eating; once I get diabetes I’ll just get a prescription from my doctor.” “Stop smoking? What for? I’ll just get chemo once the lung cancer shows up.” “Slow down and reduce the stress in my life? I can’t. Besides, the late night janitor in my office building knows CPR.” “Get off the couch and get outside and exercise? Okay, I’ll walk to McDonald’s.” Well, I’ll grant you, perhaps people aren’t saying exactly all of these things with their out loud voice, but they are with their behavior, and as we know from Mom and Dad, actions speak louder than words. The assumption underlying these behaviors is killing millions of Americans each year: “I can keep doing what I’m doing because the diabetes/cancer/heart attack/liver disease/kidney failure/etc. will never come.”

And even if we do change our behavior and become more intentional about diet and exercise, we’re under toxic assault from all directions: polluted air: both indoor and outdoor; polluted water; increasingly potent radiation from an ever-growing number of wireless networks; food grown with pesticides and chemical fertilizers; meat raised with growth hormones and treated with antibiotics; and everyday home cleaning and personal care products loaded with poisonous chemicals. Three news stories from the last decade or so highlight the critical need to boost our immunity and shield our bodies from from this toxic onslaught.

The phenomenon of “intersex fish” gained attention in the mid-2000s when it was discovered that more than 80% of male fish in the Potomac River were bearing eggs in their testes. Over time the Potomac had been become a “toxic stew” comprised of human contraceptives and chemicals used in large-scale farming operations that mimic natural hormones and disrupt the endocrine system. More than 90% of the approximately 5 million people living in the greater Washington, DC Metro area get their drinking water from the Potomac. How many of them are doing anything to lessen the impact of this “toxic stew” flowing out of their faucets? (And to think I used to kayak and swim in that river with my kids. Yuck.)

More recently in 2014, across the country from the nation’s capital region, chinook salmon in Puget Sound were found to contain in their tissues a veritable pharmacopoeia including Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, Flonase, Aleve, Tylenol, Paxil, Valium, Zoloft, Tagamet, OxyContin, Darvon, nicotine and caffeine, fungicides, antiseptics, anticoagulants, Cipro and other antibiotics galore — even cocaine! And before you say, “But I buy only ‘wild caught’ fish,” the story reports that even fish tested in what were thought to be pristine waters, i.e., areas which receive no direct municipal treatment-plant discharge, also tested positive for these chemicals.

The last story reports on a study released earlier this month by a group of government and university researchers that emissions from everyday cleaning and personal care products are beginning to rival those from the transportation and industrial sectors. These products give off petroleum-based substances known as “volatile organic compounds” (VOCs), which can be a significant toxic irritant to many people. Although this is a very recent study, VOC “off-gassing” is by no means a new, unheard of phenomenon. Indeed, many companies have offered for years now no or low-VOC options for paints, stains, glues, as well as furniture finishes; what was once considered a “fringe opinion” — the alarming toxicity of our environment — has been acknowledged by the mainstream.

Paradoxically, the foods upon which we should be able to rely are unable to provide us with the critical nutrition we need to sustain, never mind improve, our health. Our modern food supply is incapable of providing the nutrients our bodies need. Industrial methods of farming, harvesting, food processing, and the aforementioned air and water pollution have rendered our food supply largely devoid of nutrition, which leads to another paradox: the United States may be both the best fed and least nourished nation in the world. Even organic food, or better said, food labeled organic is increasingly difficult to trust as large companies lobby the government successfully to dumb down the definition of what can be included in foods labeled “organic.”

This is why we are so grateful for having discovered BioSuperfood. With its unmatched nutritional composition and potency, it supplies our family and our clients with nutrients that simply do not exist in much of the food — and dietary supplements — in and on the market today. When the cells of the body receive the nutrients and the resulting energy they need, they perform their myriad cellular metabolic activities: growth, repair, cleansing, regeneration, protection, and many more that are the key to health and immunity from disease.

By taking BioSuperfood you’re thinking about your health preventatively: you’re stretching before that run, checking the gas before that road trip, and grabbing that umbrella before heading out into the storm.