ORGANIZATIONS
American Heart Association. 7272 Greenville Avenue,
Dallas, TX 75231. Telephone: (800) 242-8721. Website:
http://www.americanheart.org
Linus Pauling Institute. Oregon State University, 571
Weniger Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331-6512. Telephone:
(541) 717-5075. Fax: (541) 737-5077. Website: http://
lpi.oregonstate.edu
Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health.
6100 Executive Blvd., Room 3B01, MSC 7517, Bethesda,
MD 20892-7517 Telephone: (301)435-2920. Fax:
(301)480-1845. Website: http://dietary-supplements.
info.nih.gov
OTHER
Familydoctor.org. Vitamins and Minerals: What You
Should Know. American Family Physician, December
- http://familydoctor.org/863.xml
Higdon, Jane. ‘‘Magnesium.’’ Linus Pauling Institute-Oregon
State University, April 14, 2003. http://lpi.oregonstate.
edu/infocenter/minerals/magnesium
Mayo Clinic Staff. ‘‘Dietary Supplements: Using Vitamin
and Mineral Supplements Wisely.’’ MayoClinic.com,
June 5, 2006. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/
supplements/NU00198
Novello, Nona and Howard A. Blumstein. ‘‘Hypermagne-
semia.’’ emedicine.com, January 12, 2007. http://
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic262.htm
Novello, Nona and Howard A. Blumstein. ‘‘Hypomagnese-
mia.’’ emedicine.com, January 18, 2007. http://www.
emedicine.com/emerg/topic274.htm
Helen DavidsonMaker’s diet
Definition
The Maker’s diet is a diet based on biblical dietary
laws. It provides guidelines to help dieters to eat as
they were created to eat. It encompasses aspects of
physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health.
Origins
The Maker’s diet is the result of a personal jour-
ney by its creator, Jordan Rubin. Rubin was a healthy,
happy athletic young man who had an athletic schol-
arship to college. Everything seemed fine, but then in
1994, when he was 19, he was diagnosed withCrohn’s
disease. Crohn’s disease is a disease of the gastrointes-
tinal system, and is a chronicinflammatory bowel
disease. It affects about half a million people in the
United States. There is no cure for this disease,
although for most people it can be managed with
prescription medications. This however, was not the
case for Rubin.
Rubin reports that he had many symptoms of
severe Crohn’s disease including abdominal pain,
chronic diarrhea, intestinal parasites, eye inflamma-
tion, arthritis, bladder infection, chronic fatigue,
chronic depression, and many other debilitating prob-
lems. He could not find a treatment that helped him,
and in a search for one he saw more than 70 doctors
and other health professionals in seven countries. In
all, he says that he tried more than 500 different treat-
ments. The treatments he tried ranged from conven-
tional medicine to natural remedies, but none of them
worked for him.
According to Rubin, all that changed when his
father tried one more person. Rubin refers to the
person as an ‘‘eccentric nutritionist’’ because he was
not a professional and had some very different ideas.
What he told Rubin was that his problems all stemmed
from not eating the wayThe Bibleprescribes. Rubin
began to look inThe Biblefor diet information, and
combining what he found with what the eccentric
nutritionist had told him, he started to change his
diet. Rubin found that his symptoms began to clear
up, and after a time, went away completely. Since this
time he reports that his Crohn’s disease has been in
complete remission. The diet that he followed forms
the basis of the Maker’s diet.
Jordan Rubin earned a degree in Naturopathic
Medicine from Peoples University of the Americas
School of Natural Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Nutrition
from the Academy of Natural Therapies, which is not
accepted as qualification by the American Dietetic
Association or other nutrition organizations. He is
also a certified personal trainer and certified nutri-
tional consultant. He has appeared on many different
television programs and written several books includ-
ing one titledThe Makers Diet. He is also the founder
and chief executive officer of Garden of Life, Inc.
which he founded in 1998. The company produces
supplements and other health products.Description
The Maker’s diet was created by Jordan Rubin to
follow the dietary laws set down byThe Bible.He
believes that following these laws, and by eating the
way people ate 100 or more years ago, is the way that
man was meant to eat. He believes that because man
was not meant to eat the way he eats today these
incorrect eating habits are to blame for many of the
diseases and conditions that are so prevalent in indus-
trialized society today.Maker’s diet