50 years ago... Inside... - Chattanooga Bar Association

12 Friday, June 13, 2008 HAMILTON COUNTY HERALD
Nutrition World owner promotes health through overall wellness
By Samara Litvack
Ed Jones has always been a
health nut.
When he joined the
Chattanooga Police Department in
1978, he was longing to be in the
industry of health and nutrition.
Soon after, he opened a health food
and vitamin store in Four Squares
Mall. After a couple of years there
with little business, he moved to
Highland Plaza. Then, he opened
another location in Brainerd Village.
As the popularity of his stores
increased, so did the opportunity for
him to spread his message. He wasn’t
merely in the business of selling vitamins
and health food. Instead, he
wanted to sell people the concept of
overall wellness. Once business
picked up, he was able to add rooms
in the back of his store. There, specialty
therapists began performing
health services that complemented
his whole idea of overall wellness.
“We had something called ‘cranial
therapy’ and massage,” he says.
“Then we branched out and opened
the gym. Then we brought in the
acupuncture and then the chiropractor.”
Jones had these therapies going
simultaneously for nearly a decade.
When he outgrew the Brainerd store
a little over a year ago, he moved to
his current location on Lee Highway.
With the added space, he has added
a massive list of specialty therapies –
stillpoint, egoscue posture, foot
detox, sound therapy, EFT therapy,
rolfing and more. Jones even has a
physician, Dr. Terry Smith, who primarily
works at Erlanger but comes to
Nutrition World once a month for
consultations.
“He has the ability to balance
both the conventional world and the
nutritional world,” says Jones, which
is a hard concept for many in the
medical field and the general public
to grasp.
The American mind has been
trained to seek medicines for specific
conditions, such as pain and high
cholesterol. These treatments are
often much easier to understand than
Ed Jones, owner of Nutrition World, says that 70 to 80 percent of people are “horribly
deficient” in vitamin D. He recommends getting a blood test to check your level
before taking supplements, however, because too much vitamin D is just as harmful
as not enough. (Samara Litvack)
the notion of the human body healing
itself naturally.
“The one thing in Tennessee
that limits us, and I think the one
thing that would change the whole
face of healing and health, is the fact
that we outlawed naturopathic medicine,”
he says. “Naturopathy’s whole
philosophical basis is that the body
has the ability to heal, if you figure
out what it’s missing, or what it has
too much of, or too little of, and you
balance the body.”
Naturopathy is still practiced in
several states, giving practitioners the
right to do everything a physician
does except write prescriptions and
perform surgery. Naturopathic medicine
encompasses the whole picture
of health – physical, mental and
emotional – and focuses on the overall
wellness of the body.
Jones references a recent case in
Hohenwald, Tenn., where a man was
fined $1 million for providing nutritional
counseling to customers at his
health food store. Dr. Larry Rawdon,
a licensed pharmacist, was advising a
customer who suffered from stage
four pancreatic cancer – a level few
people, if any, ever survive. The
patient had undergone radiation to
no avail, so Rawdon recommended a
nutritional plan that actually
increased his energy level for the first
time in years. When the patient
passed away, his widow sued
Rawdon, resulting in one of the most
controversial cases to hit the state
since naturopathy was banned in
1950.
“There’s never been, at this
point, enough concentrated money
or effort to overturn that legislation,
but it’s coming very soon, I really
believe,” says Jones. He hopes that
this case will spark public interest and
Nightfall concert series brings a variety of people downtown
By Samara Litvack
Wonderful weather and sweet,
soulful music brought droves of
Chattanoogans to Miller Park for
the May 23 kickoff of the Nightfall
Concert Series. Hundreds of motorcycles
lined the entire block of MLK
Boulevard and Broad Street as people
of all ages and walks of life blended
together to jumpstart their
Memorial Day weekend.
The festivities began at 7:00
p.m. with local favorite the
Dismembered Tennesseans, a group
of McCallie School alumni that
have been performing old style bluegrass
together for 60 years. The band
has played nationwide and has been
featured on such shows as the “Peter
Jennings Nightly News.”
At 8:00, the Mike Farris Band
took the stage. Farris, former front
man for the Screamin’ Cheetah
Wheelies, led the 10-piece band in a
spiritual, soulful performance that
kept the massive Nightfall crowd on
its feet until they wrapped up the
show.
Northshore residents Ken
Fleming and Sam Deaton watched
the performances from the sidelines.
Fleming, who relocated to
Chattanooga from New York, said
Northshore residents Ken Fleming and Sam Deaton came to the first Nightfall
Concert of 2008. The friends said they enjoy the free concert series and plan to
attend again over the summer. (Samara Litvack)
he thoroughly enjoys the summertime
nightlife that downtown has to
offer. “Every weekend, there’s lots of
concerts and festivals. Every weekend
there’s something going on,” he
said.
Deaton, who moved to
Chattanooga from Spain earlier this
year, said he couldn’t believe something
like Nightfall happened every
night of the summer. “It’s like a
whole music festival. It’s amazing,”
he said. “I love it here. It’s a great
event.”
While Fleming, Deaton and
other 20- and 30-somethings hit the
ticket and drink booths and enjoyed
the nightlife, hundreds of people
walked up and down Broad Street
and MLK Boulevard admiring the
rows of motorcycles.
Kevin Fisher stood proudly by
his 2008 Suzuki Hayabusa as people
took pictures and videos and
admired his helmet. The
Chattanooga resident said he comes
to Nightfall every Friday he can. He
enjoys meeting all kinds of people
and seeing the different bikes, and
loves talking about his Suzuki to anyone
who wants to hear.
“I had an ’06 GSXR 1000 and
it got stolen last year at Panama City
during bike week,” he said, with a
laugh. “I thought about getting a
new ’07 1000 and I heard so much
about these I decided to wait. So I
just (went) all year without a bike all
year last year. When these came out,
I walked on the showroom and was
like, ‘yeah, that’s it.’ It’s a whole lot
more comfortable than that 1000.”
While Nightfall is the perfect
local hangout for bike riders and
admirers, it’s also a prime location for
a family outing. Nicole Lopez and
her friend, Laura Mills, took their
sons, 18 months and 5 months old,
out for the beginning of the summer
long celebration.
Lopez says her son got to come
to a few shows last summer and she
plans to bring him out this summer
as much as she can. “(The kids)
enjoy the music and a lot of times
they enjoy looking at all the motorcycles
and stuff,” she said. Regarding
which types of music her family likes
most, she explained they don’t really
have a preference. They simply
check the Internet to see who’s playing,
sample the music online and
come check out the artists that spark
their interest.
“Almost every band that comes
out here, everybody enjoys it. That’s
one of the nice things about it,” she
says.
The second Nightfall show, featuring
Karla Bonoff, was just as suc-
shed some light on the ban.
“I absolutely, in the bottom of
my heart know that 99.9 percent of
us have the ability to heal within us.
We don’t lack a drug. We don’t have
a deficiency of valium, that’s why we
don’t sleep,” he says. “The whole key
is trying to balance the body and give
it back what it wants and needs to
begin with. It’ll fix itself.
“And crisis management is
wonderful. I don’t want to be in a
world without emergency rooms and
antibiotics when I get pneumonia or
something else. But that’s only about
5 to 10 percent of the problems. The
other 90 percent can be addressed by
another kind of concept.”
And since naturopathy is illegal
in Tennessee, Jones has to be careful
how he distributes his message of
wellness. He doesn’t claim to cure
diseases or treat illnesses. He only
shares the wealth of knowledge that
he has acquired in his 29 years in the
industry, all in hopes of teaching people
how to be more in tune with their
bodies’ needs.
“Most people know a lot more
about their computer and how to
keep it running and how to operate it
than they ever do their body,” he
says. “It’s now time that we embrace
the human body as much as we do a
computer. As complex as a computer
is, we all figured it out. Our bodies are
not that awful complex.”
Visit www.nutritionworld.com
for more information on the many
services offered at Nutrition World,
or to subscribe to Jones’s informative
monthly email. ❖
cessful. The singer-songwriter, who
performed at the very first Nightfall
in 1988, drew an enthusiastic crowd
for the May 30 performance.
Opening for Bonoff was Tim Veazey,
known for his gospel hymns, old spirituals
and inspirational songs.
After a two-week break for the
Riverbend Festival, Nightfall will
start back up on June 20 and continue
to bring vitality to Miller Park and
downtown Chattanooga through
the end of September.
Corporate sponsors for this
year’s series are Fletcher Bright
Company, UNITRIN, Northwest
Georgia Bank, Bud Light, Southern
Powersports, Food Lion, Kelly Auto
Group, Fox 61 and NPR/Music 88.
For more information about this free
community concert series, call 423-
265-0771 or visit www.downtownchattanooga.org
❖