IN SUMMARY
You can't repair and rebuild a living body with dead chemicals.
You can't repair and rebuild a living body with dead chemicals.
It simply isn't possible.
It could be argued that never in history has so much money been spent on the advertising and purchasing of any merchandise, with so little knowledge of the product itself, on the part of either the seller or the buyer, as has been spent on vitamin and mineral supplements.
Billions are being spent annually, and most of the purchasers, wholesalers, retailers or direct-to-the-consumer salespeople do not know the difference between a synthetic, a crystalline, and a truly natural vitamin, or the difference between chelated organic and an inorganic mineral.
They know little of how supplements are made, their characteristics, their attributes, their sources, their uses, their advantages and disadvantages, and how to tell one from another by reading a label.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC?
In short, it's the difference between something that's living and something that's dead.
That's a big difference.
NATURAL WHOLE FOOD VITAMINS
On vitamin labels the word "natural" has no specific definition other than that the substance exists somewhere on the planet or in outer space.
The key words to look for are "Whole Food Vitamins" - this means vitamins as they are found in food, untampered-with in any way that would change their molecular structure, their biological or biochemical combination, or their actions.
Vitamins in their natural state always exist as living complexes with specific synergistic co-factors, enzymes, phytonutrients and organic mineral-activators, and never as isolated single factors.
A VITAMIN NEEDS ALL OF ITS SYNERGISTS TO FUNCTION.
Further, we have literally hundreds of such synergists, most of which have not yet been studied but are nevertheless VERY IMPORTANT.
Organic food sources are preferred since they are more nutrient-dense and contain no pesticide residue.
CRYSTALLINE means that a natural food has been treated with various chemicals, solvents, heat and distillations to reduce it down to one specific "pure" crystalline vitamin. In this process all the synergists, which are termed "impurities," are destroyed. There is no longer anything natural in the action of crystalline "vitamins" - they should more accurately be termed drugs.
SYNTHETIC means that a chemist attempted to reconstruct the exact structure of the crystalline molecule by chemically combining molecules from other sources. These sources are not living foods, but dead chemicals. For example, Vitamin B1 is made from a coal tar derivative, and d-alpha tocopherol (so-called Vitamin E) is a byproduct of materials used by the Eastman Kodak company to make film. However, it is not legally necessary to give the source from which the synthetic "vitamin" is derived. Synthetic "vitamins" should more accurately be called drugs.
HOW TO READ A VITAMIN LABEL
To identify synthetics on the label, look to see if a source is given. If it isn't, assume the product is synthetic. These terms also identify a vitamin as synthetic:
acetate, bitartrate, Chloride, gluconate, hydrochloride, nitrate and succinate.
Whole food natural supplements never come in high dosages. It is only possible to create high-dosage "vitamins" if you isolate one fraction of the vitamin complex as in crystalline, or synthesize one fraction as in synthetics.
In naturally-occuring Vitamin C complex, the ascorbic acid portion only comprises about 5% of the whole complex. Similarly, alpha tocopherol only comprises a small % of the Vitamin E Complex.
Legally, the only portion of the vitamin C Complex that is allowed to be called Vitamin C is the ascorbic acid portion, and the only part of the Vitamin E Complex that can be called Vitamin E is the alpha tocopherol piece.
THE FALLACY OF "HIGH DOSAGE EQUALS HIGH POTENCY"
We, as consumers, have been thoroughly fooled and misled about vitamins. We have been hoodwinked into believing that large quantities of dead chemicals are more nutritionally potent than smaller amounts of high-quality living compounds.
Relatively small amounts of whole-food natural vitamins, with all their naturally-occuring synergists, are far more potent than high doese of synthetic imitation "vitamins."
DO SYNTHETIC VITAMINS FUNCTION AS WELL AS NATURAL WHLE FOOD VITAMINS?
No one would argue that high-performance, complex mechanisms like computers or space shuttles require very specific, high quality materials in their makeup.
Living systems are even more complex and specific in their need for building materials. In addition, living systems are constantly breaking down cells, orgns and tissues, and rebuilding and repairing them. For these processes the body must have a continual supply of high quality material.
If you build a house with cheap, imitation construction materials, your house will quickly fall into disrepair. The same is true for the physical body. The body has a very precise design, which is so incredibly intricate and complex that even with all the scientific and medical research thus far, we have only scratched the surface of understanding it.
What arrogance it is to think that we can alter a design we don't even understand.
Many conventional and non-conventional healthcare practitioners think that there is no difference between natural and synthetic vitamins, or between natural chelated minerals and inorganic minerals. This, of course, is incorrect, and has led to enormous confusion in the nutritional field.
THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES ARE A HANDFUL OF HUNDREDS THAT COULD BE GIVEN TO ILLUSTRATE THIS POINT:
- Reported on April 14, 1994 in the New England Journal of Medicine was a study in which 29,000 male smokers were given synthetic beta-carotene and synthetic Vitamin E to evaluate the cancer-protective effect of these "vitamins." After 10 years, the men taking the synthetic beta carotene had an 18% higher rate of lung cancer, more heart attacks, and an 8% higher overall death rate. Those taking synthetic Vitamin E had more strokes.
Food sources of these ame nutrients, such as fruits and vegetables, consistently demonstrate protection against cancer, heart disease and stroke.
- On November 23, 1995, the following was reported in The New England Journal of Medicine: 22,748 preganant women were given synthetic vitamin A. After four years the study was halted because of a 240% increase in birth defects in babies of women taking 10,000 IU (International units) daily, and a 400% increase in birth defects in babies of women taking 20,000 IU a day.
Women eating natural food sources of vitamin A showed no increase in birth defects.
- Reported in Reuters Health, March 3, 2000 was a study on men who took 500mg of synthetic vitamin C daily. It was found that over an 18 month period, these men had a 250% increase of the intima-media lining (inner lining) of the carotid artery. This thickening is an accurate measurement for the progression of atherosclerosis. That is, SYNTHETIC VITAMIN C INDUCED ATHEROSCLEROSIS, even at a 500mg dose.
Whole-food vitamin C protects and repairs the inner lining of blood vessels, and is preventative against atherosclerosis.
Synthetic or Isolated Nutritional Supplements
Isolated nutrients or synthetic nutrients are not natural, in that they are never found by themselves in nature. Taking these isolated nutrients, especially at the ultra-high doses found in formulas today, is more like taking a drug. Studies show the body treats these isolated and synthetic nutrients like xenobiotics (foreign substances).
By the same token, food-based supplements are never treated like this by your body. For example, your urine will never turn florescent yellow, no matter how much meat (a good source of B vitamins) you eat. This sort of rapid excretion happens only with foreign substances in your body.
Not only are isolated nutrients treated like drugs or other chemicals by your body. Like drugs, they can create problems for you too. Nature does not produce any nutrient in an isolated form. The nutrients in foods are blended together in a specific way and work best in that format. For an isolated nutrient to work properly in the body, it needs all the other parts that are naturally present in the food too.
If the parts are not all there from the start, they are taken from the body's stored supply. This is why isolated nutrients often work for a little while, then seem to stop working. Once your body's store of the extra nutrients is used up, the isolated nutrient you're taking doesn't work as well anymore. Worse yet, a deficiency in these extra nutrients can be created in your body.
And, because most nutrients are isolated from the foods they come in -- using a wide array of potentially nasty solvents and other chemicals -- taking high amounts of these products can also expose you to these potentially toxic chemicals, if care is not taken to remove them. With the burden we are already facing from the high number of chemicals in our environment, why would anyone want to add more?
Synergy and Potency
The various parts of a natural vitamin complex work together in a synergistic manner. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Nutritionist Judith DeCava puts it best: "Separating the group of compounds (in a vitamin complex) converts it from a physiological, biochemical, active micronutrient into a disabled, debilitated chemical of little or no value to living cells. The synergy is gone."
In other words, the automobile, in its original form, will drive better than a pile of its individual parts. Most people don't follow this logic when examining a nutritional supplement.
Supplement makers typically try to stuff as much as possible in a capsule, telling us that the more we take, the better it is for us. This is simply not the case. As you now know, it is not necessarily the amount of a nutrient you ingest that is important, but its form and how much is bioavailable that counts the most. In fact, remembering that ingesting single nutrients can actually create imbalances in the body, logic would dictate the higher the level of a single nutrient that you take in, the quicker this imbalance will occur.
What all of this means: The potency of a supplement has much more to do with synergy than with actual nutrient levels. It is a combined effect of all the parts of the food, rather than the chemical effect of a single part, that is most important.
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