Natural Versus Synthetic: Your vitamins may be killing you.
NeuroWellness
Vitamins and minerals are essential for good health and they are found in a variety of foods. A good way to meet your nutritional needs is to eat a well balanced diet with a wide variety of foods.
VITAMINS: Essential to life
Casmir Funk, a Polish chemist living in London, discovered the first vitamins in 1911. He found that certain "unknown substances" in food are essential to life and necessary to prevent diseases. Because it was a nitrogen compound, he labeled it an amine, because it was vital to health, it was a vital amine, or vitamine, or vitamin. This discovery began the era of modern interest in diet and nutrition. Although not all vitamins are amines, they are organic complex compounds each part contributing to the whole and produce optimum results in the presence of certain naturally occurring "cofactors," such as trace minerals, enzymes and coenzymes, as well as other vitamins. A vitamin needs all of its synergistic cofactors to function. They are required by our bodies in small amounts from the food we eat. Our body can’t make vitamins.
Unfortunately the early discoveries led some researchers to conclude that all vitamins necessary to life could be supplied in their isolated, factory-produced form as vitamin pills. Today billions of dollars are being spent annually on synthetic, chemically derived, incomplete vitamins. Never in history has so much money been spent on the advertising and purchasing of merchandise, with as little knowledge of the product itself as has been spent on vitamins and mineral supplements. We have been fooled and misled about vitamins. We have been led to believe that large quantities of dead chemicals are nutritionally more potent than smaller amounts of high quality living nutrients. Our body has a very complex and precise design that even with all the scientific and medical research, we have only scratched the surface of understanding.
We can’t “fool Mother Nature” and we can’t alter a design we don’t even understand.
The best sources of vitamins for most of us in the long term are “complete food” supplements and eating nutrient-dense meals, rich in vitamins and their cofactors.
Healthy soil is the basis of health for all life forms. Vitamin and mineral content of food varies enormously with farming methods. Commercially fertilized soils are nearly depleted of vitamin and mineral content and the fruits and vegetables grown on them declined in nutrients significantly during the last fifty years. There is a large difference in vitamin and mineral content between foods grown with commercial fertilizers and food grown organically. For example, cabbage can vary in its iron content from 94 parts per million to 0 parts per million; tomatoes can vary in iron content from 1,938 parts per million to 1 part per million. Vitamin C in some commercially raised oranges is non-existent! Food processing affects vitamin content as well. Some vitamins are heat-sensitive while others survive heating fairly well. On the other hand, cold temperatures and freezing have little effect on vitamin content while air or sun drying preserves or even enhances nutrient content. Oxidation is a prime cause of vitamin loss. Some methods of food preservation and processing actually make nutrients more available—these include culturing of dairy products, sprouting and traditional methods of pickling and fermenting.
Minerals: Building blocks for your body
Minerals are the main components in your teeth and bones. They are also building blocks for cells and enzymes. Minerals control the movement of nerve impulses and help regulate the balance of fluids in your body. Minerals also help deliver oxygen to cells and help carry away carbon dioxide. Some researchers believe that for optimum health we need to take in every substance found in the earth's crust.
There are two categories of minerals:
Macro minerals - Calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium, sulfur and chloride are considered major minerals because we need them in larger amounts
Essential trace minerals - The number of trace minerals known to be essential to life now exceeds thirty. Along with familiar trace minerals, such as chromium, copper, fluoride, iodine, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium and zinc. The body also needs others less well known, like cobalt, germanium and boron.
Minerals are usually absorbed in the ionic form. If they are not in an ionic form when consumed, they are ionized in the gut, with salts dissolving into their two components or chelates releasing their key elements. If, for example, the body needs calcium, the parathyroid gland will send a signal to the intestinal wall to form a calcium-binding protein. That calcium-binding protein will then pick up a free calcium ion, transport it through the intestinal mucosa and release it into the blood. Manganese and magnesium have similar carriers and their absorption, retention and excretion is likewise governed by mechanisms involving other nutrients and hormonal signals.
There are a number of factors that can prevent the uptake of minerals, even when they are available in our food. The glandular system that regulates the messages sent to the intestinal mucosa requires plentiful fat-soluble vitamins in the diet to work properly.
The intestinal mucosa requires fat-soluble vitamins and adequate dietary cholesterol to maintain proper integrity so that it passes only those nutrients the body needs, while at the same time keeping out toxins and large, undigested proteins that can cause allergic reactions.
Minerals may "compete" for receptor sites. Excess calcium may impede the absorption of manganese, for example. Lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, an over-alkaline environment in the upper intestine or deficiencies in certain enzymes, and nutrients may prevent chelates from releasing their minerals. Finally, strong chelating substances, such as phytic acid in grains, oxalic acid in green leafy vegetables, and tannins in tea may bind with ionized minerals in the digestive tract and prevent them from being absorbed.
Several types of mineral supplements are available commercially including chelated minerals, mineral salts, minerals dissolved in water and "colloidal" mineral preparations. There is no evidence that the body absorbs colloidal mineral preparations any better than true solutions of mineral salts or minerals in the chelated form. Many so-called "colloidal" formulas often contain undesirable additives, including citric acid. Furthermore, these products may contain an abundance of minerals that can be toxic in large amounts, such as silver and aluminum. Even mineral preparations in which the minerals are in true solution may contain minerals in amounts that may be toxic. If a product tastes very bitter, it probably should be avoided.
Some companies sell minerals chelated to amino acids which they claim do not break down in the gut, but pass in their entirety through the mucosa and into the blood, thus bypassing certain blocks to mineral absorption. However, such products, if they work, bypass the body's exquisitely designed system for taking in just what it needs and may cause serious imbalances.
The proper way to take in minerals is through mineral-rich water; through nutrient-dense foods and beverages; through the use of unrefined sea salt; and if needed through supplements under the supervision of an experienced health care practitioner.
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