What kind of vitamins should you take?
On April 9th 2008, CBS’s Early Show reported that in 2007 there were 192 million dietary supplement users and $23.6 Billion was spent on supplements. The question was raised however, “Are they always safe”?
We may think that since vitamins are in the foods that we eat, then not only are they safe, but they’re necessary and healthy. This may not be as true as you may think. In fact, supplement use should be approached as carefully as any other health habit. For example, should you pay an untrained individual for a session of massage therapy? Would you even think about having someone other than a Doctor of Chiropractic adjust the joints of your spine? How about handing a dental drill to someone who never spent a day in dental school and asking them to fix your molar? I hope not! The same holds true for dietary supplements.
Are all vitamins created equal?
Certainly not! Most of us have, at one time or another, walked into a health food store and seen the aisles and aisles of bottles containing both familiar sounding vitamins as well as formulas you’ve never heard of before in your life. Not knowing what to do, we must resort to asking the person behind the counter for advice who, 9 times out of 10, have never been trained in nutrition and knows no more than what the labels tell them. In fact it is very difficult for the average individual to determine not only which supplement to take, but from which company to buy them from! Well, with a little bit of knowledge, you too can make the good decisions for you and your family when it comes to vitamin usage. The first thing to understand… there ARE different types of supplements. The two major categories of dietary supplements are 1) isolated nutrient fragments and 2) whole food supplements.
Isolated nutrient fragments
The majority of supplements you see on the health food store counters are isolated nutrient formulas. These formulas can be broken down into two sub categories 1) synthetic and 2) “natural”.
Synthetic isolated nutrient formulas are prepared in a laboratory. Scientists research the molecular structure of certain vitamins and nutrients and attempt to duplicate them in a laboratory setting. The benefit of this is that they can mass produce them at a fraction of the cost and sell a higher amount with a higher profit level. Unfortunately for us, our bodies do not recognize these artificial substitutes as the real nutrient and does not break down or absorb these fabricated fakes. So, the bottom line is a lower cost bottle of vitamins getting flushed down the toilet resulting in a waste of our time and money.
“Natural” isolated nutrient formulas are only slightly better. You see, these type of nutrients are also produced in a laboratory. The scientists who make these variations of nutrients start out with natural substances. However, instead of duplicating the molecular structure of vitamins, they utilize a series of steps and chemical reactions to extract the desired particles from their “natural” starting product. These so called nutrients are then included, in predetermined quantities, into the capsule, tablet or pill. I use the word “natural” in quotations because many times the natural product used in these formulations are substances which we may not want ingested into our bodies. For example, many “natural” B complex vitamins are extracted form coal tar derivatives. Is coal tar natural? Yes, but not healthy!
Another important thing to understand about isolated nutrient formulations is that the nutrients extracted are not complete. Instead, only fragments of the desired nutrients are extracted and included. Allow me to explain.
If you look at your vitamin bottle’s label you will see a list of ingredients that sound like they must be healthy like Niacin, Folic Acid, Thiamine and Ascorbic Acid.
Let’s look at Ascorbic Acid. Ascorbic acid is what is included in your vitamin bottle as Vitamin C. Now let’s be very clear about this… Ascorbic Acid is not Vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is only part of the vitamin C complex. In fact, it is only the outer shell covering of the Vitamin C complex. Let’s put that into perspective. We know that eating an apple is healthy, skin and all. However, would you ever consider removing the skin from the apple and eating the skin only while throwing away the rest of the fruit? Of course not! In the same sense, taking ascorbic acid is like doing just that. It’s like eating an eggshell and throwing away the egg!
Another example would be Vitamin E. If you look on your vitamin label, you may see alpha-tocopherol listed as Vitamin E. Take a look at the diagram below.
You will notice in the diagram, that alpha-tocopherol is included in the complex of Vitamin E. However, it is not the only thing that is inside the Vitamin. There are 3 other tocopherols, selenium, as well as other co-factors necessary to make up Vitamin E. If we take only alpha-tocopherol, we are not getting the entire vitamin, only a fragment. Vitamin fragments are not complete and are therefore unstable. That means, they are looking to hook up with their counterparts… even if these counterparts exist in your body. Taking vitamin fragments can actually cause a “leaching” effect on your body.
Again, our bodies are not designed to use nutrient fragments which are removed and separated in a laboratory. The best nutrient extracting lab in the world is the human body. It is designed to consume whole foods and extract the nutrients it needs, in their complete form, and use them to it’s benefit. Which leads us to the second type of supplementation.
Whole Food Supplements
Whole food supplements start with foods grown in nutrient rich soils and carefully cultivated to preserve the integrity of the food. Then, instead of extracting the nutrients from the foods, the food is compacted and concentrated into the supplement itself. So, when taking a whole food vitamin, your body will not only recognize it as food (because that’s what it is) but it will also extract the complete nutrient properly and absorb it completely for it’s benefit. Whole food supplements are the most effective way to supplement a healthy diet because it complements the body’s design.
The April 9th CBS news program suggested that taking some supplements improperly may cause some damage to your health. I would like to agree… when taking isolated nutrient formulas that is. However, when taking whole food vitamins, your body will only extract the nutrients that it needs and not cause damage. You see, you can never get too much nutrition from eating good food and that’s what whole food supplements do for you.
For more information about whole food nutrition, visit our nutrition page and listen to the audio content available there.
