Chemicals or Food ?

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his or her patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease”.  -Thomas Edison

World HQ of Standard Process in Palmyra, Wisconsin. Considered by many to be the gold standard of supplement companies.

The right vitamins can change your life dramatically. Unfortunately, they are not usually found on store shelves. Except for a few exceptions, most vitamin companies, even many sold in health food stores, are synthetic. Synthetic vitamins, besides being a waste of money, can end up causing more harm than good.

Whole Foods Supplements vs. Synthetic Isolates                              

Getting ready to tour the Standard Process factory. I was impressed with how clean the factory was and how they have zero tolerance for anything synthetic or genetically modified.

Whole food supplements can be taken in small doses because they contain the  nutrients found in food, the way nature intended. We tend to think that if something is good, then mega doses are even better. So not true when it comes to  vitamins.Vitamins are not individual molecular compounds.   Vitamins are biological complexes.  Vitamin activity only takes place when  all co-factors and components of the entire vitamin complex are present and working together.    Whole food supplements are only food with the water and fiber removed. They are processed below 112 degrees so that the enzymes remain available. They have a limited shelf life and this is a good thing.  Whole food supplements, meaning not a bottle of vitamins from Texas-based retailer Whole Foods, but vitamins that are made from food and have all of the co-factors and enzymes present, are far superior to any synthetic supplement.

Synthetic vitamins,  sold in supermarkets, drugstores and yes, even some products in health food stores do NOT come from food. They come from chemicals and are manufactured by a few large pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Only 3 percent of nutrition companies manufacture their own product!  Basically, a chemist creates the exact structure of the molecule by combining molecules from other sources. For example, ascorbic acid (many the vitamin C choice of synthetic vitamin manufacturers) is made by reacting corn sugar with sulfuric acid. Most of the ascorbic acid in this country is manufactured in Nutley, NJ by pharmaceutical firm Hoffman-LaRoche. Vitamin E comes to us as the industrial by-product of oil processing, courtesy of Eastman Kodak Company. If you see just ascorbic acid on the label of your vitamins, run from it! It is incomplete, to put it gently.

Synthetic supplements can stay on shelves for years.  Supplements made from food have a limited shelf life. Synthetic supplements, such as ShopRite’s “The Complete Vitamin Formula”, in addition to containing ascorbic acid and calcium carbonate (the most poorly absorbed and cheapest to produce form of calcium) also contain artificial colors and genetically modified soy.

Problems with Synthetic Vitamins                                                          

Standard Process really practices what they preach! Our lunch consisted of wild rice salad, beets from the farm and salmon. Dessert was berries with cream. All organic, of course.

Do you have a cabinet full of vitamins, but still do not feel any better? Or perhaps they worked in the beginning, but they no longer seem to have any effect. One of the problems with synthetic vitamins is that they create nutritional deficiencies in the long run.Vitamins cannot be isolated from their complexes and still perform their specific life functions within the cells.   When isolated into artificial commercial forms, like ascorbic acid, these purified synthetics act as drugs in the body.

Expensive Urine May Be The Least of Your Problems

The body treats synthetic vitamins as toxins. Although some have reported relief from fatigue by taking B vitamins. Dr Judith De Cava, author of  ”The Real Truth About Vitamins and Antioxidants”  points out that this practice will “initially allay fatigue, but will eventually cause more fatigue to the build up of pyruvic acid.” If someone is so deficient in nutrients, synthetic vitamins will do some good initially, but then end up creating more problems. During a period of more than average fatigue in my life, and before I educated myself on whole food supplements, a very good friend recommended that I take this powerful B vitamin complex that she was taking. She said that it gave her so much energy. Well, even though I didn’t quite know what was wrong with that statement, something told me that true energy comes from food and rest, not a bottle of synthetic vitamins. Now that I know about whole food supplements and am taking the very best for my body in addition to eating well 80% of the time and getting a maintenance chiropractic adjustment once or twice a month, I am not often fatigued and rarely do I fall victim to a cold. Sadly, this same friend is currently one of the unhealthiest people I know. I don’t think her power B vitamin formula had a systemic, long-term effect.

Synthetic vitamins usually cause one’s urine to be a Technicolor yellow. This is the beauty of homeostasis-the body is ridding itself of foreign chemicals which it does not recognize. I have not found this to be the case when taking whole food supplements.

Standard Process, Innate and New Chapter, period.

These are the only supplements that I would take. New Chapter you can get in better health food stores. Standard Process and Innate are available under the supervision of a physician who practices holistic healing. Innate and Standard Process can be found on Amazon, but this is frowned upon by both of these companies because you are not receiving the guidance of a doctor who knows how to use their very precise formulas and also because you don’t know how old the product is when you order from Amazon. Remember that these vitamins are made from food and have a limited shelf life.   Perhaps there are more companies out there, I just don’t have the time to do that much research. I was, however, very lucky to visit  in Palmyra, Wisconsin this past October. It is truly a paradise of 420 plus acres of beautiful organic farmland.  It was founded by Dr Royal Lee in 1929. Dr Lee was truly before his time. For more information about Dr Lee, read the following article; www.becomehealthynow.com/article/sprocess/166/.

I am not a nutritionist, but just someone who has always been interested in health and well-being. I hope that you have found this blog to be informative and I would encourage you to continue learning about the difference between synthetic supplements and whole food supplements. For more information, check out www.livewellfromtheinsideout.com.   As always, I welcome your comments.