An important principle in nutrition is synergy. This means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When we eat food provided by nature we are consuming a wide array of vitamins, minerals, protein, fats, carbohydrates and thousands of other chemicals besides.
When we ingest supplements, we are mostly taking only a very tiny amount of all the different chemicals found in foodstuffs into our bodies. A high dose of a very small amount of nutrients is not synergy, and is not a food supplement. It's drug nutrition.
A high percentage of pharmaceuticals are derived from plants. The pharmacologist takes the most powerful portion of the plant and uses this to make the drug. On the other hand, a herbalist will use all of the plant. This is much safer and includes all the synergistic factors contained in the whole plant.
As with the herbal example, to create a nutritional supplement, the pharmacist will extract the most active part of the nutrient complex and discard the rest. This can no longer be regarded as a dietary supplement. Instead it is a weak drug.
Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C?
Look on your supplement label. Is vitamin C only provided as ascorbic acid? But this is not vitamin C. This is only part of the vitamin C complex. A good supplement will contain not just water soluble ascorbic acid, but fat soluble ascorbyl palmitate, as well as mineral ascorbates, bioflavonoids and fruit extracts. In this way you will also get the flavonols, flavonones and flavones that are such an important part of the vitamin C complex.
Vitamin E Is Not Only Alpha Tocopherol
Is vitamin E only provided as alpha tocopherol? But this is not vitamin E. This is only part of the vitamin E complex. There are three other tocopherols and four tocotrienols that are also part of the vitamin E complex. Taking alpha tocopherol alone is not just unbalanced, it can deplete the other parts of the vitamin E complex, reducing their potential health benefits.
Beta Carotene Is Not Vitamin A
Many supplements provide pro vitamin A in the form of beta carotene. While this does convert into vitamin A, it is only one fraction of the carotenoid complex which comprises 600 or more other pigments.
An early pioneer of clinical nutrition was Royal Lee. Back in 1940 he said that natural vitamin complexes contain everything that is contained in nature provided foods. If your supplement is synthetic, containing chemically purified nutrients then you are ingesting not vitamins but fractions of vitamins.
So the next time you look for a nutritional supplement to take, ask yourself whether you are ingesting food or swallowing a drug.
Posted under Vitamins
This post was written by Michael Sellar on August 30, 2008
