Vitamin Status on Health

Do vitamins help prevent or cure diseases? 

There is a tendency for many resources and health professionals to generalize about vitamins without much substance in support. When they are pressed to explain their views, it often turns out they are repeating what another professional said in the past. Over time this becomes the universally accepted and believed doctrine, even when the science changes and no longer supports the original assumptions.

People in America are not very healthy compared to many if not most other developed Countries in the World. The standard American diet (SAD) plays a major role in creating poor health issues. Can the proper usage of vitamin supplements mitigate adverse health conditions? article

This website breaks that mold and explores the little known science to find the real vitamin reality. You will be amazed at how much clarity there actually is available using the whole of scientific research. The controversial vitamin issues actually are not all that controversial. Rather, it is a lack of following exactly the scientific method that fails vitamin health issues. Many articles on this website attest to this shortcoming. Vitamins do have value in helping to prevent some diseases when properly used. A prevention action is much greater than curative ability for most vitamin supplements. This is due to how they function. See if you don't agree after reading some of the following:

• Vitamin E   All eight vitamin E members have a role to play in building health, not just alpha tocopherol. Notice the most protection against brain dementia comes from beta tocopherol, NOT from alpha tocopherol. Taking high amounts of just vitamin E as alpha tocopherol actually lowers the levels of the other E family members, including beta tocopherol. The alpha tocopherol only as vitamin E supplement approach promoted by the US Government is failing to adequately protect people. The accepted mainstream science here is totally WRONG. Saying that only alpha tocopherol is able to be called vitamin E or have E units is faulty. It was from day one some 70 years ago. ref article ref  
• Tocotrienols have valuable health functions not available from just alpha tocopherol.
• Co Enzyme Q10 on energy production to support a healthier heart.
• IP6 has influence to control the life span and death of prostate cancer cells. 
• Resveratrol might have beneficial functions for obesity and diabetes.
• CoQ10, Acetyl- L-Carnitine, and Omega 3 fish oils appear to help protect vision.

Is this enough to convince you of the value of proper vitamin supplement usage in health? Need some more support? Check out the next article highlighted below for areas that supplements might benefit.

• Another profound health article with many more health vitamin relationships. 
• Some vitamin studies yield positive results, a few find adverse effects, and many have null effects. The fact that vitamins have optimal windows for positive result amounts with both lower and higher often exhibiting negative results means that the beginning vitamin levels of test subjects in studies is critical for the final direction of findings. ref    
• Critical to study results warrants proper vitamin forms, dosages, and synergistic combinations. Primary use of family forms for Beta carotene, vitamins A, E, and C are also vital.

STORY EXAMPLE

A Doctor wanted to measure the blood level amounts for all of nature's eight vitamin E family members in heart patients versus those in healthy subjects. Vitamin E only contains d'alpha tocopherol, just one out of eight related members in nature. The Doctor discovered that people with heart disease had the same levels of d'alpha tocopherol as the healthy controls, while it was some of the other family forms that were lower in those with heart disease. Thus this finding calls into question the current definition of only d'alpha tocopherol to represent vitamin E. 

This is not to say d'alpha tocopherol in not vital, just that it is rather short-sighted to limit and use just one out of the 8 vitamin E family members found in food. While d'alpha tocopherol has great ability to neutralize oxygen radicals, it does not touch nitrogen radicals. This is where d'gamma tocopherol functions. Looks like all the vitamin E family members have important roles to play for heart health.

NOTE: It may very well be that increased d'alpha tocopherol is needed for heart disease. And it is nature that has a way to increase d'alpha tocopherol amounts since all the other 7 vitamin E members can be converted into d'alpha tocopherol in the body. This conversion than presents a new issue since all the other 3 tocopherol vitamin E forms would now be at reduced levels and not available for their needed protective functions. Functions that the d'alpha tocopherol form does not perform. Since d'gamma tocopherol is the most abundant other vitamin E, it's functions suffer the most when converted into d'alpha tocopherol.

Role of Vitamins in Health

Vitamins literally are the sparks of life. Vitamins are not made inside the body, except for vitamin D, maybe not a true vitamin but a hormone, and a little bit of vitamin K. But vitamin K is produced outside the body in the intestinal tract by bacteria. Yes, vitamin K1 can be converted into K2 in the body, but it was already a vitamin.

Since vitamins are necessary for life, why is there so much controversy surrounding them? 

First, here is how some vitamins function in the body, especially the B vitamins. They combine with other nutrients such as minerals to form co-enzymes that are needed to help enzymes function. In fact, the functions attributed to some vitamins are really the functions of the enzyme that co-enzymes help. Vitamin B1 is known to prevent beriberi, a nervous system disease.  How? Vitamin B1, thiamine, combines with pyrophosphate to form TPP. TPP also contains sulfur and nitrogen as well as phosphate. TPP is a necessary coenzyme for many enzyme functions to produce energy, digest carbohydrates, and for nerve cell activities.

Folate forms a derivative called tetrahydrofolate which is a cofactor in the metabolism of amino acids and nucleic acids. Biotin, known as coenzyme R, is essential for the formation of fatty acids and glucose. A vitamin B12 derived element forms a coenzyme to aid an enzyme involved in extracting energy from fats and proteins and in the production of hemoglobin for red blood cells.

VITAMIN as COFACTORS Exploitation

A common thread used to enhance the value of vitamins in whole foods uses marketing to play up the fact that whole food vitamins come with all their co-enzyme parts which it is claimed are part of what makes a vitamin a vitamin. Well, the story sounds good, but logic is lacking, plus science is nowhere in sight. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C. The form vitamin C takes in the body is to form a mineral asscorbate, ascorbic acid with a mineral, such as calcium with ascorbic acid to form calcium ascorbate. That's it pure and simple. Yes, there are sort of like family members that have similar related functions and also protect vitamin C functions. These include elements like bioflavonoids and rutin which are related family members but not vitamin C. 

HOW NATURE PACKAGES CO-FACTORS

Nature does not always package all the necessary co-factors to form enzymes and co-enzymes in every food. That is why Nutritionists recommend a variety of different foods and food categories to fulfill these enzyme cofactor nutrients, especially fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods. Plus, many of the other cofactors may already be present in the body from earlier meals or by becoming available again through a re-use process. Some are actually made by the body. It is vitamins that actually need to be supplied on a more or less steady basis. but not necessarily every day since the body does store some B vitamins for a few days, some about a week, with B12 much longer than that. But, it is generally recommended to get some daily. And, of course, the fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E, & K, can be stored in fat for some time. Availability does vary here somewhat in different size people.

BRIEF PEEK at VITAMIN D on Magnesium

A number of people do not understand how vitamin D works and look for immediate results. Vitamin D supplements build up the storage form of vitamin D over time. From this stable storage form, the body builds the 1000 times stronger acting but short lived hormone form of vitamin D when directed. The hormone form is quick acting, but it is not related to supplement vitamin D intake. A lower level of calcium in the blood is the director for PTH from the parathyroid gland to initiate and build hormone D. See vitamin D facts for full picture.

Magnesium is important as a cofactor for vitamin D conversions. ref Without magnesium, vitamin D conversion might not happen from the storage form of D to the hormone form. ref Just taking magnesium as a supplement increases the hormone vitamin D levels since the conversion process is now occurring at a normal rate. This of course, has a positive effect on bone health as well as cardiovascular health. Plus this explains the past observations that magnesium helped bone strength even without taking extra calcium. Magnesium and calcium do have a vital and synergist role to play. Magnesium with the help of vitamin K2 keeps calcium out of arteries and in bone. Nutritional tables reveal that most of the non-dairy foods in nature have almost a one to one ratio of calcium to magnesium. Well, actually it varies form 4-1 to a 1-6 ratios.  Since numerous foods make up the diet, when these ratios are added together they average closer to almost a 1 to1 ratio. chart

While broccoli and oranges at 4 to 1 are an exception, they most likely are not consumed in any quantity nearing those of milk and dairy products as a source of calcium over magnesium. Milk has a 10:1 ratio. This reference tells why this is not a healthy ratio, and what ratio is the best.

High doses of calcium may inhibit magnesium absorption, such as occurs with dairy foods. The average ratio of calcium to magnesium in the US is about 3 to 1. Over the last 30 years, calcium consumption has increased 2 times while magnesium has remained constant. This is potentially very troubling. It is mentioned that a ratio of 2:1 is best. It has to be pointed out that current studies have to first contend with the fact that the average is already at 3:1, so testing either magnesium or calcium separately or together needs to address and include this beginning level for valid interpretation of results. Remember, if the amount of calcium in the average diet is 1000 mg, and the magenium ratio is 1/3 of this amount, or 333mg, to get to a 2:1 ratio would require either a reduction in calicum to under 700 or an increase in magnesium of 167mg. This is why just increasing magnesium without any extra calcium helps bone and many other health conditions. 

OK! Now to See why Vitamins are often Controversial

Vitamin studies looking at amounts just supplied from foods resulted in many favorable associations to health. Theories were developed to explain these observations. To test these theories, Scientists used the new synthetic vitamins or some isolated and concentrated natural vitamins, like vitamin E out of vegetable oils, and discovered that the results did not mirror the vitamins in food health associations. In fact, the studies were not always favorable. Rather than correctly post as the Scientific method dictates, the Scientists went right to the conclusions that vitamins are not effective. The correct result would be that the synthetic forms or the isolated natural forms tested were not effective and in some cases, detrimental. The forms not tested should not have been lumped in together with these results. Articles on this website will explain in detail this concept. Detrimental studies that need to be explained include the SELECT study, the Vitamin E mortality study, and the Beta Carotene study on Finnish smokers.

Many Scientists to this day do not recognize that some synthetic vitamins are not equal to their natural counterpart in food, or even natural isolated forms. article article