Basic Vitamin Stuff

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:10PM
Team RightWay

These Vitamin considerations are often overlooked and some rarely mentioned, but could be vitally important factors:

• Vitamins are available in different forms such as natural or synthetic or with a different combining element, usually an acid. article
• Whether natural or synthetic can influence study results. Study results that used a synthetic form may not apply to a natural vitamin form (for vitamins with a difference)
• Some vitamins have major differences between natural and synthetic, others, not so much down to barely any. 
• Some Vitamins, like C & E, have related family members often found together in nature that have synergistic as well as complementary actions.
• Vitamin supplements are concentrated. The amount of vitamins in some supplements is equal to the amount found in many pounds of food. The body is simply not designed to handle such large amounts at one time. Disruptions can occur in vital functions as the body attempts to maintain balance. 

These large vitamin dosages may cause the body to slowly develop new pathways to deal with these concentrated amounts.  This might include calling up unique hormones or new and extra enzymes to either slowdown the absorption rate or speed up the elimination. Large amounts of vitamin C generate new enzymes that increase the vitamin C breakdown and elimination. With extra calcium, the body is simply overwhelmed to the point that the large calcium loads block the absorption sites for other vital minerals. The Kidneys have to overwork and attempt to re-balance mineral loads. While this is a safeguard the body has developed methods to handle, the extra energy these processes consume takes energy and nutrients away from more important vital processes.       

• Vitamin supplement nutrients usually lack natural buffers found in food. Buffer elements, such as fibers, help control release and absorption aspects plus help maintain synergism of balance. The body uses many nutrients at the same time for metabolism and to form needed elements such as enzymes. Nature developed about as many negative absorption hindrances compared to enhancers of absorption for nutrients, partly to help balance nutrient loads, but especially to prevent overloads of some nutrients like iron. Iron can be toxic at some intake levels. Fat soluble nutrients are often separated into different foods to help assimilation by preventing interference of one vitamin over another, sort of like more ships arriving at the harbor than available docking spaces. This aspect is overwhelmed by many multiple supplement formulas at higher dosages. Higher Vitamin E intake hindering vitamin K absorption represents one of many vitamin on vitamin or mineral on mineral interferences.              
• Digestion usually breaks apart most food and supplement vitamin forms and other nutrients. Some Vitamin companies attempt to use compounds formed during product development to suggest advantages for their products. While there may be some benefits for absorption, many are not that significant, sometimes only a difference of 5-6 percentage points for amounts absorbed. But it could also represent a 300% difference, usually only found with fat emulsification factors for fat soluble vitamins and nutrients like CoQ10 or curcumin.

• Nature uses variety in food choices to more or less balance nutrients over time according to body wisdom. Continuously taking the same multiple vitamin formula could quickly upset this balancing plan. "Stimulus Variation" is a term coined by this website to represent how the body is designed to adapt to periodic fluctuations in nutrient amount intakes that keep the body responsive by fine tuning balancing mechanisms.
  • Example: Since nature packs more potassium than sodium in food by over 10 to 1, the body adapted mechanisms to hold on to sodium more than it did for potassium. But today, chefs have reversed this ratio in prepared foods and the body suffers having to deal with such an imbalance of the two minerals since both minerals are important at proper amounts. ref  ref  ref  ref  

• Supplements are often engineered by design to bypass nature's protective absorption roadblocks. There often is a valid reason for these roadblocks, especially against some potentially damaging supplemental form nutrients like iron or the micro-nutrients zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium that are only needed in small amounts. There are adverse effects for both deficiencies and excesses of these nutrients as well as for some others. Both dosage and nutrient form have to be factored into formula considerations. Far too many multiple vitamin formulas fail this vital challenge.                                                                                                                                        
• As vitamin supplement dosages increase, there is a greater likelihood of nutrient on nutrient interference, either hindering absorption or limiting activities. Some formulas have nutrients that interact and hinder the absorption of other nutrients. Vitamin E over vitamin K, Calcium over iron, zinc over copper, etc. Sometimes these actions are little more than just rhetoric, but at larger dosages they can have adverse effects. Unfortunately, the results for some of these effects may not be discovered for many years. A diet with variety of foods and lower dosage supplement brands often overcomes this factor.

• Evan a poorly designed multivitamin with a number of flaws will provide benefits for any dietary deficiencies present. This makes it very difficult to analyze study results for the true impact of the design flaws. Plus, there are a variety of study design failures that prevail in many vitamin research studies. article

 

 

 

Article originally appeared on Vitaminworkshop.com (http://www.vitaminworkshop.com/).