Vitamins, Marketing, Truth, Health & Disease

Here are some of the reasons these terms are seldom used properly together:

• Science does not yet have all the nutritional answers in Human Physiology.
• There are critical gaps missing for vitamin connections to health and disease.
• New vitamin research discoveries are challenging some long held vitamin theories.
• New theories are slow to change mainstream nutritional science.
  
• Outdated vitamin theories are still used in the development of most Multiple Vitamin formulas.
• There are some major differences between synthetic and some natural vitamins that Science refuses to accept, even though they acknowledged them when synthetic vitamins were first produced.
• Advertising for some vitamins hides behind half-truths regarding vitamin functions and uses mis-leading marketing Slogans.
• Many vitamins and minerals come in numerous forms which can each have different body participation activity levels.
• The body is simply not designed to handle large concentrated amounts of nutrients all at once. Proper amounts are quite small compared to some currently available megadose supplements.
• Megadose Vitamin Supplements can generate interference between absorption and assimilation, body functions, plus nutrient breakdown and elimination channels. 

You are not being told the complete truth about Vitamins!    

This website is simply an attempt to bridge this informational gap with practical applications to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and safety of your future vitamin choices. The premises and support materials present the case which is stacked against the consuming Public with only about a 5% chance of making a proper choice. Results from Scientific research often only confuse the Public even more. This website wades through the "Science" to add clarity to limit this confusion.  

SHORT-CUT VERSION

In a hurry? Don't care about knowing the support reasons. First, go to the Vitamin Criteria , then to (These are NOT ACTIVE NOW> how to correct existing multiple formulas, and finish at Multiple Vitamin Picks (not available now for re-write) under Finding your multiple vitamin 

Copied below is part of how to correct existing multiple formulas since page is under re-write:

FINDING A MULTIPLE VITAMIN SUPPLEMENT CHOICE OF BRAND AND FORMULA to match this new Vitamin Criteria and your unique situation is quite a challenge. Working on the first part:

One might imagine that finding such a formula would be a simple task. Unfortunately, nutritional science and vitamin company formulators are suffering a generation gap. There are few if any ready made formulas that "off the shelf" will satisfy this vitamin criteria. Most Vitamin Formulas are still in the dark ages of nutrition. Why do you think that is the case?

HOW THIS WILL GO DOWN 

• First, you find the best matched multiple for nutrient forms.
• Next, to match dosages, adjust the serving size, which most multiples meeting criteria this is between 3-6 capsules or tablets per day, BUT reduce that serving number until you are within the dosage levels for most nutrients. This is often only half the serving size number. DO NOT TAKE THE suggested serving size number unless the dosages match the criteria!!!  
• Then add separate bottles of these nutrients: 
  • 1. A vitamin E tocopherol complex with the four tocopherols, alpha, beta, delta, and gamma, (i.e. d'gamma 100 mg with d'alpha >100 iu) 
  • 2. A vitamin E tocotrienol (50-75 mg) complex, 
  • 3. A vitamin C 250- mg with family complex, 4. A multi-mineral complex, some complete bone formulas might work here. BUT be sure to add all supplements with calcium up to not go over 700 mg.per day. Diet supplies the rest, 500+.
• Alternate days or even just twice a week for the Tocopherol and Tocotrienol complexes since the multiple will have some vitamin E already as d'alpha tocopherol and fat soluble nutrients go into storage for rainy days. 
• Occasionally also take a vitamin C family. It is not needed everyday since again there is some in the multiple. In fact, a few multiples, if have bioflavonoids, may not need extra Vitamin C. Include the amount of the C family here too. 
• Since you cut the serving size in half for most multiples, some minerals may be reduced to less than desired amounts so you might need to add one or two of a multi-mineral with a serving size of 2-6. Pay special attention to magnesium levels here since calcium is fortified in many foods. Ideally, taking the mineral tabs separately is of some benefit to increase absorption percentage. May not need a complete multi-mineral and just require getting a couple of extra minerals separately.
• DO NOT TAKE MULTI-VITAMINS EVERY DAY. Skip some days or maybe even 2 days a week. i.e. Monday, Thursday, or Tuesday-Wednesday.

BASE TENANT or PREMISE

The Human Body is a miracle of function developed by Mother Nature with many survival regulating processes. A basic tenant of this website is that the highest priority of nutritional science should be to discover how Nature functions and the purpose for these regulating actions. Obviously, they must be important for survival. Mainstream medicine has discovered and uses many wonderful medicines and surgical techniques. But, for some reason or another, there is a low priority given to cooperating with Nature to support the body's own optimal health systems. Many medicines work great suppressing symptoms, which unfortunately, are often nature's healing mechanisms, and seldom address causes. This represents a major lost opportunity for healing. This is an important area where some supplements other than vitamins and minerals are useful, such as elderberry, curcumin, mushrooms have beta glucans, and broccoli has SGS.

CAN SUPPLEMENTS SUPPORT THE BODY'S NATURAL HEALING PROCESSES?

    Of course they can! That is part of how they function. 

The proof for this is scattered throughout VITAMIN WORKSHOP 101 articles such as Up with Vitamins.

BUT, JUST AS EASILY, VITAMINS ALSO CAN UPSET AND INTERFERE WITH THESE SAME HEALING PROCESSES.

Vitamins have both the ability to suppress and prevent disease but also the ability to stimulate and accelerate disease processes. You are about to discover why both of these scenarios can even be true for the same nutrient. I.E. Folic Acid in stopping DNA damage in healthy cells to prevent cancer development compared to Folic Acid increasing cancer cell growth rate once a tumor is already established. Both of these actions are just natural functions of Folic Acid, or folate as the natural form. article Different amounts, forms, and other nutrient synergism all play roles. Vitamin D dosages also represent this unique ability of adverse effects at both low and high levels with amazing benefits within healthful range. article

First and foremost, a complete understanding for vitamin physiology is needed to avoid these possible adverse effects. There are major gaps in today's nutritional theories. I.E. What is called Vitamin E represents only one out of four tocopherols found together in nature. In isolating out just the one form, nature's synergist programs are upset and this can cancel out benefits in some areas. ref   

THINK OF THIS WEBSITE AS A VITAMIN MANUAL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, NOT THE LAST WORD, BUT WORTHY OF A GOOD STARTING POINT! 

Here is the link to the new Vitamin criteria And here is the putting it into practice link for how to find a Multiple Supplement (sorry, this article is currently in re-write) to take advantage of this program.

What Went Wrong in Vitamin Choices

HEALTHY VITAMIN SUPPLEMENT CHOICES

It should be an easy task to pick an appropriate vitamin supplement. One imagines that the marketplace would constantly improve offerings based upon updated vitamin scientific knowledge. BUT, unfortunately, that is not the major reality in America. Advertising and supplement formulas and dosages are not so much driven by positive healthy forces as they are by expediency and one-upmanship with higher and higher potencies the trend. These have not lead overall to improvements in vitamin effectiveness and safety.

WHY ARE VITAMIN CHOICES GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

American mentality says, in most cases, that if a little is good, more must be better. Thus dosages of many vitamins have increased dramatically due to this perceived notion.  Vitamin D dosages recently went from 400 IUs to 10,000 IUs. Over the years, B complex vitamins went from just a few milligrams each to over 100 mg. each. Often this was fueled by special condition disease research, such as Vitamin D in a cancer role or B vitamins on mental conditions, and not by a body nutritional function role. 

Vitamins for the most part have windows of dosage ranges within which body processes function at peak effectiveness with both more or less diminishing efficiency and/or occasionally even exhibiting adverse effects. Vitamin science knows some of these vitamin amount ranges while others are more unknown. Since vitamin manufacturers are always looking for some edge over the competition, dosage is one area to achieve a perceived advantage even if the science is missing to support the new dosage and there may even exist the possibility for some subsets of people to exhibit adverse effects.

BEST PRODUCTS ARE RARELY FIRST CHOICE

The amount of money spent on advertising a product is often in direct contrast to the benefit or value to the body. And people fall for the lines the advertising feeds them without any critical thinking. In their defense, how or where would people even learn the truth. Thus, the need for this website!

Vitamin companies and stores are in the business to make money, not to get you healthy. Hospitals also do not make any money if you are healthy. Or Doctors, or drug companies, etc. Vitamins come in a few different quality grades and formats. Do you know what to look for?

It is rare to find an honest company that tells it straight since they seldom survive against the company spreading half-truths and hype and cutting corners on quality. Quality facts are no always discernable on labels.  One of the most successful vitamin companies used clever marketing stories to rapidly grow. They started out with a unique story about the benefits "soil organisms" as a catch phrase along with a book about their healing properties. Today, many years later, it is interesting to note that there is now only one soil organism left from the many in their original products. What happened to change their tune?   

SCIENCE GETS IN THE WAY

Scientific research only has as much validity as the basic truths of formulative theories. Somewhere, vitamin research took a wrong turn at a fork in the road. One of the biggest was around 1940 when a decision was made as to the form for vitamin E. Scientists had two choices, first a new synthetic form of just dl'alpha tocopheryl, versus the other choice, a complete family of eight related nutrients with vitamin E activity. To quote from a famous line in an Indiana Jones movie when the cup of Jesus was among many, -They choose foolishly. Since only alpha tocopherol was given the name vitamin E, it was like a slap in the face of Mother Nature and she has been punishing vitamin E consumers ever since.

The vitamin E theory they used to make this decision regarding free radical elimination was only half right. It neglected to mention the beneficial functions the body found for free radicals before it neutralized them with vitamin E anti-oxidant action. Thus, there is a balance point that needs to be respected where anti-oxidant load functions operate at greatest efficiency and overall body health. Again, both lower and higher are not as beneficial which pre-dooms many research studies to failure. It is difficult to imagine Professional Scientists are this ignorant of human physiology unless they deliberately choose nutrient amounts to arrive at negative results. It sure seems that way for some bizarre research projects.

MOTHER NATURE VERSUS SCIENCE

Rather than observing how nature works, such as watching animals when they become sick, and using those methods to heal, Science thinks they know better. Nutritionists recommend a 3 to 1 ratio of calcium over magnesium in the diet to protect bones. The only problem, nature did not put the right amount of these minerals in foods to arrive at that ratio. Well, that is unless you add dairy foods. Most other mammals do not consume milk except from their mother for a short period after birth. Did Mother Nature make a mistake? Or did science take a wrong turn?

Looking at another mineral combination, potassium and sodium, one finds that nature puts lots more potassium than sodium in food, until the chef adds salt and reverses the ratio. Again, did Mother nature get it right or wrong? And did the Chef just correct it? Or.....

Looking at how these nutrients function and the matter in which the body processes and eliminates them, Mother Nature appears to have it right and Science needs to go back to school.