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.