Toxic Vitamins
Synthetic vitamins are toxic to the body, and can actually cause vitamin deficiencies! How can that be? We all know that vitamins are good for us, aren’t they?
To answer this question I need to get technical. Most biomolecules including vitamins exist in left and right handed mirror image forms. Non living matter contains equal numbers of left-handed (L) and right handed (D) molecules. The characteristic signature of living molecules is that they use only one hand. Living animals are made of proteins containing only L amino acids.
Left hand and right hand molecules when tested in the laboratory have identical physical and chemical properties. Most synthetic vitamins contain a mixture of 50 percent left-handed and 50 percent right-handed molecules. When this mixture is introduced into the human body the right-handed molecules will actually compete with and block the receptor sites where the vitamins do their work in your body. Only the left-handed molecules allow work to be done on the cellular level. WOW! The right-handed molecules block the action normally done by the vitamin when taken in its natural form.
You may be like so many of my patients who have collected a variety of supplements but the same time, don’t necessarily feel any better.
Synthetic vitamins are toxic to the human body and can actually cause vitamin deficiencies! That’s why in my office, I’m careful to use only natural supplements with great results. Let’s compare an orange to ascorbic acid (vitamin C). In the orange we will find the whole vitamin C complex with all of the enzymes, co-enzymes, antioxidants, trace elements, activators, and other unknown factors that cause the vitamin to work properly and efficiently in our bodies. Ascorbic acid, which is commonly sold as vitamin C, is only one part of what was once a whole food.
You can’t take the vitamin C complex or any other complex apart and expect it to work the way God designed it. Once the complex is taken apart and separated some of the components are missing. If the cofactors are not present ascorbic acid will not benefit your body. It will just provide a toxic overload that the kidneys must remove.
Why do we take so many synthetic vitamins? In Americawhen science comes up with a new discovery industry uses this new information to make a profit. If a study shows that eating oranges reduces the frequency of colds industry says take a lot of vitamin C. In America if a little is good a lot must be better. Vitamin C can be mass-produced in pill form and marketed to a willing public. Oranges have seasons and are not always available. Refining the vitamin C complex from foods and maintaining it in its natural form is a more expensive and delicate process than the mass production of ascorbic acid.
Synthetic vitamins are usually much cheaper than natural supplements, since natural supplements involve growing whole food substances. Synthetic supplements can come from many sources; even byproducts of various petrochemical companies. So taking one or more isolated vitamins can actually create an imbalance of vitamins which is worse than the deficiency. Synthetics can cause an imbalance.
When used in high doses synthetic vitamins can act as pharmacological agents– in other words, drugs. For example, synthetic vitamin E is often recommended to be taken in dosages 20 to 40 times as high as it would naturally occur in food. Why should we get many times the amount of the vitamin or mineral than we would naturally get in food? In working with patients, I have seen that small amounts of whole food natural supplements are far more effective than mega doses of synthetic vitamins.
Remember the long-term use of synthetic vitamins can actually make you toxic. How can you tell the difference? Look for the names of real whole food sources on the label, such as wheat germ, dried alfalfa juice or mushroom on the label, rather than names of chemicals that you don’t understand and can’t pronounce. Expect to see a lower potency in natural food supplements. A small amount of a vitamin in its whole food form is more effective nutritionally than a large amount of a synthetic one.
Don’t waste your precious money on synthetic supplements, which cause expensive urine. Be a good label reader and supplement shopper.
