All Supplements Are Not Created Equal
TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE?.., THAT IS THE QUESTION
"Food supplements were invented because people’s well being left something to be desired. Our bodies have only the resources we consume from which to take materials to generate and maintain our cells. The difference between nutrient-depleted food and nutrient-rich fresh grains, fruits and vegetables can be the difference between being vitally healthy, or desperately ill. Modern farming practices and food processing are rapidly depleting the raw materials and biological life in the food chain, and the toll it is taking can be counted in the statistics of illness and death. In a world where modern agriculture thinks it makes sense to grow food in deficient soil, bathed in pesticides and herbicides, picking produce green to be gas-aged in storage to create the illusion of being ripe, irradiating any sign of life left, supplements provide a much needed resource.
Unknown to most consumers worldwide, there are no brand name vitamin companies that actually manufacture their own vitamin material. They may create the formulas and manufacture the tablets, but they do not create the vitamin material. It is all manufactured by 14 companies worldwide and seven of them are located in the United States.
IN THE UNITED STATES THERE ARE ONLY SEVEN COMPANIES THAT MANUFACTURE VITAMINS
The seven Companies Are:
- Pfizer Chemicals Division.
- Fine Chemicals Division—Henkel Corporation.
- Takeda USA—Takeda Chemical Industries, LTD.
- Roche Chemical Division—Hoffman LaRoche.
- Archer Daniels Midland Corporation.
- Chemicals Division—BASF Wyandotte Corp.
- Eastman Chemical Company
100% of the vitamins made by these companies are synthetic or identical to synthetic. They are all made to an internationally accepted standard referred to as USP-grade (United States Pharmacopoeia) of FCC (Food Chemical Codex) vitamin material, in other words, free-form vitamin molecules without their natural food attachments.
Among these are vitamins derived from so-called ”natural sources,” and even these are stripped of their natural protein bonds and other food attachments, including enzymes. They frequently contain detectable amounts of petroleum-based extraction solvents such as Hexane. Almost all vitamins on the market today, whether labeled ”natural source” or ”natural base,” have been so processed as to leave them in a totally unnatural free form, not in the natural form in which nutrients are delivered in food.
What Is a Vitamin?
There are different points of view about vitamin and mineral molecules. The commonly held belief is that molecules are molecules, and all you need to do is put the molecules in the body in order for them to be put to use. Traditionally, the field of biochemistry has believed that elements can be removed and segregated from their natural constituents and still retain their original or natural effectiveness. But if we use the nutrients in food as our model, which is the delivery system used by nature to evolve human life over millions of years, then what we find is that vitamins and minerals as found in food are always an integral part of a complex matrix of nutrient factors that is essential.
“Food” & “Natural” Defined:
“Food,” as defined by Webster’s, is “material, usually of plant or animal origin, containing or consisting of essential body nutrients, as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, taken in and assimilated by an organism to maintain growth and life.”
“Natural,” as defined by Webster’s, is “present in or produced by nature.”
By these definitions, saying nutrients are in a “natural” form implies that they are either what nature itself produced in the form nature produced it, or they are “like” food as we understand the wholistic nature of food to be, complexed to proteins, carbohydrates and lipids, with other food attachments in close association.
Almost without exception, all vitamins utilized in the manufacturing of supplements are made from what are called hydrocarbonaceous intermediates. So they can technically be called “natural,” since they can be said to be derived from “natural sources.” But their isolated state is not at all the same as their “natural form” as found in food.
According to the redefinitions of technology, what is natural as nature created it, may not qualify as “natural” as technology defines it. When research scientists discovered how to isolate d-alpha tocopherol from food in a lab, for example, the accepted generic term for that structure came to be known as “Natural Source Vitamin E.” D-alpha tocopherol, however, does not exist as an isolated molecule in food. Food contains multiple tocopherols in a highly complex molecular structure that assures that “dl,” rather than “d,” is present. Isolated pure molecules rotate light, and once molecules are isolated to reveal their exact structure, molecularly the form they take can no longer be considered food. Thus, D-alpha tocopherol is not food as nature defines it, and wholistically it is not vitamin E as nature creates it. Still, patents exist for synthesizing d-alpha tocopherol, which is then labelled “Natural Source Vitamin E,” and the impression given to those buying and consuming it, is that they are getting something nature created as it would be found in food.
If one accepts the definition of “Natural Source Vitamin E” as it has conventionally been accepted, vitamin E as found in food cannot pass the test to be called “Natural Source Vitamin E.” Only the pure, free-state d-alpha tocopherol molecule can pass that test.
Food Is a Complex Life Form
Nutrients in food are never in a ”free-form,” meaning they do not exist in food as isolates. They are in a relationship. Food contains water and/or fat-soluble nutrients bound into a matrix of highly complex interlocking systems of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, enzymes, co-enzymes, nucleic acids, and countless other naturally-occurring elements. When this food is consumed, scientific evidence strongly suggests that proteins are the only transport mechanisms for nutrients in all known living systems. Plants only contain nutrients molecularly bound into relationships, and nature designed the human body to use vitamins and minerals the way they exist in plants. In that design, vitamins and minerals are always bound to soluble proteins, found or associated with carbohydrates, lipids and other naturally occurring constituents. This is not just a blend of isolates. It is a wholistic relationship. This integration is what is compromised in food processing.
Because of food’s complexity, its exact structure cannot be identified by using analytical chemistry. Attempts to do this so separate its many parts that it is rendered into free-form chemical isolates that can no longer be considered food. What we do know, is that bioavailability–i.e. utilization–is the whole point of nature’s design for delivering vitamins, minerals and other essential elements to the body’s cells via food, and USP vitamin and mineral material lacks the naturally-occurring transport proteins molecularly bound to vitamins and minerals as found in food.
Minerals, too, never exist as inorganic salts or gluconates in plant or animal food groups as they are typically offered in the marketplace, and because inorganic minerals are not effectively utilized by the body, some companies attempt to improve their absorption and utilization by chelating them to an amino acid, which is a chemical technique essentially gluing things together to mimic nature’s molecular bond. It is the attempt to take something unnatural and trick our bodies into thinking it is natural, as nature defines that.
Even amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, in the form of chelates are made with isolated soy proteins which are rendered completely insoluble by a chemical process which also removes most of the lipids and carbohydrates associated with them in the soybean. The phosphoproteins are destroyed in this process, and the RNA/DNA (of which the backbone is phosphorus) is decomposed. As far as mineral transportation is concerned, these isolated proteins are dead.
Bioflavonoids (biologically-active antioxidants involved in maintaining the integrity of the cell wall), are another example, present as dozens of groups and subgroups, bound together in a soluble form, in turn, bound to soluble proteins and associated with soluble carbohydrates. In plants, all vitamins are associated with soluble natural-form bioflavonoid groups whose relationship to vitamin C is especially well known, and many companies dry mix them together for that reason. Still, their relationship to all other vitamins has historically been overlooked or ignored; thus, most bioflavonoids on the market today are not in nature’s form. They have been rendered completely insoluble by a chemical process which isolates one or more groups (such as hesperidin) from the rest. Most of the proteins and carbohydrates are removed, leaving the insoluble isolate, which is then dried. It is often then diluted with other fruit constituents, and the whole blend is labeled ”bioflavonoid complex.” Legally it can still be labeled ”natural,” even though the state it is in is artificial and ”unnatural.”
With little understanding about which group or sets of groups may be responsible for the biological activity, there has been an assumption that the discarded or decomposed groups are not useful, since science does not yet know how they might be useful. For years, experts dismissed the importance of bioflavonoids and flavonols, thinking them discardable because they didn’t know what role these elements fulfilled in human health, only to now find that these important food constituents may be essential in protecting our bodies from free-radical pathology considered to be the primary cause of multiple diseases and aging. The wisdom of nature that included them was dismissed, and bioflavonoids, in general, were thought to be useless with no therapeutic or nutritional value.
There are many factors in the relationships designed by nature we do not understand, but the benefits clearly stand out over the consequences of interfering with this relationship. This tendency to fragment nature’s wholistic design, and the influence of this upon modern life, has drastically inhibited most people’s likelihood of being adequately nourished or their cells adequately supported with quality materials in the maintenance of their health. Absent a comprehension of the value inherent in nature’s design, there has been little interest in preserving the integrity of that design.
The miraculous wizardry of technology has brought with it an arrogance in which “denatured” is treated as equal to, and in many cases, superior to nature. In fact, the importance of the synergy of nature in its wholistic state and its influence on health cannot be overstated. A basic design function of our immune system is to get rid of things in our bodies that are unnatural, and an immune system chronically challenged by denatured substances never anticipated by nature is an immune system in stress.
Breaking the integrity of the relationship between natural constituents sacrifices the benefit nature designed the relationship to make available. It ignores the question, “How do molecules come together and do what they do?” Indeed, what is it nature provides in the wholistic food complex that inspired the wholistic design? No matter how smart science gets, or how much it understands, technology can only manipulate nature. Chemistry does not evoke Mother Nature, Mother Nature evokes chemistry. That is the driving force behind the ability to organize and cause effects. That life force is what our bodies respond to.
Disturbing nature’s wholistic design has consequences, whether we know what they are, or not. Illustrating the significance of the disruption of nature’s wholistic design in the modern tendency to isolate what science identifies as the active ingredients so as to synthesize them, Dr. Bernard Jensen and Mark Anderson say in their book, Empty Harvest, that: “Combined as two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, H2O will extinguish fire. It is water. Separately, however, the elements are among the most flammable and explosive elements in the universe. Their functions are exactly the reverse in their isolated state from their organically combined state. Similarly, vitamins function as biological mechanisms only when whole and complete, combined with their synergists, as a whole food…”
The Body Is an Eco-System
Our cells eat, drink, breathe, “go to the bathroom,” generate electricity, do their job, and replicate themselves, twenty four hours a day. Each and every one of them is totally dependent upon the integrity of the resources available to them to perform these functions efficiently. To the extent the quality of these resources is lacking, the quality of the cell’s performance is diminished. Quality goods cannot be created from inferior resources.
When a body’s cells are formed from inferior resources, our bodies are handicapped by a diminished capacity for health that continues to diminish throughout each subsequent generation born and raised on deficient resources. Our bodies have only what we consume to supply the materials with which our cells are generated, maintained and restored. Deficient, processed, adulterated food
In other words, junk in, junk out.
When a body’s cells are formed from inferior resources, our bodies are handicapped by a diminished capacity for health that continues to diminish throughout each subsequent generation born and raised on deficient resources. Our bodies have only what we consume to supply the materials with which our cells are generated, maintained and restored. Deficient, processed, adulterated food provides a deficient quality of material considerably different from what nutrient-rich, non denatured foods produce. A cell membrane made from damaged or deficient raw materials lacks the integrity to fulfill its healthy function. The body is designed for vital health, and nature provides all the resources by which such health can be accomplished and enjoyed. Nature is our ally, and supplementation and food production which looks to nature’s wisdom as its mentor, is nature’s ally. Lifestar and nature are allies.
Until recently, and almost without exception, USP-grade material was the only vitamin material available in the world for formulating and tableting vitamin supplements. Unknown to most consumers, there are no brand name vitamin companies that actually manufacture their own vitamins. There are close to 3,000 brand name vitamin supplements in the marketplace in the United States whose nutrient contents are all purchased through distributors from the same seven sources in the United States or from their seven foreign counterparts. Lifestar products offer an alternative."
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