In April of 2010, Reader’s Digest published an article titled “5 Vitamin Truths and Lies.” The article cited several research studies finding the use of vitamin supplements ineffective in improving health. So, what do you think? Were they right? Many people have experienced feeling better through vitamin use. The truth is that they’re both: wrong and right. That may sound strange, but read on….
The vitamin studies the article refers to are most likely not done with vitamins per se, but vitamin isolates. Since most people I talk to don’t understand the difference, you can see where the confusion & misinformation comes in. Now, sure, it’s brilliant that we, as a species, can synthesize the building blocks of life. But the body has other ideas.
The vitamins used in the studies, along with the majority of the vitamins sold in your local health food store, are synthetic, non-food concoctions supplied by pharmaceutical companies.
If you were to eat a piece of fruit or a vegetable that contained Vitamin C, you would be ingesting a number of known substances that work together, synergistically, to make up the Vitamin C complex. But if you read the label of the Vitamin C bottle, you will most likely find only one ingredient, ascorbic acid, in mega amounts. The problem is that without the other parts of the complex, this “stripped down” version of C cannot perform the functions necessary for your body to function properly.
Because these mega doses of vitamin isolates need their synergists to work, they pilfer those from any real vitamin C already within you, creating a long term deficiency. In making themselves whole they leave you with a hole. Although these mega doses can have the effect of altering symptoms temporarily, they can cause more problems later.
So, it would seem that the studies are right. We do get our nutrition from food. But there are a few potential hurdles therein to getting the proper nutrition we need.
To begin with, the typical American diet severely lacks those proper amounts and ratios of health foods needed for optimal nutrition & functioning. There are a number of contributing factors. A typical diet is extremely high in processed foods, which is fine for shelf life but not so much for your life. That processing also destroys their nutritional value. Add pesticides, hormones and genetic modification, and you’ve got a formula for illness and worse.
The 1992 Earth Summit Report indicates that the mineral content of the soil in North America has been depleted by an average 85%. Some are 100% depleted. Depleted soil means depleted crops. Considering that every person reading this eats a ton of food per year, produced on 12,000 lbs of topsoil already so depleted that afterward it cannot be reused, then the help you buy in a bottle should be food-sourced, grown whole and fertile, and grounded in life. But where to go? The question is worth asking.
I myself have learned of a few such sources, and use them. This knowledge is instrumental in my life and practice. The difference in my health shows the truth. And I would be happy, as always, to be the synergist in your own move from holes to wholes.
