Natural vs. Synthetic Vitamin:
What You Need To Know

By Unknown

There is a vast difference between natural and synthetic vitamins and minerals. In natural food, there are many factors present. When you eat natural foods or take supplements derived from them, you are getting all the factors, known and unknown. Such natural products yield far better results than synthetics.

The Lure of Synthetic Vitamins

Most chemists maintain, molecule by molecule, synthetic vitamins are identical to natural vitamins. The isolated factor of each may be identical, although newer information challenges this belief. Man-made synthetic supplements are a combination of some of the separate factors, never the whole complex of synergistic factors found in nature. The whole family of B, C or E vitamins is known as a "complex".

Synthetic vitamins may cause improvement of certain conditions for a short time but the whole complex goes even further. It is now believed that the "unknown" co-factors found in natural vitamins, not found in synthetic forms, act as catalysts which make the vitamins more effective. The reason why synthetic vitamins are so popular is because they are easier and cheaper to manufacture in a lab from petroleum products than to grow and harvest from crops.

Are Your Health Food Store Vitamins Causing Deficiencies?

Research indicates that synthetic vitamins may actually cause nutritional deficiencies. When you take a synthetic vitamin, it needs the co-factors normally found in the whole food, in order to complete its action. If they are not in the foods you eat, it will draw the co-factors from your body. You may feel good for a while but when the co-factors run out, you will begin to feel worse.

The prolonged action of the synthetics imitates the action of drugs; they over-stimulate rather than feed your body. Science does not even come close to duplicating nature. Many illnesses, pain and suffering are the result of our dietary ignorance.

Take Vitamin C, for example: The FDA has allowed ascorbic acid to be called Vitamin C. Ascorbic acid, however, is the anti-oxidant protector of the Vitamin C complex, much like the eggshell that protects the egg. The C complex consists of Vitamin P, J and K. Most people have not even heard of vitamins P or J. Vitamin J carries the oxygen and vitamin P is the anti-fragility factor.

There is another element in whole food vitamin C called terrosenase, which is a copper enzyme. It is needed to make hemoglobin and prevents anemia. Ascorbic acid, on the other hand, is this chemical teased-out portion which is deficient in all these co-factors and will never have the effect that vitamin C has. It has no effect on the common cold or other conditions that vitamin C has.

Studies show that people who eat a diet rich in vitamin C do much better than those taking ascorbic acid. In fact, the body has an enzyme that gets rid of ascorbic acid. Nature knew that we needed the egg and not the eggshell.

Vitamin E is similar: It also has an anti-oxidant protector called tocopherol. There are alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocopherols. They protect the center of the vitamin, which is the mineral selenium, which carries out metabolic functions. In addition to selenium, they also protect some essential fatty acid factors, which are needed to transport calcium.

Many people who get muscle cramps rush out to get calcium when the problem is simply that they are taking high doses of this teased-out portion of vitamin E called dl-tocopherol. Also, involved in vitamin E are other E fractions that are important to heart health that synthetic E will have no effect on.

Ingredients of so-called Natural Vitamin E purchased at Wild Oats:
Vitamin E (as Natural d-alpha Tocopheryl Acetate) 400 IU
Selenium (as Selenium Yeast) 100 mcg
Other ingredients: Soybean Oil, Gelatin, Glycerin, Carob Extract, Titanium
Dioxide (natural mineral whitener)

Looking over the ingredients, there is an easy answer as to why truly natural vitamins cost more. Whenever the word "acetate" occurs on the label of fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E), it means synthetic. The FDA now allows labeling to say "natural" when 5% of the ingredients are natural.

Synthetic vitamins are 1/5 as potent in the human body as truly natural vitamin E. So you need to take 5 times as much and then your liver must deal with the side effects of the synthetic properties.

Check your vitamin bottle. Natural vitamin E is d-tocopherol, while synthetic vitamin E is dl-tocopherol or d-alpha tocopheral acetate. Make sure your vitamin E has d-alpha and other mixed natural tocopherals without the acetate.

Synthetic vitamins will never have the effects of natural vitamins simply because they are missing many parts of the whole complex.

Enzymes Are Needed To Make It All Work

Vitamins play only a small part in our daily nutrition and it is a wise nutritionist that knows vitamins have little function without minerals. Lacking vitamins, the system can make use of the minerals, but lacking minerals the vitamins lose their ability to do their work.

Minerals liberate the vitamins to do their work. For instance, the mineral iron has a relationship to Vitamin C. Vitamin C helps the absorption of iron through the intestinal walls. However, the lack of iron raises your need for Vitamin C. The less iron in your diet, the more Vitamin C you will need. Vitamins need minerals! Yet neither can do their work without enzymes.

It may be wise to place our first importance in nutrition on enzymes. The primary aim of Enzyme Nutrition is the restoration of the basic function of the body by feeding and fortifying the body with whole food nutrition, as nature intended.

Give your body what it needs; it'll make everything else from that.

To sustain good health, your cells must have all the elements they need to perform the jobs of growth and tissue repair in your body. Your body does not need hundreds of vitamins and minerals in order to maintain itself. It seems that every month a new miracle vitamin is being touted. Each cell in your body requires certain nutrients to maintain its basic metabolic function and keep healthy.

A healthy body will manufacture everything else from these basic building blocks. They are as follows:

Carbohydrate: Glucose
Lipid (fat): Linoleic Acid
Protein
Water
13 Vitamins
19 Minerals
9 Amino Acids
These plus approximately 1300 enzymes required for each cell.

A Word About Labels

Many consumers are confused by the labels. Many labels say "Natural or "Food Based" or "Organic". "Natural" is a term used very loosely. Many things are natural (e.g. oyster shells) but they may not be ideal for human consumption.

"Food Based" simply means that it started with a food product (such as a carrot) but the rest of it was synthesized in a lab. And if the carrot was organic, then they can also add the word "Organic" to the label.

One way to tell if a product is synthetic is to look at the high concentrations of the product (manufacturers like to use the word potencies. In reality, high concentrations have nothing to do with potency. A 10,000 mg capsule of Vitamin C may not necessarily be potent at all!).

Remember, you will never see those concentrations or combinations in nature. They simply do not exist like that except in a bottle manufactured in a lab.