Vitamin C supplementation

xtremity_1

hello all,

Don't know if i'm in the right forum for this question but i can't seem to find a general health forum.

I recently read an article which has given me cause for concern. It states that most vitamins are synthetic and even the natural ones are isolated parts of vitamins. According to the article "it’s just too expensive to make vitamins from food (plants) as well as not very economical. It is expensive. To make one bottle of vitamin C from plant sources it takes 20X the raw material. That’s because the water content is so high."

The article also states that "In [a synthetic] vitamin C bottle you have the complexes that make a vitamin complete and functional. The only thing you have in the synthetic bottle is a large quantity of one part of the vitamin complex, a very isolated part. Taking it
can even create a vitamin C deficiency if you take it too long. That’s what happens when you take individual vitamin parts in large quantities."

Does anyone have any information on the supplementation of vitamin C or know of any good websites which would provide such information? I am aware of other vitamins/minerals such as calcium which, when bound to one substance over another can be more easily absorbed by the body (calcium citrate over calcium carbonate for example).

I am aware that vit C when combined with bioflavanoids would be more beneficial but with so many synthetic vit C supplements on the market, i just wonder if there is a substancial benefit to taking them or would i be better off sourcing some naturally-sourced vit C.

Again, unsure if this is the correct forum to be asking this but any and all help would be much appreciated.

ArthurDent

Here are some links you might want to try

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16313697&query_hl=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16028636&query_hl=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15806791&query_hl=1

These are just abstracts and you may have to pay for the full article - but even abstracts give good overview

HTH

AD

DrIndy

Would it be possible to quote the reference for the article so we can go through their methodology and references to figure out if it is a decent piece of research?

xtremity_1

DrIndy wrote:

Would it be possible to quote the reference for the article so we can go through their methodology and references to figure out if it is a decent piece of research?

Now, when i say 'article', i mean article from a health site "doctor" who I have a free subscription to and whose only purpose in sending emails to subscribers is to sell them something. There are no facts or figures given, as such, and no references to speak of since it is simply meant for people who are superficially interested in nutrition or in flicking through glossy health magazines. Believe me, i was skeptical from the outset.

However, it did get me wondering as to how beneficial supplements can be and just how much the consumer can be conned into thinking that the same 1000mg of vit. C in a tablet can be just as effective as 1000mg of vit C gained by the consumption of vit C-rich foods.

Here is a copy of the 'article':


"The BIG problem with SYNTHETIC VITAMINS

Dr. Berg’s HealthySelf Tip of the Week

I was reading an article on the topic of vitamins and how they absorb. The author was explaining the benefits of using powdered vitamins in soft capsules because they absorb better. It’s amazing how much false and missing information that is disseminated on vitamins. The author also said: there’s no difference between synthetic and natural vitamins, they are the same, except
for vitamin E.

That person is suffering from the failure to identify differences.
It’s like saying, artificial flavouring is the same as natural flavouring. There are very distinct differences from natural whole vitamin complexes and artificially made synthetic vitamin fractions.
Vitamins in nature come in complexes composed of many individual parts. Synthetic vitamins are isolated man-made parts of vitamins. Let me give you an example. To make synthetic vitamin C, you take corn starch (which contains no vitamin C) and mix it with sulfuric acid thus making ascorbic acid (the outer shell antioxidant). Natural vitamin C from food contains enzymes, vitamin
P, K, J as well as ascorbic acid. Vitamin P assists in preventing bleeding gums and spider veins. Vitamin K helps prevent bruising and vitamin J is the anti-pneumonia vitamin that helps give oxygen to the tissues. And lastly the enzyme in vitamin C is essential for your adrenal glands (stress glands).

Many people don’t know that most vitamins are synthetic and even the natural ones are isolated parts of vitamins. They can make vitamins from coal tar(petroleum). The author from the article I read stated that it’s just too expensive to make vitamins from food (plants) as well as not very economical. She’s right, it is expensive. To make one bottle of vitamin C from plant sources it takes 20X the raw material. That’s because the water content is so high.

I went to the farm where I purchase my vitamins from recently “Standard Process”. It is located in Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine area where the soils are the most fertile. I watched them juice organic food Spanish black radishes, buckwheat and alfalfa and then dry it is cool temperatures. They start out with this huge amount of material (500 tons) and end up with this little barrel of powder. That’s very concentrated nutrition. In one bottle (90 tablets) of vitamin C (Cataplex C), there are several pounds of raw concentrated unheated,
undestroyed food. If you compare this to synthetic vitamin C, you would have an equal amount of cornstarch and sulfuric acid make an equal amount of ascorbic acid.

But here’s the problem. If you look on Standard Process’s label, you’ll see it only contains 6 milligrams of vitamin C. On the label of the synthetic vitamins, you’ll see 500 milligrams. And more means better right? Wrong. In that little vitamin C bottle you have the complexes that make a vitamin complete and functional. The only thing you have in the synthetic bottle is a large quantity of one part of the vitamin complex, a very isolated part. Taking it
can even create a vitamin C deficiency if you take it too long. That’s what happens when you take individual vitamin parts in large quantities."


So you see what i mean. Like i said, just got me thinking. I sell these supplements to people for a living (to put me through my nutrition/complementary medicine studies) but can't find anything in the reference material there to enlighten me further as to this question.

Thanks ArthurDent for the links btw! Unfortunately I didn't find anything that answered my specific question.

DrIndy

It is true that there are a great many other components to vitamins than just the core vitamin such as bioflavinoids. But these are poorly understood if at all and indeed bioflavinoids were only recently discovered as having a significance.

Indeed vitamin C is made in an industrial process, but remember that vitamin C is a simple compound, just that humans cannot manufacture it and so we must have a dietary source. Dogs can make their own vitamin C but we lack the enzymes to do so.

I would be instinctively sceptical about an article which does not have a basis on scientific fact, there is good science out there on vitamins and other nutritional supplements and if someone is short of one, it is correct to replace it.

I have not heard of vitamin P or Vitamin J which instantly raises my heckles.

John

Vitamins P and J I think are old, old nomenclature. Basically when vitamins where being discovered they gave each new one its own letter. When they realised that most of them were essentially identical they just kept a few of the names (A, B, C, D, E and K) and classed all the vitamins as B1, D2, etc.

A quick google tells me that vitamin P is a name for the bioflavinoids and vitamin J is a name for either choline, catechol or flavin depending on who you believe.

Capt'n Midnight

Another name for Vitamin C is E300 - betcha fell safer now since it's an 'E' number.

http://www.ukfoodguide.net/e300.htm - this mentions production from GMO's

But like sugar and other water soluble crystaline compounds it is very cheap and easy to purify to a very high level so the pure product might even be safer than a mixture unless all the other ingridients were prepared to the same level.

the links AutherDent posted ended in nih.gov - not .com or .net when looking up health related stuff see if the site is a non-profit national medical organisation.

Anyone selling you vitamin supplements is probably a bottom feeder as most people will get all the vitamins from a well balanced diet with all the fresh stuff n' stuff. Also too much of the fat soluble vitamins A,D,E,K are bad for you and your body accumulates over time. IIRC you can also have problems with too much of the water soluble B's and C but you usually urinate out any excess fairly soon.

John

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

IIRC you can also have problems with too much of the water soluble B's and C but you usually urinate out any excess fairly soon.

I think the problems from the water-soluble vitamins are taken as being theoretically possible but undocumented.

Capt'n Midnight

John2 wrote:

I think the problems from the water-soluble vitamins are taken as being theoretically possible but undocumented.

Actually I was thinking about kidney stones,
but this seems to say Vit C isn't a culprit http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w99/kidneystones.html

Didn't Linus take 1g of Vit C per day to avoid colds ?

John

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Actually I was thinking about kidney stones,
but this seems to say Vit C isn't a culprit http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w99/kidneystones.html

Actually I didn't know they were implicated in kidney stones in the first place

DrIndy

They are, if taken in huge quantities in people who are stone formers. Generally, most people get a smaller amount and you need to have a predisposition to forming kidney stones to get them.

Hence you could say taking a multivitamin which contains vitamin C is ok, but not the 500mg or 10 times daily dose as are available.

ronbyrne2005

i doubt my one a day centrum "complete from a to zinc is gonna do me much harm and can only help.i eat well enough but i do a lot of training and you need more vitamins/minerals if your working out a lot