Jenna’s Lyme Blog

So, after reading Part One, we now know that over 90% of ascorbic acid in this country is manufactured at a facility in Nutley, New Jersey, owned by Hoffman-LaRoche, one of the world’s biggest drug manufacturers.

Here ascorbic acid is made from a process involving cornstarch and volatile acids. Most U.S. vitamin companies
then buy the bulk ascorbic acid from this single facility. After that, marketing takes over. Each company makes its own labels, its own claims, and its own formulations, each one claiming to have the superior form of vitamin C, even though it all came from the same place, and it’s really not vitamin C at all.

For those of us with chronic Lyme disease and rely on pure vitamins for the best performing protocols, it is critical to know this information and where to find pure vitamins (check info at the end of the post of each Part).

Now, back to Dr. O’Shea’s research:

FRACTIONATED = SYNTHETIC = CRYSTALLINE = FAKE

The word synthetic means two things:

* man-made
* occurs nowhere in nature

From the outset, it is crucial to understand the difference between vitamins and vitamin activity. The vitamin is the biochemical complex. Vitamin activity means the actual biological and cellular changes that take place when the stage is set for the vitamin complex to act.

Think of it like gas and a car. Pumping the gas into the tank doesn’t necessarily mean the car is going anywhere. Other conditions and factors must be also present, in order for Activity to occur. The gas line to the carburetor must be clear, the carburetor jets must be set, there must be an exact mixture of air flow, the ignition must be turned on, the spark plugs must be clean, the exact amount of gas must reach each spark plug right before it fires, no gas must be left over in the cylinder after the plug fires. Getting the idea? If any of this stuff is missing, there’s no Activity: the car doesn’t run, or at least not very well.

Amazing as it may sound if you’re hearing this for the first time, vitamins are more than the synthetic fractions we are commonly taught they are. The ascorbic acid you buy at the grocery store every few weeks, thinking you are buying Vitamin C, is just a chemical copy of naturally occurring ascorbic acid, which itself is still only a fraction of the actual Vitamin C. Real vitamin C is part of something living, and as such, can impart life.

Your synthetic, fractionated chemical ascorbic acid never grew in the ground, never saw the light of day, never was alive or part of anything alive. It’s a chemical, a cornstarch derivative, a sulfuric acid by-product. In your body it’s just another drug. Synthetic vitamins have toxic effects from mega-doses and actually can increase the white blood cell count. Vitamins are only necessary in minute quantities on a daily basis. Whole food vitamins, by contrast, are not toxic since the vitamin is complexed in its integral working form, and requires nothing from the body, and triggers no immune response.

DEFICIENCY
Scurvy is a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Scurvy is characterized by bleeding gums, slow wound healing, softening bones, loose teeth, ulcerations of the mouth and digestive tract, general weight loss and fatigue. From 1650 to 1850 half of all seamen on transoceanic voyages died of scurvy.

It was discovered by ship surgeon Thomas Lind in the early 1800s that British sailors were spared the disease altogether simply by a diet rich in citrus fruits. Since limes traveled well, they were the common choice during the early years, and thus the expression “limeys” was coined to describe British sailors. It was later found both at sea and in prison fare that potatoes were equally successful in preventing scurvy, and much cheaper to obtain. (Lancet. 1842)

We find that there is less than 20 mg of ascorbic acid in a potato. Yet this small amount, since it is complexed in a food source, is all the body needs not only to prevent scurvy, but also to cure it, even in its advanced state. Such a remedy is described in detail in Richard Dana’s amazing journal Two Years Before the Mast, written in 1840.

Whole food vitamin C as found in potatoes, onions, and citrus fruits is able to quickly cure any case of scurvy. By contrast, the fractionated chemical ascorbic acid has been shown to be insufficient in resolving a scurvy condition, simply because it does not act as a nutrient. (Lancet 1842)

Ascorbic acid simply cannot confer vitamin activity, as taught by the discoverer of vitamin C himself, another Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Albert Szent-Georgi.

Szent-Georgi discovered vitamin C in 1937. In all his research however, Szent-Georgi found that he could never cure scurvy with the isolated ascorbic acid itself.

Realizing that he could always cure scurvy with the “impure” vitamin C found in simple foods, Szent-Georgi discovered that other factors had to be at work in order for vitamin activity to take place.

So he returned to the laboratory and eventually made the discovery of another member of the vitamin C complex; rutin. All the factors in the complex, as Royal Lee and Dr. Szent-Georgi both came to understand, ascorbic acid, rutin, and the other factors, were synergists: co-factors which together sparked the “functional interdependence of biologically related nutrient factors.” ( Empty Harvest p120) The term “wheels within wheels” was used to describe the interplay of co-factors.

Each of the other synergists in the C complex has a separate function:

- P factors for blood vessel strength,
- J factors for oxygen-carrying capacity of red cells,
- tyrosinase as an essential enzyme for enhancing white blood cell
effectiveness.

Ascorbic acid is just the antioxidant outer shell – the protector of all these other synergistic functions so that they will be able to perform their individual roles.

Dr. Royal Lee’s phrase “biological wheels within wheels” always comes up in any discussion of whole food vitamins.

Essentially it means that individual synergists cannot function as a vitamin in a chemically isolated form, like ascorbic acid. Vitamins are living complexes which contribute to other higher living complexes – like cell repair, collagen manufacture, and maintenance of blood circulation. Ascorbic acid is not a living complex. It
is a copy of a part of a living complex known as vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is a fractionated, crystalline isolate of vitamin C.

Why are you a high school graduate or a college graduate or a doctor, and you don’t know this? Because drug manufacturers like things clean and simple and cheap to produce. To this simple fact add the politics which always comes into play when anyone mentions the word “billions,” and you are beginning to get the idea about where to begin your investigation. Burned his research???

DIETARY SOURCES
Most vitamins cannot be made by the body. They must be taken in as food. The best sources then are obviously whole foods, rich in vitamins. Because of soil depletion, mineral depletion, pesticides, air pollution, and erosion, it is common knowledge that foods grown in American soil today have only a fraction of the nutrient value of 50 years ago.

That means a fraction of the vitamins and minerals necessary for normal human cell function. Royal Lee described the American diet as the cultivation and production of “devitalized foods.” Dr. Weston Price describes these empty products as the “foods of commerce.” Think it’s gotten better or worse since their time? Thus the necessity for supplementation.

Vitamins and minerals are not functionally separable. They make each other work. Example: vitamin D is necessary for the body to absorb calcium. Copper is necessary for vitamin C activity. And so on. Mineral deficiencies can cause vitamin deficiencies, and vice versa. Epidemic mineral deficiency in America is a well-documented result of systematic soil depletion.

So that is the other prime difference between whole food vitamins and synthetics: whole food vitamins contain within them many essential trace minerals necessary for their synergistic operation. Synthetic vitamins contain no trace minerals, relying on, and depleting, the body’s own mineral reserves.
Following the German agricultural methods of Von Leibig in the mid-1800s, American farmers found that NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) was all that was necessary for crops to look good. (Frost p7) As long as NPK is added to the soil, crops can be produced and sold year after year from the same soil. They look OK. But the other necessary trace minerals vital for human nutrition are virtually absent from most American soil after all these years.

Many of these minerals, such as zinc, copper, and magnesium, are necessary co-factors of vitamin activity. Depleted topsoil is one simple, widespread mechanism of both vitamin and mineral deficiency in American produce today.

This doesn’t even take into account the tons of poisonous herbicides and pesticides dumped on crops. According to the UN, two million tons of pesticides are used worldwide annually. (Jensen, p69)

American agri-business has one motive: profit. Such a focus has resulted in an output of empty produce and a nation of unhealthy people. The earth’s immune system is its soil. To be vital and capable of growing vital foods, soil must be rich in both minerals and soil-based organisms – life forms. Healthy produce naturally resists insects. Insects are like bad bacteria in the body: they are attracted to diseased tissue, though they do not cause it.

And we’re still only talking about people who actually eat raw fruits and vegetables, which is a tiny minority. Processed food composes the majority of what most Americans eat. The only nutrients in most processed foods are “enriched” and “fortified” as described below.

When a doctor says that food supplements are all unnecessary because we can get everything we need from our food, that doctor is lacking basic information published and agreed upon by his own peers. Whether or not we need supplementation is no longer an issue, except for one who is totally out of touch. The issue is what kind and how much. Vitamin and mineral deficiency can be tagged to practically ANY disease syndrome known to man. DW Cavanaugh, MD of Cornell University actually concluded that

“There is only one major disease, and that is malnutrition. ” (Jensen, p8)

Malnutrition of the affluent is the natural result of the foods of commerce.
The best vitamins are called whole food vitamins.

It will be difficult finding this out on the Internet, however, because the Web is dominated by mainstream nutritional theory. In the area of vitamins, the Internet is 99%
marketing; 1% actual information.

There are about 110 companies who sell vitamins in the US. Less than 5 of them use whole food vitamins. The reason is simple: whole food vitamins are expensive to make. A few of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world mass produce synthetic vitamins for the vast majority of these 110 “vitamin” companies, who then put their own label on them, and every company claims theirs is the best! It’s ridiculous! Americans spend over $9 billion per year for synthetic vitamins. (Frost p2)

Whole food vitamins are obtained by taking a vitamin-rich plant, removing the water and the fiber in a cold vacuum process, free of chemicals, and then packaging for stability. The entire vitamin complex in this way can be captured intact, retaining its “functional and nutritional integrity.”
(DeCava p.23.)

Upon ingestion, the body is not required to draw on its own reserves in order to complete any missing elements from the vitamin complex.

Mainstream marketing of vitamins and minerals has successfully created the myth that vitamins and minerals may be isolated from each other, that correct amounts may be measured out, and then we can derive total benefit from taking these fractionated chemical creations.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Vitamins and minerals, and also enzymes, work closely together as co-factors for each other’s efficacy. If one part is missing, or in the wrong form or the wrong amount, entire chains of metabolic processes will not proceed normally. Result: downward spiraling of health, probably imperceptible for long periods of time.

One excellent protocol for treating chronic Lyme disease is also inexpensive and uses whole food vitamins.  Read about the protocol “Salt & Apples” based on Vitamin C/Salt it uses Himalayan salt (protected by man’s pollution) and apple polyphenols which uses baby green apples.  Download Here.

Also, Premier Research Group is a company with incredible standards and REAL vitamins.  Investigate for yourself.

Similar Posts:

• The Great Vitamin C Hoax – Part One
• Where To Go If You Must Have Real Vitamin C?
• The Great Vitamin Hoax, and How it Must Affect Your Protocol – Part Three
• Clean, Ionized Water Critical For Chronic Lyme Disease
• Good Article on Building Healthy Immune System to Fight Chronic Lyme Disease
• Best Supplement for Chronic Lyme Disease
• Assist Immune System in Fighting Lyme – Keep Colon Healthy.
• Fight Lyme With Balanced pH
• Foods to Keep Our Immune System Strong to Fight Chronic Lyme Disease
• Happiness is…Total Recovery From Chronic Lyme Disease. IVIG Part Three

Posted on March 31st, 2010 under Chronic Lyme Disease, Coping with Lyme Disease, Product Reviews, Treatment Protocols • Tags: ascorbic acid, pure vitamins for health, Salt/C Lyme protocol, Vitamin C. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback