Jenna’s Lyme Blog

So, now we learn that after pouring hundreds if not thousands of dollars down the drain buying “fake vitamins” – many time the foundation of our protocol – and we wonder, “..WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING????”

Perhaps it makes sense that once again we have trusted in the marketing and promotion behind well-meaning companies that perhaps do not fully understand the implications of the chemistry behind the very product they are selling.

But ignorance, although it may be “bliss” is no excuse for poisoning those who are purchasing a product explicitly for wellness.

So what kind of marketing philosophy could possibly be behind the prevalence of synthetic vitamins everywhere?

Simple: profit above all else.

Once the public is shown that vitamin supplementation is necessary, the rest is marketing. Marketing is the art of persuading by suspending logic and twisting data into junk science.

Example: What’s the actual difference in composition between Wheaties and Total, two cereals put out by the same company? Total is advertised as being much more nutrient-rich than “ordinary” Wheaties. Look at the labels. What justifies the extra $1.30 for a box of Total?

Answer: 1.5¢ worth of synthetic vitamins sprayed over the Wheaties. That’s it! That’s what “vitamin enriched” always means. The other trick word is “fortified.” Generally that means that the food itself is devoid of nutrients or enzymes, so they tried to pump it up a little with some “vitamins.” Cheap synthetic vitamin sprays are all that is required for the manufacturer to use labels like “enriched” and “fortified.” These words are red flags – if a food needs to be fortified or enriched, you can bet it was already dead.

The mega-vitamin theory doesn’t really hold when it comes to synthetics: If A Little Is Good, More Is Better. Macro doses of vitamin E, and also vitamin D have been shown to decrease immune function significantly. (DeCava.) It stands to reason. Vitamins by definition are necessary in phenomenally small doses. The discoverer of thiamine, a B vitamin, and the man who came up with the word vitamin, Dr. Casimir Funk, has this to say about synthetics:

“Synthetic vitamins: these are highly inferior to vitamins from natural sources, also the synthetic product is well known to be far more toxic.”

Nutrition authority DeCava describes it:

“Natural food-source vitamins are enzymatic-ally alive. Man-made synthetic vitamins are dead chemicals. “

- The Real Truth About Vitamins, p 209

The marketing of fractionated crystalline synthetic vitamins has been so successful that most nutritionists and doctors are unaware that there is something missing from these “vitamins.” Vitamin manufacturers compete for customers with identical products – they all bought their synthetic vitamins from the same couple of drug companies.

To differentiate their product, each makes claims of “high potency.” Our vitamins are higher potency than theirs, etc. The point is, the higher the potency, the more the drug-like effects are present. Natural whole food vitamins are very low potency. Remember the 20mg of vitamin C in a potato that was able to cure a patient of scurvy?

That was low potency.

Low potency is all we need. Low potency is enough to bring about vitamin activity. High potency overshoots the mark – the chemical is very pure and refined, like the difference between white sugar and the type of sugar that’s in an apple.

Generally speaking, if milligrams are being discussed at length, the author has no clue about vitamins. Synthetic vitamins are refined, high potency chemicals, and therefore may be accurately measured in milligrams, just like drugs. This has nothing to do with vitamin activity or nutrition, except in a negative way.

The same type of incomplete action can be seen with any synthetic vitamin.

Fake Vitamin A

Let’s take beta carotene for a minute, which the body can turn into vitamin A. Now you’ll remember that vitamin A is necessary for good eyesight, DNA synthesis, and protects cells from free radicals.

A study reported in Apr 94 in the NEJM of some 30,000 Finnish subjects showed conclusively that synthetic vitamin A had no antioxidant effect whatsoever. A true antioxidant helps to protect heart muscle, lungs, and artery surfaces from breaking down prematurely. In this study, the subjects who received the synthetic beta carotene actually had an 8% higher incidence of fatal heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer than those who got the placebo (sugar pill).

Stands to reason: the synthetic brought no vitamin activity to the tissues that needed it. As a dead, purified chemical introduced into the body, the synthetic further stressed the immune system, the liver, and the kidneys which all had to try to break down this odd chemical and remove it from the body. It would be bad enough if they were harmless, but synthetic vitamins actually have a net negative effect.

Vitamin A was first discovered in 1919. By 1924, it had been broken down and separated from its natural whole food complex: “purified.” By 1931, LaRoche – one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, even today – had succeeded in “synthesizing” vitamin A. That means they had created a purely chemical copy of a fraction of naturally occurring vitamin A. Naturally occurring vitamin A is found associated with an entire group of other components:

- Retinols
- Retinoids
- Retinal
- Carotenoids
- Carotenes
- Fatty acids
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin E
- Vitamin B
- Vitamin D
- Enzymes
- Minerals

Isolated from these other factors, vitamin A is a fraction which cannot perform its biological functions. Taken as a synthetic, it must then draw on this list of resources already in the body in order to complete its make-up.

Whole food vitamin A, by contrast, is already complete and ready to go.

Most synthetic vitamin A consists only of retinal, retinol, or retinoic acid. The well-publicized potential for toxicity with mega doses of vitamin A involves one of these three. Vitamin A toxicity, known as hypervitaminosis, always results from an excess of synthetic, “purified” vitamin A, and never from whole food vitamin A. (DeCava, p 86) Effects of vitamin A toxicity include:

- tumor enhancement
- joint disorders
- osteoporosis
- extreme dryness of eyes, mouth and skin,
- enlargement of liver and spleen
- immune depression
- birth defects

Beta carotene is a precursor the body can convert to vitamin A. Unfortunately, as a supplement, synthetic beta carotene is usually “stabilized” in refined vegetable oils. In this trans fatty acid form, oxidation occurs and the chemically “pure” beta carotene can no longer act as a nutrient, because it was changed. Almost all synthetic beta carotene is produced by the Swiss drug giant Hoffman-LaRoche.

This form can no longer be converted to vitamin A. The best it can be is worthless, and at the worst is toxic.

Natural vitamin A and beta carotene are well known as immune boosters and cancer fighters, in their role as antioxidants. Synthetic vitamin A by contrast has actually brought about significant increases in cancer. A study done in Finland provided smokers with large doses of synthetic beta carotene. Lung cancer incidence increased 18%! (NEJM Apr 94 ” The Alpha Tocopherol Beta Carotene Cancer Prevention Study Group”)

These findings were corroborated two years later in another study written up in Lancet. Pharmacologic doses of synthetic beta carotene’s were found to block the antioxidant activity of the other 50 naturally occurring carotenoids in the diet. Anti-cancer activity was thus blocked by the synthetic. (Lancet 1996)

With the vast outpouring of wrong information about vitamins A and C, the findings of a 1991 article in Health Counselor are no surprise: 50% of Americans are deficient in vitamin A and 41% are deficient in vitamin C. Synthetic vitamins cannot prevent deficiencies.

Fake Vitamin B

In one experiment, synthetic vitamin B (thiamine) was shown to render 100% of a group of pigs sterile! 100% would be considered a significant finding. (Dr. Barnett Sure, Journ Natr 1939) Perhaps the fact that synthetic vitamin B comes from coal tar, maybe that has something to do with it, you think? Then there’s vitamin B12, which comes from activated sewage sludge. (Frost p 60) Been shooting blanks since you started on those multi’s?

For the licensed dietitians and clinical nutritionists reading this in disbelief because it is too “unscientific, ” consider the way Theron Randolph MD delineated between natural and synthetic:

“A synthetically derived substance may cause a reaction in a chemically susceptible person when the same material of natural origin is tolerated, despite the two substances having identical chemical structures. The point is illustrated by the frequency of clinical reactions to synthetic vitamins – especially vitamin B1 and C – when the [same] naturally occurring vitamins are tolerated.”

IRRADIATION

According to Los Angeles naturopath, Dr. Jack Singh, all commercial lecithins in supplements, as well as most vitamin D, comes from irradiated vegetable oils. That’s rancid, oxidizing trans fatty acids! A birthday party of free radicals. This is the precise mechanism for arterial wall breakdown prior to plaque deposits, then arteriosclerosis, then heart disease.

I thought we were supposed to be taking vitamins to stay healthy!

Why is this information so difficult to find? It’s in none of the “alternative” health ‘zines, or any of the mainstream media. Alternative- Lite guru Julian Whittaker, in his summer 1998 newsletter actually had the temerity to state outright “Synthetic vitamins and whole food vitamins are identical.”

I’m sure his synthetic vitamin company and all its retailers were reassured by this incredibly arrogant and flagrantly inaccurate pronouncement. But who is objecting?

Only those clients of the 5 companies who know enough to take whole food vitamins, because they have become educated to realize the difference. These are the vast minority, having no control of the media.

Royal Lee and Harvey Wiley lost. Nobody knows who they are today, except we few. This is no accident. What everybody does know is Pepsi and Viagra and Wonder Bread and prednisone and Double Whoppers with Cheese and Zantac and Baskin Robbins and Long’s Drug Store. And grocery store vitamins: synthetic vitamins.

That’s America, today as the product of yesterday. Control of information in America today is one of the most sophisticated systems of influence ever devised. The simple ideas contained here are simply not available to the mass consciousness. The documentation is out there, but you really have to dig for it.

100 years ago if a medical doctor saw a case of cancer he would call all his colleagues to come and have a look, telling them it was unlikely they would see another case, as cancer was so rare. People rarely died of heart attacks; in fact the term heart attack itself didn’t even exist.

There was no incidence at all of atherosclerosis. Diabetes was practically unheard of. What did they eat? Fruits, vegetables, meat, butter, and lard. But none of it was processed with drugs and chemicals.

Today one in three dies of cancer. One in two dies of heart disease. Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. (Vital Statistics) Is that progress? If you are a food manufacturer it is, and especially if you are a drug manufacturer.

In the 1980s the WHO ranked the US as #22 in the world in infant mortality. Male sperm count is less than 20% of what it was in 1929. (1981 University of Florida report, Natural vs. Synthetic) Infant mortality is up; birth defects are up. We spend $1.5 trillion per year for health care, most of which goes for administration and executive salaries. Who are the largest advertisers for TV and the printed media? Right: drug companies and food manufacturers.

Do they want to keep the ball rolling?

You bet.

Will they kill you to do it?

Probably not consciously, but somewhere in every corporate executives subconscious whimpers and moans, “..danger!…danger!”  Are they ignoring the voice for profit?

You bet.

Do they want people to take charge of their own health by natural inexpensive foods and supplements? Negative. A cure for cancer has been “right around the corner” since Nixon. People are starting to ask questions; they’re less inclined to believe the slick ads coming every 10 minutes on TV and in Newsweek.

Perhaps Hippocrates did not envision doctors as detail men or drug reps. He most likely thought like Henry Bieler, MD:

“Nature, if given the opportunity is always the greatest healer.

It is the physician’s role to assist in this healing, to play a supporting role.”

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Thanks again to Dr. Tim O’Shea for consolidating all of this important information.

For those of you whose treatment protocol rely on a vitamin such as Salt/C, please review the ebook I wrote on adjusting the protocol to make it more effective with whole food vitamins at Salt and Apples.

If you are interested in purchasing pure vitamin products go to Premier Research Products.

Similar Posts:

• The Great Vitamin C Hoax – Part One
• The Great Vitamin C Hoax – Part Two
• Where To Go If You Must Have Real Vitamin C?
• Foods to Keep Our Immune System Strong to Fight Chronic Lyme Disease
• Good Article on Building Healthy Immune System to Fight Chronic Lyme Disease
• New Hope for Most Severe Chronic Cases of Lyme Disease! Part Two
• Salt and Apples for Chronic Lyme Disease?
• Colostrum for Chronic Lyme Disease
• Best Supplement for Chronic Lyme Disease
• Cancer Research Leads to Possible Lyme Vaccine

Posted on March 31st, 2010 under Chronic Lyme Disease, Coping with Lyme Disease, Product Reviews, Treatment Protocols • Tags: pure vitamins for healing, read labels, vitamins to help immune system fight chronic Lyme disease. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback