natural or synthetic – your choice!

This is a short posting – I’ve a lot of editing etc to complete, but this cannot be let go.
You may have seen on the news, or in a paper, the blitz of propaganda against vitamin supplements?
Don’t swallow the hype……don’t believe all you read (or hear/see on tv)

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph’s page 1 headline was:
Vitamin pills ‘can increase the risk of early death’
What followed was a masterpiece of misinformation – slightly modified by the paragraph in column 2 that said:
“The Danish research released by the influential Cochrane Library, applied only to synthetic supplements and not to vitamins that occur naturally in vegetables and fruit”
If time and space permitted I would elaborate on the importance of this piece of information…..synthetic beta-carotene is not the same as natural beta-carotene…… what a big surprise!
Also of critical importance is what types of tocopherols were being evaluated when vitamin E was being tested, since there is a great deal of difference between D-alpha-tocopherols (the natural form) or L or DL versions.
I have no doubt that the mixed antioxidant supplements involved in these studies contain little if any natural sourced nutrients, they’re just too expensive.
I also have no doubt a more thought through response to this attempted sabotage of another aspect of complementary health care will emerge sooner rather than later.
A quote I have taken from another useful blog on this topic summarises other aspects of the distorted reporting involved in this scandal of half-truths and misinformation:
“…..the correct statement [from this research] is that, “Synthetic chemicals were found to slightly increase the death rate among certain cancer patients.” That is the conclusion of this study. It is such a weak conclusion, in fact, that the very authors of the study said there was “no convincing proof of hazard” for taking vitamin supplements. They also pointed out that the conclusions drawn from this study were of borderline statistical significance, and that many more studies would be needed to draw any conclusions.”

Aside from the fact that the supplements tested are known to be inferior to naturally sourced products, there is another major flaw in the research studies on which the anti-vitamin propaganda is based.
We are not all the same……. we have biochemical individuality.
This is something that has been known for many years since the groundbreaking work of Roger Williams on this subject. I urge you to read his classic Biochemical Individuality to understand the background to the truth rather than the hype.
Williams demonstrated that in any group of people there will be wildely different bodily needs for any specific nutrient. For example you might need – for efficient function of your metabolic processes – 5 times more (say) vitamin C than I do.
And this sort of variable need would be true of all nutrients.
You can read more about this in The Metabolic Typing Diet by Wolcott & Fahy.
So how could anyone who was seriously seeking the truth expect valid results from a research study that ignores this essential fact, and which virtually homogenizes its participants by giving them all the same amount of whatever nutritional supplement is being tested.
Some will benefit, and some will not, and then the distorted results will be used to broadcast the ‘news’ that supplements may make you ill (especially if they are synthetic)…. and this is precisely what has happened.

I shall continue to take naturally sourced supplements to complement my diet, since levels of nutrients in modern food leaves a lot to be desired.