How to Choose a Multivitamin Supplement? Wait...Do You Even Need A Multivitamin Supplement?
It all can be summed in pretty easily: Millions, maybe even billions, gorge themselves on synthetic vitamins, yet only to acquire and die from degenerative disease. Multivitamins are not what they seem to be, even superfoods and "health shakes". The upshot is you need natural sources of vitamins, and fresh, too; such as those complete and balanced natural sources that make up DAILY DOSE & CHOCOBERRY BLAST. And that you really have to look and the ingredeint label, CLOSELY! VERY CLOSE!! ALWAYS!
ALWAYS! When in doubt, please ask us.
Each of the ingredients will be listed with a unit of measurement such as IU, mg or mcg.
We are all familiar with cups, teaspoons and tablespoons for measuring food in the kitchen. In a similar way, IU, mg and mcg are abbreviations for measuring the amount of a nutrient in your supplement. IU stand for International Unit. It is based on the biological activity of a substance. Not all nutrients use IUs to express their amounts (vitamins A, D and E are the most common). Some vitamins, like A, can be listed with an IU or mcg (micrograms).Mg is a milligram, one-thousandth of a gram. One ounce is 28349.5 milligrams. Mcg is a microgram. This is one-millionth of a gram. One ounce is 28349523.1 micrograms are set at the level needed by most people to insure avoidance of vitamin deficiency diseases rarely seen in the modern world such as rickets (caused by a vitamin D deficiency), scurvy (caused by a vitamin C deficiency), beri-beri (caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency) and pellagra (caused by a vitamin B3 deficiency)
Here are a few sources you can learn more about micronutrients
http//healthyfixx.com/21/choosing-the-best-multivitaminicconsumers.org
https://bodyecology.com/articles/could-your-multivitamin-be-making-you-sick/
Are certain synthetic ingredients worse than others?
Yes. Some vitamins are water soluble, so the flush out of the body quite easily. Other vitamins are fat soluble. The fat-soluble vitamins include vitamins A, D, E and K. Because they are soluble in fat (lipids), these vitamins tend to build-up in the body's fat tissues, fat deposits, and liver. This storage capability makes the fat-soluble vitamins potentially toxic when consuming high-dose synthetic versions of these vitamins, rather than food-based vitamins that the body knows how to metabolize. Care should be exercised when taking the fat-soluble vitamins, and it is recommended that you avoid the synthetic forms of these vitamins whenever possible.
How can I tell if my B vitamin is good?
A good example of "junk" nutritional supplements is B vitamins. Most people do not know that most B vitamins are made from petrochemicals! For your best health, take a whole-nutrient B vitamin and avoid synthetics. Synthetics will be listed on the label as follows: Vitamin B1 (thiamine), Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), Vitamin B3 (niacin), VitaminB5 (calcium pantothenate).
SOURCE; TRUE ACTIVE™ FOODSTATE® AMOUNT
OCA’s Nutri-Con campaign aims to offer exposure to these issues to help consumers better choose products that are healthier and easier for the body to absorb and metabolize. The OCA does not claim that synthetic vitamins are all totally useless. Like other pharmaceutical drugs, some of these synthetics have their place in emergency health situations. But many of these synthetics are also unhealthy and naturally occurring vitamins and minerals found inorganic foods and 100% plant or food-based supplements are much better. Labeling synthetic supplements as "natural” or “all natural” is consumer fraud. Consumers have a right to know if the vitamin or supplement they are purchasing is synthetic or truly made of naturally occurring ingredients.
How can I read product labels to be able to determine if a particular vitamin or supplement is truly natural or synthetic?
If a vitamin/supplement product label uses words like "Food State", "Food Source", "Food Base", “All natural” , or “Organic”, can I assume that it truly is what it claims to be?
There are quite a few companies that use this kind of labeling, but many of them are not being clear on their labels and other literature that they use a medium of fermented or mixture of foods that have been spiked with synthetic vitamins. Many products contain synthetic vitamins which are put into our supplements even though the label says "all natural." One easy way to tell is to look at the RDA. If the potency is higher than anything you would find in nature (example 1000% Daily Recommended Allowance of Vitamin C per serving), the product contains synthetically produced ingredients, no matter what the producer of that product might claim.
How do I know what companies I can trust?
Over the next few months, the OCA will be building a list of vitamin/supplement producers that ranks them based on criteria that assesses how close that product is to being 100% organic and naturally occurring. If you have a specific brand of vitamin/supplement that your are curious, you can submit that company to ushered, and we will investigate its ingredients. There is also a new standard under development known as the Naturally Occurring Standard (NOS). Products that meet this standard are naturally occurring, organic, fairly traded, and free of genetically engineered ingredients, synthetics, and nanoparticles. The OCA is working with the Naturally Occurring Standards Group (NOSG) on research and development of this new standard.
Over the past few decades, many factors have contributed to the drastic decline in the overall quality of our food supply.
Here are just a few you should consider:
Soil depletion has reduced the nutrient content of the foods grown in it. In many areas of the world—especially the United States—the land has been over farmed. Modern fertilizers are chemically toxic and fail to replenish the earth with fundamental trace elements. Less than a hundred years ago, manures were used extensively for fertilizer.
Today, artificial superphosphate alternatives have all but replaced them. Superphosphates act more as a growth stimulant that a soil builder; they are devoid of any of the trace elements found in manure. Their rampant use has furthered the nutrient decline in soils and the crops they produce Hybrid crops produce lower nutrient foods. And unfortunately, they are currently grown everywhere, even on organic farms. They yield more food per acre, but produce foods with a significantly lower nutrient content than those our grandparents ate and grew. To produce nutrient-rich foods, plants must be grown in soils high in healthy microorganisms. Pesticides and herbicides can damage or even destroy these necessary microorganisms, reducing the nutrient density of crops.
And it doesn’t matter how many times you wash a piece of sprayed produce; the toxic, chemical residues will remain inside the food itself. Many pesticides contain deadly chemicals (the same ones used for biological warfare during World War II) that severely tax the human body. Some contain lead, arsenic and other toxic metals. Our current laws allow sewage and even factory sludge to be sold as fertilizers, even if they contain significant quantities of toxic metals. The long-distance transportation of foods reduces their nutrient status.
As soon as a crop is harvested, its nutrient content begins to diminish. Today, many foods are grown thousands of miles from where they are sold. Some may spend more than a week on a truck or train before they reach you Food processing drastically reduces nutrient content. The refining of wheat to make white flour, for example, removes 80% of its magnesium, 75% of its zinc, 87% of its chromium, 88% of its manganese and 50% of its cobalt. Food additives further deplete nutrients. Thousands of artificial flavors, colors, stabilizers and preservatives are added to most processed foods. Most of these are toxic, depleting the body of vital nutrients when they are ingested.
The fact is we are being led astray by the supplement and pharmaceutical industry (which by the way produces most of the ingredients for these chemical blends). And as we are continually fed conflicting information on the potential benefits and/or risks of these formula, most people choose sides and become a “believer” in vitamins and buy expensive blends or many different products that promise benefit or a “non-believer” and take nothing or perhaps an inexpensive store bought brand to avoid expensive urine.
Millions gorge themselves on synthetic vitamins, only to acquire and die from degenerative diseases.
So, who is correct?
Well both sides are!
As you will see we do need nutritional supplement support but from a whole-food based multivitamin and not of the synthetic chemical type. In order to understand why this is critical, you first need to understand what a vitamin actually is. And the answer is not as easy as one might think. The common textbook answer for the definition of a vitamin is “an organic substance that cannot be manufactured by an organism that is necessary in small amounts.” Yet, this does not give a full understanding, as vitamins have a very diverse range of functions. Vitamins can be hormones, antioxidants, or act even coenzymes for many metabolic functions. Also almost all vitamins are phytonutrients, meaning they were originally discovered in food, therefore we can add phytonutrient to this definition.
So then what is a vitamin really?
A vitamin is a man-made definition for a phytonutrient needed in regularly in small amounts to prevent a combination of symptoms (disease) that develop over a relatively short term (months to few years). For example, if you are missing the phytonutrient C6H8O6 (vitamin C) from your diet, you will develop asset of symptoms that we call scurvy; lack of C27H44O (vitamin D) will present in a set of symptoms that we call rickets and lack of vitamin B1 results in beri-beri. Because of this definition, our thought is that vitamins are needed to prevent disease. But this is where the plot thickens. Actual vitamin deficiencies that cause a short-term disease such as scurvy or rickets are quite rare.
The health issues facing us today are obesity, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, illnesses that are not caused by acute-short term deficiency states but long-term nutritional deficiency imbalances that develop due to many years of unhealthy eating habits, stress, inadequate physical activity and imbalances in a broad range of nutrients
Learn more about how to safe guard your health with PureClean Performance and Dr. Cohen's MLP Formulary which are both centered around giving you body the correct and right type of nutrients that your body can actually use, 100% naturally, for your best life, performance.
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