What are synthetic vitamins? They are an attempt to copy
something from nature.
Synthetics are made in a laboratory with base materials that
can include coal tar, formaldehyde, petrochemicals, toxic cow livers, fecal
mater or ground-up rocks and shells!
The isolate vitamin-wanna-be does not have the complex
co-factors that work with naturally occurring vitamins to produce the
nutritional effects and proper absorption.
Vitamins are never isolates in nature but synthetics are and they just don’t
work the same!
It’s the belief of many researchers that these isolates have
little or in some cases no nutritional molecular activity compared to their
naturally occurring superior and can actually have a detrimental effect to our
bodies. Let me be clear that I do
believe that synthetic vitamins in many cases have some bioactivity and at
first can produce the desired effect but the question is if the bioavailability
and activity decreases with time and what the long-term detrimental side
effects are on the body. When you take synthetic vitamins your body will draw
on it’s small reserve of co-factors to deal with the isolate at first and you
might feel like they are working but once your body has exhausted these
reserves the symptoms of deficiencies and imbalances will return! Over time synthetics could actually be
depleting your body’s nutrients!
Under a microscope synthetics don’t look the same!
-Most synthetic vitamins are crystal form, the naturally
occurring vitamins are not and the body has a problem recognizing them and as a
result treats them as a foreign substance, excreting them with a major
reduction in absorption.
-Another difference is something called Chiral. The vitamin
isolates that are produced in the lab many times are the mirror image of the
naturally occurring vitamin molecule. The molecule is made up of the same atoms
but the structure is different, left-handed or right-handed. The change in structure makes the molecule act
completely different.
To try to illustrate this difference hold your hands out,
palms up. You cannot superimpose your
hands over each other because your thumbs are pointing in opposite directions,
so the structure is different.
This is a picture from americanhistory.si.edu
This picture is of mirror molecules (stereoisomers) and another example of how the structure of a molecule can completely change it's activity and the way the body reacts with it. There are all the same atoms but different
structure, one is right-handed and the other is left. The picture on the left is the molecule found
in an orange peel and it is the left-handed version of the molecule Limonene.
The picture on the right is the molecule found in a lemon peel and is the
right-handed version of Limonene. The change in structure of this molecule
makes it smell completely different and so your body perceives these two
molecules as being completely different even though they have the exact same
atoms.
So for some to say that synthetic mirror image vitamin
molecules are the same as naturally occurring vitamin molecules is a bit of a
stretch! The bigger questions are how do these mirror synthetic molecules work
in our bodies, what is their bioavailability and what are their detrimental
side effects?
-Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and Nutrition. Caballero B, Trugo
L, Finglas P, 2003
-Vitamins are Naturally Found in Food Complexes. Thiel R ANMA
Monitor, 1999
-Natural Vitamins are Superior to Synthetic Ones. Medical
Hypotheses. Thiel R, 2000
The Insight Team of the Sunday Times
of london. Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide. New York:
Viking Press,1979.
