(Are you destroying your health with vitamin supplements?

)
Vitamins are the most widely used supplements worldwide. They are readily available in
multiple formulations and commonly added to food and household products. It has been
widely believed that vitamin supplementation is critical to human health. Much of the
research on vitamin supplements has been funded by the supplement industry where data
comes from trials on animals and humans suffering from immune disorders or malnutrition.
Based on this data, vitamin supplementation can help prevent nutritional deficiencies and
restore health. Thats apparently one side of the story. The other side is not as
complementary.
What that data doesnt tell is that in large dosages,
vitamins can become overwhelmingly toxic, and the
same vitamin treatment that benefits the sick may
actually devastate the healthy. Given the reality that
our society has been getting increasingly addicted to
the habit of popping vitamin pills, its time to put the
record straight and address questions that the
industry doesnt want you to ask.
How did our society become vitamin addict? How the compulsive need to shove in
megadosages of vitamins has been exploited by the industry? And what are the real effects of
vitamin supplementation on the human body?

How did our society become vitamin addict?

There has been a widely held perception that human diseases are caused by vitamin
deficiencies. It therefore gives that supplementation with high concentrations of vitamins can
help prevent disease. Though not fully supported by scientific evidence, this perception has
been propagated and exploited by commercial interests. Vitamins are a multi-billion dollar
enterprise.
Health authorities and the media encourage vitamin treatment in high dosages. Fitness
magazines whose livelihood depend on supplement companies advertisements, cannot afford
going against the trend; they would never dare to publish anti-supplement articles. Instead,
theyd rather run editorials that repeatedly attack the minimum recommended daily allowance
(RDA) for vitamins as too low. Thats in spite of the undeniable evidence that the human body
is programmed to utilize vitamins in potencies which are actually below the minimum RDA.
The vitamins propaganda machine would say almost anything to increase product sales, and
consumers have been falling prey for false claims and misleading information. Perhaps you
too.

It is ironic that the health industry has been using military demolition terms such as burning,
killing, busting etc., when dealing with health issues. That may explain the widely held
perception that high potency vitamins have more strength to kill disease than low
potency vitamins (most people today still believe that thats indeed the case).
Even more disturbing is the fact that all high potency vitamins are chemically based. None of
these products is natural. Growing evidence indicate that synthetic vitamin molecules can
cause dependency similar to drugs. Hence, synthetic vitamins are potentially addictive. And if
you stop taking them, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. Yet all that has been largely
overlooked and ignored as our society becomes increasingly dependent on that stuff.

How the compulsive need for megadosages vitamins has been exploited by
the industry?
It has been commonly speculated that due to soil depletion, industrial food processing and
often low accessibility to fresh food, it becomes imperative to supplement the diet with
vitamins and antioxidants. The industry has been spreading reports that promote vitamin
supplementation in high dosages as an essential strategy.
So where is the truth? Are vitamin supplements as essential as claimed? Lets take a look at
the theory behind the usage of synthetic high potency vitamins and check how that theory fits
reality.

The orthomolecular theory

The orthomolecular theory says that there is no difference between synthetic and natural
molecules. According to this theory, synthetically produced bioidentical molecules are
indistinguishable from those naturally synthesized by plants or animals. The theory claims
that receptors on the surface of animal cells control the uptake of individual molecules
regardless of how or why these molecules appear in the blood stream. Therefore, you must
support your body with the right molecules that are required to sustain life without any
concern to where theyre derived from.
Though not conclusively proven, this theory has been adapted by mainstream health
authorities who recommend the usage of supplements containing high concentrations of
synthetic vitamin molecules as alternative medicine.

Millions of people today are taking vitamin supplements as the only means to prevent
nutritional deficiencies, believing that that protocol actually compensates for poor eating
habits and bad diets. The highest pound for pound vitamin consumers are the sick, the
elderly and fitness consumers, who have been told that their vitamin requirements are higher
than normal and therefore require larger dosages. However, in the midst of all this hype,
vitamins consumers have been failing to acknowledge one fact
There is NO evidence that people who take vitamin supplements are healthier than
those who dont.
In fact, there is growing body of evidence that vitamin supplementation rather increase
susceptibility to disease and even shorten life span. Research shows that vitamin supplements
can turn toxic in the following cases:
if synthetically produced
if taken in unnatural overlyhigh dosages.

What are the real effects of vitamin supplementations on the human body?
The vitamin issue involves lots of misinformation. Data provided by
vitamin manufacturers does not necessarily reflect the truth, certainly
not the whole truth.
Our society has been fooled to believe that popping pills with hundred
of times greater vitamin potencies than those naturally occurring in
food is a smart way to outperform nature. What the public has been
failing to acknowledge is one undisputable fact:
The human body has not evolved for synthetic nutrients, or anything in excess.
This means that your body evolved for utilizing nutrients as they naturally occur in food and
not in any other way. Your body is programmed to utilize these nutrients in the safest most
efficient way, and at exactly the right concentrations. Human biology is ruled by nature, not
by technology.
Your body has the enzymatic capacity to convert naturally occurring food compounds into
bioactive nutrients vitamins, minerals and antioxidants all of which are absorbed and
utilized through a tight feedback control. You can safely utilize naturally occurring plant
carotenes into vitamin A, you can optimize your vitamin E from nuts and seeds, and get your
vitamin D from dairy and marine food or through exposure to UV sunlight, all of which involve
no toxicity risk.
Evolution has not prepared organisms for artificial food. Both humans and animals lack the
capacity to regulate the absorption and utilization of chemicals. Chemicals spell poisoning.

Here is what likely happens to your body when synthetic vitamins are administered.
The chemical molecules bypass your innate enzymatic processing, and while rapidly hitting
your circulation they give your body the signal that its vitamin pool is loaded. Your body is
then tricked to believe that it does not need to utilize more of the same nutrients from food.
Consequently, the enzymes that normally metabolize foods vitamins are inhibited, and your
body thus loses its ability to assimilate real foods nutrients.
The accumulated effect of synthetic vitamins on your body could be overwhelming. Recent
reports indicate that supplementation with synthetic vitamins disrupt cellular redox and
diminish the bodys capacity to respond to stress.
Simply put, synthetic vitamins induce a drug-like effect, and similar to drugs they not only
cause dependency, they disrupt normal metabolic functions often with devastating side
effects.

Vitamins toxicity
Up until recently, it has been commonly assumed that only fat soluble vitamins
can turn toxic in high dosages. That has to do with the fact that fat soluble
vitamins (A, E, and K) are stored by the body and can accumulate in overly high
toxic levels if taken in large dosages.
Toxicity Side Effects of Excess Fat Soluble Vitamins
Vitamin A:

abdominal pain, vomiting, headache, lethargy, eczema, patchy hair loss, edema, anemia,
respiratory tract infection, chronic liver disease

Vitamin E:

allergic reaction, breathing impairments, swelling of the tongue, fatigue, headache, nausea,
blurred vision, excessive bleeding (anticoagulation due to inhibition of vitamin K), increased
oxidative stress, increased hypertension, decreased life span

Vitamin K:

supplementation with a synthetic form of vitamin K Menadione has been associated with liver
damage. Some reports indicate a significant association between high intramuscular levels of
vitamin K and cancer.

As for water soluble vitamins, it has been largely presumed that since theyre excreted via the
urine and cannot accumulate into toxic levels, they should be regarded safe. But how safe are
they? Lets start with the one considered the safest of all vitamin C.

Vitamin C Cure or curse?

The belief that high potency vitamin C can cure the common cold and prolong life was given
credence by the American scientist Linus Pauling (1901-1994). The premise of his theory was
that there is somehow a design flaw in the human genome that disables us from selfproducing vitamin C; thats unlike other species such as felines and canines who are capable of
producing that vitamin. According to Pauling and his advocates, adult humans need to
compensate for that genetic default with 10,000 12,000 mg of vitamin C daily, to prevent or
cure disease.
In comparison, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is only 60 90 mg per
day. The upper intake level for vitamin C was set at 2000 mg a day for adults by the Food and
Nutrition Board in 2000.
So how much daily vitamin C your body needs? And what kind of vitamin C?
Vitamin C is critically important to animals and humans. It is vital
to the production of collagen, it helps recycle vitamins A and E, it
potentiates iron absorption and is needed for proper adrenal
functions particularly under stress.
Most notoriously, vitamin C prevents and cures scurvy disease.
Scurvy causes bleeding and inflamed gums, loose teeth, poor
wound healing, easy bruising, joint pain, muscle wasting and a
total metabolic decline with mortal consequences if untreated. Interestingly, vitamin C cures
scurvy even in small potencies such as those naturally occurring in a single lemon or an apple.
So in theory, vitamin C can help cure ailments, build tissues, counteract stress and promote
great health, this is at least how it has been accredited. But in reality, not all vitamin C are the
same.
There is vitamin C and there is vitamin C, one is natural and the other one is synthetic, and
there is a fundamental difference between these two.

Natural Vitamin C vs. Synthetic Vitamin C

The difference between these two vitamins is in their molecular structure. Synthetic vitamin C
appears as a single molecule; whereas natural vitamin C occurs as a complex molecules
(complex nutrients). The point is: only the complex form of natural vitamin C can
accommodate your bodys metabolic needs. Regardless, it is synthetic ascorbate (ascorbic
acid) that has been most widely sold.

Following is a review of recent research data on the effects of synthetic ascorbate on animals
and humans.
Ascorbic acid supplementation impairs muscles mitochondrial function and
adaptability to exercise.
A recent human study featured in the American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 87, No. 1, 142-149, January 2008),
revealed that supplementation with synthetic vitamin C
ascorbate shattered muscle performance in young men,
causing impairment in mitochondrial function, loss of
endurance, and inhibition of the antioxidant enzymes
superoxide dimutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxide (GPX).
Other related experiments were designed to examine the
effect of vitamin C on training efficiency in animals. The
researchers were aware that ascorbic acid supplementation
is
highly popular among exercise practitioners for the simple
reason that intense exercise increases oxidative stress in the muscle. It has been assumed
then that administration of vitamin C ascorbate may help protect the muscle from oxidative
damage.
But again, the findings left no place for a doubt: ascorbic acid supplementation caused the
opposite effects than expected.
Ascorbic acid impaired muscle performance by increasing oxidative stress and
suppressing critical cellular mechanisms of adaptation to exercise.

How safe is natural vitamin C?

Since humans and primates cannot produce vitamin C, they evolved to be dependent on
vitamin C rich foods. Accessibility to food based vitamins is a critical factor of human
survivability. The naturally occurring vitamin C in food is both essential and safe. And unlike
the case with synthetic vitamin C, there are no threshold limits for the intake of the naturally
occurring vitamin.
So what had made the human species evolve for certain vitamins molecules rather than
others?
To address this issue, we need to delve into human evolution. How the human survival
apparatus has evolved? How stress resistance played into human survivability? And how all
these relate to vitamin supplementation?

How the human survival apparatus has evolved?

Growing body of research suggests that the human body hasnt evolved for todays world of
plenty and comfort, but rather for a stressed world that existed many thousands of years ago.
Anthropological evidence indicates that the human genome hasnt changed at all since the
late Paleolithic era. We still carry the same survival mechanisms of our cavemen ancestors but
the world that we live in today is different than the world we have originally adapted to.
Staying alive during extreme primordial times required inherent survival skills. All species
evolved with a stress response system that acts to compensate for primordial stressors such as
lack of food, physical hardship and extreme climate conditions. Our species is no exception.
The human genome is programmed for living (and thriving) under stressed conditions and not
the other way. Stress upgrades your survivability. Under stressed conditions, certain genes
are triggered to compensate your body by increasing energy utilization efficiency along with
the capacity to resist hardship, starvation and disease.

Starvation Resistance
Starvation resistance is one of the most important evolutionary
traits linked to longevity. This feature has been attributed to a
certain genetic phenotype which likely evolved to increase
organisms survivability during times of nutritional scarcity or
famine.
Note that food shortage existed in the past and still exists
today. But here is the paradox: though it presents a survival
risk, it has been shown to benefit human survivability. Food
shortage has been forcing human civilizations to keep
innovating and improving agricultural means for yielding more
food and better distribution.
The real problem today is not shortage of food but rather excess of food. Excess food seems
to violate human biology and sabotage human health.
Consider this, as the human body evolved for food scarcity, it also evolved for utilizing
maximum nutrients from minimum food. This enabled our species overcome cycles of famine
which were common factors of life millenniums ago. Lets face the facts
The human body is not programmed for excess nutrients let alone overfeeding.
So how is your body designed to accept vitamins? And how do vitamin supplements affect
your survivability?

How do vitamin supplements affect your survivability

Our species has been successfully thriving for many thousands of years without a single
vitamin supplement. The human body cannot tolerate excess of any kind or anything
unnatural. So here is the inconvenient truth.
Youd better survive living off the land, eating scarcely from a few accessible seasonal food
choices, rather than living off the supermarket and eating excessively from multiple food
choices.
Excess nutrients is toxic and inflammatory. Overfeeding can get you fat, bloated and sick.
Similarly you can get poisoned and sickened by excess vitamins. And the same holds truth for
excess antioxidants.

How antioxidants turn pro-oxidants

Keeping a healthy metabolic homeostasis is top priority for your body. Its a critical factor in
your survivability. Your body is highly sensitive to changes in homeostasis. It is capable of
sensing fluctuations in cellular energy and detecting changes in cellular redox. Cellular redox
means the balance between oxidative and antioxidant reactions in the cell. That balance is
determined by the levels of two kinds of compounds oxidative radicals and antioxidants.
So how does that redox balance affect your body?
Here again, due to misinformation, there exists a false perception
based on good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are oxidative
radicals and the good guys are antioxidants. It has been commonly
thought that oxidative radicals (the bad guys) increase oxidative
stress, whereas antioxidants (the good guys) save us from the
harmful effects of oxidative radicals. So how bad are oxidative
radicals? And how good are antioxidants?
The truth is that both oxidative radicals and antioxidants can be either good or bad.
Lets start with oxidative radicals. These metabolic byproducts of oxidative reactions can turn
harmful when chronically accumulated in the cell such as due to inflammatory diseases, where
they damage cellular membranes, proteins, lipids and DNA. However, under certain
conditions, oxidative radicals become not only beneficial but rather critical.

Oxidative radicals play essential roles in adaptation to stress.

They act as signals to improve adaptation to physical hardship such as during exercise. In fact,
a certain threshold level of oxidative radicals is needed to tone the cell and incredibly, this
very oxidative threshold of is what keeps the muscles energy and antioxidant systems intact.
The dynamics between oxidative radicals and antioxidants may seem paradoxical. High
threshold concentrate of oxidative radicals in the muscle, such as after intense training, is
acting as a trigger to adapt and improve rather than degrade.
The free radicals threshold in the muscle is essentially what triggers adaptation to
exercise.
Two of the most important effects of elevated oxidative radicals in the muscle are: increased
expression of stress response genes (and antioxidant enzymes) and increased mitochondrial
biogenesis. Muscle durability depends on both. However
These beneficial effects can be utterly negated by excess antioxidants.

How excess antioxidants negate the beneficial effects of exercise

High dosages of synthetic antioxidants have been shown to shatter
muscle adaptability to exercise, as they disrupt cellular redox, suppress
mitochondrial biogenesis, inhibit antioxidant enzymes and impair
resistance to stress.
Several reports reveal deleterious effects of antioxidants and vitamins
on animals and humans. As early as 1921, it was shown that vitamin E
supplementation in 400 iu/day (a commonly used dosage) caused an
unfavorable decrease in endurance performance. In 1996 and 1997, a
Scandinavian journal published 2 reports showing the adverse effects
of antioxidant supplementation (Ubiquinon-10) on high intensity training performance in
humans. In 2001, Coombes et al reported that supplementation with vitamin E and alpha
lipoic acid depressed muscle contractile force in animals. One year later, it was shown that
supplementation of racing greyhound dogs with 1g vitamin C/day for 4 weeks significantly
slowed their speed.
Suffice to say that the common practice of supplementation with synthetic vitamins and
antioxidants should be seriously questioned.

The B vitamins syndrome

B vitamins are water soluble compounds, acting as catalysts and cofactors in multiple
enzymatic processes involving energy production, hormones synthesis, neurotransmitters
activation and stress response functions. Because of their great appeal, B vitamins are
commonly added to food stuff for nutritional enrichment.
However, though largely considered safe, there is growing evidence that B vitamins could turn
harmful when applied in large concentrations. It is now known that an excess of a single B
vitamin not only turns potentially toxic, it can cause depletion of other B vitamins.
For instance, excess of vitamin B1 has shown to disrupt insulin
production. Excess of vitamin B3 niacin has shown to cause liver
damage. And while niacin megadosages have been commonly
prescribed as an alternative medicine to lower cholesterol, excess
of this vitamin has shown to adversely affect glaucoma, gout,
liver disease and peptic ulcers. And there is more.
Excess of synthetic vitamin B6 pyridoxine has shown to cause liver damage when used in
therapeutic dosages (over 200 mg/daily) for a long term. These so-called therapeutic
potencies are currently available over the counter in stores nationwide. Even folic acid, which
is considered safe and highly beneficial, could turn harmful in high doses (5-10 mg);
symptoms include bloating, nausea and upset stomach. High dosages of folic acid may also
result in increased occurrence of seizures among individuals suffering from epilepsy.
Why then these presumably safe water soluble vitamins turn harmful in vivo? Because like
other synthetic vitamins, they lack the biological design of food based vitamins and similar to
drugs, theyre absorbed in overly-high concentrations and mess with the bodys metabolism.
In comparison, natural B vitamins are non-toxic and cannot be absorbed in excess.
No vitamin manufacturer in the world yet figured out how to artificially synthesize what nature
has been providing us since the genesis of the human species. Regardless to how fancy,
sophisticated and advanced a vitamin formula claims to be, it can never be properly
assimilated and utilized unless its ingredients are naturally occurring as in food.

How to detect the difference between natural and synthetic vitamins?

You can detect the difference between natural and synthetic vitamins according to their
claimed potencies. Synthetic vitamins potencies are thousand to hundred thousand and even
million times higher than those of natural vitamins (grams and milligrams vs. nanograms and
picograms). Natural vitamins never appear in high concentrations. When it comes down to
essential nutrients, nature provides us with balance, complexity and bioavailability but not with
excess potency.

Check where your vitamins are coming from. A truly natural food based vitamin product
should indicate the exact natural source from which the vitamins are obtained. Note that
sources for synthetic vitamins manufacturing include petrochemicals, coal tar, chemically
manipulated sugar and inorganic minerals.

Final Note
It may take another decade or perhaps a century for scientists to fully elucidate the magnitude
of benefits we get from whole foods nutrients vs. the harmful effects we get from synthetic
nutrients, and accordingly establish indisputable principles upon which human nutrition
should be based.
Until then, you need to rely on available data on human biology. Biology means logic of life.
In todays world you must know how to recognize and use that logic to better survive.
For more information, please visit
http://www.defensenutrition.com

Warrior Vitamin C
Natural vitamin C is required for protecting cells and tissues from
oxidative free radicals. Vitamin C also plays important roles in collagen
formation, brain neurotransmitters production, and adrenal function.
Unlike synthetic vitamin C, which is devoid of nutritional cofactors, and
has shown to cause undesirable side effects, Vitamin C from Amla
Berries is a natural complex of vitamin C and cofactors, received by the
body as whole food and causes no adverse side effect.

Plant Based Multi Vitamins and Minerals

Defense Nutritions Plant Based Multi-Vitamins & Minerals was
created to fill a void in todays marketplace and serve as a viable
alternative to synthetic vitamins products as well as supplements made
with a blend of natural and synthetic ingredients. The formulas plantbased ingredients are assimilated as whole food as theyre naturally
utilized by the body with no side effects.

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