Vitamin suppliments - Topsteroidsonline

Where do vitamin supplements come from? How are they made? Are they more natural than white flour, sugar or medicines?

When people say "drugs" they are thinking of something artificial. And when he says "vitamins" he is thinking of something natural. But both drugs and vitamins or dietary supplements can be natural or artificial.

Natural substances are not necessarily beneficial. Hemlock, hallucinogenic mushrooms, rhubarb leaves and sprouted beans are all natural but potentially deadly.

There are 6 categories of nutrients used in the manufacture of vitamin supplements.

1. Natural sources
This includes nutrients from plants, animals or minerals. But before they reach the vitamin bottle, they undergo intense processing and refining. Examples include vitamin D from fish liver oils, vitamin E from vegetable oils and natural beta-carotene.

When a vitamin is classified as "natural", it should include only 10% of the plant-derived ingredients. The other 90 percent can be synthetic.

For example vitamin E tocopherols, which can be extracted from vegetable oils (often low-cost soybean oil):

First, the soybeans are crushed and the protein is removed by precipitation.
Then, the remaining oil is distilled to become the vegetable oil that is packaged on the shelves.
The remaining material is solubilized and all carbohydrates are removed.
Vitamin E is extracted with the remaining solvents from the wax and lecithin.
Synthetic alpha-tocopherol is a combination of 8 isomers, natural alpha-tocomerol is only one isomer, and the consumption of more isomers can decrease bioavailability (how much vitamin E is absorbed from the intestines).

Another example is vitamin D3. Manufacturing begins with 7-dehydrocholesterol (usually from woolly oils), which turns into cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) when exposed to ultraviolet light.

2. Identical natural sources
It includes nutrients manufactured in the laboratory with a molecular structure identical to that of nutrients that appeared spontaneously in nature. This process is usually preferred because it has a lower cost and some natural ingredients are more difficult to procure. Most of the standard vitamins on the market today are produced this way.

An example is vitamin C. Much of the vitamin C on the market is synthetic and comes from China. Vitamin C is a weak acid. Many supplements use different salts (sodium ascorbate, calcium ascorbate, magnesium ascorbate) to reduce acidity.

The most popular form of synthetic vitamin C is ascorbic acid. Natural vitamin C is the same molecule as synthetic ascorbic acid. But in food, ascorbic acid is found in the vitamin C complex along with other compounds. Ascorbic acid in supplements is often derived from cornstarch, corn sugar or rice starch, and is chemically dependent on volatile acids.

Vitamin C synthesis by two-step fermentation was developed by China in the 1960s.

3. Synthetic only
These nutrients are made in the laboratory and differ from the variants found in nature. Synthetic vitamins may have the same chemical constituents, but a different form. For example, the famous Centrum vitamins are only synthetic.

It is an important thing, because certain enzymes in the human body work properly only if the vitamin has the correct shape. When we give the body concentrated forms of synthetic nutrients, it seems that it cannot absorb them optimally.

The raw material for strictly synthetic supplements can be anything from coal tar to oil or acetylene gas. These supplements are made in factories by chemical handling in order to replicate the structure of isolated vitamins. The exact formulas used are not made public (no such information can be found anywhere ... and it is legal, being "patented formulas").

An example is vitamin B1. Coal tar is most often used as a raw material for this vitamin (yes, coal extracted from mines where miners protest on the Jiu Valley work). Hydrochloric acid is usually added to allow precipitation. Then it goes through other processes such as fermentation, heating, cooling and other steps, until a synthetic vitamin is obtained. It is then dried and tested for purity before being sent to distributors.

To get a natural B1 supplement, the process is quite different. The food or plant that contains the desired vitamin is harvested and cleaned (say wheat germ). It is then placed in a tub to be mixed with water and filtered to create an extract and remove the fibers. What remains after filtration contains the nutrients found in the original food. It is then dried and ready for packaging.

4. Food crops
They are the kind of microbial cultures such as those that occur in yogurt, kefir, miso or pickles. Nutrients for supplements are often increased in yeast or algae. Such crops create nutrients with a high absorption fence.

The raw material (minerals and some synthetic substances) is added to the yeast / algae suspension where it is concentrated in the cells. Then the yeasts / algae are harvested, broken and transformed into vitamin supplements. The theory is that yeasts / algae contain the nutrients they are fed as a whole complex.

Sometimes the vitamins obtained through cultures are combined with the synthetic ones to increase their potency (to increase the weight of micrograms / milligrams on the label). But keep in mind that counting the milligrams of a synthetic vitamin is not comparable to what is found in a whole food.

5. Food sources
They are obtained by the enzymatic reactions of some synthetic and natural vitamins with extracts that contain vegetable proteins and their transformation into supplements. It is not the same with food crops because nutrients are not raised in whole foods, as is the case with yeast / seaweed suspensions.

It is not a process too often used because it results in nutrients with low potency, fluctuating levels, limited shelf life. Nutrients are easily degraded by heat, changes in pH, light and oxygen.

6. Bacterial fermentation
These are nutrients obtained by genetic modification of bacteria. These bacteria can produce metabolites that are nutrients.

Examples include CoQ10, amino acids, ergocalciferol (D2), K2, riboflavin, B12 (this vitamin is obtained only through the fermentation process, because the natural source of B12 is the metabolic activity of bacteria, more precisely the bacteria in animal meat / tissues).

For example, vitamin D2 is obtained by irradiating mushrooms. It is not a natural form of vitamin D. The starting form is ergosterol, a plant sterol derived from fungal cell membranes. Ergosterol is converted to ultraviolet light viosterol, and then converted to ergocalciferol (D2).

What you should know about vitamin supplements
Intense vitamin production began in the 1930s and after World War II began to spread throughout the world. One third of the population of developed countries use vitamin supplements.

Nutrients from food
The main reason they are used is that people are afraid that they are not getting enough nutrients from their food. It is a well-founded fear, nutrients can be lost through soil fertilization, pesticides, herbicides, industrialization of agriculture, etc. It is known that the nutritional value of vegetables has been declining since 1973. The absorption of vitamins ingested from whole foods varies between 20 and 98%.

Do Vitamin Supplements Prevent Illness?
A 2002 study found that it is good for adults to take a multivitamin supplement daily. It was not specified whether natural or synthetic. Other research has concluded that beyond the treatment of deficiencies, vitamin supplements do not support better health and do not prevent disease.

Some data indicate that vitamin supplements may increase the rate of cancer, cardiovascular and kidney disease. But the chances of getting sick increase just as much if you have micronutrient deficiencies. Therefore, the results are mixed.

Other sources of vitamins
Even if you do not use vitamin supplements, it is impossible to avoid synthetic ones altogether. Fortified foods (milk, cereals, shakes, meal replacements, etc.) contain such vitamins.

A report from the National Institutes of Health noted that those who consume high doses of single-ingredient supplements and fortified foods along with multivitamin / mineral supplements are exposed to side effects.

Conclusions
All available data indicates that we need to focus on what we eat, not what pills to take. Vitamin supplements are isolated from humans, which appear to be in the same class as synthetic drugs.

Some supplements even have real benefits, for example:

Folic acid for pregnant women.
Iron for the anemic
B vitamins for those who struggle with alcoholism.
Vitamin D for those who have undergone bariatric surgery.
Vitamin C for those suffering from scurvy.

But in a situation where it is possible to take nutrients from whole foods, choosing to replace them with supplements does not support health and supplements can do more harm than good.

If you want a natural vitamin supplement, look for one whose label says so. If the power of the vitamin in question is higher than what you find in nature (for example 1000% vitamin B3 per serving), it most likely contains synthetic ingredients.

12.05.2021