What is the most important part of a car? The normal response would be “the engine.” Take the engine out of the car and then how far are you going to get?
Take the cogs out of a watch? How good is a watch then?
Take beta carotene out of a carrot, how good is the beta carotene now?
This is what pharmaceuticals and 98% of all supplement manufacturers do. They take out the nutrient/vitamin that is thought of as the most powerful and then increase the grams of the “isolated fragment,” to create ‘high potency’ vitamins. At first you would think, “That’s a pretty clever idea!” But the car without the engine, or even the engine without the frame and tires, will not get you far! We are the sum of our parts. Nature has perfectly made fruits, vegetables, and herbs which do not need to be manipulated.
Did you know there are over 200 nutrients, phyto-chemicals, vitamins and minerals inside a carrot? When we take beta carotene out of this natural envelope the body sees it as a foreign element. We are now finding that beta carotene is much stronger when left in its natural envelope with the other 200 nutrients a carrot contains. These other nutrients serve to balance each other out and reduce any possible side affects. It is the whole carrot and all of its synergistic cofactors which make beta carotene famous! Think of beta carotene as a famous movie star that can’t really act. It was beta’s agents and great marketing that made her powerful and rich!
Ephedra is a drug that is now banned by the FDA and can only be used by Chinese herbalists. Why? We use the whole ephedra leaf or stem. Not just the isolated chemical that stimulates rapid biochemical changes within the body – that is the substance that is banned. When ephedra was taken out of its natural envelope and its potency increased in the laboratory – side affects occurred.
We all know who wins in a fight between enriched flour versus whole flour. Taking the surface layer off the flour is once again another great example of humans trying to better something that is already perfect. These are the same things that your supplement companies do to create ‘mega dosage’ vitamins.
It is common knowledge that eating organic whole foods is our best dietary option. So its now time to use this same notion when we chose our supplements and herbs. Whole supplements may have small grams on their labels but with all of the other nutrients, phyto-chemicals, trace minerals and synergistic co-factors there is no need to increase the grams. These other nutrients increase the bioavailability of the desired substance thus giving the cells a chance to heal. High grams are just that – heavy. Isolated substances change the biochemistry too rapidly, do not heal tissue, and are not anywhere near as bio-available as whole foods or herbs.
Please don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with the human desire to improve and invent new things. But the old saying ‘don’t change something if it is not broken,’ needs to be applied here. The environment, our bodies, herbs and foods are finely tuned. Choosing whole food supplements is the way to go.
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