Are You Taking Trash Supplements?

Are you wasting your money taking junk supplements?

In any discussion of product quality, the most fundamental point of consideration must be the dissolution characteristics of the product.

Obviously, it makes absolutely no difference what nutrients are in a product if that product does not dissolve in the GI tract in time for those nutrients to be absorbed.

Most vitamins and minerals have a very narrow window of opportunity for absorption, consisting of a few feet in the upper jejunum (upper part of the small intestine where most absorption takes place)

Clearly, if a tablet reaches that point of the intestine without completely disintegrating, the vitamins and minerals it contains will pass right on through, unabsorbed, and totally wasted.

The tragically comical truth about most supplements is that they are totally worthless, regardless of what beneficial nutrients they may contain, simply because the tablets have such a substantial coating that the product does not dissolve nearly in time for nutrient absorption.

When patients bring their favorite health food store supplements to me for evaluation, the first thing I look at is the list of excipients. Excipents is what holds the supplement together. Without excipents you would have only powder. The following is a list of some of the excipents listed in Centrum Silver.

Over my 27 years of practice, I have had many patients ask for my opinion on some new multi-vitamin. Quite often I tell the patient, "To read the list of nutrients in these tablets is to waste as much of my time as you have wasted each time you have swallowed them. You might as well pour this bottle down the toilet --- since that is where it all ends up anyway.

My only consideration is nutrient availability to my patients. That is why I use what I sincerely believe is the best multi-vitamin with the thinnest vegetable protein glaze or gelatin that will hold the supplement together.

The Shelf Life Problem

For most companies the primary consideration is shelf life. They want their product to look exactly the same after sitting on the health food store shelves or a doctor's office shelves for 3 years as it did the day it was made.

To achieve that, of course, they have to encase the capsule or tablet in extremely stable excipients.

The problem is that such a heavy coating precludes the dissolution of the product in time for its nutrients to do any good.

Are pill makers and nutrition distributors really so ignorant as to not know the essentials of product dissolution and nutrient absorption?

Sadly, the natural food industry is perhaps the dirtiest in the world; the manufacturers and distributors don't give a hoot about the efficacy of their products --- $$$$ is all that matters to them.

There are excipients that will guarantee you are wasting your money and filling your toilet with your hard earned money.

Go right now and take a look at your multi-vitamin and see if your supplement has any of the following excipients.

The first is di-calcium phosphate, which inhibits absorption of mineral nutrients.

Another is microcrystalline cellulose, widely used in the nutrition and pharmaceutical industries. Ingested over a period of years, it can cause micro infarcts and thus tissue death throughout the body. Cellulose is indigestible, but in microcrystalline form the cellulose particles are so small they are passively absorbed into the blood. There is no way to metabolize or to eliminate the cellulose, so it accumulates in the body to the point it can block small blood vessels.

Carrageenan is another common excipient that will cause tissue damage over time.

When comparing other companies supplements to quality supplements like the one I take, Oxygenic B, many of those products can be eliminated from consideration based on poor nutrient availability or toxic excipients --- before you even look at what nutrients might be offered.

Now, let us take the next step and discuss what nutrients to be commonly found on labels are a sure tip-off that the product is cheap trash.

We need to make sure you really understand the difference between a quality product like Oxygenic B and some of the garbage that masquerades as professional supplementation.

There is more to consider beyond excipients and dissolution characteristics.

Not only commonly used excipients, but even some nutrients, are widely used that interfere with the absorption of nutrients.

One extremely common example is magnesium in oxide form. Magnesium oxide is without a doubt the most common form of magnesium used in supplements.

Is there a problem with magnesium oxide? --- Yes, a problem so huge that any product containing magnesium oxide should be immediately discarded.

You see, magnesium oxide causes an extremely alkaline condition in the upper GI tract.

Why is that a problem?

Many minerals and trace minerals, including magnesium, calcium, copper, manganese, and iron, need an extremely acid environment in which to be absorbed.

Absorption of these minerals and trace minerals occurs very high in the jejunum for obvious reasons --- that is immediately below the acid stomach and before the alkalizing secretions of the bile duct take full effect.

There is literally only a few feet of the upper jejunum where absorption of these minerals and trace minerals must occur --- now or never.

When a product contains a substantial quantity of magnesium oxide, the acidification necessary for absorption of these mineral nutrients never occurs, and they are wasted.

Why, then, do supplement suppliers use magnesium oxide?

Simply --- it is cheap and stable.

Do these nutrition companies not know the problems GI alkalization by magnesium oxide?

Ask them!

All I can tell you is that if you see magnesium oxide on a product, the peddler of that product is either ignorant or dishonest. In either case, you do not want to be dealing with that kind of company.

There is another problem with common trash supplements that is probably just as significant as the low bio-activity of the nutrients provided, and that has to do with the proportions between the various nutrients supplied.

Suppose you see a label listing 6000% of the recommended daily allowance of this nutrient, and 1500% of the recommended daily allowance of that nutrient --- ultra mega doses of cheap vitamins, in no particular proportion to one another, and completely out of proportion with the amount of minerals and trace minerals supplied?

That product is an absolute disaster as a multiple supplement.

But remember, most folks have no way of knowing that more is NOT better.

Unfortunately most people will look at a label in a health food store that features 50-100 milligrams of all the B vitamins and believe they are getting more for their money.

What most people are not being told is the fact that every vitamin has an absorption curve, which is a graph of the percent of different size doses that the GI tract can absorb.

As an example, consider Vitamin B1. The absolute maximum quantity of Vitamin B1 that a human being is capable of absorbing is 4 milligrams.

Up to a little less than 2 milligrams almost 100% of the dose is absorbed.

After 2 mg the absorption percentage drops off dramatically to the point where anything above 4 milligrams is not absorbed at all.

For more information on the multi-supplement I take and have been recommending for my patients for over 15 years, click here