By Steven R Newton

Our bodies are naturally built to fight off disease. All things being healthy, they do it very well. But when things are out of balance, the body has to work harder in some of its systems to help others do what they're supposed to do. Pollution, in its many forms, and toxins from unnatural food sources deplete our bodies of their nutrients and vitamins and cause that imbalance. There are more free radicals and less antioxidants, for example, and the immune system is forced to work harder to try to keep us healthy. Over time, with less natural source nutrients in our diets and more toxins in our bodies, our immune systems have been genetically weakening. But fortunate for us, science has once again come forward with a solution. Synthetic vitamins and nutritional supplements have been developed in labs and mass produced for several decades now. We don't need rich, organic soil any more. We can use lots of fertilizers to grow enough food for everybody, and we can get our nutrients off the store shelf...or can we? What exactly is it we're getting off the store shelves these days?

Vitamins are organic micro-nutrients that the body needs to metabolize fats, carbohydrates and some proteins to create energy. Vitamins assist this process but they are not metabolized to provide energy nor are they manufactured by the body for the most part. They play a specific and critical role in the body's disease prevention, which has evolved from natural diets containing many nutrients. Vitamins are generally classified into one of 4 fat soluble types (A, D, E & K) or 9 water soluble types (C & 8 B's). The fat soluble types can be stored in the body for a period of time, whereas most of the water soluble types cannot and must be consumed frequently. In its natural form, a vitamin is a working process that made up of nutrients, enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants, and trace minerals. Clearly, the body's utilization of vitamins and nutrients is highly complex so how is it that the body can process synthetic vitamins? Or perhaps a more pertinent question is...can the body process synthetic vitamins the same way as those from natural food sources?

Vitamins are a complex biological process that only works when all of the parts of that process are present and working together the way they are supposed to be in concert with several other complex processes within the body. Vitamins will not work as they are intended if they are isolated from those processes. In fact, when they are isolated into their synthetic commercial forms they can act as toxins in the body and challenge the immune system. Large doses of synthetic vitamins can have very serious toxic effects, which can lead to illness or disease. Why is it that synthetic vitamins can be toxic to the body and natural source vitamins are not?

Naturally occurring food source vitamins function within a group of complex processes that the body is designed to depend on. If the process is incomplete, the body will attempt to build or repair that incompleteness, whereas in the natural complex it does not have to. This defence mechanism is genetically programmed into the body at the cellular level. When a synthetic incomplete compound is introduced into the system, the body views this as a mistake and assumes that there is supposed to be the complete process and attempts to add the missing pieces that it knows should be there. It works hard to convert the incomplete synthetic vitamins through the kidneys, skin and other organs. So the body doesn't receive what it needs in the first place, which is a form of stressor, and it has to work harder to repair which is yet another stressor. The end result from taking synthetic vitamins can be some form of negative health effect. So it makes sense that you should be taking natural source vitamins.

It is estimated that nearly 95% of all vitamin products in the stores today are synthetically manufactured. Some are fully synthetic and others are a mix of synthetic and naturally occurring. Note the term "naturally occurring" and not "natural". The term "natural" is a fairly loose word that is used extensively throughout a wide range of product marketing. You see it in food, hygiene, and household products. Because there is no exact definition of what natural is, many marketers have used it to try to position the product as being healthy the but the reality is a little more shocking than that. For example, food manufacturers are allowed to use the word natural, as in "natural fruit flavours", but they are not legally required to have any component of real fruit in it. Many processed food manufacturers are using chemical compositions to create the flavour. Same thing goes with the synthetic vitamins.

Most, if not all, synthetic vitamin manufacturers will use the term "natural" as part of the healthy marketing scheme. The only natural part of it might be some yeast or algae by-product that has been blended with synthetics. Because the yeast or algae by-product is derived from natural botanicals, the manufacturers can legally call them "natural". In fact, those few that use the term "naturally occurring", where they also identify the food source, have a product that has actual food source vitamin content in its composition. Given huge competition in the health supplements marketplace, it should come as no surprise that the large chain stores would buy their vitamin products in huge volumes so as to be competitive in price. Mass produced synthetics are definitely cheaper than the naturally occurring vitamins which are more expensive to produce. So now that you're all concerned about all those synthetic vitamins you've been taking all these years, you can rest assured that there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

The inspiration for this article come from an excerpt of a book that is published on the Organic Consumers Association website. The book is titled "The Vitamin Myth Exposed" by Brian Clement and from my perspective, if you're at all concerned about nutrition, vitamins and/or what's going on in the vitamin industry this is a must read. There is a movement afoot that is charged with the implementation of a new set of Naturally Occurring Standards (NOS), certification procedures, and labels which are truly "organic and beyond," and to expose the fact that 90% or more of the vitamins and supplements now on the market labeled as "natural" or "food based" actually are spiked with synthetic chemicals. There's more information on the website.

So, the next time you go to buy some vitamins, take a look at the label for the term "naturally occurring". If it's not there, you're probably looking at a product that is loaded with synthetically manufactured ingredients. For any alternative cancer treatment or cancer prevention plan, consider naturally occurring vitamins.

By Steven R Newton

Tough to put the pen down on a topic like this. Vitamins are supposed to be good for us...right? Here's a little bit of an insight into vitamins. More precisely, the difference between synthetically manufactured and naturally occurring vitamins from nature. It takes a few minutes to read so grab yourself a cup of green tea and enjoy the read.

Science is a wonderful thing. It has been at the basis of pretty much all technical and medical advances the planet has seen. We put a man on the moon. We discovered electricity. We can talk and see someone around the world in real time. We can measure very precise changes in a star several galaxies away. We can measure how far that star is away because we know how fast light travels. We can map body parts at the genetic level. And of course we've cured many diseases. Yet there is one thing that we've been told that science cannot do yet. And that is, cure cancer.

There are all kinds of science and money going into discovering that elusive cancer cure. In fact, it's one of the largest drivers in the global medical economy. Science has developed all sorts of cancer treatments, both in the conventional and alternative worlds. We all know that the standard approach to treating cancer by the conventional western medical community is usually based in chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. In fact I just heard from a friend that sounds all excited because tomorrow is her last round of chemotherapy and then she's off to Las Vegas for a few days before starting on surgery. Truth be told, I suspect it is the Vegas trip that is winning the excitement race with her right now. But all of these, and several other conventional cancer treatments exist today because of advances in science. Even most aspects of the alternative cancer treatment exist because of some form of science.

Several alternative cancer treatments are based in nutrition. One very common theme throughout this approach is that cancer is a deficiency disease, and that it can be treated by supplementing the diet either with natural food sources and/or using vitamins. In fact, the one thing that the conventional and alternative cancer treatment worlds can probably agree on is that people should eat healthy. Many people believe that natural balanced organic vegan diets based in fruits and vegetables can in fact cure cancer, but that claim is immediately dismissed by the majority of the conventional medical world. Yet one thing that you will find in many of the conventional and alternative cancer treatments is the use of vitamins and nutritional supplements.

Science is a wonderful thing. It has given us the ability to manufacture nutrition in a lab. But here's the kicker; no living thing, whether it be human, animal or plant has been successfully created from chemical compounds. It just hasn't happened yet. There have are some interesting things that have been done around cloning and stem cell research. No doubt about it. But those technologies have been based in existing living or preserved cells. No one has been able successfully create life from mixing a bunch of chemical compounds together. They've been able to duplicate the construct of something exactly, yet not give it life. A simple example is that of salt water where scientists can duplicate exactly the chemical composition of an ocean but no fish have been able to survive in it. So why is it that we would presume that vitamins and nutritious supplements made in a lab would provide us with the exact same benefits as those found in nature? Those very same vitamins and nutrients that the human body has evolved over many thousands of years to depend on for its very survival, or allow our brains to think and make sense of things, or keep our immune system working properly so we stay healthy. But the human body is unable to manufacture most of the vitamins it needs itself, so it takes them from other sources. Let's explore what the differences between synthetic and natural source nutrition might be. Let's talk dirty.

Most land based creatures have evolved on a diet based in plants, and from other creatures that eat plants. The plants need water to survive, but they also need nutrients which they take in from the soil. When those plants are eaten, the nutrients are passed on to the creatures that eat them. At all levels of the food chain, nutrients are passed on in a similar way. Our bodies have developed a highly efficient way of taking in and utilizing vitamins from natural foods, primarily plant sources. So we've come to depend on fruits, nuts and vegetables as a mainstay in our diets. Back in the day, before large scale commercial farming, most people had some sort of garden that they depended on. They knew that if they introduced natural source compost, whether it be plants or the manure from animals that had eaten the plants, then they would have healthier soil. This translated into healthier vitamin rich food crops and, consequently, healthier people. But then something happened.

As medical science evolved, the survival rates of people also increased. We were discovering new cures for just about everything. So as people lived longer, and survival rates increased, the population began to grow in turn creating more demand for food. So our agricultural practices transitioned from smaller scale, localized farms into massive economies-of-grand-scale industrial operations. Traditional farming methods were labour intensive, for the most part. The newer industrial operations, however, utilized machinery and farming became a profitable business to be in. The population was growing. Demand for agricultural products was growing so more people got in to it. But then something changed.

Science delivered to us that agricultural savior, the chemical fertilizer. Farmers loved it because they were able to harvest greater yields on an acre of land than they ever had before. So the population continued to grow and people needed more food. The farmers needed more fertilizer to grow more food. The cycle continued for decades. It was a good thing. However, science had created an agricultural fertilizer that didn't have the natural source nutrients that nature had once provided from the soils. So the fertilized food crops that people were eating were very deficient in the nutrients that our bodies needed. It's been discovered that today's modern agricultural practices have depleted the soils from over 70 of their trace elements (nutrients) to somewhere around 6 to 8. Because of this, people have not been getting the nutrients that they need and their immune systems have been working overtime to try to fight off disease. Any cancer treatment needs a strong immune system.