So many people are on medications that they don't want to be on, especially older adults. Sometimes these people are resistant to taking vitamins as well because they just don't want to take another pill. However, there is a big difference between a prescription or over-the-counter drug and a nutritional supplement. We cannot place them into the same category, even though we take them in a similar form.



Nutritionals are natural

First drugs are not natural substances. They are foreign to the body and have their effect by interacting with a normal biological process to change it in some way. Nutritional supplements, on the other hand, are natural products and normal parts of the body's biology. They contain vitamins and minerals that are required by the body to operate normally. Nutritional supplements just add to the amount of nutrition that we get from our food.

This is also why it is difficult to do scientific studies with nutritional supplements. With a drug, it is easy to give one group of people the drug and another group a placebo (or fake drug pill) and see what happens. But with nutritional supplements you can't just withhold vitamins and minerals from one group of people, because they are required to survive. Study participants will get some level of the test vitamin from their food, even if it is not enough, and that will interfere with the standard experimental design of the study. In fact, it would be unethical to try and completely eliminate a vitamin from someone's diet in a scientific study because we know that harm would be done.

Drugs are mostly interferers

Second, drugs usually act by interfering with one of the body's natural processes in order to have some desired effect. For example, statin drugs, used to lower cholesterol, actually interfere with the normal process that the body uses to manufacture cholesterol ? thereby lowering it's levels in the blood. Most drugs work in a similar way by interfering with some normal function. Alternatively, nutritional supplements boost the amounts of vitamins and minerals so that the body's biological processes get plenty of the stuff that they need to function optimally. Vitamins and minerals help biological process whereas most drugs interfere with them.

Drugs are potent

Third, drugs are often taken in very small amounts because they are very powerful at interfering with their targets. Nutritional supplements are taken in much larger amounts because they are a part of so many different functions all over the body.

My mother once asked me why vitamin pills had to be so big. After all, her medications were tiny little pills. Well, this is why. Vitamins are typically taken in amounts thousands of times greater than drugs. For example, a good daily dose of vitamin C is in the range of 2,000 milligrams or more while many drugs are taken in the amount of about 0.02 milligrams. Add to that the fact that a good supplement has a large number of different vitamins, minerals and other natural compounds. This forces vitamin pills to get large very quickly. In fact, a quality daily supplement won't fit into a single reasonably sized capsule.

Drugs have side effects

Finally, many drugs actually reduce the level of natural substances that the body needs. To use statin drugs as an example again, they interfere with the manufacturing of an important substance called CoQ10 at the same time that they interfere with cholesterol manufacturing. This is because cholesterol and CoQ10 are made by the same biological process. CoQ10 is very important in the production of energy in every cell in your body, but especially important in the heart and the brain. In fact, recent studies have suggested that CoQ10 supplementation is beneficial to prevent heart attacks. Unfortunately, many people at risk for heart attacks are taking statin medications, which are lowering CoQ10 in their bodies.

So even though it is sometimes discomforting to pop a handful of medications, please don't think of your vitamin supplements in the same way. Drugs are treatments for disease. Vitamins are promoters of health.

Copyright (c) 2007 The Brain Code LLC