In an effort to protect themselves and their families from frightening and serious health problems, people are changing their diets and are taking herbs and supplements.

Why do they need vitamin supplements? Due to the depletion and demineralization of topsoil, the contaminations of produce from pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, the over processing, enriching and preservation - foods just don't have the same nutritional value they once had. To get the same amount of iron that was available to Popeye in one can of spinach, today he would have to consume 65 cans. An orange that once contained 50 mg of natural Vitamin C complex in 1950, now contains 5 mg.

We've all have gotten used to reading literature proclaiming the benefits of vitamins, deciding what is wrong with us and heading to the health food store to buy what we've decided we need We often end up buying all kinds of supplements - but are we any healthier? People are still fatigued, still overweight, still fighting the cholesterol battle, etc. etc. etc.

The body runs on vitamins, minerals, nutrients and oxygen just like your car runs on gas, water and oxygen. But what happens if you put the wrong gas, or worse some other liquid, into your car? Not only will it not work, it may damage the engine. The same thing can happen when you put the wrong vitamins in your body.

We can get healthier if we understand what most vitamins today really are - they're synthetic. Let's talk about synthetic vitamins

What are synthetic vitamins made of? Let's define some words:

Natural: These are vitamins not tapered with and are the way they are in nature, not tapered with in any way that might change their molecular structure or biochemical actions. This can also be called whole food supplements.

Crystalline - these are vitamins originally from food but treated with heat, caustic, high-powered solvents (such a s benzene or toluene) chemicals, and distillations to reduce them to a specific vitamin.

Synthetic - These are vitamins made in a laboratory that are chemically reconstructed versions of the crystalline vitamins from other known sources. Thiamine mononitrate (a synthetic vitamin labeled as B1), is made from coal. It's not "organic" just because it has carbon in its molecular structure.

One of the most perilous deceptions is the passing off of these phony, synthetic vitamins and saying that the body does not know the difference. In the long run, we will compound our health problems by taking them.

Keep in mind that synthetic vitamins are not the vitamin available in foods, but synthesized (made in a laboratory) fractions (parts) of a vitamin complex, The analogy here is essentially the same as an automobile salesman handing you a wheel from a car and telling you the wheel is an automobile.

In an example we look at vitamin C. You can buy "vitamin C" that is called

"Ascorbic Acid". Ascorbic acid is only one small part of the vitamin C complex. Vitamin C has enzymes, co-enzymes, antioxidants, trace elements, activators, and other unknown factors that enable the vitamin to go into the biochemical operation.

In turn, the human physiology cannot properly utilize these synthetic fractions in the way that natural complexes work in the body and are essential to tissue repair and the sustenance of life.

When a person starts taking a fraction of a vitamin - and has sufficient reserves in his body of all the other components of the vitamin to recombine and process, the person may experience some improvement for a time. However when those reserves are drained, the vitamin will no longer benefit the person. Thus, a person may feel an increase in energy for a short period of time, but if taken for an extended period of time, the effects will reverse.

When vitamins were first discovered, they were discovered in foods. When foods were studied a lot was learned. Studies that show that vitamins work use a food source nutrient. In studies showing that vitamins don't work, a synthetic was always used.

Additionally, the body actually has to recognize what you are putting into your body as food. Like the finicky cat, that looks at some new food offered it and says "what is that?" You're body does the same thing. It doesn't recognize the synthetic vitamins and often just sends it right back out of the body.

A synthetic vitamin fraction can only be utilized for a drug or pharmacological effect. The effect of a drug is palliative - meaning a making or covering over of symptoms - it isn't curative. The disease process remains unchanged or progressively gets worse for lack of proper attention.

What is needed is vitamins that come from whole food, which comes along with all the co-factors present when you eat a food.

Tissue and cell repair, or replacement, require the following to restore the approximately 24 billion cells that break down each day in the human body.

·A constant, uninterrupted nerve impulse supply

·A constant, uninterrupted blood supply

·All of the VITAMINS in a natural, complex form.

·All of the minerals in an organic form in most instances

·All of the trace elements essential to metabolism

·All of the enzymes, coenzymes, and apoenzymes

·All of the 22 or more amino acids from protein hydrolysis

·A discontinuance of organic or inorganic poisons either inhaled or ingested in bad air, bad food and/or bad water.

This doesn't happen using fractionated vitamins.

What is a natural vitamin or supplement? It is a whole food supplement, made from food, not made in the laboratory.