Natural vs. Synthetic Supplements

The most expensive vitamin you can buy is the one that doesn’t work!

Many of my patients ask me why the vitamins I sell in my office are more expensive than the vitamins they can buy at Walgreens or Walmart. True, the supplements we sell in the office do cost more, but they also work better. Multi-vitamins like Centrum, One-A-Day and other such products do not work. In some cases they may cause more harm than good.

The supplements I sell in the office are whole food supplements. These vitamins are made from whole food sources. These are vitamins as they are found in food, not tampered with in any way that could change their biological or biochemical combination, or actions. This means the supplements are recognized as a food source by your body and are absorbed just like food would be.

The supplements that you find at most drug stores are synthetic. The definition of synthetic as found in the Merriam Webster dictionary is: of, relating to, or produced by chemical or biochemical synthesis; especially: produced artificially.

Synthetic supplements are exactly as defined, artificially produced. Vitamins need to be in their whole form and not broken down to receive the full benefit of that vitamin.

Products such as One-A-Day and Centrum contain many ingredients you don’t recognize and some are even harmful to you. Three of these ingredients are calcium carbonate, polyethylene glycol, and crospovidine. Calcium carbonate is not a good form of calcium; it actually blocks your body’s absorption so you do not absorb the nutrients in the vitamin. Polyethylene glycol is used as a laxative, increasing water content in your body. Crospovidine has actually been found in autopsies in which substance abusers who injected this ingredient instead of taking orally, had trauma to their pulmonary vascular system. So how good can it be to take orally?

I encourage you all to look up the ingredients of products such as Centrum and One-A-Day and see what you find!

By Dr. Dustan J. Mattingly, D.C.