Could Vitamins and Food Supplements Harm?

Absolutely, the answer is yes. Even if they are most conventional, well known and answering the FDA rules and regulations of manufacturing practices. The pills and powders you paid a lot of money for may contain wrong ingredients and contaminants like bacteria, fungi, various toxins and side products of photosynthesis, pesticides, heavy metals, glass, food coloring, and more. Many “special’ components can cause allergic reactions, and it is easy to overdose on one or more ingredients if the labeling is not accurate or if you combined a few different sources, or have already had received your daily norm by means of normal food.

Then why are these pills pushed so hard on the market and most internet articles praise them with rather positive reviews? Could it be the same reason one would have to dig really hard to find a detailed description of the illegal drugs detrimental health effects? The first few pages on most search engines about, say, opiates, will tell you a slightly hidden but mostly flattering story about the pain relieve and pleasure they provide. Get a clue? Correct, just follow the money!

Here’s an example: spirulina, a well known and widely advertised food supplement obtained from dried cyanobacteria. There is nothing cheaper to make any one could imagine: these are the most primitive prokaryotic organisms found in every pond and ditch, and make any bucket of water green if left outside for a few days or so. Though often referred to as blue-green algae, these organisms are unicellular monerians which contain liver-damaging toxins from their microcysts. Yet, many “promoters” call these organisms plants and assign magical almighty healing powers to spirulina in all aspects of human health and organ systems including digestive, circulatory, nervous, excretory, reproductive, immune, you name it! Harry Potter could just go take a hike here. If something seems too good to be true, there is big chance it isn’t. In fact majority of spirulina and other food supplement promoters do not even show signs of biological knowledge at all claiming for instance scientifically undocumented effects of chlorophyll on human blood composition and other Mickey Mouse “discoveries”.

Now back to overdose and how detrimental it could really be. Here are some well documented examples. Excessive intake of vitamin A (such as retinol) can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, abdominal pain, blurred vision, dizziness, liver damage, brittle nails, loss of hair, severe depression, drowsiness, lethargy, anemia, muscle pain, gingivitis and many other problems including coma. It is easy to overdose by taking A supplements, while it is virtually impossible to do by just eating eggs, milk, beef liver, wild salmon or carrots. Like many other fruit and vegetables the latter contain beta-carotene, a precursor for retinol production in human body. If you made your child consume a lot of carrots the worst thing that could happen is his(or her) hands turning orangey. No liver damage.

Being a product of evolution our body is adapted to derive nutrients from food sources we had access to for millions of years. Mostly hunters and gatherers, our ancestors came to rely more on agriculture only in the past few thousand years, or a few seconds ago on the evolutionary scale. And yet that provided enough time to select for DNA mutations encoding for more salivary amylase to break down starches. We are evolving pretty fast, but not as fast as to catch up with the last few decades commercially produced concentrated food “bombs” like spirulina. It is claimed to possess in 1 kg the same amount of nutrients found in 1,000 kgs of “assorted vegetables”. Its promoters are trying to convince the users that with “such a high concentration of healthy nutrients, good things will happen”.

What an unfounded conclusion! Why would anybody need to consume that much of anything at once? The same logic is heard here and there from many vitamin consumers such as “you would need to eat tons of oranges to obtain the same amount of vitamin C as in the pill (capsule, powder)”. Why, why would you want to consume that much?! To get bloated, hypoglycemic and develop kidney stones?

The old biology textbooks used to tell how dangerous the vitamin and microelement deficiencies were, but did not have much information about over dosage. That was before the age of pills, powders and chews. Even a few generations back our great-grandparents could not have routinely overdosed on food nutrients. An apple or two a day couldn’t have harmed any body. A century ago you wouldn’t come across the reports here and there of a teenager dying from internal bleeding on the way to a hospital after overdosing on iron supplement. Poor kid, all he wanted was to build up some muscles through “magic” pills. Today we are readily exposing our bodies to the overdose of substances that can hurt faster than heal. We are placing ourselves in the unnatural situation to which we are not adapted, and therefore do not have a defense mechanism.

We wouldn’t be here today if our ancestors made wrong choices. So for the sake of future generations why not to stick to natural foods which we are adapted to and supplement our diet artificially only in case of serous starvation or disease. We have more means than cave paintings today to conduct our research and identify missing nutrients from your diet and their natural sources. Examples:

• To make your hair shiny and stimulate its growth try raspberries. Raspberry ketones were found to grow hair, rejuvenate skin elasticity and reduce body fat.
• To cure eye and skin lesions and improve male sexual performance try pumpkin seeds, they are high in Zn, an essential microelement.
• To prevent osteoporosis try honey: not only it contains calcium, but also is shown to promote calcium uptake by bones.
• To lower your blood pressure try watermelon: it is rich in potassium which keeps salt from raising blood pressure, regulates cardiac cycle and may prevent kidney stones formation.
• To prevent anemia and infections try beets: besides numerous vitamins, they contain iron, potassium and cancer fighting agents like betanin.
• To protect your body from radioactive isotopes of cesium and strontium in the vicinity of nuclear disasters and ecological catastrophes consume large amounts of iodine containing foods like sea weed salads, strawberries, and mozzarella cheese. The iodine will displace other metals from coenzymes and cofactors and prevent their accumulation.
• To prevent arthritis, gout and other inflammatory diseases try cherries: they contain anthocyanins which in some studies were found to be as powerful as aspirin.

This list may be continued indefinitely. Our body can find something useful and extract nutrients from all natural foods our ancestors had ever been exposed to. It is those modern commercially manufactured and concentrated pills and powders we should really be worried about.