Nutrition

Not all supplements are regulated the same way and by the same standards.  Below are several ways supplements are regulated.   When choosing a vitamin, chose ones that follow Pharmaceutical GMP Standards, NSF Certification, and USP Certification.

GMP Quality Standards: (Good Manufacturing Practices)
FDA:

•  manufactures are responsible for determining the safety of the supplements, for manufacturing practices and quality control, less strict than the pharmaceutical model
• it is mandatory for all supplement companies to follow these standards

Pharmaceutical-Model:

• manufactures are tested for potency and purity, they are treated as if they are a drug company with strict practices and quality control measures
• they products must contain what is stated on the label (this is not the case with FDA GMP standards as there is no 3^rd party testing of this)
• is voluntary in the US
• is mandatory in Canada

NSF Dietary Supplement Certification

• means the facility and the laboratory were audited by third party agents to verify that the formulation and labels are accurate and that the products are pure

USP Dietary Supplement Verification Program

• they will not grant a certificate to a company if the product contains unsafe ingredients
• they verify each ingredient in the product
• they verify the product’s shelf life
• they verify the facility, laboratory, labels, and quality control measures
• they monitor performance of the product and how it dissolves

Resources and Further Reading: Nutrisearch’s Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements by Lyle MacWilliam

Print off the label and read the list of ingredients.

Look for ingredients such as ascorbic acid, natural or artificial organic flavoring, sucrolose, or yellow 6. These are all synthetic nutrients.  Another item to look for is ingredients that start with dl instead of d, like dl-alpha tocopheryl (Vitamin E). Lastly, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamin mononitrate, or cholecalciferol are all ingredients in synthetic multivitamins.

Knowing what you are putting into your body is the first and most important line of defense we have for living a healthy life.

Natural: nutrients come from vegetable, mineral, or animal sources that undergo little or no processing and retain most of their nutritional value. Examples are fish liver oil and all minerals.

Natural Source: nutrients are from vegetable, mineral or animal sources but undergo processing.  Examples are vitamins A and D from fish liver oil, vitamin E, lecithin, digestive enzymes, protein powders and amino acids.

Nature “Identical”: laboratory-manufactured nutrients that are identical in structure.  It is more costly or difficulty to extract the same nutrients from all-natural sources, which would make them too expensive or scarce.  Examples are vitamin C and the B vitamins.

Synthetic: are laboratory-manufactured nutrients that are not similar to the natural nutrient.  For example, vitamin E cannot be copied exactly.  Synthetic vitamins are inexpensive and are thus by many manufacturers.  These are often very inexpensive.

Whole Food or Food-grown: use raw materials by combining minerals and some pharmaceutically manufactured vitamins with yeast cells.  These are the most usable and available nutrients to the body.  They are also the most expensive.

Tablets: contain fillers, binders, lubricants, and coatings.  Fillers make the tablet large enough to take comfortably when the nutrient is a very small amount.  Binders hold ingredients together.  Lubricants coat the ingredients so they do not stick to the machines and are easier to swallow.  These added ingredients can hinder absorption in anyone who lacks stomach acid, experiences digestive problems or suffers from poor assimilation of nutrients.

Time-released: contain substances that reduce absorption even further, because they release nutrients over an extended period.  Since most nutrients are absorbed quickly in the small intestine, time-released tablets and capsules are the least absorbed.  Those with weak digestive systems have a hard time breaking them down.

Sublingual: bypass the digestive tract and are absorbed under the tongue.  Vitamin B12 is an example.

Chewables: contain natural or artificial sweeteners, flavoring and coloring to improve their taste and appearance along with the binders, fillers and coatings.  (Be sure to brush your teeth after taking chewable supplements to avoid tooth decay.)

Capsules: contain fillers. Capsules dissolve quickly and are easy to digest.

Powders and Liquids: Powders and liquids are easily absorbed.  Check labels for added sweetening, flavoring and coloring.

Everyone is talking about nutritional supplements.  Our doctors recommend them at our annual appointments.  There are a million ads for Centrum on the TV daily.  The shelves at the store and filled with so many choices of supplements they make my head hurt.  So how do you know what to choose?  How do you know which one is better?  Which one is safe?  Which one is actually making me healthier?   Which one is not a waste of money?

I have spent many hours reading books and researching all of these questions above.  I am not an expert on nutritional supplementation but I do know a lot about them.  So I wanted to share with you what I have learned.

Here are my 8 steps to choosing a nutritional supplement:

1. USP Standards: United States Pharmacopeia means the products you are taking will dissolve within 30-45 minutes of ingesting them.
2. GMP Standards: Good Manufacturing Practices means the vitamin is regulated by pharmaceutical (drug) company standards, under go periodic inspections, and follow strict control of procedures and documentation.
3. High RDA’s Levels: Recommended Daily Allowances, was established in the 1930’s as the minimal amount of supplementation needed to avoid pellagra, scurvy, and rickets.  The RDA’s are continually changing.  Recently Vitamin D was doubled due to the lack of it in most people’s diets.  Therefore, you should choose a supplement that says 50% DV or more.  Research suggests that the higher the percentage the better your chances of are reducing and minimizing diseases.
4. Pass on Liquid Supplements: most companies claim that liquid supplements absorb faster, but yet 90% of drugs given to people are in tablets.  Even aspirin is in a tablet form.  Also, many nutrients are absorbed at the same rate regardless if they are in tablet or liquid form.
5. Read the Label:
1. Watch out for ascorbic acid, natural or artificial organic flavoring, sucrolose, or yellow 6 lake, these are synthetic ingredients
2. Your vitamin should have these: calcium citrate (it is better than calcium gluconate), magnesium chelated
6. Check the Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements: this book was created by a researcher in Canada to help consumer choose a nutritional supplement easily.  Each supplement is rated on a number scale, o being low and 5 being high.  Only 4 companies received their 5 star standard award.  They are Creating Wellness Alliance, Douglas Laboratories, TrueStar Health, and USANA Health Sciences.
7. Don’t Base Your Decision on Price: Did you ever consider that most people will spend hours researching, saving, and test driving a car before they buy one—but when it comes to buying a vitamin, people choose the cheapest ones on the shelf.  We only have one body and one life.  How much is your health worth to you?
8. Compare Products to One Another: when you look at the label compare the RDA levels of different products, you will see dramatic differences between them (choose the one with higher RDA levels)

 One more…..Is your vitamin listed in the Physicians Desk Reference?  Doctors use this book to determine which drugs should be given to their patients for certain symptoms.  Therefore, anything mentioned in it is used to prevent and treat disease.

More information on nutritional supplements will be coming soon—because I love this topic.

I came across this several years ago.  Upon looking at all the ways sugar impacts our bodies some things started to click for me.  Many of the things listed below I experience when consuming sugar.   I hope that you will print off this list and highlight all the ways in which you see sugar impacting your body personally.

Contributed by Nancy Appleton, Ph.D
Author of the book Lick The Sugar Habit

In addition to throwing off the body’s homeostasis, excess sugar may result in a number of other significant consequences. The following is a listing of some of sugar’s metabolic consequences from a variety of medical journals and other scientific publications.

1. Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease.^1,2
2. Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body: causes chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium. ^3,4,5,6
3. Sugar can cause can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.^7,8
4. Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.^9,10,11,12
5. Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function.¹³
6. Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, biliary tract, lung, gallbladder and stomach.^{14,15,16,17,18,19,20}
7. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose and can cause reactive hypoglycemia.^21,22
8. Sugar can weaken eyesight.²³
9. Sugar can cause many problems with the gastrointestinal tract including: an acidic digestive tract, indigestion, malabsorption in patients with functional bowel disease, increased risk of Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.^{24,25,26,27,28}
10. Sugar can cause premature aging.²⁹
11. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.³⁰
12. Sugar can cause your saliva to become acidic, tooth decay, and periodontal disease.^31,32,33
13. Sugar contributes to obesity.³⁴
14. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as: arthritis, asthma, multiple sclerosis.^35,36,37
15. Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections)³⁸
16. Sugar can cause gallstones.³⁹
17. Sugar can cause appendicitis.⁴⁰
18. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.⁴¹
19. Sugar can cause varicose veins.⁴²
20. Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.⁴³
21. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.⁴⁴
22. Sugar can cause a decrease in your insulin sensitivity thereby causing an abnormally high insulin levels and eventually diabetes.^45,46,47
23. Sugar can lower your Vitamin E levels.⁴⁸
24. Sugar can increase your systolic blood pressure.⁴⁹
25. Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.⁵⁰
26. High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs)(Sugar molecules attaching to and thereby damaging proteins in the body).⁵¹
27. Sugar can interfere with your absorption of protein.⁵²
28. Sugar causes food allergies.⁵³
29. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.⁵⁴
30. Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.⁵⁵
31. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.^56,57
32. Sugar can impair the structure of your DNA.⁵⁸
33. Sugar can change the structure of protein and cause a permanent alteration of the way the proteins act in your body.^59,60
34. Sugar can make your skin age by changing the structure of collagen.⁶¹
35. Sugar can cause cataracts and nearsightedness.^62,63
36. Sugar can cause emphysema.⁶⁴
37. High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in your body.⁶⁵
38. Sugar lowers the ability of enzymes to function.⁶⁶
39. Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson’s disease.⁶⁷
40. Sugar can increase the size of your liver by making your liver cells divide and it can increase the amount of liver fat.^68,69
41. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney such as the formation of kidney stones.^70,71
42. Sugar can damage your pancreas.⁷²
43. Sugar can increase your body’s fluid retention.⁷³
44. Sugar is enemy #1 of your bowel movement.⁷⁴
45. Sugar can compromise the lining of your capillaries.⁷⁵
46. Sugar can make your tendons more brittle.⁷⁶
47. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.⁷⁷
48. Sugar can reduce the learning capacity, adversely affect school children’s grades and cause learning disorders.^78,79
49. Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha, and theta brain waves which can alter your mind’s ability to think clearly.⁸⁰
50. Sugar can cause depression.⁸¹
51. Sugar can increase your risk of gout.⁸²
52. Sugar can increase your risk of Alzheimer’s disease.⁸³
53. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalances such as: increasing estrogen in men, exacerbating PMS, and decreasing growth hormone.^84,85,86,87
54. Sugar can lead to dizziness.⁸⁸
55. Diets high in sugar will increase free radicals and oxidative stress.⁸⁹
56. High sucrose diets of subjects with peripheral vascular disease significantly increases platelet adhesion.⁹⁰
57. High sugar consumption of pregnant adolescents can lead to substantial decrease in gestation duration and is associated with a twofold increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.^91,92
58. Sugar is an addictive substance.⁹³
59. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.⁹⁴
60. Sugar given to premature babies can affect the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.⁹⁵
61. Decrease in sugar intake can increase emotional stability.⁹⁶
62. Your body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch.⁹⁷
63. The rapid absorption of sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese subjects.⁹⁸
64. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).⁹⁹
65. Sugar adversely affects urinary electrolyte composition.¹⁰⁰
66. Sugar can slow down the ability of your adrenal glands to function.¹⁰¹
67. Sugar has the potential of inducing abnormal metabolic processes in a normal healthy individual and to promote chronic degenerative diseases.¹⁰²
68. I.V.s (intravenous feedings) of sugar water can cut off oxygen to your brain.¹⁰³
69. Sugar increases your risk of polio.¹⁰⁴
70. High sugar intake can cause epileptic seizures.¹⁰⁵
71. Sugar causes high blood pressure in obese people.¹⁰⁶
72. In intensive care units: Limiting sugar saves lives.¹⁰⁷
73. Sugar may induce cell death.¹⁰⁸
74. In juvenile rehabilitation camps, when children were put on a low sugar diet, there was a 44 percent drop in antisocial behavior.¹⁰⁹
75. Sugar dehydrates newborns.¹¹⁰
76. Sugar can cause gum disease.¹¹¹