Most absorption of nutrients takes place in the small intestine. By the time it reaches the small intestine, food must have undergone proper digestion. The small intestine extracts nutrients from the food and they enter the bloodstream. Waste products move along to the large intestine where they are excreted from the body.
Food not properly processed by the time it reaches the small intestine creates a host of problems. Poorly digested, putrefying, fermenting and rotting food particles in the intestines create vast amounts of toxins. Undigested food molecules can pass through the intestinal walls and move directly into the bloodstream. In the bloodstream the body recognizes these food molecules as foreign. The immune system may attack them. This response resembles a classic food allergy; poor digestion of a food can cause you to become allergic to it. Worse, each allergic reaction damages the intestinal tissue and makes it more permeable, perpetuating the problem. An increasing number of food allergies and numerous other health problems may result. These ongoing allergic reactions can overtax and exhaust the immune system, making you vulnerable to low-grade, chronic infections, such as chronic sinus infections.
Provided the digestive process goes well in the intestines, allowing the proper nutrients to enter the bloodstream, those nutrients must still go to the proper cells and then inside those cells. This activity often requires separate “transporter nutrients” (certain amino acids, for example) that also come from your diet. In other words, nutrients are used for many purposes, including delivery of other nutrients. This is one example of how nutrients work together in tandem, and why you cannot afford to miss a single one. Once the necessary nutrients have arrived at the target cells, they still need to pass through the cell membranes. If the membrane is not constructed properly (as described in the fats and oils section of the Big Four), new problems arise. Nutrients can have a difficult time being transported through cell membranes constructed from “bad” fats and oils (hydrogenated oils, refined supermarket oils, deep-fried foods and excessive saturated fats).
The final step in proper digestion is the elimination of waste products, which must be eliminated as quickly and efficiently as possible. Otherwise, toxins may reabsorb back into the body. The best ways to improve bowel function are to eat sufficient fiber, follow proper food combining and chew food well. If you select a food with good fiber content and then cook it, however, you may be short-changing yourself. Some of the fibrous structure of food can be lost in the cooking process, so be sure not to overcook.
Many people find it uncomfortable, even embarrassing, to talk about their body's waste products. Being comfortable with these natural processes is important because one of the simplest ways to measure the health of your digestive system is to be aware of your bowel movements and to note the quality of your stools, in terms of frequency, texture and odor.
Most Americans are constipated; many have a bowel movement only every other day or think that one movement per day is ideal. Not true. If you do not have frequent, efficient elimination, then food wastes remain in your intestines, where they putrefy and poison you. Optimal is two or three bowel movements a dayâone, at the very least. Loose stools or exceptionally dense stools are reflections of serious problems, especially if they persist. Well-formed and floating is a good rule of thumb. Excessive gases (stomach or intestinal) or stool odor also may indicate digestive trouble. Be aware of your elimination process, and if you have a problem, take steps to remedy it by following the guidelines in this chapter.
Choosing the Right
Dietary Supplements
Eating good foods and digesting them well may not be sufficient to make sure your cells receive all the nutrients they need every day. Supplementing your diet with high-quality vitamin, mineral and essential fatty acid supplements is also important.
Supplements have become a necessity in our society for two reasons: First, the supply of nutrients is down. Intensive commercial farming, depleted soils and food processing have reduced the nutritional content of our food so dramatically that our diets no longer contain the nutrients required by our cells to maintain good health. Second, our need for certain nutrients is up because of the effects of environmental pollution, which puts extra stress on the body. Responding to this stress uses up essential nutrients, in particular antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C and E. With the supply of nutrients down and the need for nutrients up, is it any wonder that three out of four Americans have a diagnosable chronic disease? Supplementation is necessary to bridge the gap between what we need and what comes from our diet.
Most physicians (who, on average, receive only two and a half hours of nutritional training during four years of medical school) often tell you that supplements are not necessaryâ that they make little more than expensive urine. The position often taken by physicians is that you can get all the nutrition you need to maintain health by eating a balanced diet of commercially produced foods. You know by now that this claim is absolutely false.
Numerous studies have shown that virtually all Americans are not receiving the recommended amounts of nutrients on a daily basis. Many nutritional researchers (myself included) believe that, in our modern world, obtaining the nutrients we need from diet alone, even if we eat good foods, is impossible. Over the last quarter century, research has established that a huge gap exists between the small amounts of nutrients required for preventing overt nutritional-deficiency diseases and the large amounts of nutrients required to maintain optimal health and fortify our bodies against disease in general. Dietary supplements help fill the gaps in your nutrition, especially in those nutrients for which you, as an individual, may have a particularly high need. One final note: Supplements are not an invitation to eat a poor diet; they are to be used in addition to healthy foods.
Countless people have been cured of chronic health problems by the addition of dietary supplements. Consider Albert, a man who sought my advice several years ago. Albert had been suffering from serious, “untreatable” depression for almost a decade. He had exhausted his resources going to hospitals, clinics and physicians, but nothing had helped. His life was a living hell, and he was suicidal.
At our first meeting I learned that he subsisted on a meager diet consisting mostly of processed foods and that he was addicted to sugar. I suggested that he eliminate sugar and incorporate fresh, raw fruits and vegetables into his diet. I recommended a supplement program of specific vitamins and essential fatty acids. Albert was skeptical that these seemingly simple suggestions would make any real difference, considering how many “expert doctors” he had already seen. In less than a week after starting the diet and supplement program, Albert called to say that he felt as if a great burden had been lifted from him. He was no longer feeling suicidal. In all of his years of treatment for clinical depression, I was the first person who had suggested that poor nutrition could be the cause. In fact, poor nutrition is the leading cause of depression (and almost every other disease).
Although Albert had been taking nutritional supplements before he saw me, he had been taking the wrong kinds of supplements (those with low bioactivity, which means they were in a form that the body could not easily absorb or use). Ultimately, bioactivity is critical to whether supplements will be effective or not. When institutions like the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Sciences have performed large-scale population studies to measure the benefits of taking supplements, they have failed to find any benefits because most people are taking poor-quality supplements.
Quality is everythingâin supplements, as well as food.
For Albert, quality supplements (with high bioactivity at the cellular level) made all the difference. Having been a technical consultant to vitamin companies, I can tell you that of all the vitamin products on the market today, few actually do much good.
An investigative report aired on NBC's
Today
show in 1990 determined that 36 percent of the multivitamin brands tested did not dissolve soon enough to be absorbed and be of use to the body. In fact, some never dissolved at all! These failures included only the most popular brands. The numbers of failing brands would have been far higher had all the minor brands been measured. NBC's testing also allowed a generous one-hour for the pills to dissolve. Using a more conservative (and appropriate) time of forty-five minutes would have made almost half the tested brands fail.
Almost half of all vitamin
brands are not going to do your body any good, yet these are
what most people use.
One reason that these brands fail is because they are filled with additives, which can constitute up to half of the volume of the pill. These additives are used as fillers, binders, lubricants, colors and preservatives, but they can cause real problemsânot only interfering with the pills' ability to dissolve and with nutrient absorption, but also introducing many harmful contaminants and allergens into your body.
Most vitamins marketed today are synthetics and often contain petroleum residues from their manufacture. Some of these synthetic molecules are fundamentally different from natural vitamins, which affects the ability of your body to utilize them. For example, synthetic vitamin E is far less biologically active than vitamin E derived from natural sources. Synthetic beta-carotene actually can cause a deficiency of other carotenes.
Nutritional supplements are available at different levels of quality and price because of the variety of manufacturing processes used to create them. Each brand exhibits different properties and bioactivities. Trying to select a vitamin brand can be a bewildering experience. I found that comparing two different brands with exactly the same list of ingredients was not even possible, because how these ingredients are made is just as important as what is printed on the label. Unless you are a chemist or you know exactly how the supplement was made (and how the body metabolizes nutrients), distinguishing the difference between two seemingly identical products is almost impossible. The initial quality, chemical form, age of the ingredients, how they were handled (whether or not they were exposed to moisture, heat, light and oxygen during their storage or manufacture), and what other chemicals they are combined with in the formula has everything to do with the bioactivity of the final supplement.
When I was recovering from my chemical hypersensitivity, I was unable to take most vitamins because of their chemical contaminants. Vitamin supplements were critically important in my recovery process, but first I had to find pills that were pure, biologically active and uncontaminated. The contaminants in most pills (that were making me sick) also tax the health of people who are healthy, even if they are not aware of it.
Seeking manufacturers who use quality ingredients along with good manufacturing practices is vitally important. Most of the supplements on the market today are not worthwhile, as many do not contain what is professed on the labels, and many are even toxicâcontaminated by substances such as heavy metals, solvent residues, pesticides, artificial colors and allergens. The supplement market is unregulated; you simply cannot trust vitamin pills unless you know how they are made. Even the best-selling brands of vitamins are not something I would take myself or recommend to others.
Although you cannot always trust labels, I have developed some convenient rules of thumb that help me to quickly evaluate the quality of vitamin supplements. First, check to see if cheap ingredients can be recognized on the label. Cheap ingredients usually suggest that the remainder of the product is not of high quality. Does cost matter? Yes, because it costs more to purchase pure ingredients that are in the more bioactive forms. For example, calcium carbonate is an ingredient used in many mineral formulas, supposedly to supply calcium, and it does to a certain degree, but very inefficiently. Compounds such as calcium citrate, calcium fumarate, or calcium malate are far more biologically active and are much better choices. However, they are much more expensive. The uneducated consumer seeking a calcium supplement will usually choose a formula based on price or appearance or how much calcium it contains rather than chemical composition and bioactivity.
Paying attention to the chemical composition of the nutrients is more important. Some chemical forms are better than others because of their superior bioavailability. The poor ones should be avoided. Below are some guidelines for choosing the quality of mineral supplements:
| Poor | Acceptable | Optimal |
| Bioactivity | Bioactivity | Bioactivity |
| Carbonate | Aminoate | Ascorbate |
| (e.g., calcium carbonate) | Chelate | Citrate |
| Oxide | Gluconate | Fumarate |
| (e.g., magnesium oxide) | Â | Malate |
| Sulfate | Â | Picolinate |
| Phosphate | Â | Succinate |
| Â | Â | Tartrate |
Now look at the vitamins. The easiest way is to check the B vitamins, specifically vitamins B
2
and B
6
. In a high-quality formula, vitamin B
2
(riboflavin) will also be accompanied by its more expensive and bioactive form: riboflavin 5-phosphate. Similarly, with vitamin B
6
(pyridoxine hydrochloride) a high-quality formula will also contain the more expensive and bioactive form: pyridoxol 5-phosphate.