Vitamin "B"

Before delving into the problems of vitamin B complex deficiency and its symptoms, it is first important to understand the difference between vitamins that are in pill form versus vitamins that are contained within nature’s foods. There is a world of difference — a difference between sickness and health. Vitamins just do not work like foods, and foods are what our bodies were designed to use for healing, prevention and energy. There is no substitute, and no matter how you look at it, vitamin pills are an invention of scientists, so they are prone to cause side effects, be incomplete and lack what we need to overcome our health problems.

Vitamins have been sold and marketed as the “magic bullet” for all health problems, yet food science researchers are bringing out the truth about vitamins, minerals, multivitamins and antioxidants— and it’s not an easy pill to swallow. The problem is that vitamins, when not still contained in their original food (oranges, bananas, spinach, broccoli, etc.) are merely chemicals. Our bodies do not recognize vitamins as nutrients, because they don’t work the same way as whole foods for these simple reasons:

• Foods contain not just vitamins, but the co-workers (synergists) and helper nutrients that allow vitamins to work
  
  
• Foods are never found in high potency, so you won’t suffer any toxic side effects that have been proven to exist with ALL vitamin pills. As one expert stated, “Foods never deliver toxic doses [of vitamins]. (Hamilton, p.205)
  
  
• Vitamins are just a small part of what our bodies require for health and healing. It is very often that it is the other food properties that help us while the vitamins are secondary.
  
  
• Vitamin pills need other nutrients in order to work.

For these reasons, and more, vitamin pills, despite their use and overuse, are not turning people’s health around. They are lacking the properties of real nutrition which can only come from eating nature’s real, whole, raw foods. The only supplement that someone should take, therefore, is a whole food formula WITHOUT any isolated (singular vitamin). This is an important point, because most supplements called “whole food” are combinations of real foods and isolated vitamins. You have to carefully read the labels to see. Look for these words to identify vitamin chemicals on a label:

• Pyridoxine
• Thiamine or thiamin
• Niacin or niacinamide
• Palmitate
• ascorbic acid
• Riboflavin
• Mixed tocopherols
• B12
• cyanocobalamin
• more

Vitamins are not foods, so instead of vitamins and minerals on a label, you should be looking for the names of foods and herbs on the label. Don’t be fooled by high milligrams, high potency, standardization or any other such terms that just do not apply to real foods from nature.