Re: Adrenal Fatigue and Stomach

Stay off the adaptogens, you won't be able to clear their byproducts and metabolites, and they'll just set you back further.

Properly used adaptogens are one of the best treatments for adrenal fatigue.  And the body clears the metabolites of adaptogens just like it clears the metabolites of foods we ingest and vitamins such as vitamin C and pantothenic acid.  Not really sure where you are getting your misinformation from but you really need to study the role of adaptogens and how they work on the adrenals.

What you need is Vitamin C and the pantethine form of B-5,

As with the synthetic ascorbic acid (vitamin C) pantethine is unstable.

It amazes me that these boards are supposed to be about natural healing yet there seems to be more recommendations of pharmaceutical drugs including pharmaceutical nutrient synthetics on these boards.  

Long before the pharmaceutical companies came about and started synthesizing nutrients man managed to survive perfectly well on the nutrients from natural sources.  But there was not enough money to made this way so they started making unstable synthetics and touting that they were somehow superior to what mankind has always survived on.  But in their ignorance the pharmaceutical companies overlooked various facts such as plants provide multiple synergistic compounds that the synthetics did not provide.  For example the naturally occurring bioflavonoids that allowed the vitamin C in the plants to work properly.  And the fact that the plants also provided protective compounds to its vitamins.  For example the polyphenols that protect the vitamin C in plants making it more stable than the unprotected synthetic ascorbic acid.  They still do not understand the concept that their synthetic counterparts are not identical to the real thing even though they claim they are.  If this were the case though then why have the synthetics such as C and E been found to be less effective in studies compared to the real vitamins.  

Mankind wants really bad to believe that they are smarter than nature, but they never will be.  Why do drugs synthesized or extracted from plants have side effects not found when the plant itself is used?  Simple, the plants contain balancing compounds again not found in the synthetics.  For example I can take the herb alfalfa without any side effects.  If I isolated the coumarins in the alfalfa though not only could I bleed to death but the coumarins would also make me more photosensitive.  The pharmaceutical answer to this dilemma is just more drugs to deal with the side effects of the imbalance they created in the first place!!!  Really, is this rational thinking?

The same applies to nutrients.  If I took the equivalent of 10g of vitamin C from acerola cherry I would not get diarrhea from it again because there are balancing compounds such as tannins that would help prevent this.  If I took 10g of synthetic ascorbic acid though I would end up with diarrhea because the synthetic isolate is not balanced.  And it is well known that high levels of individual B vitamins can displace other B vitamins from the body.  So is it safer to take high doses of pantethine and risk displacing other B vitamins from the body or take food sources of B vitamins, which are balances and synergistic?  It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the answer to that one.

A good example that really worries me is the new lipid soluble (liposomal) vitamin C.  In nature vitamin C is water soluble, not lipid soluble.  This means that it is normally found within the cell plasma, not the membranes.   Since lipids incorporate in to places such as myelin and cell membranes where vitamin C is not normally found how is this going to affect the myelin and cell membranes?  The fact is that we don't really know.  But someone decided that they had to come up with some new form of vitamin C that the body would not recognize so they could file a patent on it then make wild claims on how it is the greatest thing to come along so they could sell it for a lot of money with exclusive rights to the human guinea pigs they sell it to.  If people want to take this risk then why don't they just stick to pharmaceutical drugs?  At least we have a pretty good idea of their side effects including long term effects.