Re: Doctors Say Vitamins are Safe and Effective

Hi Chrisb1,

"Please refer to the archives in my original post that have peer-reviewed studies and esp' this link...............
http://www.benthamscience.com/biot/samples/biot1-1/Zhao.pdf"


I've read quickly through your referenced document quoted above and some points jumped out at me along the way. If you don't mind, I'll share them with you here.

From "Nutraceuticals, Nutritional Therapy, Phytonutrients, and Phytotherapy for Improvement of Human Health: A Perspective on Plant Biotechnology Application":

"The original idea in these concepts goes back three thousand years ago. Hippocrates (460–377 BC), the well-recognized father of modern medicine, stated “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” to predict the relationship between appropriate foods for health and their therapeutic benefits [3]. The truth in this saying is widely recognized today.

The above quote shows how people can recognise the truth in something but still miss the point. I would say that the truth is not widely recognised in the medical community at all.



"Since the purpose of consuming nutraceuticals and phytonutrients is to incorporate them into our body and to allow them to build overall health and to treat some diseases, we assume that our bodies could absorb these important compounds as much as possible. However, many important nutraceuticals and phytonutrients are not fully absorbed in the human body. This conclusion is based on studies of the absorption of several nutrients; however, the exact percent absorption of most nutraceuticals and phytonutrients has yet to be determined. Information on their metabolism in the human body is also lacking. Therefore, absorption and metabolism of all nutrients and health-beneficial phytonutrients in humans, needs to be investigated. For some nutrients, improving their rate of absorption may be a more important target than enhancing their production, since a current bottleneck in alleviating nutrient deficiencies is the poor absorption."

Apologies for the long quote but this paragraph highlights the facts that the discussed supplements are not fully absorbed in the body and that their metabolism in the body is not fully understood and needs to be investigated. This is not a glowing endorsement for these expensive products.


and the most damning quote so far is:

"The nutraceutical, phytonutrient, and phytotherapy markets are still not well regulated [6,11,85]. Concerns from scientists, professionals, and customers continuously arise, due to increases in the use of these products and therapies. Quality, safety, long-term adverse effects, and toxicity are primary concerns. For manufacturing processes of nutraceuticals and phytonutrient products, quality controls such as the composition and contents of active constituents in natural plants, and maintenance are critically important. To establish product safety and efficacy, extensive safety studies including acute, subacute, subchronic, chronic and long-term toxicity studies, reproductive toxicology, as well as supplementation studies in animals and clinical trials in humans are necessary. The safety assessment of botanicals and botanical preparations in food and food supplements is complicated and should at least involve the characterization and quality of the material, its quality control; the intended use and consequent exposure; toxicological information, and risk evaluation [55,295]. Although these concerns exist, governments, scientists, nutritional professionals, and other related parties are making great efforts to build the nutritional product and therapeutic system markets."

... with a special emphasis on the last paragraph which I would paraphrase as "Despite the great deficit in testing, everyone with an interest is doing their best to build the markets for these questionable, unproven products."

I'll have to go back over the document a bit slower to make sure that I haven't missed the most important messages but against the above quotes, any good news is bound to be watered down severely.

Regards,
NH...