Are Your Supplements Like Santa?

Yes, Santa. The jolly, round guy that lives on the North Pole who dresses in that fuzzy red suit and flies around the world on Christmas Eve to deliver presents to all of those good boys and girls. Now this may be a stretch, but I am going to compare your supplements to Santa.

Imagine one Christmas Eve Santa is kidnapped by one of the major toy manufacturers so they could use Santa to make and deliver toys right to children’s houses. Santa fails miserably for this toy manufacturer. Why? Because Santa is out of his element. His elves aren’t helping him by making the toys, he is working in conditions he isn’t used to working in and he is working way more days than he is used to!

Compare this situation with some supplements you may be taking. If you eat an orange for vitamin C, the orange provides the right amount of supporting vitamins and minerals to help your body absorb the vitamin C and utilize it properly. The orange also provides the right environment for the vitamin C to remain stable and allows the amount of vitamin C intake to remain limited to the amount of oranges you eat.

However, when you “kidnap” the vitamin C from the orange, it goes through some degree of processing so it can be packaged and sold. This processing strips away the supporting vitamins and minerals. If those vitamin and minerals are added back in to the vitamin C pill or powder, then they may not be in the correct proportions for optimal vitamin C absorption and utilization. Now the vitamin C will be presented in a jar where light and heat can easily affect it and make it less stable. Of course when vitamin C is in a jar, it is more likely to be ingested in higher quantities than what your body needs at that time.

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, my apologies for using this analogy.

In any event, it is very important when choosing supplements to make sure they are of good quality and have the vitamins and/or minerals that your body can actually use.

Some forms of vitamins that are sold are not the right ones for our body to use and may not provide us with the benefits that are associated with that type of vitamin. For example, take buying vitamin D… vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 can both be marketed at vitamin D, but only vitamin D3 can provide the benefits that are associated with vitamin D.