Thoughts of a Holistic Doctor Written in 2002 and posted with permission are the thoughts of the late Dr. Bruce West of Health Alert.
Beyond Vitamins and Antioxidants
The synthetic vitamin controversy started in the 1940s with Alice Faye Morgan's dog experiments showing that starving dogs lived longer than those fed synthetic or isolated vitamins. And it continued into the 1970s when I began telling my patients that ordinary vitamins don't work.
As my clinical studies became more and more vast into the 1980s, I actually started putting my ideas in writing. At that time I said clearly that single nutrient supplements don't work, either separately or with each other! I learned this the hard way--by trying to help people get well with these products.
As time went by, my studies continued to show poor results using isolated nutritional supplements. At the same time, I was recording more and more "miracle" results using whole-food, phytochemical-rich nutritional supplements. I continued to study these products, to write the truth about nutrition, and to encourage other health professionals to do a better job with their patients. Yet the supplement world was aghast.
In the later 1980s and 1990s, even esteemed journals started to sound like me. In April 1994, Newsweek had a cover that read, Better Than vitamins. They were referring to phytochemicals from raw foods. Later still, well-controlled studies showed that vitamin E takers enjoyed no fewer heart attacks, strokes, or death from heart disease. And this after taking 400 lUs for more than five years.
The controversy continued as isolated beta carotene caused all kinds of problems. Twenty thousand women given beta carotene enjoyed no more protection from cancer and heart disease than women who took "sugar" pills. And even good old vitamin C (ascorbic acid) seemed to speed up hardening and clogging of the arteries!
My, How Things Have Changed
Things have really changed now. Promotions for products and materials are now blaring, "Beyond Vitamins," "Beyond Antioxidants," "Why Your Vitamins Don't Work," and "The Great American Vitamin Hoax." Sadly, most are simply trying to cash in on the ever-growing knowledge that synthetic and isolated nutrition is mostly bunk.
Some of these "experts" would have you believe that only they know how to make a "complete" vitamin product.* They even rate other products based on their own "scientific" parameters. Yet careful study reveals that they take the usual synthetic materials from pharmaceutical houses and add in some stale herbs like garlic, St. John's Wort, and Echinacea, along with hot selling items.
Too many companies claim that their products are phytochemical products while they use synthetics and non-organic plant materials. The processing can be abysmal with all semblance of live nutrition destroyed by heat, freezing, freeze drying, etc. You will never know the difference. Yet, the companies now trying to cash in on the phytochemical revolution were the very ones who were aghast at me years ago.
It is truly amazing how things change, and yet don't really change at all. There are few if any really new, high-tech cures. There are few if any really new nutritional products. There are few if any really new "miracles." In fact, they were there all along-provided by nature-before we altered nature so drastically as to preclude all these natural wonders from our daily fare.
What I said in the 1970s was true then and is true now. Nutrients work in harmony with one another as only nature provids. When separated, their healing powers are eliminated. For nutrients to work in your body and to help you gain and keep robust health, they must contain vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, trace activators, known and unknown phytochemical counterparts, enzymes, and more, in proper combination.
Unless nutritional products are made from organic crops (as nature intended), processed to maintain the life energy of plant and animal nutrition, and maintained in their natural form like a complex puzzle, they will work minimally for you at best. And at worst they will fail completely, or even make your condition or disease worse. For the most part, these are the synthetic products that are costing Americans billions of dollars. They are not what I use or recommend. The live, phytochemical products that do fight disease are the ones I discuss in Health Alert every single month. And this is one thing that has not changed. [NOTE * "Are your vitamins 'complete'?," Health Alert, vol. 16, No. 9]
Angel's Note: Dr. West used a prescription line of food-based supplements from Standard Process Labs. He gave all his subscribers a bonus book detailing his protocals titled: "The 45 Day Health Turnaround. Alternative & Traditional Cures." You can check out the online reviews on Amazon, etc. If you are looking for a specific protocal and cannot find the book, email me through my website and I'll see what I can do.
