I am just waking up from a great night of sound sleep and am ready to tackle my day! I have some infused herbal tea brewing, my yoga session on DVD waiting for me to press play and a ton of emails to dig into after a little meditating. But first, before I start getting into my zone, I wanted to follow up with my lovely readers about what we were talking about last week: supplements. Since is this the theme for the month, I want to make sure I provide some well-rounded information that will really benefit you all! In the last post, I mentioned that with certain supplements, it would be a tremendous help to be very mindful of what kinds you choose. More importantly, it’s best if you know the differences between natural and synthetic supplements. Of course I would recommend sticking with all-natural supplements. However, I am going to give you a few insider clues that may help you while you’re looking for the best supplement to fit your various needs.
Clue #1: Read Those Labels!
The first thing that will help you decipher whether your vitamins are natural or synthetic is to simply take a few minutes and read the label before you get into the checkout line. Trust me; an extra few minutes in the nutrition aisle can really save you the heartbreak of knowing your vitamins run a very high possibility of not doing you any justice whatsoever. Below is a little chart I put together so that you have a pretty good visual of what to look for in the most common kinds of vitamins that you may be consuming regularly. Looking for these keywords will definitely help you weed out the baddies. I also give you some food alternatives that contain the vitamins you are looking for, just in case you need to save some extra money.
| Vitamin | Natural Sources | Synthetic Baddies |
| A | Sweet Potatoes, Romaine Lettuce, Butternut Squash, Carrots, Mangos | Retinol, Acetate, Palmitate |
| A | Jackson | 94 |
| B12 | Bee pollen, Seafood, Flaxseed | Cyanocobalamin |
| C | Oranges, Tomatoes, Green Peppers, Kale | Ester C, Calcium ascorbate |
| D | Shitake mushrooms, Cod Liver Oil, The Sun | Calciferol |
| E | Almonds, Swiss Chard, Safflower Oil | D-alpha tocopherol (The natural source would start with DL) |
Clue #2: Absorption Quality
This clue is not as easily detectable as the first but is equally essential. The nutrients in natural supplements blend almost perfectly with our body chemistry. The reason for this is because the various enzymes, antioxidants and other organic vitamin goodness have been harvested and preserved without any disruption of its structure that could otherwise rip it to shreds. Because it compliments your body in an amazing way, it is a lot easier for your body to absorb the supplement successfully due to its perfect form. In addition to this, your body doesn’t run the risk of potentially overdosing in the supplement because it knows what is needed, when, where and how for optimal absorption and increased nutrition.
On the flip side, with synthetic supplements, things get a lot more tricky and difficult. A synthetic supplement originally started out as a wholesome source of micronutrients, until it was rip to shreds, allowing all the good stuff to leak out and become wasted and depreciated. As a result, your body now has to work even harder to register what the heck this foreign version of vitamins is and attempt to make it blend with existing nutrients within the body. This is the equivalent of going to a library, picking out a catalogue card in order to locate a book, only to find out from the librarian that it’s really at another library on the other side of town! Not to mention, a lot of library stuff is done digitally now. You see what I mean? Imagine how frustrating that much be to expect that book to be in the location you are at, only to realize that you have to spend way more time tracking it down. Not cool! Another disadvantage to synthetic supplements is that the body eventually dispels of most of it with waste and other things it doesn’t need. Unfortunately, this also results in the waste of your hard-earned money. Again, not cool! So if your body is not really responding to the current supplements you have been taking for a while, then you have your answer.
Clue #3: More Label-Reading (Sorry)
To go along with the last clue above, we need to take a little trip back to looking at the bottle label one more time. One of the surefire ways to tell if your supplement is natural or synthetic is to double check the product list. Usually, natural supplements will list real food ingredients as its source. You want to look for some of the food-rich ingredients similar to the ones in the chart above. They will more than likely be in powered form, which is totally fine. However, if the bottle label says that the ingredients are the exact same thing as what it identifies on the bottle, than you may want to think twice about taking them again. Take Vitamin C for example. If you look on the back of the label and the ingredients read “Vitamin C” and nothing else, it’s time to chuck it for good (or put it back on the shelf if you are in the store).
You are now armed with the most exclusive and highest top security clearance insider supplements information! Ok, maybe not top clearance, but having knowledge about this really does put you at a great advantage compared to most. Feel free to share this information with all your friends and family who may be interested! To avoid having to filter through all of those many brands of supplements, I suggest checking out Blackmores for some quality products. Wow, you really lucked up on some bonuses this week!
