Articles:

NOTE: This article by Bill Sardi comes on the heels of JAMA saying that Beta carotene Vit E and Vit A make us die faster.

by Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com

Monday, February 26, 2007

One is not surprised to find another baseless assault on vitamin pills, this time coming from two evolutionary biologists at the University of Colorado, writing in the most recent 2007 issue of the journal Nutrition & Food Science.⁽¹⁾ The opinions they express are far from a balanced scientific review, often in fact exposing their own ignorance on the topic. Bottom line, they warn readers away from theoretically high-dose vitamin pills and continue with the standard drivel — get your vitamins from foods.

This would be ideal, especially if the Food & Nutrition Board were doing its job and recommending proper nutrient fortification of foods, but foods have changed over the years. Today Americans consume less vitamin E, less magnesium and less essential omega-3 oils, than decades ago. Furthermore, millions of Americans are taking drugs that induce nutrient deficiencies (antacids/vitamin B12, aspirin/folic acid and vitamin C, statin cholesterol-lowering drugs/ coenzyme Q10, diuretics/ thiamine vitamin B1 as well as minerals, serve as examples). According to a recent report in the New York Times, the average 75-year old American swallows 8 prescription drugs a day. Adverse drug events harm more than 1.5 million Americans and kill several thousand a year, even when taking in the proper dosage.⁽²⁾

The two evolutionary biologists don't recognize they have caught a disease that most doctors catch in medical school — nutriphobia. They found the $12 billion of annual sales of dietary supplements in 2000 to be alarming. Just for comparison, the major statin cholesterol-lowering drug generates more sales in dollars than all dietary supplements combined.

Their criticism is surprising, given that nutrition is believed to have played a strong role in the Darwinian theory that humans evolved from lower forms of life. Anthropologists at Emory University in Atlanta suggest the availability of omega-3 oils from aquatic sources (fish) facilitated the development of the human brain.⁽³⁾

According to evolutionary biology, homo sapiens evolved from hominids (upright-walking, ape-like creatures), but hominid fossils are generally found inland, not close to marine sources of omega-3 oils. Never mind, there are so many incongruencies in the evolutionary theory of biology that it is meaningless to start a debate. Suffice to say, the progressive evolution of life forms has never been shown in rock layers, a fact that caused evolutionary biologists to fantasize that there were massive genetic leaps (punctuated equilibrium) that explain how more advanced organisms suddenly pop up in the rock layers. (I'm just pointing this out so you see that these biologists who claim to have superior knowledge on these matters believe in some nonsensical things.)

To get back to our topic of vitamin pills, evolutionary biologists ought to be concerned because the massive epidemic of obesity now underway throughout the world shows that young people today have very, very low tissue levels of omega-3 DHA fat which is required for proper brain development.⁽⁴⁾

Because of this, humanity is essentially de-evolving. Today domesticated animals are being sent to a feed pen for fatting via grain feeding, and this eliminates the small amount of omega-3 fat needed for maintenance of the human nervous system.⁽⁵⁾

Yet these evolutionary biologists maintain the population should get their nutrients from foods alone, not pills, when the only practical way of getting enough omega-3 today is to supplement the diet. But then, this may explain why the evolutionary biologists aren't thinking clearly on this issue — they're likely to be deficient in omega-3 fat in their brains.

It's true, dietary supplements are often poor quality, even lacking any of the active ingredients printed on product labels. This is quite an embarrassment for an industry that has such promise to cure disease and maintain public health. But vitamin and mineral pills, even taken in high doses, aren't generally toxic and any side effects emanating from overdosage are transient, self-limiting, and disappear with lower dosage.

In fact, while evolutionary biologists are warning consumers away from vitamin pills because of potential toxicity, this week the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (February 23, 2007) issued a bulletin showing that there was not even one death caused by vitamins in 2005, according to the most recent statistics available from the US National Poisoning and Exposure Database. The 129-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers published in the journal Clinical Toxicology shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.⁽⁶⁾

However, peer reviewed journals, like Nutrition & Food Science, continue to accept papers like this that reveal nothing more than preconceived ideas. The old issue of whether high-dose vitamin C induces cancer is re-hashed, even though it was debunked in 2001. That's when researchers, in a lab dish study, alleged that more than 250 milligrams of vitamin C might cause DNA mutations that result in cancer.⁽⁷⁾

While the researchers were maintaining high-dose vitamin C could be geno-toxic, based on their lab dish study, five human studies had already been conducted which showed doses up to 5000 milligrams did not cause DNA mutations.⁽⁸⁾ It was an embarrassing moment for Science Magazine because the report drew worldwide attention in the news media.

This time, the evolutionary biologists refer to a small human study that showed mixed results — high-dose (500 mg) vitamin C exhibited both cancer protective and promotion effects. But they chose to emphasize the latter. A critique of that experiment can be found at the Linus Pauling Foundation website: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w98/genetic.html

Our evolutionary biologists certainly must be aware that all mammals (except for fruit bats, guinea pigs and the primates) produce their own vitamin C, synthesizing it by enzymatic conversion of blood sugar to ascorbate (vitamin C) in the liver. Similar-size animals, like a 160-lb goat, will produce 13,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day, and more under stress. There is no evidence this high-dose endogenous vitamin C produces cancer in animals. Contrarily, humans are genetically flawed, having sustained a mutation to the gene that produces an enzyme needed to convert sugar to ascorbate.⁽⁹⁾ Vitamin C used to be a hormone, but now all of humanity is deficient and must acquire vitamin C from their diet. According to Darwinian evolution, humans evolved eating a diet of about 600 milligrams of vitamin C per day.⁽¹⁰⁾

This mutation occurred many generations ago and would have rendered homo sapiens less able to survive. The Darwinian idea of survival of the fittest runs contrary to this fact. But again, let's not bring up the inconsistencies of evolutionary biology, which is accepted as fact.

If you want to talk about DNA breakage, Dr. Bruce Ames of the University of California at Berkeley, points out that widespread inadequate intake of a B vitamin, folic acid, causes millions of parts of RNA (uracils) to be incorporated into the DNA of each cell with associated chromosome breaks, essentially producing the same genetic damage that would be caused by exposure to atomic radiation.⁽¹¹⁾

Our biologists go on to warn the public away from high-dose vitamin E, while failing to mention that virtually the entire population except supplement users doesn't consume the Recommended Daily Allowance for Vitamin E. Nor do they mention that 40% of the public is deficient in vitamin B12, better than 80% deficient in vitamin D (especially in winter months in northern climates), and The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 13% of Americans were deficient and 23% completely depleted of vitamin C based on blood serum levels, particularly smokers.⁽¹²⁾

The biologists conclude their paper by saying that "excessive consumption can be equally harmful as, and potentially even more detrimental than, a deficiency." Yes, potentially, overfeeding children could be more harmful than starving them. Excessive water, oxygen and salt, can all be toxic. But with massive nutritional deficiencies evident in the population at large, one wonders how such statements can be made without even recognizing how foolish and tragically misdirected they are. —Bill Sardi, Feb. 2007 Knowledge of Health, Inc.

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