Learn Why Your Body Absorbs These Supplements Better!

Scott: Talk about supplements a little bit as long as we're on the topic.  What is your thought on them?  You mentioned whole food supplements.  Can you explain a little bit more about what those are versus the ones that people can buy at the big box stores, that just are vitamin C, or vitamin D or zinc or some of the things that we've talked about and... what should people look for when they're trying to buy something like that.

Donna Burka Wild: Well, when they buy a food based supplement, the supplement label should read as foods, telling you exactly what foods it came from and then they usually break it down into what vitamins and minerals are in there as well.  But if you buy a synthetic or a crystalline extract or pharmaceutical supplement, then it will read more like a... oh... a chemical label, more than a food label.  You may not be able to understand what everything is in there, where you can read a food based label and know where the foods come from or what foods are in that supplement.

Scott:  And if I understood you correct, a lot of... some of the issues with buying some of those regular supplements is that the body may not use exactly what's on... as much as what's on that label?

Wild:  That's true because um.... ok.  Vitamins act as catalysts in the body.  And they're very specific and they have to fit in like a puzzle piece.  And they can be left handed spin or right handed spin, but they have to be very specific.  The problem with pharmaceutical nutrients is that they're racemic blends, so they have both a levo and a dextro spin.  So at the most you're only absorbing 50 percent of that because the body can either take a right handed spin or a left handed spin, depending on the nutrient we're talking about.  But then if you don't have the other cofactors to be able to absorb and assimilate it, you're going to be assimilating even less and you're going to have very expensive urine by spilling out all of these nutrients into the urine where I would rather you absorb and utilize all of the nutrients that I'm giving you.  And I found in my private practice, that food supplements tend to work better, people don't have the side effects or the indigestion that some of these supplements might cause.