I recently changed my vitamin to avoid toxic ingredients. I had been taking the Whole Foods Multivitamin for women, but have switched to a higher quality vitamin. There are a lot of ingredients that should be avoided in vitamins. The vitamin I take now is from Ulta Life, which is a site that requires a referral from a professional holistic health care provider. Elizabeth Wallish (Dare2CareNow.com), an Integrative Nutrition Consultant, recommended to me the multivitamin from MegaFoodVitamins (Megafoods.com)
Magnesium Sterate is a common ingredient in many vitamins. Essentially this is chalk and it is useless to the body but is included to help the vitamin pass through the body more easily. Magnesium Sterate contains hydrogenated oil and can contain pesticides. According to Mercola, it is associated with decreasing natural killer cells that are needed in the immune system. Although vitamins are in no way a substitute for getting nutrients from food, if taken, they should be free of toxins.
Sodium selenite/selenate is an inorganic for of selenium that is toxic (see the studies on greenmedinfo.com). Selenium as a natural nutrient from plants is essential and also prevents cancer and heart disease, but due to the selenium depletion in the soil, different forms of artificial selenium are added to vitamins. Natural ways to get selenium is fresh produce, brazil nuts, and mustard seeds. Safer forms of selenium in vitamins are chelated or yeast-grown selenium.
Many vitamin supplements contain artificial ingredients that the EPA has prohibited in tap water (at levels above 50 parts per billion.) Titanium Dioxide is a heavy metal compound and coloring agent. Check out the website safecosmetics.org that talks about titanium dioxide and other heavy metals such as chromium, mercury, and lead that are found in cosmetics, nail polish, sunscreen and the harm they can cause including immune toxicity and cancer.
Elizabeth Wallish also gave me a list of other elements to avoid in vitamins: Methyl parabens, microcrystalline cellulose, talcum powder, polyethylene glycol, sodium metabisulfite, maltodextrin, resins, and polysorbate 80. Also on her list are things to avoid in nutritional products as a tablet: silicon dioxide, natural flavors (could include MSG), methacrylic copolymer, triethyl citrate, corn starch, hydroxypropl cellulose, red ferric oxide (orange shade), diacalcium phosphate, and pharmaceutical glaze. Also, avoid caramel coloring.
Another thing to look out for is irradiated food. These foods include wheat, flour, meats, eggs, spices and produce. Irradiation is done with cobalt 60, cesium 137 ( used rarely) or x rays--150 million times more radiation than a standard chest x-ray, according to Paul Chek, Holistic Health Practitioner (the C.H.E.K. Institute.)
Paul Chek writes in his book How to Eat, Move and be Healthy, "A wide range of independent studies prior to 1986 clearly identified mutagenic and carcinogenic radiolytic products in irradiated food, and confirmed evidence of genetic toxicity in tests on irradiated food. Studies in the 1970's run by India's Institute of Nutrition reported that feeding freshly radiated wheat to monkeys, rats, mice and to a small group of malnourished children induced gross chromosomal abnormalities in blood or bone marrow cells and mutational damage in the rodents. Food irradiation results in major micronutrient losses, particularly vitamins A,C,E and the B complex group."
How To Eat, Move and be Healthy also states "the FDA approved irradiation based on five studies selected from 441 studies published prior to the early 1980s. To this day, these early studies remain the basis for their claims that irradiation is safe." A Center for Disease poll of 11,000 people showed that only half were comfortable eating irradiated food. The food will be labeled irradiated in the ingredients, but if the food is not entirely irradiated there is not regulation requiring labeling. The radiation kills dangerous bacteria, but there are safer ways being developed such as high pressure and ozone treatment.
Chek also points out that "the US Department of Energy has aggressively promoted food irradiation for decades. The DOE sees food irradiation as a way of reducing disposal costs of spent military and civilian nuclear fuel by providing a commercial market for caesium nuclear wastes." Cs-137 is "the remains of spent military nuclear fuel." Both Co60 and CS137 were leaked in Three Mile Island fiasco, the Chernobyl disaster and the more recent Fukushima episode.
Purefood.org states "the origin of cobalt-60 and cesium-137 is rarely mentioned in glowing reports of irradiation's benefits: cesium-137 is a radioactive waste left in huge quantities from nuclear weapons programs, and cobalt-60 is manufactured in nuclear reactors. Cesium-137 is extremely hazardous, deadly for 300 years, water-soluble and very expensive to store. The FDA's Jim Greene said in 1986 that using cesium-137 for irradiation, 'could substantially reduce the cost of disposing of nuclear waste.'(6) In 1983 the Energy Dept. told the House Armed Services Committee, 'The utilization of these radioactive materials simply reduces our waste handling problem. we get some of these very hot elements like cesium and strontium out of the waste.'"(7)
Mercola's website (mercola.com), posts study upon study on irradiation--some of the tests on animals link dangers such as cancer , reproductive dysfunctions, and liver damage due to irradiation.
Thanks, I think I'll stick to organic foods, no nuclear waste for me, please....another toxic element to avoid is the fluoride in drinking water. More on that in later posts.
A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health), Alix
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