Tough to put the pen down on a topic like this. Vitamins are supposed to be good for us...right? Here's a little bit of an insight into vitamins. More precisely, the difference between synthetically manufactured and naturally occurring vitamins from nature. It takes a few minutes to read so grab yourself a cup of green tea and enjoy the read.
Science is a wonderful thing. It has been at the basis of pretty much all technical and medical advances the planet has seen. We put a man on the moon. We discovered electricity. We can talk and see someone around the world in real time. We can measure very precise changes in a star several galaxies away. We can measure how far that star is away because we know how fast light travels. We can map body parts at the genetic level. And of course we've cured many diseases. Yet there is one thing that we've been told that science cannot do yet. And that is, cure cancer.
There are all kinds of science and money going into discovering that elusive cancer cure. In fact, it's one of the largest drivers in the global medical economy. Science has developed all sorts of cancer treatments, both in the conventional and alternative worlds. We all know that the standard approach to treating cancer by the conventional western medical community is usually based in chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. In fact I just heard from a friend that sounds all excited because tomorrow is her last round of chemotherapy and then she's off to Las Vegas for a few days before starting on surgery. Truth be told, I suspect it is the Vegas trip that is winning the excitement race with her right now. But all of these, and several other conventional cancer treatments exist today because of advances in science. Even most aspects of the alternative cancer treatment exist because of some form of science.
Several alternative cancer treatments are based in nutrition. One very common theme throughout this approach is that cancer is a deficiency disease, and that it can be treated by supplementing the diet either with natural food sources and/or using vitamins. In fact, the one thing that the conventional and alternative cancer treatment worlds can probably agree on is that people should eat healthy. Many people believe that natural balanced organic vegan diets based in fruits and vegetables can in fact cure cancer, but that claim is immediately dismissed by the majority of the conventional medical world. Yet one thing that you will find in many of the conventional and alternative cancer treatments is the use of vitamins and nutritional supplements.
Science is a wonderful thing. It has given us the ability to manufacture nutrition in a lab. But here's the kicker; no living thing, whether it be human, animal or plant has been successfully created from chemical compounds. It just hasn't happened yet. There have are some interesting things that have been done around cloning and stem cell research. No doubt about it. But those technologies have been based in existing living or preserved cells. No one has been able successfully create life from mixing a bunch of chemical compounds together. They've been able to duplicate the construct of something exactly, yet not give it life. A simple example is that of salt water where scientists can duplicate exactly the chemical composition of an ocean but no fish have been able to survive in it. So why is it that we would presume that vitamins and nutritious supplements made in a lab would provide us with the exact same benefits as those found in nature? Those very same vitamins and nutrients that the human body has evolved over many thousands of years to depend on for its very survival, or allow our brains to think and make sense of things, or keep our immune system working properly so we stay healthy. But the human body is unable to manufacture most of the vitamins it needs itself, so it takes them from other sources. Let's explore what the differences between synthetic and natural source nutrition might be. Let's talk dirty.
Most land based creatures have evolved on a diet based in plants, and from other creatures that eat plants. The plants need water to survive, but they also need nutrients which they take in from the soil. When those plants are eaten, the nutrients are passed on to the creatures that eat them. At all levels of the food chain, nutrients are passed on in a similar way. Our bodies have developed a highly efficient way of taking in and utilizing vitamins from natural foods, primarily plant sources. So we've come to depend on fruits, nuts and vegetables as a mainstay in our diets. Back in the day, before large scale commercial farming, most people had some sort of garden that they depended on. They knew that if they introduced natural source compost, whether it be plants or the manure from animals that had eaten the plants, then they would have healthier soil. This translated into healthier vitamin rich food crops and, consequently, healthier people. But then something happened.
As medical science evolved, the survival rates of people also increased. We were discovering new cures for just about everything. So as people lived longer, and survival rates increased, the population began to grow in turn creating more demand for food. So our agricultural practices transitioned from smaller scale, localized farms into massive economies-of-grand-scale industrial operations. Traditional farming methods were labour intensive, for the most part. The newer industrial operations, however, utilized machinery and farming became a profitable business to be in. The population was growing. Demand for agricultural products was growing so more people got in to it. But then something changed.
Science delivered to us that agricultural savior, the chemical fertilizer. Farmers loved it because they were able to harvest greater yields on an acre of land than they ever had before. So the population continued to grow and people needed more food. The farmers needed more fertilizer to grow more food. The cycle continued for decades. It was a good thing. However, science had created an agricultural fertilizer that didn't have the natural source nutrients that nature had once provided from the soils. So the fertilized food crops that people were eating were very deficient in the nutrients that our bodies needed. It's been discovered that today's modern agricultural practices have depleted the soils from over 70 of their trace elements (nutrients) to somewhere around 6 to 8. Because of this, people have not been getting the nutrients that they need and their immune systems have been working overtime to try to fight off disease. Any cancer treatment needs a strong immune system.
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