Tag Archives: Vitamin E

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“d-alpha tocopherol” Is NOT Vitamin E

My Chorale PicAre you taking 800 units of “vitamin E” every day? If so, you may be doing more harm to your body than good. Read this report by John Courtney, former head of Research & Development for Standard Process Laboratories for thirty years. When you’re finished reading, you will have a clear understanding of what vitamin E is and is not..

IT’S ABOUT FUNCTION, NOT POTENCY

Functions of Vitamin E: promotes cell repair, anti-scarring, increases tissue resistance to stress, (supports skin, muscles, ligaments, tendons), specific support to cardiovascular system, source of manganese and selenium and aids in pituitary function.

John Courtney: Our VITAMIN E Complex product (CATAPLEX E) presents a situation similar to our other vitamin formulas. Dr. George Goodheart, for instance, who has developed this muscle testing technique, AK, frequently lectures to doctors, and he always calls one up and checks him for vitamin E. He will say: “You’re deficient in vitamin E.” The doctor usually says, “That’s impossible. I take 800 units of vitamin E every day.” So George says, “Take one
now.” So the doctor takes one and George tests him and there is no change. So he gives the doctor one of our two-unit CATAPLEX E tablets and the doctor becomes stronger.

This is what I mean by function. We are interested in making a product that has function, and we give it to the doctor no matter what it looks like on the label. Granted, they would not sell in health food stores because people try to read labels and they don’t understand them. Instead of reading the ingredients, they read how many units of something and that throws them off.

We talked about vitamin E as classified by the government as “tocopherol.” There are seven tocopherols in all, alpha being one of them. The government has decided to rate any vitamin E product according to the amount of alpha tocopherol it contains. The tocopherols are antioxidants, just like ascorbic acid. They are a part of the E complex, but they are not the active ingredients. Their function is to preserve the active factor. Tocopherols are measured on the basis of cell growth.

Kids who have acne have it at a time when their sex organs are beginning to develop and require vitamin E. If they’re not getting enough vitamin E in their diet, the gonads begin to take the vitamin E that would otherwise be used in the maintenance of the health of the skin. So there begins to be abnormal skin growth.

On the other hand, the entire E complex contains the polyunsaturated fatty acids. Vitamin F is part of the E complex, as are Vitamins A and K. There are some forms of vitamin D and manganese in the E complex as well. The traditional source for vitamin E is vegetable oils. But the best quality vitamin E comes from whole vegetables. Green lettuce is one of the best sources, and the pea plant is what we use and is about equally as good. We raise green peas on our farms and press the juice out and vacuum dry it. This is our E concentrate. It is high in manganese. The manganese is combined with the protein, vitamins and other
trace minerals in the plant in the growing process. You could call our CATAPLEX E a “naturally chelated” product.

“Chelated” means “combined.” If you take any high potency laboratory-chelated products, your body has to do some combining in order to make them work. But if you take your minerals the way nature provides them, combined with protein and vitamins through the growing process of plants, they are bound to work.

For example, we could take vitamin E and separate the tocopherols from the manganese. Putting them back together in the laboratory, chelating them artificially, we would find they wouldn’t work. But they worked before you took them apart. Dr. Lee used an analogy to illustrate this point.

The same point applies to all of our products. He said you can give a chemist a watch and he can analyze it for content. Then hit it with a hammer and give it back to him. Although it is the same watch, it has now lost its function. A nutritional concentrate is an organized mechanism that has a function. If you break the function by separating the parts, the body can no longer use the mechanism. High potency’ vitamin E products are made this way.

Tocopherols are broken down and separated from oils, the natural tocopherols are separated from vegetable oil. Then they are packed into a gelatin perle and you have a high potency vitamin E product, a 200 or 500 International Unit vitamin E product. That means 200 or 500 International Units of alpha tocopherol, because the government insists that the potency of the product is measured by the amount of alpha tocopherol it contains. Of course, the reason for doing this is to give the public a “high potency” product. Although the label of such a product will say “all natural” or “organic” – it was taken from oil, a natural source – it’s still not food. It’s an incomplete product. You are getting lots of tocopherols, but none of the active components of the E complex: the F, A, K, D, manganese, etc.

Our VITAMIN E is a two International Unit product. Each tablet contains two International Units of alpha tocopherol. The remainder of the tablet is composed of all the other vitamin E components. How do the high potency vitamin E products work? By preserving the active components of the E complex which still remain in the patient’s tissues. If you recall, the tocopherols are an antioxidant. So the patient’s symptoms, such as angina, will disappear, but often only temporarily. The body is designed to utilize food in its whole form. If you eat incomplete foods, such as refined tocopherols, all the missing factors are borrowed from the tissue reserves in order to make the partial food usable. Sooner or later, depending on the patient’s past eating habits, there will be a deficiency of those nutrients, causing what’s referred to as a “reversal of symptoms.” This means there is a recurrence of the same symptoms, which were causing the problem in the first place, often to a more serious degree.  

Bicknell and Prescott, in their book THE VITAMINS IN MEDICINE, talk about bone decalcification and other problems caused by the use of excessive alpha tocopherol. So, high potency vitamins are similar to drugs in their effect. They cause a masking of symptoms, which eventually creates additional problems. Dr. Lee used to say that using high potency vitamins was like whipping a tired horse; he would be stimulated to run faster but sooner or later he collapses because you never fed him. Sometimes doctors call us for help with patients with cramps. This could be cramps anywhere in the body-the legs, abdomen, heart, etc. They will say, “I’ve tried everything I could nutritionally, calcium, magnesium, etc., and the patient still has cramps.” Then we ask if the patient is taking high potency vitamin E. Many times they are, and the cramps developed after they started taking the high potency vitamin E. Then, of course, we suggest the doctor take the patient off the high potency vitamin E product.

Our approach is to give the patient the specific food factors which he’s lacking, along with the associated factors, which make it work. In the case of angina, we would recommend CATAPLEX E2. It’s the part of the vitamin E complex, which preserves calcium in the tissues. A person with angina is usually deficient in this food factor, so he develops cramps in the muscles of his heart. One final word about our CATAPLEX E, and this applies to our other products as well. Sometimes tablets from different lots will be different in color, This is due to variables in the conditions under which the peas were grown — moisture in the air and soil, the mineral: content in the soil, etc. Since we don’t color or sugar-coat our tablets, they don’t always look alike. We have always felt this better than having to use artificial dyes or coating in order to give the tablets a uniform appearance.

Now you have a complete picture of what vitamin E actually is. The same applies to so-called “vitamin C” which the FDA says is ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is no more vitamin C than an orange peal is the whole orange. Ascorbic acid is the anti-oxidant envelope in which the active and functional ingredients of vitamin C are contained and protected. More on this in my next blog.

Here’s to your health

Anthony Palombo, DC, ACN – Chiroparctor and certified practitioner of Applied Clinical Nutrition.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more informative and inspiring articles.

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Not All “Free Radicals” Are Harmful

 

Tony Pics for SA BookSome free radicals are actually essential to life. Free radicals have acquired a rather notorious reputation.  Like with the news media and worldly events, we mostly hear about all the bad stuff they do to the body’s cells and their DNA. The good stuff often goes un-noticed and untold. One such essential “free radical” is the recently discovered and celebrated Redox Signaling Molecule. Before I tell you about it, however, let me create a little context that will help you understand its importance in your body.

Your cells are micro-models of your entire body. Your body has organs and its cells have organelles: they eat, they digest, they create energy, they excrete waste, they are regenerated, and they die.  Their health depends largely on the conditions of the terrain wherein they live and carry out their various roles in the body.  This post is about the health of this terrain of your physiology. Your body is only as healthy as its cells.  It lives and dies at the cellular level.

Cells are individuals complete unto themselves.  They are also gregarious.  They form communities of organs and systems and communicate with one another and with cells in other communities, such as the immune system – or what I prefer to call “immune alliance.”  (It’s an alliance by virtue of the involvement of and dependency on every cell, organ and system of the body.)  The immunity of the body is only as strong and balanced as the health and stability of the cell and its ability to communicate with and activate protective mechanisms such as antioxidants and “T” cells, or T lymphocytes.

T cells are the body’s exterminators. They destroy harmful bacteria, pathogens, toxins, viruses and even viral-infected cells.  They are made in the Thymus gland and bone marrow.  They often depend on the secondary lymphoid organs, such as the lymph nodes and spleen as sites where activation occurs, but they are also found in other tissues of the body, most conspicuously the liver, lungs, blood, reproductive tracts, and profusely throughout the intestinal tract.

Cells can be injured and damaged by “free radicals.”  When they are damaged they cannot function normally nor communicate with the rest of the cells in the body. But not all “free radicals” are equal, nor harmful.  So, let’s take a look at what they are.

Free radicals are oxygen-carrying atoms, molecules or ions with unpaired electrons looking for other molecules with unpaired electrons to bond with. They may have a positive, negative or zero charge.  The unpaired electrons cause radicals to be highly chemically reactive.  They pair up with other molecules, such as those of the cells, to which they bond and, in most cases, do damage through what is called “oxidative stress.”  Antioxidants, such as found in fresh fruits and vegetables, including Vitamins E and C, can protect the cell from free radical damage by a chemical reaction that simply neutralizes free radicals.  This is the purpose of antioxidants.

Hydrogen, for example, is an atom with a zero charge and an unpaired electron to which free radicals are easily attracted and bond.  Once they bond, they are no longer “free” and are thus rendered harmless.  This is why it is important to keep the pH (potential of Hydrogen) of the body’s fluid internal terrain balanced with plenty of raw fruits, vegetables and alkaline-ash foods (not to mention plenty of water, which is comprised of 2 Hydrogen and 1 Oxygen molecules). Too many acid-ash foods, such as meats and grains, deplete the alkaline reserve the body draws on throughout the day in order to keep the pH balanced.  Otherwise your body’s terrain becomes acidic making the cells very unhappy as the acidic fluids in which they live and function erodes their outer wall.

Free radicals also play an important role in combustion, plasma chemistry, biochemistry, and many other chemical processes, including human physiology.  For example, superoxide and nitric oxide regulate many biological processes, such as controlling vascular tone.  Such radicals can even be messengers in a phenomenon dubbed “redox signaling.”    [Chemial reactions in which one atom or compound is reduced (gains an electron and therefore energy) and another is oxidized (loses an electron and therefore energy) are called redox reactions.]

Redox signaling molecules are produced in the mitochondria of each cell, where your energy (ATP) comes from as well.  Two kinds are produced: antioxidant activators and immune system communicators.   Here’s a graphic:   [Also, this link will take you to a power-point presentation by Dr. Rob Ward of ASEA’s Scientific Advisory Council.  Dr. Ward focuses on the powerful holistic nature of redox signaling and how these amazing molecules empower our bodies! http://www.vimeo.com/17464658 ]

Redox signaling is the complex process within the cells wherein free radicals, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and other electronically activated radicals act as messengers in the biological system. It is basically the process that shows how cells in our body respond to oxidants and free radicals. Redox signaling is a continuous and crucial process, through which human cells communicate with each other and carry out vital body functions.    [Ref:  http://www.bewellbuzz.com/antiaging/redox-signaling/]

As demonstrated here, the immune system (T cells) is one such system activated by these redox signaling molecules.  These reactive molecules attach to receptor sites on the cells and convey signals and messages to them, thereby empowering them to perform specific functions.

Redox signaling molecules also activate antioxidants that protect the cells of the body from free-radical damage.  In fact, antioxidants are functional only when activated.  As you can see, these molecules are very important to life.

For a scientific explanation of ROS, click on this website: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_oxygen_species#Oxidative_damage

If you haven’t heard of redox signaling molecules yet and the role they play in the body’s ability to maintain a high degree ofhealth and well-being, you are not alone. Despite the fact that these molecules are relatively unknown to the general public, researchinto the critical role they play in cellularhealthhas been going on for at least 30 years, if not longer.

For a layman-friendly explanation of the Redox Signaling Molecule, visit this website: http://www.hubpages.com/hub/Redox-Signaling-Molecules-The-Next-Health-and-Wellness-Breakthrough .  You will be thrilled and thank me for bringing this information to you at this time.

This complex process, which occurs naturally within the cells of the body, slows down as we age, contributing to the ageing process.  Damaged cells fail to produce sufficient quantities of these signaling molecules, and those that are produced are often unstable and ineffective.

This slowing down and consequent ageing can now be addressed through a recent scientific breakthrough which has found a way to stabilize the Redox Signaling Molecule and synthesize it for human consumption with significant results in health benefits.

For a visual demonstration of how these radical molecules work in the body, click on this link:  http://www.dranthonypalombo.teamasea.com/science.aspx.  Scroll down and click on “View the full video.”This is my website as an associate distributor for ASEA(TM) products. After viewing the video, you may contact me for further information about this innovative approach to health enhancement. I’m taking ASEA(TM) myself and have noted an increase in energy, stamina and mental acuity and clarity. That’s encouraging to a septuagenarian. Clients report that they are able to reduce the amount of supplements they are taking.   I feel good about this product and recommend it highly to my blog readers.

I wish you each one a very joyful Christmas and a New Year of abundant and healthy living.

Here’s to your good health,

Dr. Anthony Palombo

1722 Bilbo St., Lake Charles, LA 70601. Phone (337) 802-5510 – Email dranthonypalombo@live.com