Synthetic Versus Natural Vitamins

When a chemist begins the study of any material, he has as his chief objective the mapping of the molecular structure, and he feels that his work is unfinished until he succeeds in synthetically duplicating its construction.

Previous to the days of vitamin investigation, no chemist had the temerity to suggest the synthetic production of foodstuffs from non-food sources. The obvious lack of accessory food factors in such products made their commercial exploitation out of the question, regardless of the fact that it has long been possible to make sugar from calcium carbide (via acetylene) or from wood pulp.

In the vitamin field, however, no such practical knowledge of the dangers of consuming synthetic materials has existed in the public mind to protect the layman from exploitation by unscrupulous or ignorant purveyors of nutritional products, who on every hand are barking their wares in health food, grocery and drug stores.

Each year sees new advertising campaigns break all sales records with new products of assembled synthetic conglomerations of so-called “Vitamins.” The buyers are looking for sustenance. Proof that they fail to find it in these mushroom promotions is unmistakable in the short life of each of these trade names in the mind of the public. Here today and gone tomorrow. Every druggist can show a “morgue” of dead products that sold as leaders while the advertising pressure was applied, and were not called for again after the first crop of customers had hopefully laid its money on the counter for the privilege of testing the new and scientifically advertised “Elixir of Life.” A product that cannot create its own repeat business is unquestionably worthless, regardless of the so-called “biological units” it may contain.

We reiterate the principle: “Animal tests are indispensable to determine what the symptoms of vitamin deficiency are, but are worthless to determine what will cure those symptoms when observed in the human species.”

The natural vitamin complexes contain the various closely related principles that are normally found together in foods. The more we study those complexes, the more complex they appear. That is why synthetic and chemically purified “Vitamins” are really not vitamins at all. They are only fragments of vitamins, just as the vegetable fiber in hay is a fragment of the carbohydrate complex. Goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs can thrive if fed this single fragment of the carbohydrate group (as it naturally occurs unpurified) BUT WE CANNOT. Hay is not a carbohydrate for the human, but we get some benefit from the associated minerals and vitamins it contains.

The unparalleled results produced by “V-P” Vitamin Complexes is due to the presence of these associated synergists which make up each complex.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin A Complex will so effectively relieve those frequent cases of hypertension, cystitis and sinusitis that develop because of Vitamin A deficiency.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin B Complex so effectively cooperates with liver extract in anemia and corrects the heart arrhythmias found in almost a third of the adults over fifty, which are common specific reactions to Vitamin B deficiency.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin C Complex so promptly brings down the temperature in infectious diseases where the deficiency has paralyzed the phagocytic activity.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin E Complex so promptly relieves the eczematous conditions that often result from a deficiency of the fat-soluble vegetable group.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin F Complex so promptly relieves the fever blisters, cold sores, brittle nails, scanty hair growth and falling hair that is characteristic of Vitamin F deficiency.

That is why “V-P” Vitamin G Complex so often removes the distressing symptoms in gastric ulcer, where the cause frequently is a slowing of regenerative processes because of a deficiency of specific growth factors.

In the following pages will be tabulated the known factors of each of the vitamins that have been discovered up to the present.

NOTE: Clinical Experience with V-P Vitamin A Complex (the complete natural complex from various therapeutically active sources) has indicated that a combination of factors gives greater effectiveness in humans than vitamin A from any ONE source. Vitamin A is particularly hard to measure in units. The vitamin A of butter is two or three times as potent, unit for unit, as vitamin A from cod liver oil.8 Spinach vitamin A is ten times more potent, unit for unit, in the treatment of night blindness, than vitamin A from cod liver oil. The various forms and synergists are necessary for highest potency and best clinical results. Remarkable results have been reported from the use of V-P Vitamin A Complex in nephritis, hypertension, cystitis, acidosis, hemeralopia, and nyctalopia.

 

References Cited:

1. McLester, Nutrition and Diet in Health and Disease, W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, pp. 81, (1939).
2. Nelson and Tolle, “Fat-soluble Vitamins, Vitamin A,” Ann. Rev. Biochem. 8;415, 1939.
3. Embree, Jol. Biol. Chem. 128:187, 1939.
4. Abstract, Frederichsen and Edmund, “Studies of Hypo-vitaminosis A: II. A New Method for Testing the Resorption of Vitamin A from Medicaments,” American Journal of Diseases of Children, 53:89-109, January 1937; “Clinical Experiments in the Vitamin A Balance in Children after Various Diets,” ibid, 53:1178-1201, March 1937.
5. Emmett and Bird, “Comparative Biological Value of Vitamin A as an Alcohol and Ester,” (Abstract) Scientific Proceedings of the Society of Biological Chemists 119,1: xxxi, June 1937.
6. Stepp, Kuhnau, and Schroeder, The Vitamins and Their Clinical Application, English Translation, the Vitamin Products Company, Milwaukee, 1938.
7. The Badger Quarterly, 1, 1:6. January 1939, Madison, Wisconsin.
8. Fraps and Kemmerer, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin #560, February 1938, “Relation of Spectro-Vitamin A and Carotene Content of Butter to its Vitamin A. Potency Measured by Biological Methods.”