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Important Facts - Water soluble vitamin. Antioxidant.
Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant and cofactor for many enzymes.
Food Sources - Highest levels are found in sweet peppers, broccoli, citrus fruits, strawberries, melons, tomatoes, raw cabbage, and leafy greens such as spinach, turnip, and mustard greens. Among animal foods, only liver contains vitamin C.
Functions in the Body - In your body vitamin C functions
primarily in the formation of collagen, the chief protein
substance of your body's framework. Vitamin C also participates
in the activation or production of vital body chemicals - such
as norepinephrine, needed for the fight or flight response, the
unconscious raising of your pulse rate, blood flow to your
muscles, blood pressure elevation, and heightened sense of
readiness that you experience when danger threatens.
Interactions -The citrus bioflavinoids (vitamin like molecules naturally present in the peeling of citrus fruits) improve your ability to absorb and hold vitamin C by about 35%. But does that mean you should eat the peeling of your grapefruits and oranges? Not unless you particularly like to do that. You can purchase vitamin C supplements that contain bioflavinoids or you can purchase the bioflavinoids separately.
- Birth control pills and aspirin. Some research suggests that
oral contraceptive agents (birth control pills) may reduce your
blood levels of vitamin C.
- Vitamin C makes your intestine absorb aluminum better, and since aluminum can be toxic to you, you should not take supplemental ascorbic acid at the same time as any medions that contains aluminum (such as antacid liquids, like Alternagel).
- Large doses of vitamin C ( 1 gram or more taken with meals )
can interfere with your ability to absorb vitamin B12 from food
or supplements you take. In time, this could cause a B12
deficiency, which can be dangerous.
Recommended Usage - The RDA for vitamin C is 30 mg per day for infants to 6 months, 50 mg per day for children, and 60 mg per day for adults of both sexes, and 70 mg per day for pregnant or lactating women. (These are levels far below what many experts in vitamin research feel are adequate to promote optimal health.)
According to USDA 1987 literature, the mean* intake of
vitamin C in the United States ranged from 187% of RDA (93mg)
for children 1 to 5 years old, to 207% of RDA (162mg) for adults
men, to 125% of RDA (75mg) for adult women.
If that's true for women, that very likely means that the majority of Americans of both sexes and all ages are grossly deficient in this vitamin so crucially important to optimal health. The level of intake for optimal health ( not just for prevention of scurvy ) varies greatly depending on the source. Some scientists recommend an intake of 100 to 200 mg per day as a level that will achieve tissue saturation, believing that amounts beyond that will simply be excreted in the urine.
However, Dr. Linus Pauling, who has
studied the vitamin and its uses extensively since the 1960s,
disagrees. He bases his recommendation for intake on careful
scientific study of the levels of the vitamin in animals that
produce their own vitamin C.
Their data show very promising and intriguing responses to these megadose levels with few toxic side effects. Work concerning ascorbic acid's effects in cancer treatment is currently being done at the Pauling Institute (in Palo Alto, California) and in Canada and Scotland.
Symptoms of Toxicity - Very well tolerated even in high doses.
The only consistently documented symptom of taking too much
vitamin C is diarrhea.
Safety Information - Some concern about the development of
kidney stones as a result of increased vitamin C intake arose
several years back because ascorbic acid breaks down to form
oxalic acid, a major player in the formation of one type of
kidney stones (calcium oxalate stones).
- Large doses (above the RDA) could cause hemolysis (red blood
cell rupture) in people who suffer from a lack of a specific
enzyme called gluose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase.
- If you take doses equal to or greater than one gram of ascorbic acid three times daily, you should check the level of vitamin B12 in your blood every 6 months to one year. (See discussion above and under vitamin B12.)
*While an average value means adding the individuals amounts of
vitamin C taken of all people surveyed and dividing that sum by
the number of people involved, a mean value is the amount most
commonly taken.
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Biotin Important Facts - Water soluble vitamin. You can store some of this sulfur containing vitamin of the B Complex group in your liver, even though the vitamin is technically water soluble. Food Sources - The highest concentrations of Biotin come from liver ( 100 to 200 micrograms per 100 grams of liver ), kidney, and pancreas, follower by soy flour (60 to 70 micrograms), egg yolk (16 micrograms per 100 grams), cereal (3 to 30 micrograms per 100 grams), yeast (100 to 200 micrograms per 100 grams).
Functions in the Body - We need biotin for proper energy
metabolism and for growth, for the production of fatty acids, of
antibodies, of digestive enzymes, and in niacin metabolism. The
vitamin also has insulin like activity in lowering blood sugar.
Interactions -Raw egg white contains a substance called avidin - a biotin anti-vitamin - that binds to biotin and prevents its absorption into your blood. Heating denatures (irrevocably alters the structure of) the avidin in egg white, and therefore cooked eggs pose no problem in preventing you from absorbing the biotin from foods you eat. Alcohol impairs your ability to absorb and, therefore, chronic abuse of alcohol can make you deficient in biotin. - Conversion of biotin to its active form requires magnesium, and so if you are deficient in magnesium, you can also become deficient in biotin. - Antibiotics increase your need for biotin by killing the intestinal bacteria that produce it for you.
Recommended Usage - Natural d-biotin is the only active form (of
eight possibilities) to be fully active. (Other forms are not
fully active vitamins. Oxybiotin has reduced activity and
desthiobiotin retains no activity whatsoever.) It's rare under
normal circumstances that you would become deficient in biotin,
except as a remedy for specific medical conditions, little
reason to supplement exists.
Symptoms of Deficiency - Spotty loss of hair, anemia, loss of appetite and nausea, depression, fatigue, high blood cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, sleeplessness, pain and weakness of the muscles, dry skin, grayish cast to the skin, pale smooth tongue. Symptoms of Toxicity - No reports of toxic effect have occurred with daily intakes as high as 10 mg per day. Safety Information - Biotin is safe and non-toxic. |
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I am not going to list all the information here on B Complex, suffice to say; use it!
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Important Facts - Water soluble Vitamin.
Cooking in water leeches much of the thiamine content out of foods. Deficiency of this vitamin caused one of the classic deficiency diseases of history -beriberi- which I have discussed fully in a section devoted to these deficiency disorders.
Food Sources - Beans, grains and seeds, meat (especially pork), liver, brewer's yeast.
- Thiamine functions in your body as a required coenzyme or helper molecule in the metabolism of protein, carbohydrates, ans fat for energy production. You also need this vitamin to be able to produce the copies of genetic material that must be pass from one cell to another when cells divide - an activity that all living cells must regularly do.
Recommended Usage - RDA minimum intake is 1.0 mg per day for adult females, 1.4 mg per day for adult males, and 0.14 to 0.2 mg per day for infants. Rule of thumb is 0.4 to 0.5 mg per day per 1,000 calories of dietary intake in all age groups to prevent disease. However, in treating specific deficiency states,
Symptoms of Deficiency - Loss of appetite, clouded thinking, sluggish bowel, lack of coordination, mental or emotional depression, fatigue, irritability, memory problems, muscle weakness or wasting, nervousness, numbness or burning of the hands and feet, decreased pain tolerance, shortness of breath, and fliud retention in the hands and feet. The classic deficienct syndrome is called beriberi. Symptoms of Toxicity - None known Safety information - Not stored, quickly excreted, little or no risk of toxic buildup if taken orally. Take care with other routes of administration, however, because thiamine by injection can cause potentially fatal allergic reactions. |
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Important Facts - Water soluble Vitamin. As its name (derived from the Greek panthos, meaning evrywhere) suggests, this vitamin is widely distributed in nature. It is destroyed by dry heat, such as baking and grilling, by acid and alkali solutions used in canning or freezing, and by processing of foods (such as wheat flour, refined sugar, and heat treated commercial fats and oils). Unlike Riboflavin, niacin, and thiamine, this member of the B Complex group is not added as an enricher into white flour. Food Sources - Occurs widely, but sources with the highest content are liver, peanuts, whole what, wheat germ, brewer's yeast, bran, egg yolk, chicken, and broccoli. Functions in the Body - Pantothenic Acid forms one part of a vital substance called coenzyme A, which is necessary for energy production and the metabolism of carohydrate and fatty acids. It is necessary for the normal synthesis of red blood cells, brain chemicals, cholesterol, and native corticosteroids, critical to our withstanding physical (and emotional) stress. In the immune system, pantothenix acid helps to stimulate antibody production. Interactions - Adequate amounts of pantothenic acid are necessary for the proper absorption and metabolism of folic acid, so there is a positive interaction there. Otherwise, this vitamin does not appear to adversly affect other vitamins, nitrients, or medions. Recommended Usage - Because deficiency is rare under normal circumstances, there is no RDA listing for this vitamin, however, usual intake ranges from 5 to 10 mg per day for adult men and women, and just under 2 mg per day for infants. Roger Williams, the professor of biochemistry who discovered this vitamin, beleives that a dosage of 50 mg per day in pregnant women would sharply decrease the incidence of fetal malformation and miscarrages, which in light of very recent data concerning the association of folic acid deficiency with the development of neural tube (spinal tube) defects and the direct relationship between pantothenic and folic acids make perfect sense. Need for this vitamin (as is true for all the B group and C) increases dramatically under physical or emotional stress or with illness. Orthomolecular physicans (those who subscribe to the use of high doses of vitamins and minerals to treat diseases) routinely prescribe doses in the 200 to 400 mg per day range during such times when native steroid (stress hormone) production is high. Symptoms of Deficiency - Because the vitamin is ubiquitous in foods, deficiency rarely occurs in humans unless specially created for study purposes. During these special circumstances, volunteers kept deficient for 9 to 10 weeks developed symtoms associated with deficiency which included: abdominal pains, hair loss, loss of appetite, nerve function impairments such as burning foot pain and loss of coordination, emotional symptoms of depression, irritability and nervousness, muscle spasms, weakness, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, rapid heart beat, low blood pressure, eczema, and insomnia. In animal models, deficiency results in a broad range of problems which involve abnormal growth of young, spontaneous abortion of young, infertility, abnormalities of hair, skin, and pigment, malfunction of the gastrointestinal system, neurologic system, and sudden death. The graying of fur in rats made deficient in pantothenic acid and the subsequent reversal of the color loss upon resupplementation led researchers to postulate that additional dosage of the vitamin in humans might prevent or reverse graying of human hair. Certainly, this is an intriguing hypothesis to those of us hitting that phase of life when the "salt" has begun to overtake the "pepper" in our hair, however, clinical trials of oral and topical supplementation for this purpose have proven disappointing to date. Symptoms of Toxicity - Very Non Toxic. Some orthomolecular physicans describe using doses of up to 10,000 mg without adverse effect. Safety Information - Safe and non toxic. |
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Side Effects and Interactions
Important Facts - Water soluble vitamin. Although cooking foods in large amounts of water, then discarding the water, can potentially cause niacin losses from food sources, heat and light do not effect it. Deficiency causes the classic disease, pellagra. For a more in depth discussion and additional important facts about this vitamin, see the Classic Deficient Disease, page 10 Food Sources - Milk, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, dried beans (legumes), sunflower and sesame seeds, whole grains, and brewers yeast. Functions in the Body - Niacin functions as a required coenzyme in protein metabolism, in the synthesis of genetic material, fatty acids, cholesterol, in energy production, and is necessary for proper central nervous system (brain) functions. Interaction - Your body can convert some dietary tryptophan to niacin at a rate such that 60mg of tryptophan becomes 1mg of niacin. Nutritional researchers have dubbed the amount of tryptophan that will yield 1 mg of niacin as 1 "niacin equivalent." This conversion allows a diet rich in tryptophan to increase available niacin even in the absence of dietary niacin. Recommended Usage - The RDA for children above 6 months of age and for adult men and woman is 6.6 mg niacin (or 6.6 niacin equivalent) for each 1000 calories in the diet. In protocols to treat deficiency or to promote cholesterol lowering, clinicians have recommended doses of 250 mg or even more, two, three times a day. Symptoms of deficiency - Loss of appetite, fatigue, weakness, heartburn, depression, and irritability occur early in the developing deficiency. Classic signs of deficiency include a red, inflamed, scaling dermatitis especially prominent on the face, neck, arms, and hands (but present in any sun exposed areas), diarrhea, painful swallowing from soreness of the mouth and esophagus, psychological symptoms such as depression, disorientation, delusional thoughts and hallucinations, and ultimately death. Classic deficiency state is termed pellagra. Symptoms of Toxicity - Flushing and itching of the skin, especially of the face and upper trunk, abnormal heart rhythms, and gastrointestinal problems. Safety Information - Not stored, water soluble. May cause flushing of the skin; however, the niacinamide and nicotinamide forms of the vitamin seem not to cause this symptom as readily as niacin itself. Take note, however, that the niacinamide form of niacin, paradoxically, may cause depression or fatigue in some people. |
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Important Facts - Mineral.
In the late 1950s, two researchers, named Schwarz and Mertz, reported that rats fed a diet deficient in chromium developed sugar intolerance, and that replacing the chromium in the diet of these "diabetic - like " rats restored them to normal. This marked the first recognition that animals required chromium for normal life. Since that time, researchers have recognized a similar role for chromium in human health. Food Sources - Brewer's Yeast, wheat germ, liver, meat, cheese, legumes, beans, peas, whole grains, black pepper, and molasses. Functions in the Body - The primary role of chromium in your body is in blood sugar regulation as a "glucose tolerance factor" or "GTF". Chromium works with insulin to drive sugar from your blood into the tissues of your body for use or storage. This mineral is so important in sugar tolerance that severe deficiencies of it cause a diabetes - like illness to develop. Chromium levels fall low during and after childbearing, in childhood diabetes, and in coronary artery disease ( hardening of the arteries to the heart ). Deficiency of chromium during pregnancy may explain the diabetes that develops during pregnancy ( gestational diabetes ) and through its interaction with insulin may also contribute to the rapid weight gain, fluid retention, blood pressure some woman experience during pregnancy and afterward. Interactions -Calcium carbonate ( a form of calcium often used in over the counter calcium supplements ) can impair your ability to absorb chromium and could ultimately cause you to become deficient. - Sugar increases your need for chromium and at the same time may increase your loss of chromium in urine. Recommended Usage - Use only the trivalent form (chromium picolinate or nicotinate glycinate) to take 100 to 200 micrograms per day. Symptoms of Deficiency - Anxiety, fatigue, sugar intolerance (borderline diabetes), stunted growth, high cholesterol. Symptoms of Toxicity - Symptoms that can develop, but are rare, include: skin rashes, stomach ulcers, and poor kidney and liver function. Safety Information - Even in very high doses in experimental animals, chromium seems to cause no ill effects. |
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Michael R. Eades, Thin So Fast ( New York: Warner Books,
1989), and |
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