Ascorbic Acid Is Not Vitamin C

July 12, 2017

Ascorbic Acid Is Not Vitamin C

This will be a short chapter, but after you’re finished with it, you will know more about vitamins than 95% of clinical nutritionists, doctors, supplement sales force, or bodybuilders. If that sounds arrogant or overstated, it really isn’t my fault. I’m just a messenger; a purveyor of information. Either I’m right or the 95% are right; can’t be both.

Originally published at The Doctor Within

Without further ado, here’s the kernel:

Ascorbic acid is not vitamin C.
Alpha tocopherol is not vitamin E.
Retinoic acid is not vitamin A.

And so on through the other vitamins. Vast sums of money have been expended to make these myths part of Conventional Wisdom. If you have several college degrees and all this is news to you, don’t feel bad. Unless you think your education ended at Commencement. Which is generally true.

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

Vitamins are not individual molecular compounds. Vitamins are biological complexes. They are multi-step biochemical interactions whose action is dependent upon a number of variables within the biological terrain. Vitamin activity only takes place when all conditions are met within that environment, and when all co-factors and components of the entire vitamin complex are present and working together. Vitamin activity is even more than the sum of all those parts; it also involves timing.

Vitamins cannot be isolated from their complexes and still perform their specific life functions within the cells. When isolated into artificial commercial forms, like ascorbic acid, these purified synthetics act as drugs in the body. They are no longer vitamins, and to call them such is inaccurate.

A vitamin is:

A working process consisting of the nutrient, enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants, and trace minerals activators.

– Royal Lee “What Is a Vitamin?” Applied Trophology, Aug 1956