iThyroid.com

VITAMINS

Most people and most nutritionists think that taking vitamins is good, but I have a different viewpoint. I think that minerals are the real workers and that vitamins are just the catalysts and enzymes that assist mineral metabolism. 

Mineral metabolism requires vitamins but what happens when you take vitamins without the minerals? My feeling is that each mineral requires a certain vitamin or group of vitamins to make it work. For example we know that vitamin D helps calcium metabolism, vitamin E helps selenium metabolism, and vitamin B-12 helps iron metabolism. 

But what happens when you take D without calcium, E without selenium, and B-12 without iron. My experience leads me to believe that when you take a vitamin without the appropriate mineral the vitamin causes that mineral to become more deficient. The vitamin pushes the metabolic processes that involve the mineral, so the scarce supplies of the mineral get used and the mineral becomes scarcer.

This means that when you take vitamin D without calcium, you could get more calcium deficient; when you take vitamin E without selenium you can get more selenium deficient; and when you take B-12 without iron you can get more iron deficient.

This is a revolutionary idea in nutrition and while I can't prove that it's true, I have a very strong suspicion that it is. Here is what I've seen that leads me to believe this.

Studies have shown that taking vitamin E in large amounts (over 400 IU per day) causes an increase in heart disease. Selenium is a key to preventing heart disease and there are areas of this country where selenium is very deficient in the soil like Georgia and South Carolina where the heart disease rate is so high, the area is called the Heart Attack belt.

Copper metabolism is assisted by various vitamins including many of the B complex vitamins and vitamin C. Anecdotal evidence suggests that taking lots of vitamin C or B complex without also supplementing copper causes copper to become more deficient. This seems to be a common pathway that many hypers have followed toward their disease.

I hope to accumulate stories from people which will offer more anecdotal evidence of this effect. Remember this is not scientific proof but if enough anecdotal evidence is collected it might spur someone to do the appropriate experiment to test the hypothesis.

Story 1: 

Hi John:

Thanks for a very informative thread.

I think it has cleared up a mystery I had: I first became very ill following 
several weeks of very high doses of Vitamin B1 which I took with lesser 
doses of vitamin B complex on the recommendation of a naturopath in 
training. I have always thought that supplementing the B vitamins had 
something to do with the onset of my illness as I became progressively 
fidgety and irritable the more I took the supplements.

I ended up, in March 1999, having what felt like a "seizure" where I blacked 
out on a train with a "panic attack" (it was not). I took to my bed for 
about four days following, during which time I lost a stone in weight - this 
was first dismissed as a panic attack, then diagnosed as an SVT attack, then retrospectively, "probably a thyroid palpitation". I don't know for sure 
but it definitely marked a sudden beginning to this protracted spell of ill 
health and left me with enormous terror of that ever happening again. Maybe 
that was a storm.

John, you said: "The B complex sounds fine, but don't take it without copper 
since it will further deplete copper if you're not taking copper."
I think this is maybe what happened to me. Whaddayareckon??!