Are Liquid Vitamins Better than Vitamin Pills?

Absorbing nutrients from vitamins is an important issue.  If vitamins don’t get absorbed, you wasted your money.  When I started in the wellness industry 12 years ago, we spent a great deal of time on the absorption issue. Except for pharmaceuticals, the law doesn’t require tablets to dissolve  in order to be sold.  That means your vitamin tablet was not tested most of the time.

Liquid vitamins are popular because many people just don’t like swallowing pills. Chewable tablets don’t often taste good, and it can be  difficult to teach children how to swallow pills. (Some tips here).

Doing some searches for independent information on liquid vitamins was extremely difficult.  98% of the references were by distributors of liquid vitamins. ( The Shaklee Corporation does make a liquid vitamin called Liqui-lea.)  I did find a good article by Dan Ho.  Consumer’s Reports had a little info, but they tend to be negative on supplementation anyway, and do not distinguish between synthetic and natural supplements.

Because the average person doesn’t have a good understanding of the digestion process, it’s very easy to sell the idea of liquid vitamins.  Nutrients are absorbed in your small intestine, not in your stomach.  The purpose of your stomach is to begin the process of breaking down your food.  The rest of the breakdown happens in the small intestine. Your liver, gall bladder, pancreas all supply hormones, enzymes, etc to the small intestine, to complete the process.  There your body extracts the nutrients, makes other vitamins, assembles the protein chain, and it is absorbed through the tiny, finger-like villi.  There is a belief that liquids somehow break down in your stomach more easily. People think that liquid vitamins have somehow “saved a step” in the digestion process. Yet even water must be digested- ever experience water sloshing around in an empty stomach?

Vitamin manufacturers, many of whom do NOT do any clinical testing or third party verification of their products are looking for a competitive edge.  If they can play into popular myth that liquid vitamins are
more easily absorbed, without providing proof, then they do it.

Some vitamins are water soluble.  That means that any nutrient suspended in liquid – like vitamin C, will be completely worthless, because it will break down completely in the bottle before you swallow it. Did the manufacturer takes steps to ensure that the vitamins and minerals in the liquid supplement are stable?  That
they don’t interact in the bottle? What about molecular structure?  Your body requires that certain nutrients come in specific forms – despite what a marketer will tell you.

From Keith Anderson of the Shaklee Corporation:

“There are a few issues with liquid vitamins. Let us start by confirming that liquid vitamins have no absorption advantages over tableted or gel encapsulated supplements. And, yes, water soluble vitamins are unstable and lose potency very quickly in a liquid medium.

Once ingested, nutrients have to be separated from their carriers via the body’s natural chelation process and reunited with the appropriate enzymes and proteins within the body to be redistributed to where they are needed. The body doesn’t care if these nutrients come via liquid or tablet…the chelation
process is necessary with either form.

Another issue of major importance is that nutrients are absorbed through receptors present in various locations along the digestive tract. This is why the time release feature of the SMART delivery system utilized in Vitalizer is so important in maximizing nutrient absorption. Ideally, you do not want vitamins to all be released at the same time in one nutrient dump into the stomach, where certain nutrients are diminished by the acid environment”.

Bottom line- ask to see the clinical studies and third part verification of any brand that you are taking.  Ask for absorption and bioavailability studies.  Learn a little about how your body works yourself, and you will be well prepared in shopping for supplements.

Cinch Yogurt Recipes

Copyright 2008 Karen Hurd Enterprises, Inc.  All rights reserved

Tired of Cinch Shakes? If you’ve been on the Cinch plan a while you may need a little variety in your 2 Cinch meals a day. I’m a yogurt lover, but my 1 cup of yogurt everyday didn’t quite fit into my personal Cinch plan, and the 4 oz variety, was too little for me. These variations are good anytime!  They satisfy my yogurt craving, are very filling and really change up my plan.  I used organic fat free plain yogurt.  It was the only fat free yogurt I found that had no aspartame of Splenda ™. These yogurt meals are filling and easy to whip up.  I used ¾ cup instead of 1 cup to keep the calorie count down.  1 cup fat free yogurt is 110 calories vs 90 calories for light soy milk or 100 calories for non-fat milk.  I’m sure that you could substitute soy yogurt, sheeps milk yogurt or coconut yogurt. Just watch for the fat/calorie content.

If you choose to use vanilla yogurt, the calorie count will increase.

You don’t need any extra sweetener because the Cinch TM shake mix is naturally sweet.  If you must add sweetener, add some stevia or a little xylitol.  I add some water to thin it or it will be too thick.

These are really yummy and make me feel full.  Not on Cinch yet?  See me or visit my Cinch Plan site.


Pumpkin Pie yogurt – my new favorite

¾ cup fat free plain yogurt (80 calories)
¼ cup canned pumpkin (22 calories) counts as ½ vegetable
2 scoops Cinch ™ vanilla shake mix
½ tsp cinnamon or to taste
dash ginger
2 drops vanilla extract
2T water – to thin the yogurt/Cinch ™ mix

This is a really good substitute for pumpkin pie!

Pina Colada yogurt

¾ cup fat free yogurt – (80) calories
2 scoops Cinch TM vanilla shake
2-3T crushed pineapple.  Fresh is better, canned works just fine Count it as part of your fruit serving
2 drops drops rum flavoring

Mocha Expresso Yogurt

¾ cup fat free plain yogurt (80 Calories)
2 scoops Caffe Latte Cinch ™ Shake mix
2 tsp cocoa baking powder (not chocolate milk mix)
Couple drops vanilla extract

Change it up – switch to 2 scoops chocolate Cinch ™
shake mix
1 tsp coffee granules

Can use coffee to thin the yogurt/Cinch mixture

Berry Good Yogurt

¾ cup fat free plain yogurt
2 scoops Cinch ™ strawberry shake mix
couple of drops vanilla or orange or almond extract
¼ cup fresh or frozen blueberries
¼ cup fresh or frozen strawberries

The fruit in this will count as 1 fruit serving on your Cinch ™ plan.

Peanut Butter Cookie Yogurt – may need a blender for this one!

¾ cup fat free plain or vanilla yogurt
2 scoops Cinch ™ vanilla shake mix
2T natural peanut butter creamy or crunchy style – this counts as 2 fat servings
2 drops vanilla extract

Mix it up well!

Change it up! Almost like Reese’s ™ yogurt

¾  cup Fat-free plain yogurt
2 scoops Cinch™ chocolate shake mix
1 tsp cocoa baking powder
2 drops vanilla extract

Coffee Addict – this should quench the craving of the most ardent coffee lover

¾ cup fat-free plain yogurt
2 scoops Cinch™ Caffe Latte shake mix
2 drops vanilla
1 tsp instant coffee granules
dash cinnamon

Thin this  w/coffee.  You may want to add some stevia or xylitol

Let me know what variations you come up with!    Join US!  We have Cinch Resolution Group tele-meetings every Monday night 2 8:30 Eastern.  See the Events page for details.

Splenda and Reese’s are trademarks of their respective companies.  Cinch is a trademark of the Shaklee
corporation.

12 pounds and 12 inches smaller!
Karen
Cinch Plan site

• @DowntownWoman Corporate cultures must change. They seem stuck in old mindsets, and are pretty controlling. Glad I'm not in one now! in reply to DowntownWoman #
• Discovered that my Cinch shake mix makes a great high protein flavor for yogurt. Today I'm making pina colada yogurt – yummy! #
• @DowntownWoman – Personally I feel that the future of women in biz is as entrepreneurs, not the corporate ladder. in reply to DowntownWoman #

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Should You Use Zicam?

I’m an allergy patient. When I get a cold, it’s like adding an insult to injury. The congestion is awful.  If I don’t take care of it quickly, it quite often goes into a secondary infection.  It’s best to avoid getting colds altogehter, and for the most part I seldom get them.

As a wellness person, I know that much of the cold remedies are questionable, and most never really worked for me.  I kept seeing Zicam, and was very intrigued because it contained zinc and seemed like a good natural alternative.  The price tag (over $10) kept me from buying it.  Right now I’m using a neti-pot, or nasal irrigation when I get a cold or am exposed to alot of dust.  It works quite well. In addition I take quite a lot of garlic, Vita-C (TM), Nutriferon (TM), Formula I (TM) and Alfalfa (TM).

Guest Blogger today is Dr. Richard Brouse.  Dr. Brouse is a chiropractic physician, biochemist, certified clinical nutritionist, teacher, author and lecturer on health preservation and disease prevention. you can find his site at: http://www.healthedcorp.com/

Zicam manufactures a form of zinc gluconate + gylcerine lozenge supposedly said to treat colds.  An other product with the same ingredients include Cold Ez. Zicam has had a number of lawsuits due to alleged damage to olfactory sensory nerves.

In September 2003, Zicam faced lawsuits from users who claimed that the product negatively affected their sense of smell, and sometimes taste. However, Zicam advocates assert that instructions on the container clearly indicate proper use, which will allow users to avoid these problems. In January 2006, 340 lawsuits were settled for $12 million.^[9] In early 2004, at the height of the controversy, Matrixx Initiatives, Inc., the maker of Zicam, claimed that only a small number of people had experienced problems and that anosmia (loss of smell) can, amongst others, also be caused by the common cold itself. Matrixx also claimed that zinc gluconate dissolves into zinc ions and gluconate, and that both are naturally occurring compounds which are found in all human tissues. They also claim that Zicam is a buffered gel which is formulated to have a neutral pH. The plaintiffs countered Matrixx, claiming that many of the patients had experienced a strong and very painful burning sensation when they used the product, indicating damage to the nasal tissue. No part of the settlement targeted the product’s removal from sale, and the nasal gel continues to be available at drug stores throughout the USA. The two creators of Zicam have come under scrutiny. Robert Steven Davidson received his PhD from an unaccredited university which has since closed while Charles B. Hensley has been cited by the US Food and Drug Administration for selling unapproved drugs over the Internet.^[10]

· 9 zicam.vanosteen.com

· 10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001255.html Retrieved on 2008-02-27

My advice over a product like zinc gluconate is to take Vivix, Nutriferon, avoid sweets, evaluate your zinc status by laboratory testing and get enough rest.  This works for my patients.

Dr. Richard Brouse Health Education Corporation