Vitamins & Supplements: Is Natural Really Better? Vitamins, the essential elements for humans to live and be healthy, have evolved from their natural foundations into a synthesized and sometimes unnatural form of as they are processed with ever-expanding technologies. It is important to get balanced amounts of each vitamin to avoid disease or other health complications. Supplements can be one way to ensure a balanced diet but first one must be determined whether or not to use supplements, and then the appropriate dosage must be determined. Finally, there is a choice of synthetic or natural supplements. The first two questions are answered according to personal preference. The third question is easier to establish: regardless of the actual source of the vitamin, if the chemical makeup is the same, they will have the same health benefits. Vitamins are a nutrient in the form of an organic, carbon-containing, molecule. There are varying amounts of these molecules found in the foods we eat every day. These little molecules are an essential component of good health. Though originally found in food, it is now possible to get vitamins from other sources, necessitating the distinction of synthetic and natural vitamins. Natural vitamins are ones that you ingest from eating certain foods and synthetic vitamins are made in a laboratory setting. Besides the source of natural and synthetic vitamins, there are other supposed differences that cause controversy, with some health purists maintaining that synthetic vitamins are useless and ineffective. The chemical components of natural and synthetic vitamins are identical, their purposes the same. If a patient needs vitamin C, he needs ascorbic acid, which has a specific chemical formula and can come from any source. Vitamin C and ascorbic acid are the same because they have the same chemical formula. When ascorbic acid is manufactured in the lab, it is the exact same thing as ascorbic acid from an orange. To the body and the cells utilizing the nutrient, it does not matter if the source is natural or synthetic, as long as the actual chemical formula is the same. Even when knowing synthetic and natural vitamins are chemically the same, some people still contend that one is better than the other. This is because in addition to the chemical structure, vitamins also have a molecular structure. The chemical structure is comprised of the elements that make up a substance. The molecular structure is the structural shape of those elements. It is important to compare the synthetic vitamin’s molecular structure to the natural vitamin’s molecular structure. If it is different, the vitamin could act different in the body. Dr. Linda Hadley states, “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”. This duplication is precisely what chemists have done; not only are synthetic vitamins made with the exact same chemical formula, they also have the same molecular structure. In most cases it is actually advised to take vitamins with food. Vitamins are meant to be taken with food so that the necessary micronutrients will be met and the vitamins only have to help fill in the gaps. It is also advisable to include healthy foods in a diet because the available amounts of a particular vitamin vary from food to food: “The vitamin A in butter is two or three times as potent, unit for unit, as vitamin A from cod liver oil. Spinach vitamin A is ten times more potent, unit for unit, in the treatment of night blindness, than vitamin A from cod liver oil” (Hadley).
Vitamins are meant to be supplements not substitutes. Some doctors even argue that vitamins should only be used for treatment. The main idea, though, is that, “’If you’re eating a balanced diet, you’re already getting all the vitamins you need‘” (Van 193). The best source