Dr.Garber’s Blog

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     Recently a short item appeared in the New York Times which caught my attention. New research published in the highly regarded Annals of Internal Medicine announced that [despite its popularity and contrary to previous studies] the herb Echinacea does not help fight colds! Here we go again, I thought. First we’re told something is good for us, then we’re told that was a mistake. But the crux of the matter was brought out in the last line of the article. It seems that the researchers weren’t using the actual plant, not the leaf nor flower nor root, but a purified form of Echinacea.In their never ending quest to find the “active ingredient” in all things therapeutic, our scientists have given us yet another example of what Nature has been showing us all along, that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Another example of this type of thinking presented itself to us not long ago when it was discovered that Soya was a phytoestrogen, that is, it exhibited an estrogen-like effect. Our scientists immediately went to work “deconstructing” the soy bean to find out what it was in the plant that had this effect. The “active ingredient” in this case turned out to be one of a group of compounds known as isoflavones. No sooner was this information made public than the shelves at stores everywhere were flooded with Soy Isoflavone products from nearly every nutritional supplement manufacturer. Not surprisingly though, it was soon found that these soy isoflavone products just didn’t quite seem to have the same estrogenic qualities as the whole soy products did. Could it be that the so called active ingredient wasn’t quite so active without the rest of the ingredients nature intended it to be partnered with?

     This principle is known as synergy. Other examples abound, especially in the world of vitamin supplements. What we call, for example, vitamins C and E (ascorbic acid and alpha-tocopherol respectively) are merely the protective layer, the anti-oxidant portion of the whole vitamin complex. In nature, that is, in food, these substances are always associated with some mineral and other co-factors which make the nutrients more available to our body. There is no place in natural where one can find alpha-tocopherol by itself. It is always found with beta, gamma and delta-tocopherols (often labeled as “mixed tocopherols”) along with the mineral selenium. As newer research has shown that the “other” tocopherols may, in fact, be even more important than the alpha form, and that the addition of the mineral selenium seems to make tocopherols more effective, one only needs to understand that that’s how vitamin E comes in the “original package.” Likewise, there is no place in nature where one will find ascorbic acid apart from a complex of nutrients. There the ascorbic acid is acting as a protector for the enzyme tyrosinase with the mineral copper at its core.

     The extraordinarily high amounts of specific vitamins and minerals we are told are necessary to take are only as high as they are because they are not complete nutrients acting synergistically. Only nutritional supplements made from whole food concentrates will have the intended nutrients present with all the proper co-factors, in the proper amounts and ratios necessary for our bodies to effectively utilize them and promote health.

     For further information on these concepts I recommend visiting the International Foundation for Nutrition and Health’s web site www.ifnh.org. The IFNH is an incredible resource for information about real nutrition. The first book listed in the suggested reading section is a wonderful little title, inexpensive and easy-to-read, Going Back to the Basics of Human Health, by Mary Frost. Another book which I strongly recommend is Empty Harvest, Bernard Jensen and Mark Anderson.