Beyond the vitamin alphabet...A look at pine bark...

When we think about the multivitamin and health supplements we take, we generally focus on what I call the "vitamin alphabet."

You know what I mean. A, B and the whole B-series, C, D, etc.

All of those vitamins are absolutely necessary and great for us, but you might not think a lot about some of the other good stuff that's found in top-notch supplements.

Take, for instance, pine bark. Pine bark isn't found in every available multivitamin, but it is in some of the better ones. There's pine bark, for instance, in my personal favorite--The Greatest Vitamin in the World.

Now, pine bark might not compare to Vitamin C in terms of its fan following, but it is pretty amazing stuff. According to Drug Digest:

"Pine bark extract helps to control chronic venous insufficiency in two ways. First, chemicals called proanthocyanidins (or polyphenols) in pine bark extract help keep veins and other blood vessels from leaking. In addition, pine bark extract has anti-inflammatory effects. Inflammation is often a response to irritation, injury, or infection and it usually includes pain, redness, and swelling in the area of the damage. Inflammation, which can occur within body tissues as well as on the surface of the skin, contributes to chronic venous insufficiency.

Because it strengthens the walls of all blood vessels, pine bark extract may also be effective for slowing retinopathy, which is the gradual break down of the retina in the eyes. Individuals with arteriosclerosis (a build up of fatty deposits in the arteries), diabetes, or other conditions that increase the likelihood for damage to the small blood vessels in the eyes are more likely to have serious vision problems as a result of blood vessel damage."

It also has some fascinating possibilities in terms of anti-oxidant value.

If you're taking a great supplement, you're ingesting some very helpful stuff. That includes the full "vitamin alphabet," but it goes beyond that to things like pine bark!

Why buy vitamins online?

You could walk down to your local pharmacy. You could run to the nearest shopping mall and go to a chain supplement store. You could just walk into Wal-Mart and head for the health and beauty section.

All of those options will put you in front of a wide assortment of multivitamin products.

With so many choices at our fingertips, why would anyone buy vitamins online?

Here are three great reasons.

First, you have a better opportunity to do research and to comparison shop. Your health is important, so you want to find a great vitamin. It can be hard to make an informed decision while comparing three different bottles in the aisle at a busy store with no other reference materials available. If you're online, you can perform the necessary due diligence.

Second, you can often save money by buying online. Great deals aren't reserved to buying ceramic kittens on eBay. You can get some wonderful cost-saving deals on vitamins by buying online, too. That's reason enough not to pay inflated pharmacy prices.

Third, some of the best products aren't on your local store shelves. The vitamin industry is growing all the time and those behind products don't always adopt at "put it on the shelf at K-Mart" marketing strategy. Online shoppers can access better products than what the store-browser might find. If you're looking for the best, you might just have to look online.

If you're thinking about buying the very best possible multivitamin, don't stop yourself from shopping online. There are some great reasons not to go to the mall and buy the first brown bottle you find.

Don't fall for "FDA approval" stories...

Can you believe what some vitamin dealers and manufacturers will do to get your business?

Here's a great example of how they can stretch the truth in hopes of securing another sale. Have you heard vitamin sellers talking about FDA approval? If you have, you've heard an incredibly misleading sales pitch!

Let me explain... The FDA (Food and Drug Administration, in case you weren't sure) doesn't license or endorse vitamins or supplements. They aren't under its jurisdiction. They don't study them. They don't test them. They don't approve them. The FDA has about as much to do with the multivitamin industry as the Tennessee Valley Authority--nothing.

So, how do these hucksters get away with that kind of rhetoric? It's because of the GRAS list. GRAS stands for "generally recognized as safe." The FDA does maintain a list of substances it recognizes as generally safe for human consumption.

Those looking for a way to sell their products are ready to stretch the fact that they have GRAS ingredients into some kind of FDA approval, which it is not.

The honest brokers won't exaggerate. Some of them, like The Greatest Vitamin in the World will go out of their way to explain the whole thing to you (just check their site's Q&A, they break it down honestly and succinctly).

If you were hoping for the FDA to tell you which multivitamin to buy, you're in for a disappointment. That's not going to happen. You want safe ingredients, but individually safe elements are no guarantee of effectiveness. Don't confused GRAS presence with a vote of confidence from the Federal Government!

Probiotics don't need to chill out!

By now, almost everyone has heard of probiotics and their potential health benefits. That's why almost every major multivitamin contains probiotic elements these days. Some versions of popular "name brands" are making a big deal out of their probiotic focus.

There's a widespread belief that these elements need to be refrigerated and preserved at all times to retain their effectiveness. Many experts will tell you that there's no good reason to consume probiotics if they haven't been appropriately handled with respect to temperature from the point of bottling until they reach your home.

There's some truth to that perspective. If left in their everyday form, a probiotic will lose effectiveness if exposed to higher temperatures. Under normal circumstances, a warm bottle of vitamins containing probiotics wouldn't be appreciably different than a bottle without them.

So, make sure you buy refrigerated vitamins if you want the probiotic advantage, right?

Not necessarily. There is an alternative.

There is one process that can preserve the effectiveness of the elements without requiring constant refrigeration and care. It involves stabilizing the probiotics through a cryogenic (flash freezing) method.

If this is done, it's possible for them to retain their value in the bottle until combined with water, another liquid, or ingested.

If you want to latch onto the benefits of probiotics but don't want to gamble with a product that may or may not have been constantly refrigerated (and you'll never really know), look for a supplement that uses a cryogenic process to stabilize the mix.

You'll be glad you did!

The problem with synthetic vitamins...

Mother Nature covered the planet with everything we need to stay healthy. The original plan was for us to develop and maintain a natural diet that met all of our needs. Of course, modern society makes that hard to do, which is why many of us use supplements and multivitamins.

The body does a much better job ingesting and processing natural vitamins. That makes sense. It matches that original plan.

So, why is that so many supplements rely on laboratory-made synthetic vitamins instead of the "real thing?"

I'm sure part of it is a matter of efficiency. It's easier to churn out "versions" of vitamins in a lab than it is to acquire them naturally. I'm sure cost-cutting is part of the deal, too. It's obviously cheaper to mass produce vitamins using synthetic compounds than it is to do things the "natural way."

All of that smart efficiency, unfortunately, leaves us with lousy products.

Did you know that some organic supplements with vitamins derived from whole foods are absorbed 400 times more effectively than those synthetic versions?

An organic vitamin can help the body so much more than a phony human-made lab experiment.

That's why everyone should do their best to find vitamins that contain natural ingredients derived from whole foods. It can make all of the difference in the world!

If you're using a cheap synthetic vitamin, you might as well be swallowing a placebo every morning. Think about it... What good is a multivitamin if your body can't absorb it?

The organic alternative makes so much more sense. You can feed your body the good stuff is was built to ingest in the first place. Instead of putting stress on it to figure out how to deal with a non-natural compound, you can give your body something it will immediately recognize and utilize to your advantage.

People think they're saving money with those mass-produced vitamins with long, long lists of ingredients. What they don't realize is that they might not be absorbing any of those things because they aren't derived from natural products.

The best supplements will utilize natural whole food sources of vitamins and minerals.