Should the FDA Regulate Your Vitamins?

Congress is pushing for the FDA to regulate your use of vitamins and supplements.

Considering the downright scary job the Food & Drug Administration has done with regulating drugs, do you want them telling you how to make healthy choices?

Remember Vioxx? Merck pulled it from the market because it posed a heart risk. But not until it had been on the market for 5 years, prescribed 105 million times, and killed as many as 57,000 people – even though Merck and the FDA knew of the risk.1

And then there are the seizure drugs used to treat anxiety and depression that double your risk of suicide.2 It took the FDA more than 70 years to start warning doctors about this serious risk.

There’s a laundry list of the FDA’s negligence when it comes to the drugs they oversee. So why would Congress want to give them more authority over the vitamins you take?

In fact, they can’t even get the recommended daily allowance (RDA), its official guidance on how much of a vitamin you should take, right. The world-renowned journal, Archives of Internal Medicine, just ran three articles that prove the FDA has no idea what makes a good daily intake.

Today I’ll show you the top vitamins and minerals you’re not getting enough of if you’re following the RDA, and exactly how much you should be taking if you want to get results.

You Need 415 Times the RDA of This Vitamin to Protect Your Eyes & Heart

One of the most glaring shortfalls in the RDA is for B vitamins. B vitamins play a critical role in heart health by reducing the amino acid homocysteine, which contributes to heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism.3 Plus, B vitamins help keep your eyes healthy.

The FDA says you should

get a combined 400 mcg of folic acid (folate), 1.3 mg of vitamin B6 and 2.4 mcg of vitamin B12 every day.

But a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that you would need as much as 415 times the FDA’s recommended daily intake to have any real benefit.

The study showed an 18% decrease in homocysteine, as well as a 35% to 40% reduction in age-related eye disease.4

So how does the vitamin intake used during this study stack up against what the FDA says will keep you healthy? Take a look:

Vitamin

FDA’s RDA

Study Amount

Difference

folic acid

400 mcg

2.5 mg

525%

vitamin B6

1.3 mg

50 mg

3746%

vitamin B12

2.4 mcg

1 mg

41567%

As you can see, you’d need 525% more folic acid, 3,746% more vitamin B6, and an astounding 41,567% more vitamin B12 than the FDA currently recommends in order to get the benefits seen in this study.

And B vitamins aren’t the only critical nutrients where the FDA’s recommended daily intake misses the mark.

This Vitamin Slows Aging, Repairs Cells and Boosts Immunity But Only At Certain Levels

Vitamin C has a host of benefits:

  • Fights free radicals before they can do damage
  • Maintains body structure by being an important ingredient in collagen (collagen’s integrity is dependent on vitamin C)
  • Helps the immune system
  • Aids the nervous system
  • Helps to break down histamines – the inflammatory element of allergic reactions

Plus, vitamin C can protect your telomeres as well.

Telomeres are a protective cap on the ends of DNA strands. When cells divide, the telomeres get shorter in the process. If they don’t ever get repaired, then they just get shorter until they aren’t protecting the DNA anymore.

In 1998, a Japanese study found that raising the level of vitamin C in the cells could slow down the loss of telomeres up to 62%.5

But the RDA – 75 mg for adult women and 90 mg for adult men of vitamin C per day – is not enough to slow telomere loss.

The telomere-preserving, anti-aging benefit of vitamin C appears to begin at about 500 mg, twice a day. That’s a whopping 1011% more than the FDA’s recommended dose for adult males.

Another study showed a 19% decrease in age-related eye disease for a group taking a combination of vitamins and minerals, including a 500 mg dose of vitamin C.6

This Mineral Protects Steel AND Your Body

Zinc was also part of the combination used in the eye study. They took 80 mg of zinc every day — 627% more than the RDA. This critical nutrient helps make your cell membranes healthy, influences your body’s hormone control and keeps your DNA organized.

When it comes to keeping you healthy, zinc is second only to iron in concentrations in the body. It helps in the production of hundreds of enzymes that are responsible for regulating your bodily functions.

The prostate has the highest concentration of zinc in the body. And a deficiency has been linked to inflammation of the prostate known as prostatitis

Zinc, like vitamin C, also has anti-aging benefits. It’s essential for making superoxide dismutase (SOD), the most potent antioxidant your body has.

It gives your skin a more youthful look, too. Zinc is essential for your body to use collagen, which makes your skin more resilient and elastic—to fight off wrinkles and saggy skin.

Zinc also keeps your vision sharp by transporting vitamin A to the retina, improving night vision. And it protects retinal cells from free radical damage while helping to slow down the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The list of zinc’s crucial role in your health is long, including:

  • Promote a healthy immune system
  • Growth of reproductive organs
  • Fertility and conception
  • Prevent acne and regulate the activity of oil glands
  • Aid in protein synthesis and collagen formation
  • Cell reproduction and wound healing
  • Perception of taste and smell
  • Protect the liver from chemical damage
  • Bone formation
  • Maintain both vitamin E and vitamin A in the blood

If you stick to the FDA’s advice, you’ll never receive the full benefits of these incredible nutrients.

Nature Says You Need 250; The FDA Says 5 Is Enough

The Archives of Internal Medicine published another study that highlights the FDA’s basic inability to understand how the body works – let alone what keeps it healthy.

The study found that people with healthy levels of vitamin D get 29% fewer upper respiratory infections than people with low levels.7 But what’s a healthy level?

Your body produces 250 mcg of vitamin D from just 15 minutes of sun exposure. If you only “need” 5 mcg of vitamin D, according to the FDA, why does your body produce 50 times more than that?

Now, we might buy that the FDA knows that the body can produce enough vitamin D just by going out in the sun. And therefore doesn’t tell people to get much more through diet or supplements.

But, with three out of four Americans deficient in vitamin D and a 20-year national government campaign against sun exposure ongoing, don’t you think they should have increased their recommended intake by now?

The One the FDA Forgot

There’s just one more critical nutrient to bring to your attention…

This nutrient is necessary for the basic functioning of cells. And every single organ in your body uses this nutrient to get the energy they need to function.

As if that weren’t enough, it also:

  1. Destroys free radicals in the cell membranes
  2. Prevents arteriosclerosis by protecting against the accumulation of oxidized fat in blood vessels
  3. Successfully treats heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol

If your body doesn’t have enough, it will have serious consequences. In fact, the Clinic noted this critical nutrient is “low in patients with some chronic diseases such as heart conditions, muscular dystrophies, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS.”8

Yet the FDA completely ignores it. I’m talking about CoQ10.

In spite of the fact that the only dietary source for CoQ10 is red meat, the FDA doesn’t list an RDA for it at all.

Considering how many people are vegetarians or vegans, you’d think the government would think it vital to make sure people are getting enough of it.

Plus, even if you eat meat, you probably still aren’t getting enough CoQ10 in your diet. I ran some numbers on my test results over the years and discovered a remarkable fact: 82% of my new patients don’t have anywhere near enough CoQ10.

The chances are good that you don’t have enough either.

What You Can Do

The best way for you to get the bulk of the nutrients you need is through your diet. However, today’s fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they once were. And today’s grain-fed beef and farm-raised fish are also lower in the critical nutrients you need.

Be sure to get your foods from the right sources. As a general rule of thumb, always choose organic for fruits and vegetables. When it comes to your protein, look for grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish.

You can also take supplements. Specifically…

B Vitamins. Take the following daily:

40 mg of B2 – Good for blood cell formation and cataract prevention.

50 mg of B6 – Boosts brain and immune function and helps prevent cancer.

500 mcg of B12 – Helps digestion and prevents anemia and nerve damage.

800 mcg of folic acid – Helps cell production and prevents dementia. Folic acid is the supplement. Folate only comes from your food. Eat lots of green leafy foods like spinach, turnip greens, or broccoli. Calf liver is also a good source.

Vitamin C. Humans don’t naturally produce vitamin C. We are dependant on getting vitamin C from our diet or supplements.

You can get vitamin C from lots of foods including oranges, strawberries, broccoli, and bell peppers (the colorful ones are better than green). You can get your minimum daily requirement from food.

But to get antioxidant amounts, you’ll have to take a supplement. I recommend at least 500 mg twice a day. Many of my anti-aging patients are taking 2-5,000 mg per day in divided doses. Take it with food to avoid an upset stomach.

Zinc. You need at least 30 mg per day – 60 mg is even better. A 12-oz steak can give you between 15 mg and 30 mg of zinc. Oysters and clams are also a great source of zinc and other minerals. A 3.5-oz serving of oysters has close to 40 mg of zinc.

Vitamin D. If you can’t get out in the sun for 15 minutes a day, you can ramp up vitamin D through diet.

Fish are a great source. Here’s a list, including amounts of vitamin D:

Selected Food Sources of Naturally Occurring Vitamin D

Food Source

Amount

Vitamin D

Cod Liver Oil

1 tablespoon

1360 IU

Salmon (cooked)

3.5 ounces

360 IU

Sardines (canned)

3.5 ounces

270 IU

Tuna (canned)

3 ounces

200 IU

Egg (yolk)

1 egg

25 IU

Beef Liver (cooked)

3.5 ounces

15 IU

Swiss Cheese

1 ounces

12 IU

As you can see, a daily tablespoon of cod liver oil is by far the easiest way to get your vitamin D.

CoQ10. The best source of CoQ10 is red meat, especially organ meats like the liver. The problem is eating a lot of organ meat is that they tend to contain the most toxins and other pollutants. The best way to make sure you’re getting enough CoQ10 is to take a supplement.

I suggest you supplement with a minimum of 50 mg of the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 a day. If you have high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, gingivitis, age related memory loss, chronic fatigue or are a vegetarian, increase your dose to 100 mg of ubiquinol per day.

  1. Graham, David. Testimony to the U.S. Senate. November 18, 2004 http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2004test/111804dgtest.pdf
  2. Mike Adams. “Chemically-Induced Suicide: 80 Percent of Suicide Victims Took Antidepressant Drugs”, NaturalNews.com, 2/28/08
  3. Family Doctor, http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/articles/249.html
  4. Christen W, Glynn R, Chew E, et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009; 169(4): 335-341
  5. Furumoto, K. et al. “Age-dependent telomere shortening is slowed down by enrichment of intracellular vitamin C via suppression of oxidative stress,” Life Sciences. 63 (11): 935-948 August 7, 1998.
  6. Arch Opthalmol, 2001; 119(10): 1417-36
  7. Ginde A et al. Association Between Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Level and Upper Respiratory Tract Infection in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009; 169 (4):384-390