If you extract sugars from corn syrup. Ferment them with bacteria and add a chemical reaction, you have synthetic vitamin C. Most synthetic vitamins are chemically identical to the natural form, but without the fiber and micronutrients that come with food. The end result is a vitamin made not by a plant, but in a plant.
Given the amount of vitamin needed is generally tiny, what makes up the rest of the pill? Well, inactive materials like cellulose, sugars, or rice flour are often added to provide bulk and to help the tablets dissolve in the gut. Colors and flavors can also be added to make the tablets more palatable.
Around half the countries on Earth allow the addition of synthetic vitamins to common food products. It's called fortification. In places like the US and Australia, fortifying bread flour and margarine is required by law. And companies often decide to add vitamins, mostly from the B family. The B vitamins are sometimes called the pep vitamins, they help our bodies produce energy and assist in cell development. One of the vitamins added to bread is B9, better known as folate, to avoid neural tube defect.
Neural tube defects can be caused by the lack of folate long before birth. If you eat folate, it's the best kind of diet because it's actually found richly in leafy green vegetables, it's found in things like asparagus, it's found in strawberries, it's found in whole grains, so if you are eating fruits and vegetables, it's quite likely that you will have a diet rich in folate. Folate is very important for both DNA and RNA repair, but also for the rapid development and multiplication of cells which is what's happening in the fetus, so it's essential for that.
Vitamin D
Low vitamin D has been linked to cancer, heart disease, dementia, it's been linked to over 100 different conditions. There are some who claim we're in a midst of a global vitamin D deficiency.
When sunlight hits our skin, something remarkable happens. Just under the surface lies a type of cholesterol. When the sun's ultraviolet rays hit this molecule, it transforms, becoming a form of vitamin D. This is the same molecule found in cod liver oil. It then travels to the liver, where it's converted into the form that doctors measure in our blood. This is then activated by the kidneys, and now, it's ready to help absorb calcium, building strong, healthy, rickets free bones. Today, most of the world's vitamin D pills are created from the greasy wool of sheep, mostly Australian sheep. The wool is coated in a type of grease or lanolin, it's the stuff that makes your hands feel soft. It's a mixture of fatty acids produced by the sheep's oil glands, and this lanolin is the key to making synthetic vitamin D. The lanolin is separated from the wool by boiling in hot water and detergent. Around 15 percent of the lanolin is a form of cholesterol, like the cholesterol under our skin. This is a extracted and oxidized to produce a new compound which is then irradiated with ultraviolet light, transforming it into a precursor of vitamin D. This chemical process mimics the biological process of the sunlight hitting our skin. Several more steps create the end product, synthetic vitamin D. Vitamin D's not just a vitamin, vitamin D is a hormone that has a range of incredibly powerful effects on the cells in our body that could determine whether or not that cell starts to divide uncontrollably and become a cancer for example or whether or not that cell gets a mutation and kills itself.
Geneticist professor Tim Spector studied vitamin D a lot in the last 15 years were the first group to show that the levels in individuals is actually partly controlled by your genes so we always assume it's purely how much sunshine you get or how much oily fish you're eating but in fact, about 50 percent of the levels vary just because the genes you've got and so everyone has a different normal level of their vitamins and that is generally holding true for all the vitamins we've been able to test so far so our idea of normal should actually be very person specific.
The 13 vitamins can be divided into two teams, the water soluble team consisting <br>
-all the B vitamins<br>
-vitamin C <br>
and the fat soluble team, consisting<br>
-Vitamin A<br>
-Vitamin D<br>
-Vitamin E<br>
-Vitamin K<br>
We can get rid of excess water soluble vitamins in our urine, but the fat soluble ones are stored in our livers and fatty tissue, so they're the ones that can build up easily to toxic levels.
In 1994, a new US law is passed, forbidding the testing of dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before sale. We lobbied on behalf of the dietary supplement industry to get congress to pass a sweeping law in 1994 that forever forbade the FDA from requiring that dietary supplements be tested or for efficacy before they're sold. Different countries have different regulations. In Australia, most vitamin products are classified as complimentary medicines. Manufacturers must certify that they use low risk ingredients, products contain what they say they contain and they have evidence to back up health claims. In Europe, vitamin products are regulated as food supplements and again, they don't have to be tested before they go on sale.
transcript by https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8232232/
Given the amount of vitamin needed is generally tiny, what makes up the rest of the pill? Well, inactive materials like cellulose, sugars, or rice flour are often added to provide bulk and to help the tablets dissolve in the gut. Colors and flavors can also be added to make the tablets more palatable.
Around half the countries on Earth allow the addition of synthetic vitamins to common food products. It's called fortification. In places like the US and Australia, fortifying bread flour and margarine is required by law. And companies often decide to add vitamins, mostly from the B family. The B vitamins are sometimes called the pep vitamins, they help our bodies produce energy and assist in cell development. One of the vitamins added to bread is B9, better known as folate, to avoid neural tube defect.
Neural tube defects can be caused by the lack of folate long before birth. If you eat folate, it's the best kind of diet because it's actually found richly in leafy green vegetables, it's found in things like asparagus, it's found in strawberries, it's found in whole grains, so if you are eating fruits and vegetables, it's quite likely that you will have a diet rich in folate. Folate is very important for both DNA and RNA repair, but also for the rapid development and multiplication of cells which is what's happening in the fetus, so it's essential for that.
Vitamin D
Low vitamin D has been linked to cancer, heart disease, dementia, it's been linked to over 100 different conditions. There are some who claim we're in a midst of a global vitamin D deficiency.
When sunlight hits our skin, something remarkable happens. Just under the surface lies a type of cholesterol. When the sun's ultraviolet rays hit this molecule, it transforms, becoming a form of vitamin D. This is the same molecule found in cod liver oil. It then travels to the liver, where it's converted into the form that doctors measure in our blood. This is then activated by the kidneys, and now, it's ready to help absorb calcium, building strong, healthy, rickets free bones. Today, most of the world's vitamin D pills are created from the greasy wool of sheep, mostly Australian sheep. The wool is coated in a type of grease or lanolin, it's the stuff that makes your hands feel soft. It's a mixture of fatty acids produced by the sheep's oil glands, and this lanolin is the key to making synthetic vitamin D. The lanolin is separated from the wool by boiling in hot water and detergent. Around 15 percent of the lanolin is a form of cholesterol, like the cholesterol under our skin. This is a extracted and oxidized to produce a new compound which is then irradiated with ultraviolet light, transforming it into a precursor of vitamin D. This chemical process mimics the biological process of the sunlight hitting our skin. Several more steps create the end product, synthetic vitamin D. Vitamin D's not just a vitamin, vitamin D is a hormone that has a range of incredibly powerful effects on the cells in our body that could determine whether or not that cell starts to divide uncontrollably and become a cancer for example or whether or not that cell gets a mutation and kills itself.
Geneticist professor Tim Spector studied vitamin D a lot in the last 15 years were the first group to show that the levels in individuals is actually partly controlled by your genes so we always assume it's purely how much sunshine you get or how much oily fish you're eating but in fact, about 50 percent of the levels vary just because the genes you've got and so everyone has a different normal level of their vitamins and that is generally holding true for all the vitamins we've been able to test so far so our idea of normal should actually be very person specific.
The 13 vitamins can be divided into two teams, the water soluble team consisting <br>
-all the B vitamins<br>
-vitamin C <br>
and the fat soluble team, consisting<br>
-Vitamin A<br>
-Vitamin D<br>
-Vitamin E<br>
-Vitamin K<br>
We can get rid of excess water soluble vitamins in our urine, but the fat soluble ones are stored in our livers and fatty tissue, so they're the ones that can build up easily to toxic levels.
In 1994, a new US law is passed, forbidding the testing of dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before sale. We lobbied on behalf of the dietary supplement industry to get congress to pass a sweeping law in 1994 that forever forbade the FDA from requiring that dietary supplements be tested or for efficacy before they're sold. Different countries have different regulations. In Australia, most vitamin products are classified as complimentary medicines. Manufacturers must certify that they use low risk ingredients, products contain what they say they contain and they have evidence to back up health claims. In Europe, vitamin products are regulated as food supplements and again, they don't have to be tested before they go on sale.
transcript by https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8232232/