Recently I was having a follow up nutrition consultation with one of my clients. I noticed, using the BIA, that her toxic load had been increasing. I went over the list of possible suspects: excess caffeine? ‘no’, artificial sweetners? ‘no’, pain medication? ‘no’, antibiotics? ‘no’…. hmmm. New prescription? ‘no’. I was stumped. She then preceded to show me the vitamins she has been taking that she bought from a vitamin shop. She thought they should be good because there was a doctor’s name on it. I asked her if she knew the doctor and she said ‘no’. I then asked to look at the ingredient list. BINGO! We found the toxic ingredients she had been consuming! Inside her multivitamin was food colorings (red #40, blue #2, yellow #5), sugar (why? She was swallowing these pills!), many carbonate forms of vitamins (calcium carbonate is not absorbable and is known to cause bone spurs! Carbonate is the cheapest form available, which translates to more profit for Mr. Doctor!), and, the icing on the cake, TALC!
Yes, you heard me – Talc, the stuff you put on baby’s butts. I couldn’t understand why talc would be in a multivitamin so I looked it up in one of my favorite books, “Food Additives” by Ruth Winter, M.S. This is what Ruth says about talc:
TALC Fresh chalk. Magnesium Silicate. The lumps are known as soapstone of steatite. An anticaking agent added to vitamin supplements to render a free flow; also to chewing-gum base. Gives a slippery sensation to powders and creams. Talc is finely powdered native magnesium silicate, a mineral. The main ingredient of baby and bath powders, face powders, eye shadows, liquid powders, protective creams, dry rouges, face masks, foundation cake makeups, skin freshners, foot powders, and face creams. It usually has small amounts of other powders such as boric acid or zinc oxide added as a coloring agent. Prolonged inhalation can cause lung problems because it is similar in chemical composition to asbestos, a known lung irritant and cancer-causing agent. There is no known acute toxicity, but there is a question about it being a cancer-causing agent upon ingestion. It is suspected that the high incidence of stomach cancer among the Japanese is due to the fact that the Japanese prefer that their rice be treated with talc. Talc is not considered food grade by the FDA as it contains asbestiform minerals. GRAS.
Wow! Maybe you should take a look at your vitamins if you aren’t buying them from me. At Angie’s World, we only carry the purest products that are GMP (good manufacturing practice) certified and NSF (national standard federation) certified. These certifications mean that third parties go into the supplement companies manufacturing plants to make sure that the place is clean (free of bugs, debris, etc.) and that each pill you take gives you exactly the dose it claims on the bottle. Without third party testing you are rely on the vitamin company to tell you the truth. How honest do you think Mr. Doctor is?