Newsletter - March 2022
Vitamins and minerals
When I started studying veterinary medicine in Utrecht 50 years ago, as a 17-year-old. On the one hand, it was indicated that vitamins played an important role in cell metabolism, but on the other hand, the risk of deficiencies was rather laconic. At the time, it was believed that deficiencies at that time were absolutely impossible and that diseases such as Scurvy, Rickets, Pernicious anaemia and the like, diseases that express the end stage of a vitamin deficiency, were something from a bygone era. There was no reason to doubt those words then. Not only because they were systematically repeated during every lecture that dealt with vitamins and minerals. But also because fruits such as apples and oranges, as well as the seeds, contained more than enough vitamins and minerals at that time. That is often very different today. Where an orange 50 years ago easily contained 150 mg of Vitamin C, you now read about levels between 10 and 5 mg.
The acceptable daily intake
No cause for concern, we were taught then. Earlier, doubts and fears were sown about the risk of an excessive intake of these substances. You could get all kinds of annoying conditions, such as kidney stones with too much vitamin C intake or liver abnormalities with an excess of fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D and E. In particular, these last risks were greatly magnified and portrayed as a sword of Damocles that you did not want hanging over your head.
Precisely because there was no longer any fear of vitamin deficiency, there did not really seem to be a reason to act against the Codex Alimentarius (A collection of international standards regarding food and food products). In this document it was noted that if one were to get a certain amount of the vitamins every day, there could be no risk of shortages. These values were basically the minimum daily intakes needed to avoid developing deficiency diseases. These amounts were called ADI. The acceptable daily intake. They can be found on any jar of vitamin intended for human consumption.
The lobbyists then visited politicians and universities to promote these ADI values as the maximum intakes that were desirable every day. This minimum intake of the vitamins for the prevention of deficiencies was tacitly put down as the maximum amount to be taken per day. This was further promoted so that it was accepted as such. The marketing lobby of these types of companies is therefore not only of this time. No one really cared about this at the time. After all, with a little normal and varied diet, the risk of a vitamin and mineral deficiency was simply basically negligible. In fact, it was lobbied that anyone who offered vitamin preparations should actually be portrayed as a bagger. This story thus gained a very firm anchoring in the collective consciousness.
On the other hand, the risk of excessive use of vitamins and minerals was greatly increased. So much so that every student, as soon as he graduated, including myself, thought he had to watch out for the consequences of an excessive use of vitamins. I can still remember the warnings I gave to animal owners if they wanted to shake the vitamin jar too lavishly.
Shortage of vitamines
In the eighties, rumors surfaced that a shortage of folic acid in unborn children during pregnancy could lead to the development of open backs. When I read the evidence about this, I expected nothing more than that the person responsible for the Codex Alimentarius would adjust the target doses for this vitamin to these latest insights. However, this did not happen. It took almost ten years before this started to move and these values were reluctantly adjusted.
How many open backs could have been prevented by doing this earlier.
It was a kind of wake-up call for me that there could also be snags with the other recommended values. After all, I had gained experience myself with very good results when using higher doses than the ADI values. But not only that. There was a mass of literature that underlined the inaccuracy of the ADI values. These minimalist values had nothing to do with an optimal value of vitamin use. It became increasingly clear that the optimal vitamin levels were in many cases miles away from the ADI values.
What also became clear was that there were and are forces that tried and are trying to thwart the use of these more optimal quantities. The vitamin preparations that may be marketed usually contain so little vitamin that they cannot really make a difference. For example, the standard vitamin B12 preparations that had been on the market until a few years ago were so limited in content that they could hardly remedy a deficiency of this vitamin. Meanwhile, there are preparations of this vitamin available that can help. But one must then know where to look.
Pigeon racing
The stories that dangerous situations could arise very quickly if vitamins were used too widely also turned out to be mainly based on falsifications and scaremongering. For example, a study was conducted on 45,000 men between the ages of 60 and 75 (the age at which most kidney stones occur) who took 1.5 grams (this is 20 x the ADI value) of vitamin C for a year and a half. None of these men developed a kidney stone.
I would also like to issue a warning here that, on the other hand, one should not think that one can simply swallow a twentyfold dose of all vitamins with impunity without any problems. The reason not to do this is as simple as it is simple. Vitamins affect each other's functioning. If one swallows too much of certain vitamins, a relative deficiency of other vitamins could arise, which could indeed cause problems (reportedly, the dubious condition weakness of skater Sven Kramer was due to an excessive use of some vitamins without being in balance with other vitamins. This would eventually have led to the strange chronic fatigue at the time).
This warning can also be taken to heart when using vitamin preparations in the pigeon sport. Provide well-balanced vitamin preparations that contain levels of vitamins that are matched to each other.
Possibilities
At one of the universities, an internist seems to be walking around who discovered that high doses of Vitamin D3 would have a good effect in the treatment of prostate cancer and its prevention. This internist then went to work with other experts to look for the possibilities of converting this vitamin D3 into another molecule that had a similar effect in the body, but that could be patented so that one could earn a pretty penny from it in that way. An assistant in training wanted to use the vitamin D3 and make it known that this worked well. The good man was promoted to a provincial town because he had ignored the stable orders of the big bosses. With this we have immediately grasped the biggest problem of vitamin use at the collar.
Keeping pigeons healthy
Vitamins cannot be patented so there is no big money to be made. Reason enough to ridicule the efficacy of these substances, or worse, to put them in a bad light. After all, to cure diseases, one can prescribe medicines from which (a lot of) money can be earned. Reason enough to ensure that the use of vitamins in optimal doses is thwarted. These lobby mechanisms have become so strong over the years that everyone shouts that the earth is flat ('vitamins are not really needed'). The people who get it in their heads to say or write that it could well be that the earth is round ('optimal dosage of vitamin is different from the minimum dose of vitamin'), prefer to be silenced by this 'inquisition'.
What used to be very common, namely to whisper in the ear of the (animal) medicine students every time that too much vitamin is harmful and that vitamin deficiencies cannot occur if one only eats healthy, is still done in this way. General practitioners and veterinarians who have just graduated are often negative about the use of vitamin preparations.
In Europe, there is now a lot of lobbying to get the use of vitamin preparations that contain optimal amounts and are therefore effective against many complaints, something that the available ADI preparations usually lack, reserved for doctors. How lurid is this development. Doctors are often brainwashed to prescribe vitamin preparations. It is precisely these people who want to be given the mandate to prescribe such preparations.
In any case, a guarantee that the pharmaceutical industry will be able to continue to sell many other medicines that work well to help combat the symptoms that can arise from the chronic shortage of vitamins and minerals. It is not the diseases that are then combated, but the symptoms. Lurid way to keep customers. In contrast to the time I studied, it is now increasingly difficult to get enough vitamins and minerals, especially if one does not eat a varied diet. In my book 'keeping pigeons healthy' I spend a few chapters on the reason why this shortage of vitamin in food has arisen.
Regards Peter Boskamp
09 May 2023Read More
