Click on this link for a great video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/369218/iron_in_your_cereal/
This video shows just what form fortified nutrients take in your breakfast cereal.
It is important that the form of nutrient or vitamin that you are taking be considered as a part of your treatment. Iron citrate is very bio-available. that means that it can be absorbed and turned into a form that is useful for making things like blood cells.
Iron filings (like in the video) are not bio-available. They are in a form that is so stable that the biochemical processes of the body can’t break them apart to use them. The same concept works for calcium and magnesium and every other mineral. If it isn’t bound to a molecule that your body can separate and use or discard, then neither molecule does you any good.
Many of the multiple vitamin supplements and individual nutrients that you can buy at your local supermarket are made with cost cutting ingredients that may not be easy for your body to absorb. There is one well known vitamin that was tested (I can’t say which) and you could still read the imprint of the name of the supplement after it had come out the other end! You aren’t saving money if you are just going to poop it out, unless your goal is to have expensive poop!
One easy way to tell if your vitamin is made with unavailable forms of nutrients is to look for phosphorus. Phosphorus is a binding agent, we get plenty of it from our diet, and it keeps things like calcium from being readily available to the body. Phosphorus in a supplement is a BAD sign. If your supplement contains phosphorus then your poop is probably the most expensive on the block!
Part of the training of Naturopathic Physicians is orthomolecular medicine. This means that we are trained to know what nutrients are effective, in which forms, and at what dose for each individual.
Alternative medicine is NOT just herbs and fluff. There is documented, evidence based research that many medical doctors don’t bother to sift through. Since giving you an alternative is our priority, you get the best alternative medicine based on the latest research.
-Dr Michele Raithel NMD