Are these ingredients OK?

[Einy]

I just got "Spring Valley" natural Calcium/Magnesium/Zink supplement with 100% DV, but found the two following ingredients listed on the bottle,

- Soy Polysaccharide
- Gluten

Will this still be OK? I am done with induction, but still in my OWL Rung1.

[jimmie 48]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

i may mod this forum but i am sure not the queen know it all of vitamins. i'm looking into this and hopefullly biogeek or some other knowledgable person will chime in.

i think you are okay as far as the gluten goes.
Soy Polysaccharide i'm not sure of. this is just guessing on my part so take it with a grain of salt.

[jimmie 48]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

did a little more searching and maybe when biogeek looks into this thread, she'll comment on it.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/carbohydrate

. Polysaccharides include such substances as cellulose, dextrin, glycogen
starch : they are polymeric compounds made up of the simple sugars and can be hydrolyzed to yield simple sugars. The disaccharides are sometimes grouped with the simpler polysaccharides (usually those made up of three or four simple sugar units) to form a class of carbohydrates called the oligosaccharides.Sources=Sources | 16;columbia()

[biogeek]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Hi Einy,

Unless you're allergic to gluten (and you'd know it if you were), it's perfectly fine to consume it. It's a good source of protein and contains very little starch, if any.

Soy polysaccharide is also fine to consume. As Jimmie has posted, polysaccharides consists of a large group of compounds...some of which are fine for the Atkinteer to consume, others are not. In this case, soy polysacharides are acceptable to consume because they are mostly insoluble fiber particles and are very low in calories. Think of it as the stringy stuff in celery or the skin of zucchini.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

This absolutely help. Thanks a punch really for both of you. I am not allergic to any of the ingredients, just like to follow this WOE down to the letter and would hate it if I take something I am not supposed to take. I think I feel better now and will start taking it.

Thanks again..

[biogeek]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Better to be safe than sorry! Best of luck to you!

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

I hear people in the forum taking tens of different pills of supplements everyday. I wonder how the liver react to all this intake of pills! Does this add any stress on the liver? and if yes, why? Aren't all these ingredients still natural (at least for the most part)?

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

I started to increase my supplements to include EFAs and CoQ10. I am already on Calcium/Magnesium/Zink, multivitamins and sometimes L-Glutamin. Does anybody here knows if such intake has any impact on the liver?

[jimmie 48]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

i don't know the answer to that einy. have you done a search of the www?

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Yes, as a matter of fact I did. My wife asked me to check, she is not a doctor, she is a dentist, but since she is still in the medical field, I think she knows what she is talking about..

Here are coulple,
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/ma...ticlekey=20320

http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20...to-supplements

There are others. Not sure though whether the effect is from a specific kind of supplements (specifically the kava tea) or general supplement intake. My understanding is that any intake would have to be processed by the liver since two of the main liver functions are helping in digestion and detoxification. So, are we taking too many supplements? When is it "too many"? Are we stressing out the liver with "too many" supplements?

These are all questions I have in mind, I thought may be someone here has ran by this before and know the answer. Hopefully I am not over-reacting and I sure don't wanna sound like chicken-little here.. The sky is falling.. Hehe.. But just a concern I have here since I have been taking 10 pills a day in average.

[jimmie 48]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

bio is such a smarty on this stuff as it is her field. i'll make sure she sees the thread.

when she's here it's not for long but she's pretty good about getting to these question.

[biogeek]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Very good questions, Einy! If only more people worried about their liver and how it works when they consume processed foods with a laundry list of chemical ingredients!

But before I go off on a tangent, allow me to address your concerns.

First of all, just because an ingredient is "natural," it doesn't mean it can not harm you. There are, for example, many poisons that exist in nature that no one should consume, but they are natural. So don't let the natural tag on a product fool you into thinking it is completely acceptable. One must be a savvy and informed consumer to look past the various marketing ploys.

Second of all, as a general rule...10 different types of vitamin supplements will not overtax your liver. Dr. Atkins was a beliver in supplements and I believe he took over 50 or so. I will have to double check his VitaNutrient book to be certain of what he took. Does that mean we have to take that many vitamins? Of course not. If one took a close look at his/her food log and went into the minute details of every single ingredient of every single food item, including natural foods, we would have hundreds, if not thousands of individual chemicals that gets processed by our system. The human body is a remarkable thing!

As remarkable as our bodies are, it does not mean we can just consume anything. The reason why many of us are on this website is because we consumed way too much in the past. But again, I stray a bit off topic...

So can supplements tax our liver? Some of them certainly can including some common vitamins such as Vitamin A, D, E, K. You need to be careful about consuming too many fat-soluble vitamins which are the ones that gets processed and stored in the liver. For example, if you take too much vitamin A over a long period of time, you can develop liver toxicities. We are talking megadoses here, but again, everyone reacts to medicines and supplements in slightly or more different ways. Does that mean if you never take a vitamin A supplement that you'll never develop a toxic liver? Not at all. Many foods are incredibly high in vitamin A, such as liver from animals, so it's possible to consume too much of this vitamin if one consumes too much of certain types of foods.

EFAs are processed in the liver, so how much are you taking? With the supplements you're consuming, do you know what the RDA limits are? I have several threads on vitamins that you may wish to read. I think Jimmie has a link to some of them in the sticky. With your list of supplements that you're currently taking, I would not be concerned about overtaxing your liver unless you're taking TOO many, i.e. a multitude of the multivitamin and over 7500 IUs of the EFAs, etc.

I can go into further details of how the liver works or other areas if you like. I'm always worried about going into TOO MUCH detail and having eyes glazed over to the general reader. Please let me know if you have further questions.

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Thanks biogeek. This is excellent information. I am ok with the details.. Although I am an IT guy, I love to read on this stuff.

I think my intake is within the range, but just had a concern. I am taking 10+ pills, but ~5 different supplements..

Here is my TOTAL daily pills intake,

3x NSI Low Carb Dieter's Basic Multi-Vitamin Version 2.
3x NSI Complete EFA (ALA, Linoleic acid, GLA, EPA, DHA)
1x NSI CoQ10 100mg & L-Carnitine 500mg
3x Spring Valley Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc

Sometimes (May be around once or twice a week) I also take 1x 500mg L-Glutamine from TWINLAB (Free From Amino Acids, - I guess TWINLAB means other amino acids-).

I take also one tablet of bp medication daily.. My doctor dropped the dosage to half of what I used to take when I started Atkins by the way..

By looking at my Fitday, here are my average (across a whole month) Vitamin A, D, E and K intake.

Nutrient Units Intake RDA % RDA
Vitamin A mcg_RE 1773.5 1000 177.35
Vitamin D mcg 20.94 5 418.71
Vitamin E mg_ATE 211.67 10 2116.7
Vitamin K mcg 80.66 80 100.83


Isn't Vitamin E (2116.7%) intake high? The multivitamins intake alone has 500%.

[biogeek]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Ah, well since you're a different type of geek *grin* I know you can handle the details, friend!

So with Vitamin E (not to be confused with Vitamin A)...at first glace, you may think that having 2000+% of Vitamin E would be detrimental, but it is not as a general rule. The new upper limits (UL) that were established in 2000 does NOT apply to vitamin E that occurs in food unless it is a food item that has been fortified. Think Wonder Bread, pastas...heck even some milk and orange juice. It mostly applies to supplements, which is what is in fortified foods as well.

The new RDA for Vitamin E is 15 mg (via supplementation), but the upper limit is 1000mg for alpha-tocopherol which is equivalent to 1500 IU(International Units) or 1100 IU for the synthetic form of vitamin E. Can get confusing, eh? Don't worry, I can throw out even more jumble into the mix!

So even if you're concerned about having your vitamin E from food intake, your fitday value of 211 mg is a long way off from the upper limit.

You might have noticed that on Fitday as well as other nutritional labels list vitamin E in mg-ATE. ATE means alpha-tocopherol equivalents and it is measured against the only natural source which is RRR-alpha-tocopherol. All other RRR- and rac- alpha-tocopherol-blah blah blah are synthetic versions of vitamin E and must be measured and calculated to be reported as if they were the natural thing. For example, 1 mg of RRR-alpha-tocopherol equals 1.00 mg which also equals 1.49 IU (you'd think it would be 1.00, but it's not *pppft*) but 1 mg of all the other forms do NOT equal 1.00 mg. Does that make sense? The only computer thing I can think of to compare it to would be converting bits into bytes, but it's not a very good analogy. Perhaps a better one would be the processor speeds of Intel vs. AMD, but I stray again away from the main topic.

Not only do you have to decide which type of Vitamin E to take as a supplement, but the labels of them have changed over the years. The old school way was to refer RRR as d and rac as dl, so one could have dl-alpha-tocopherol or dl-alpha-tocopherol acetate and so forth. The change to RRR and Rac was to make it a more specific labelling for us science nerds, but for the general public, we got along with d- and dl- even if most didn't understand the difference.

Soooooo, to get back to your original concern about how much Vitamin E you're consuming, look at your multivitamin and see how much is listed on the label. I don't know NSI values, but maybe they're on-line? hmmm...

Is this what you're taking? http://www.vitacost.com/NSI-Synergy-...amin-Version-2

Oh, and in case you're wondering what happens to you if you take TOO MUCH vitamin E...the worse offender is that it acts as an anticoagulent. Not good for bleeders types or those going to have surgery, etc. It causes other offenses, but what doesn't? The anticoagulent is by far something that you want to avoid.

Did I answer your questions? See, I tend to blab on and on! I think we'll have to discuss more about your supplements as far as content is concerned. Your questions point out to me that I need to write up more threads about various vitamins and such...something that I've been neglecting for quite some time.

[Einy]

Re: Are these ingredients OK?

Just read the reply. Thanks for your help again there biogeek. The multi-vitamins I take are actually, http://www.vitacost.com/NSI-NutriSli...-Vitamin-Ver-2

You sure answered the question perfectly. I think I am fine, besides what I try to do now is keep a close look at my nutrients intake through fitday and by the end of the day, if I find all the nutritions satisfied for that particular day, I usually don't take my third pill, etc.

Thanks again.