What To Do About Vitamin Antagonists

Article #7: What To Do About Vitamin Antagonists By Marti Fry

If you’ve read any popular health books or magazines, you’ve no doubt heard about vitamin antagonists, or anti-vitamins. They are portrayed as “thieves out for the highest stakes: your health and well-being.” They are described as criminals. However, while these descriptions may make for colorful writing, they do not point to the real culprits. Even worse, they point their readers to harmful and ineffective solutions to the problem.

Drugs, medicines, pollutants, stresses, refined sugar and flour, coffee, alcohol, the Pill, etc. are inert, lifeless substances, and they are not anxiously waiting to get into human bodies where they can ravage and plunder and make off with booty. People are the real culprits, the thieves. From the consumer or user to the manufacturer, inventor and promoter, people are the living beings who are responsible for depleting their own vitamin supplies and rendering vitamins consumed nonusable. Humans are responsible for the living practices that so enervate their bodies that assimilation of nutrients is impaired. We are responsible for informing ourselves (and others) of a healthful lifestyle.

Popular health magazines make statements such as the following from Bestways (September 1981): “Drugs are antagonists in many ways. They destroy nutrients, cause them to be used up quickly, keep them from being absorbed, rush them through the system before they can do the most good, and sometimes replace them chemically.”

What they’re saying is that drugs interfere with normal body functioning. Drugs are vitamin antagonists, however, only if humans consume them. We humans do not have to consume any drugs. Therefore, we need not deplete our vitamin stores, etc. We need only avoid drugs and eat wholesome foods in appropriate amounts. Pollutants that are unavoidable (such as soil and air pollutants) cannot deplete our vitamin stores and intake to the extent that we need concern ourselves about deficiencies or consider using vitamin supplements.

The best way (and the only healthy way) to deal with the problem of vitamin antagonists is to stay away from the physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. that prescribe and sell drugs and medications. We should also do the best we can to live in a healthful environment and lead a stress-free lifestyle. The idea that we can counteract the harmful effects of drugs and other stresses with the use of vitamin and/or mineral supplements is entirely erroneous. A proper diet and lifestyle will simultaneously supply the nutrients we need and include no vitamin antagonists or anti-vitamins. Health results from healthful living—that’s a fact to keep in mind at all times!