The absorption of Vitamins & Minerals; are Capsules better than tablets?

March 16, 2010 - PRLog -- v4vitamins.co.uk, March 16 2010, East Sussex
The Absorption of vitamins and minerals is not a complex biological study that requires several PHD’s and 8 years worth of extreme study under great duress!!

The key elements to understanding how Vitamins and Minerals are absorbed by the body are in knowing what parts of the body are able to absorb substances, and where they go.

The digestive system is a diverse system that contains the very key to knowing what happens and where things go. To understand the assimilation of your food what you need to know is that the process starts from the minute you put something in your mouth, start chewing and then swallow. Once the voluntary action of swallowing has occurred the process becomes involuntary because the nerves take over and a process called peristalsis is used to keep the flow moving. Peristalsis is a wave like action that moves all the way downwards to keep the motions of the digestive system going. Once the foods that have been digested are passed through the intestines the digested nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls and transported throughout the body. Any waste products not needed by the body including undigested parts of the food, known as fibre, and older cells that have been shed from the mucosa are pushed into the colon, where they remain until the faeces are expelled by a bowel movement.

The key thing that one would want is to know that any vitamin or mineral that you have taken as an additional supplement enters through the intestinal walls and is transported around the body via the blood stream and not wasted.

This is where the important aspects of what form the Vitamins and Minerals are in I don’t mean what kinds of compounds; I mean what form the compounds are in. If you take nutritional supplements in tablet form there is a possibility that the tablet may pass into the colon before it is fully digested. This is because of the hard compaction and binding that the tablet has undergone during the manufacturing process. You may get some benefit out of the tablet which is fine but at the same time you will be wasting the other half of the tablet that was never absorbed. This also poses another question which may require a PHD to answer but due to the possibility of poor absorption rates of tablets would you have to double-up on any dosage to ensure that you are at least getting some benefit out of the tablet? You would have to answer this for yourself.

A much better form of vitamins and minerals are those that are made up of encapsulated powder forms. There is a much better chance of absorption when taking encapsulated powders the nutrient molecules have easy passage through the intestinal walls and easy access to the rest of the body. If the digestive system has to work at anything there is a strong chance that some of the matter will be passed into the colon as undigested food.

Clearly there is a reason why anyone would want to take a Vitamin or Mineral supplement in the first place so why not take something that has a much better absorption rate in your intestinal walls? You don’t want to spend money and time trying to take something that isn’t going to work as well as just taking the good stuff.

Vitamins and Minerals and all general types of nutritional products are generally a lot cheaper in the tablet form but at the end of the day they will work out a lot more expensive because of their poor absorption rates. You can go down to any local pharmacy and pay a quarter of the price for a tablet vitamin and mineral supplement than the encapsulated powder form but there is so much you need to know.

It isn’t necessarily true that the active ingredients in tablets are a lot lower than the active ingredients in a capsule but by the time the tablet reaches the consumer it has had a lot of work done to it to get it into a tablet form. Capsules have nothing more than the actual formulation in them that is needed to do the job and unlike tablets capsules don’t undergo high temperature treatments which may damage the efficacy of the active ingredients.

To make a tablet all kinds of fillers and binders are needed to make the tablet stay in tablet form including a heat process which capsules don’t need. As we are all moving into the “health conscious era” we need to be aware that the overall standards of what we are taking may not always be as high a quality as one would expect. Just because the label says it is a vitamin, please don’t assume that it is quality.  

A lot of tablet manufacturers are aimed at making a profit, the capsule manufacturers are focussed on your good health and profit otherwise they wouldn’t exist, and the effort that it takes to produce a capsule is far more involved than stamping a tablet together, and the care and effort that is taken to protect the active ingredients in a capsule are far greater.

So next time you are shopping for Vitamins and Minerals put the price tag to one side and find good encapsulated powders, in the long run you will save money and you will be a lot better off for it as well. Some people still buy vitamins and minerals for themselves and family members to put their consciences at ease, this is not the correct approach because who knows what other long term damage could be done taking the wrong form of something.

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I created V4Vitamins to assist people in finding quality Health and Nutritional products. Our aim is to make known good Health and Nutritional products that are available within a competitive market.

I have discovered that there are so many companies around who have made substantial claims within the health industry but very few are able to deliver quality without compromise. Due to the current climate and the need to stay in business, manufacturing companies are forced to compromise on the quality of their products.

Good health is priceless and it's important that you are able to find the best possible nutritional products on the market.