With the exception of the Pro32 Probiotics (has to be taken on an empty stomach)  all our products may be added to juices or smoothies. We do not recommend blending it, however. Liposomes are quite delicate and blending (or vigorous shaking) or adding it to hot drinks can damage the liposomes. Rather stir it into the smoothie.

As Pharmaceutical Sciences professors Vladimir P. Torchillin, Ph.D., and Volkmar Weissig, Ph.D., write in their definitive text: Liposomes: A Practical Approach: “In order to produce liposomes (of whatever kind), lipid molecules must be introduced into an aqueous environment. “Water is the most common aqueous material in liposomal supplements.” Therefore, a liposomal product will always be in a liquid.

There is research to show that extreme doses of ascorbic acid can be helpful in the treatment of cancer, sepsis and infectious diseases. Oshun Health’s view is that high dose ascorbic acid is beneficial under special circumstances such as the ones mentioned above. There is, however, also research that shows that high doses of ascorbic acid can cause damage to DNA. A study in the American Journal of Clinical  Nutrition (Vol. 87, No. 1, 142-149, January 2008) reveals, that supplementation with ascorbic acid devastates the muscle, causing impairment in mitochondrial function, loss of endurance, and inhibition of the body’s own antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase. In this case, rather than being a beneficial antioxidant, ascorbic acid has been shown to work as an adverse pro-oxidant.

Therefore, high dose ascorbic acid can be beneficial but, depending on how high the dose of ascorbic acid, it can be an extreme intervention and should not be undertaken lightly or on the long term. For daily use and under normal circumstances a natural Vitamin C is preferable.

Citrus C cannot be compared to ascorbic acid, the synthetic version of vitamin C at all. Except for the fact that Citrus C contains the whole Vitamin C molecule which ascorbic doesn’t (see explanation above) whole food vitamins also, due to the phytochemicals and other nutritional cofactors in the product, functions in a completely different way as far as dosage is concerned. Studies on apples show, for instance, that although an apple contains only about 5mg of Vitamin C, the phytochemicals and nutritional cofactors in the apple work synergistically to provide the equivalent of 1500mg of Vitamin C! (reference: Apple phytochemicals and their health benefits). It follows, therefore, that natural Vitamin C does not have to be taken in high doses to be potent

Unlike whole food, synthetic supplements contain isolated, synthetically made nutrients. In other words nutrients that are taken out of the context (in combination with phytochemicals, nutritional cofactors etc) in which they optimally function. This situation you will never find in nature/food, which already gives an indication that it’s unnatural. In addition, these supplements are often foreign to the body; they, therefore, have to be converted into a form that the body can use or they have to be excreted through the urine, placing an undue burden on the organs.

It is now widely believed that the actions of antioxidant nutrients alone do not explain the observed health benefits of diets rich in fruit and vegetables. Taken alone, individual, isolated antioxidants studied in clinical trials do not appear to reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, in the same way that diets rich in fruit and vegetables do. Work done by scientists has shown that fruit and vegetable phytochemical extracts exhibit strong antioxidant and anticancer activities and it is proposed that this is due to the complex additive and synergistic effects of the combined nutrients in fruit and vegetables. This also explains why no single antioxidant can replace the combination of nutrients in fruit and vegetables. The above explains why whole food supplements, as offered by Oshun Health, are better than isolated, synthetic nutrients.