Recently liquid vitamins have been gaining an increase in attention and notoriety, but many have wondered about whether or not liquid vitamins are quite as effective as they are said to be. The most controversial myth regarding liquid vitamins relates to the claimed superiority of vitamin absorption that they offer. Vitamins taken in pill form offer an absorption rate of up to 30 percent, but many liquid vitamins are boasting as many as a 90 percent absorption rate.
Testing this fact involves a rather simple scientific experiment beginning with a theory. In order for a specific nutrient to be properly absorbed into the blood stream, it must be completely simplified before it can be passed through the membranes of the body, such as the small intestines’ villi, or the mucous membrane. In other words, a pill has to be simplified before any kind of absorption of nutrients can occur, limiting the vitamin in pill form to basically one primary entry way into the blood stream, which is through the villi of the small intestine.
The use of liquid vitamins instead of vitamins in pill form increases the number of available entry ways into the body, allowing for an increase in absorption rate. Liquid vitamins are already in their most simple form when they are taken, and absorption is already occurring in the mucous membrane of the mouth as the liquid vitamins are consumed. The tissue within your esophagus is also capable of absorbing the liquid vitamins, which means that the vitamins are already being absorbed before they reach the small intestine.
Because it is important to look at liquid vitamin absorption in a way that is more than simple theory, it is important to look at visual proof that the vitamin supplement is able to pass through very small membranes. Luckily, this can be easily tested using a simple kitchen ingredient that you probably already have: A coffee filter. You can use a coffee filter to serve as a mock permeable membrane, which is what nutrients have to pass through in order to serve a purpose within our bodies.
Two vitamins were chosen anonymously in order to protect the universal nature of the experiment, and lemon juice was used to simulate stomach acid, as lemon juice has a pH level of 2.3, and the pH level of stomach acid can range from 1 to 3. Before and after the experiment was held, all of the components were weighed, and both vitamins spent an equal amount of time in the equivalent stomach acid, and the same amount of time filtering through the coffee filter. The time frames chosen for the experiment were chosen to simulate the digestive process as closely as possible, which meant a span of between two and four hours in the stomach.
After the filtering process had been completed, the facts regarding vitamin absorption were displayed quite clearly. The weight analysis revealed that 0.2 of an ounce of the liquid vitamin supplement was filtered, and 0.8 of an ounce of pill form vitamins were filtered. When putting the absorption rates to the test, we now have visual proof that liquid vitamins can be absorbed between three and four times more
