Can you pass a whole vitamin?

Question

I'm a 33 year old female. 5'0" 98 lbs. Basically healthy. I take some vitamins, sometimes I take them and then anywhere from1 hour to 24 hours later I poop them out completely whole! What can be causing this?

Answer 1

The pharma and supplement companies, at least those with some commitment to quality, pay considerable attention to the disintegration properties of their pills.

There are two main reasons. First, some drugs/supplements require an acidic environment to be converted to active forms. They must disintegrate in the stomach, which is acidic, not the intestines which are, mostly alkaline. On the other hand, some require an alkaline environment (ie, the intestines), not an acidic environment. So the pill coatings are chosen to protect from the wrong environment and fall apart in the right environment. As well, some pill contents are absorbed best in small particles, others dissolve readily and there's no need to worry about particle size.

Second, some drugs must be made available in a particular time frame. For instance, some heart drugs or antibiotics can't be delayed getting into the blood. So, if a pill fails to disintegrate and make its contents available when needed, there is likely to be a problem in achieving the desired clinical effect. This is why many pills shouldn't be crushed or broken as it's likely to interfere with the planned timing. One variant on this requirement is those continuous delivery mechanisms in which the pill absorbs fluid and extrudes its active contents as an expanding inert material absorbs fluid. These pills are not supposed to disintegrate at all, just to 'pump' out their contents at a steady rate.

In your case, it's possible that your digestive arrangements (ie, stomach acidity, or intestinal alkalinity) may not be sufficient to achieve the intended disintegration. A stomach acidity problem? Are you taking one of the proton pump inhibitors (some of which are now available over the counter) like Pepcid or equivalents? Or a gall bladder or pancreatic problem? Or, perhaps the pills you have been taken may have been made by a less than competent maker (and in the US there, by law, are no standards for food supplements as the result of lobbying effort by the vitamin industry in the early 90s); no one's watching, so anything goes in the food supplement industry.

You might perform a little kitchen chemistry experiment on them to learn a little something. Use clear water glasses (not plastic, as it may react with one of your test solutions), Does one of the pills break up in plain water> How long does it take? Does it break up in vinegar (weakly acid) or muriatic acid (a brick work cleaner available from hardware stores which is a stronger acid)? How long does it take? Or does it break up in dilute drain cleaner (use the straight lye type) which is alkaline? How long does it take? If one of your pills doesn't dissolve in any of these, you've probably got some really poorly made vitamin pills -- avoid that manufacturer in future as their commitment to quality appears to be nil.

One last point. The trip through the digestive system from one end to the other takes many hours (perhaps as much as 12 or 18 in the usual case), and so your report of a 1 hour transit time is very odd. Perhaps you're seeing yesterday's pill on its way out not long after taking today's?

Answer 2

Lack of digestive enzymes absolutely will cause the outer coating of the vitamin to stay intact. Lack of enzymes happens because the organs responsible for creating them are not doing their job. That can happen for many reasons. You can supplement your digestive enzymes with off-the-shelf items from your local health food store. I use papaya enzymes, myself.
Lately, I've started looking into nutrition and alternative medicine, and it's amazing what ISN'T being told the public about heath.
Best of luck.

Answer 3

No. the reality is that the physique can basically take in a good number of any diet at any given time, the rest is expelled as waste. it is the reason they invented time released supplements that take longer to interrupt all the way down to grant the physique extra time to ingest the nutrition.