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Magnesium Stearate (aka Stearic Acid)


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#1 newshadow

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 12:16 AM


howdy. im new here but have been studying ''this'' for ten years. like most of you i supplement by trial and error. i was a pre-med student and so am lucky to understand what the hell these researchers are going on about in the online journals.

ill be contributing when i can. im certain that i will learn much from you all and you will no doubt learn from me.

let me start by letting you know about my concern regarding a substance that almost all supplement manufacturers use to prepare capsules and pills. its called magnesium stearate and or stearis acid. ive had to return a lot of supplement s because they contained these substances even after i was assured by customer service or a label on a website that it would not. many of the brands ive read you guys recommend or mention use 'ms' and or 'sa'. in case you dont know why i now buy only powders or liquids is because or articles i have read like the following:


Magnesium Stearate (aka Stearic Acid)
Poisonous Flowing Agents
Over 90% of the vitamin/mineral products consumed today
contain magnesium stearate, also known as Stearic Acid.

“Stearic Acid inhibits T-cell dependent immune responses. Plasma membrane integrity is significantly impaired, leading to a loss of membrane potential and ultimately cell function and viability.”

Tebbey PW, Buttke TM, “Molecular Basis For The Immunosuppressive Action
of Stearic Acid on T cells”, Immunogy, 1990 Jul; 379-86

“ When cells were exposed to stearic acids and palmitic acids, there was a dramatic loss of cell viability after 24 hours. Cell death was induced by stearic and palmitic acid.”

PMID: 12562519 (PubMed) Ulloth, JE, Casiano CA, De Leon M. Department of Microbiology
and Immunology, East Carolina University School of Medicine.

“T-helper cells become the target of stearic acid.”

PMID: 6333387 (PubMed)

“Stearic Acid, Magnesium Stearate, Calcium Stearate, Palmitate, and Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils are lubricants which enable manufacturing equipment to run more efficiently but inhibit eventual dissolution of the nutrient. Stearic acid may prevent absorption by individuals with compromised digestive systems. Magnesium stearate and stearic acid also present the problem that delivery of the active ingredient may be considerably further down the intestinal tract than the site originally intended. This may result in the nutrient being delivered away from its optimal absorption site. Not only can this impede absorption, in some cases it might be harmful to the liver.”

Czap, AL. Townsend Letter For Doctors and Patients, July 1999, Vol.192;Pg. 117-119.

“The addition of palmitate or stearate to cultured cells led to activation of a death program with a morphology resembling that of apoptosis. Palmitates and stearates caused cardiac and other types of cells to undergo programmed cell death.”

Sparagna, GC, Hickson-Bick, DL, Department of Pathology and Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston. American Journal of Medical Science, Jul 1999; pg. 15-21.

“Signs and Symptoms of Magnesium Stearate Poisoning:

Ingestion - Vomiting, Rinse mouth and rest.”

Pesticides Poisoning Database, www.pesticiceinfo.org.

“Magnesium Stearate - Stearic Acid Material Safety Data Sheet:

Toxicity by ingestion - Give several glasses of water to drink to dilute, get medical advice. Skin Contact - Wash exposed area with soap and water, get medical advice.”


Consumers often take handfuls of capsules to get nutrients from supplements containing magnesium stearate or stearic acid and instead, get a powerful immuno suppressive treatment! Most retailers are not aware of this threat and mistakenly claim 100% purity for their products. Ask suppliers to provide a written statement that guarantees their supplements are free of stearates. In fact, ask for full label disclosure listing every compound used to produce each product, and eliminate those supplements that have potentially harmful additives.


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Sodium Benzoate
A Poisonous Preservative
Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate are used as preservatives in most of the liquid vitamin products sold in health food stores or by multi-level-marketing distributors. Usually these juice products have claims that they are the secret of peoples in a far away place who live to be 150 years old! These people did not live to be 150 drinking juices that have sodium benzoate in them!

What does a preservative do? It kills everything alive in the product so it can sit on a shelf in a warehouse or store for weeks or months without spoiling. If the preservative kills everything alive in the product, what do you think it does in your body?

First, a little history. Harvey W. Wiley, M.D., taught at Harvard in 1873, and Purdue after that. Dr. Wiley accepted the position of Chief Chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1882. His main job was to assist Congress in their earliest questions regarding the safety of chemical preservatives in foods. He became known as the “Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act” when it became law in 1906. That act led to the creation of today’s Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Wiley also oversaw the laboratories of Good Housekeeping Magazine where he established the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

The important issues of the day were the use of bleached flour, saccharin and benzoate of soda (now known as sodium benzoate). In a letter addressed to President Coolidge he wrote regarding sodium benzoate: “The time has fully come for this monstrosity to disappear.”

The Food and Drug Act had already been watered down by politicians afraid to upset big business enterprises using sodium benzoate as a preservative. Dr. Wiley went on to write to the President: “It is the crowning ambition of my career, before I die, to see these illegal restrictions, which now make a prisoner of the Food Law, removed, and the Law restored to the functional activity which Congress prescribed.”

Dr. Wiley made it clear in his book, A History of Crime Against the Food Law (1929), that sodium benzoate was a food additive that was indeed harmful to health. Sodium benzoate should have been outlawed as a preservative at that time, but it is still used today. Why? Because vigorous protests from those engaged in adulterating foods were made to the Secretary of Agriculture, and sodium benzoate was allowed to continue to be used as a preservative.

Today, the FDA has a list known as GRAS: Generally Recognized As Safe. The FDA allows the addition of hundreds of chemicals to our food. Since the whole purpose of adding a preservative to a food is to make it unfit for insects or mold to eat, what makes us believe it is okay for humans to eat it? Especially the one preservative, sodium benzoate, that Dr. Wiley worked so hard to get outlawed.

After Dr. Wiley failed to get Congress to act. He finally gave a simple solution to the sodium benzoate problem: Don’t buy and use any food containing sodium benzoate. He suggested that we just read the label, and if it is a chemical, and you can’t pronounce it, do not buy it and eat it. He expected that this voting with our dollars would get additive-laden foods off the shelves of stores. But that has not happened, and now we have vitamin products being touted for your health that contain this poisonous chemical!

The Material Safety Data Sheet on sodium benzoate states:

Ingestion: If swallowed, call a physician immediately;

Induce vomiting.

Give oxygen or artificial respiration as needed.

The Chemical Analysis Data Sheet on sodium benzoate states:

Store away from food and beverages.

Yet today it is not kept away from food and beverages, it is found in most of them, including liquid vitamin supplements products that are supposed to “improve your health”. Take Dr. Wiley’s advice and read the labels before you and your family drink anything containing the poison of sodium benzoate.


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Living Food Source vs. Non-Food Synthetics
By: Robert J. Thiel, Ph.D, N.M.D.,

The Truth About Vitamins In Supplements

For decades the “natural” health industry has been touting thousands of vitamin supplements. The truth is that most vitamins are made or processed with petroleum derivatives or hydrogenated sugars. Even though they are often called “natural”, most vitamins sold in health food stores are isolated substances which are crystalline in structure. Vitamins naturally in food are not crystalline and never isolated. Vitamins found in any real food are chemically and structurally different from those commonly found in “natural vitamin formulas”. Since they are different, medical practitioners should consider non-food vitamins (often called “natural” or USP or pharmaceutical grade) as vitamin imitations and not actually vitamins.

Synthetic vitamins were developed because they cost less. Manufacturers often call synthetic vitamins “vegetarian”, not because they are from plants, but because they are not from animals. (Food source vitamins will list the names of the plants the vitamins are derived from on the label.)

Food source vitamins are smaller in size for better bioavailability, in chemical forms that the body recognizes, and the absorption of vitamins relates not only to the nature of the nutrients, but also their interaction with each other.

Even before there were electron microscopes, Dr. Royal Lee knew that food vitamins were superior to synthetics. Dr. Lee, like Dr. Bernard Jensen, was opposed to the use of isolated, synthetic nutrients. Dr. Lee specifically wrote,

“The synthetic product is always a simple chemical substance, while the pure food is a complex mixture of related and similar materials. The commercial promoters of cheap imitation products spend enough money to stop the leaking out of this information.”

Take Vitamin B for example. The body has a specific liver transport for the type of vitamin B found in food. It does not have this for the synthetic vitamin B forms. Therefore, no amount of synthetic vitamin B can ever equal food vitamin B. In fact, the body tries to rid itself of synthetic vitamin B as quickly as possible.

Certain forms of vitamin B synthetics have been shown to have almost no vitamin activity!

Look for vitamins that are 100% FOOD. The term “natural” does not mean pure food. Some companies try to confuse the consumer by using the term “food based”. “Food Based” vitamins are almost always USP vitamins mixed with a small amount of food that does not change the chemical form of the vitamin.

The truth is that only supplements composed of 100% FOOD can be counted on to perform the necessary functions in the body.
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Beware of Additives in Supplements

The Supplements Industry




Beware of Additives in Supplements
Stearates – Hydrogenated Fats Used in the Production of Most Supplements– Decrease Absorption and May Be Toxic and Immunosuppressive

by Ron Schmid, N.D., ©2003

Magnesium stearate, stearic acid and ascorbyl palmitate, made by hydrogenating cottonseed or palm oil, are used throughout the supplements industry as lubricants. They are added to the raw materials in supplements so that production machinery will run at maximum speeds. These fatty substances coat every particle of the nutrients, so the particles will flow rapidly. This ensures that production schedules will meet profit targets.

Cottonseed oil has the highest content of pesticide residues of all commercial oils; cotton crops are heavily sprayed. In the hydrogenation process, the oil is subjected to high heat and pressure in the presence of a metal catalyst for several hours, creating a hydrogenated saturated fat. Hydrogenated vegetable fats contain altered molecules derived from fatty acids that may be toxic. The metal catalyst used in the hydrogenation process may also contaminate the stearates produced (see Erasmus, Fats and Oils).

While toxicity is one problem, decreased absorption is another. In a study published in the journal Pharmaceutical Technology, the percent dissolution for capsules after 20 minutes in solution went from 90% without stearates to 25% with stearates (article available from us upon request). This delays the absorption of nutrients. Individuals with impaired digestion may have particular difficulty absorbing nutrients coated with stearates.

Another problem with stearates: concentrated doses of stearic acid suppress the action of T-cells, a key component of the immune system. The article “Molecular basis for the immunosuppressive action of stearic acid on T cells” appeared in the journal Immumology in 1990.

Companies that manufacture and transport magnesium stearate must file a Material Safety Data Sheet with the Environmental Protection Agency because concentrated magnesium stearate is classified as a hazardous substance.

Its uses are listed as “ammunition, dusting powder, paint and varnish drier, binder, and emulsifier.” The section “Human Health Data” states that “Inhalation may irritate the respiratory tract” and “Acute ingestion may cause gastroenteritis.”

Under the heading “Regulatory Information,” the paper states, “This product is hazardous under the criteria of the Federal OSHA Hazard Communication Standard.” This information may be viewed at the web site www.hummelcroton.com/msds/mgstear_m.html

Supplements manufacturers pass off magnesium stearate as a benign form of magnesium. Magnesium stearate is the magnesium salt of stearic acid, which is also used in supplements for the same purposes. The argument is made that small amounts of these substances do no harm. But do you really want them in your supplements every day? Remember, the sole purpose of using these substances is to make the machines go faster. Supplements can be made without them-it just takes more time, care, and attention to detail.

How Much Hydrogenated Lubricant Oils Are You Getting With Your Supplements?
Up to 5% of the average 1000 mg capsule or tablet is magnesium stearate. That’s 50 milligrams. Suppose you take 8 capsules or tablets a day. That’s 250 a month – or 12,500 mg of this hydrogenated oil, nearly half an ounce. That works out to about 6 ounces of hydrogenated oils a year, from just 8 pills a day. Many people take more supplements, and ingest pounds of this toxic oil we try to avoid in our diets – while directly inhibiting the utilization of the nutrients they’re supplementing!

100% Additive-Free Supplements.
Remember, the sole purpose of using these oils is to make the machines go faster. Supplements can be made without them – it just takes more time, care and attention to detail. Our exclusive process yields absolutely pure supplements – no lubricants, binders, flowing agents, fillers, dyes or additives of any kind – only the pure nutrients.

Our Certificates of Analysis Demonstrate the Purity of Our Products
The raw materials that go into our supplements are independently analyzed. Here are some typical results:

Alpha Lipoic Acid: Assay: 99.72%; Loss on Drying: 0.25%. Purity thus tested at 99.97%.

Glucosamine Sulfate Potassium: Assay: 99.88%; Loss on Drying: 0.072%. Purity thus tested at 99.952%.

Other manufacturers cannot provide pure products because of contamination by stearates. We will provide copies of our certificates of analysis for any of our products upon your request.

#2 mike250

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 04:33 AM

I too wonder about magnesium stearate. it seems to be in every supplement I've seen around.

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#3 bgwowk

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 06:01 AM

For Heavens sake, stearic acid is a saturated animal fat present in high concentrations in beef and cocoa butter (i.e. chocolate). As saturated fats go, it seems to be one of the lesser dangerous ones. The milligram amounts in supplements are certainly going to do little or nothing.

Benzoic acid was recently discussed in another thread. If you are concerned about small amounts of benzoate, you better not eat berries. Benzoic acid occurs naturally in many foods.

#4 mike250

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 09:28 AM

you don't think there is much difference between the natural occurring stuff and the forms found in supplements?

#5 bgwowk

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Posted 10 June 2007 - 03:36 PM

you don't think there is much difference between the natural occurring stuff and the forms found in supplements?

It's a defined molecule.

http://wwwchem.csust...102/stearic.htm

If it were different by even one atom, it wouldn't be called stearic acid.

#6 mirian

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Posted 06 July 2007 - 06:53 PM

Newshadow is the studies you provided based on animal or vegetable stearate?

Many supplements like the multi I take specifically lists vegetable stearate.

I do notice after reading this thread that 100% of tablets, 99% of capsules, and close to 0% of softgels have either magnesium stearate and/or stearic acid.

I do know that many companies are changing from trans fat AKA: hydrogenated oil to either: Interesterified oil or stearate-rich oil. Research is indicating that although it doesn't lower LDL like trans fat. Just like trans fat it can alter blood sugar and lower HDL:

http://en.wikipedia....resterified_fat

The only capsule multi I've found that shows on their website as apparently no magnesium stearate or stearic acid is the particular Source Naturals Life Force multi but still has undesirable's like bioperine, chromium picolinate, sodium selenite, niacinamide, over 10mg of B2 (accelerates aging of skin & light permeable organs) , over 100% RDA of manganese (increasing parkinson's risk) and less than 800 mcg of folic acid:

http://www.sourcenat...roducts/GP1459/

NOW foods put up an outline with references on why they feel it's safe for use:

http://www.nowfoods....l&item_id=93528

Edited by mirian, 25 July 2007 - 09:35 PM.


#7 private

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Posted 06 October 2007 - 06:29 PM

I use Iron Free One Daily by Megafoods Cold Fusion Foodstate Nutrients.

There is no magnesium stearate. The "other ingredients" are: Silica, Vegetable Lubricant, Kelp, Dulse and Food Glaze.

On second thought, could the "vegetable lubricant" be magnesium stearate with a name change?

#8 graatch

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Posted 07 October 2007 - 07:56 AM

It's a defined molecule.

http://wwwchem.csust...102/stearic.htm

If it were different by even one atom, it wouldn't be called stearic acid.


Thanks man.

#9 resveratrol

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Posted 09 October 2007 - 04:46 PM

Thanks for posting this, newshadow. I took a look and found magnesium stearate in more than half the supplements I'm taking -- very scary stuff.

Does anyone have a sense of how much magnesium stearate is actually in a typical supplement? If I take a 500mg supplement, how many milligrams of magnesium stearate am I likely to be getting? I'm really concerned that the total amount of magnesium stearate across all these supplements could end up being really significant.

#10 ajnast4r

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Posted 09 October 2007 - 06:59 PM

For Heavens sake, stearic acid is a saturated animal fat present in high concentrations in beef and cocoa butter (i.e. chocolate).  As saturated fats go, it seems to be one of the lesser dangerous ones.  The milligram amounts in supplements are certainly going to do little or nothing.
.



listen to this man

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#11 resveratrol

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Posted 09 October 2007 - 09:02 PM

OK, I found a study which helps me quantify it a bit: http://www.atypon-li...ournalCode=jaoi

Magnesium stearate levels in 5 out of 25 supplements exceeded 2500 micrograms/g, which indicated the possible admixture of magnesium stearate.


If I'm not mistaken, 2500 micrograms equates to 2.5 mg, which should not be a big deal.




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