18 replies to this topic

[Anthony_Loera]

Hi Everyone,

recently I have been getting some emails from a person stating how much better synthetic resveratrol is better than natural resveratrol. He states that he is an avid reader of this forum. I would like folks here to pick a side, put on your boxing gloves, and weigh in on this if you could (even as a devils advocate if you will...as it makes it interesting sometimes). [thumb]

[lol]
Personally If you have 99.5% resveratrol from an herbal source against a 99.9% synthetic version... would you guys pay 8x times the price for the synthetic even though studies are using both for positive results? Somehow I think most people would not. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[sfty] Manu (if you are reading this...) please jump in and correct me as well.

From a business side of things, I don't think the average person can pay an enormous amount of money for a synthetic version, since in the end... we are talking about the same molecule being consumed.

What do you guys think?
A [spectate]

[stephen_b]

It seems to me that natural resveratrol should command a premium over synthetic. This is less a biological argument than my perception that the market would value natural more. Would a seller be obligated to put the word "synthetic" on the label?

Stephen

[malbecman]

What difference does it make if a molecule is synthesized by a plant's biochemical pathways versus a person doing it using chemistry?

[maxwatt]

In this case there is the "synthetic" made in a vat by genetically modified yeast or bacteria -- both methods have been described in the literature. It involves using a lentivirus to deliver dna to the organism's genome, so that it synthesizes resveratrol. At least one Chinese company is said to be using this process to produce 99% resveratrol. It is also likely that the second half of Paul Wakfer's group buy -- after he found a replacement source when Orchid refused to sell him any more -- came from this source. In theory it should be as good as extracted resveratrol from plants. But the devil is in the details; remember the batch of tryptophan that caused several deaths from eosinophilia in those who used it, after the bacteria in a Japanese company's vat mutated and made something nasty in addition to tryptophan.

So I would want to see a very stringent standard of testing and openness of the manufacture process. All my resveratrol is from a natural source: Polygonum cuspidatum.

EDIT: GMP would ensure openness of the process.

Edited by maxwatt, 12 September 2007 - 01:43 PM.

[stephen_b]

What difference does it make if a molecule is synthesized by a plant's biochemical pathways versus a person doing it using chemistry?

Supply and demand. People get good vibes from the word 'natural', but the word 'synthetic' is scary. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting the market's decisions to be rational.

Stephen

[dannov]

Natural unless synthetic was not only cheaper, but basically what Maxwatt stated. I'd have to see incredibly stringent testing, essentially guaranteeing it's safety.

[bcs4]

It is just as possible to get someting bad naturally as synthetically. It would seem the quality of the product depends on the ethics and diligence of it's manufacturer.

A synthetic product generally comes as the result of an attempt to produce a product which is more pure or in more productive quantities. If the synthetic product doesn't have the same safety as the natural product, it simply isn't the synthetic equivalent, thus the need to try again.

I've never understood the meaning of the word natural. I guess I'm too much of a "black or white" type of person.

[david ellis]

maxwatt-
So I would want to see a very stringent standard of testing and openness of the manufacture process. All my resveratrol is from a natural source: Polygonum cuspidatum.

EDIT: GMP would ensure openness of the process.

I don't see any reason to expect openness if such a catastrophe occurred again (35 dead 3500 crippled). The Japanese never explained exactly what happened and the Chinese are a century behind the Japanese in appreciating the consequences of industrialization..

It's like a "DUH" for me. Natural is cheaper and I don't have the worries about trusting the Chinese controlling bacteria genomes.

[dannov]

It is just as possible to get someting bad naturally as synthetically.  It would seem the quality of the product depends on the ethics and diligence of it's manufacturer.

A synthetic product generally comes as the result of an attempt to produce a product which is more pure or in more productive quantities.  If the synthetic product doesn't have the same safety as the natural product, it simply isn't the synthetic equivalent, thus the need to try again.

I've never understood the meaning of the word natural.  I guess I'm too much of a "black or white" type of person.

Natural simply means extracted from something from nature. Synthetic means created in a lab. That sounds pretty "black or white" to me.

[shadowrun]

Synthetic or Natural...If its coming from China we should think twice.

(I just realized my bags of Trader Joe's frozen organic spinach is coming from China...I have a headache)

[dannov]

As long as it's a GMP-compliant company that provides CoA, you're fine. South China is the way to go from what I understand.

[edbear]

Natural simply means extracted from something from nature.  Synthetic means created in a lab.  That sounds pretty "black or white" to me.

So would something sourced anonymously from plants in China be more comfortable to take than a synthetic product backed by pharmaceutical-grade quality control standards?

[bcs4]

I'm sorry, re: my comment about not understanding the meaning of natural, I should have said significance.

[dannov]

  So would something sourced anonymously from plants in China be more comfortable to take than a synthetic product backed by pharmaceutical-grade quality control standards?

If the same sort of quality control is applied to the plants, then why not? Thus my mention of GMP, CoA, etc.

[david ellis]

dannov-
If the same sort of quality control is applied to the plants, then why not? Thus my mention of GMP, CoA, etc.

No, it is not that simple. Synthetic is made by bacteria genetically modified to produce resveratrol. (See maxwatt's Post) This introduces the possibility of getting poison instead of resveratrol. With natural your major worry is low quality or being shorted on quantity.

With synthetic the worries are much bigger. As an example of what can happen consider tryptophan made in Japan during the late 80's. Genetically modified bacteria may have produced highly poisonous tryptophan. The poison, (the molecules in error) were so similar to tryptophan and such a small part of the mix that very sensitive spectral analysis would not detect the poison. I have to say "may" because the Japanese never explained what happened. They just paid claims on 35 deaths and thousands crippled. I wish they had explained so we would know the risks and be able to protect ourselves without guessing. Japan had a legal system similar to ours and legal recourse was available. In China, at present, there is no legal recourse. So their motivation for quality is not the same as those who have to worry about legal responsibility.

So, we already "may" have had one serious biological engineering accident. I for one, do not want to be part of the next one. I lucked out on the tryptophan, I took one dose, got a splitting headache and threw the bottle away. Thousands of people were not so lucky. And this event didn't happen from the beginning. The process produced "safe" tryptophan, until one day, it started producing "poisonous" tryptophan. And because the molecules were so similar, spectral analysis would not have detected the problem. This is a very highly technical process that we are trusting our health to. It requires constant vigilance and care.

GMP is a cause to trust a supplier, but it is not a guarantee. In the vitamin brands found deficient by consumerlab.com this month, one was a GMP certified manufacturer. Let's see if they offer your money back. Japan has 50 years of experience with western legal systems and takes seriously the concept of legal responsibility. A difficulty with Japan is that instead of accepting responsibility and telling what happened, they adopted the Western habit of spinning deniability. China is the "wild west" as far as consumer law goes. McDonald's folded rather than insisting on performance of contract terms.

I hope I am wrong and that synthetic manufacturing is safer than I think it is. So I would welcome any information that indicates that bacterial manufacturing is comparably safe as extracting supplements from plants.

[bcs4]

I don't want to belittle anyone, but it would seem to me 35 deaths are very few (unless of course you are one of the 35!) in comparison to the number of doses in the history of synthetic meds. I would think there would be more than 35 deaths each year from consuming natural bootleg alcohol.

I'm really not trying to be dense. I don't see why "natural" is such a draw. What is natural about consuming 2 grams of Resveratrol a day?

[tintinet]

One more point to consider: you rely on the integrity of the supplement suppliers to ensure when you buy a product labeled "natural," it is "natural" and not substituted, possibly cheaper, synthetic material (and vice versa.)

[niner]

With synthetic the worries are much bigger. As an example of what can happen consider tryptophan made in Japan during the late 80's. Genetically modified bacteria may have produced highly poisonous tryptophan. The poison, (the molecules in error) were so similar to tryptophan and such a small part of the mix that very sensitive spectral analysis would not detect the poison.

Since the Japanese manufacturer (Showa Denko) of the bad TRP isn't talking, I presume we don't really know what sort of process analyses were regularly run. I say this because analytical techniques in common use today should be able to uncover problems like this. Liquid Chromatographic quantitation of impurity peaks could tell you that something has changed in the process if a new peak suddenly appears. In the tryptophan case, the impurity, 1,1'-ethylidenebis[tryptophan], was over twice the molecular weight of tryptophan, and would have eluted far from the tryptophan peak. What we don't know is even if some nameless Chinese manufacturer runs regular LCs, and they see a new peak, would they halt production in order to sort it out? Or would they say "it's way less than 1%, so what?"

Yet, in comparing the cell culture resveratrol to the knotweed extract, how do you know that the ostensibly "natural" knotweed extract doesn't have something bad in it? There's really nothing "natural" about running flash chromatography with a bunch of weird solvents on an herb, and concentrating the hell out of a fraction of it, then ingesting gram+ doses for the rest of your life. It's just a different bunch of technology. In the end, I would want either product, herbal or cell culture, (or chemically synthesized) to have all impurities that are present in physiologically relevant quantities to be characterized.

For what it's worth, the Showa Denko tryptophan disaster was an extremely unusual event. Sometimes airplanes crash, but we keep flying on them. At the start of the thread, Anthony mentioned an 8X price difference in the two products. It that's the case, then I'll most likely go for the cheaper one. However, I'd heard elsewhere that the fermentation resv was way cheaper than that. If it were actually cheaper than the herbal extract, and demonstrably more pure, I'd probably go that route.

[david ellis]

Thanks niner, for a recap. I am an accountant and I was struggling to balance the issues. I had no idea about the risks with solvents on the "natural" side. It is interesting that people in the mid90's were looking at "peaks' and publishing articles saying current tryptophan is poison. I assume it wasn't, because I could only find the "Showa Denko" incident. But bottom line, people who should have known something about what they were doing found anomalies that frightened them.

For me, because I haven't decided to take resveratrol, all I have to do is wait. And with the latest dust-up in China with contaminated leukemia medicine, waiting seems like a good choice. There doesn't seem to be enough incentive to do a proper job. So I am thinking the possibility is high that someone will say (in the scenario you described), "What the heck, the anomaly is way less than 1%, let's approve the shipment". The penalty is getting shot, but the one guy shot so far was a government employee. Maybe shooting a few CEO's and Quality Vice Presidents is needed.