Vitamin P and the Rainbow DietVitamin P was a name given to bioflavonoids or flavonoids, a collection of colourful pigments in fruits, vegetables and flowers; they are in many common foods like citrus fruits, grape seed, and red peppers, or herbs such as mint, parsley and chamomile, or teas, cocoa and chocolate.
So, we are not really talking about a vitamin. ’Vitamin’ P is more a loosely linked group of similar bioactive natural compounds often providing the colour in vegetables and fruit at the very heart of
the Rainbow Diet - the colourful Mediterranean Diet.
The body cannot produce them; you have to eat them. This group also includes phenols and polyphenols - compounds like quercitin, rutin and hesperidin. Most flavonoids are powerful antioxidants.
Hesperidin is closely associated with vitamin C and often thought to be an essential part of that vitamin.
The most common members of vitamin PThere are probably over 4,000 flavonoids in nature. For example:
1.
Citrus Bioflavonoids - from tangerines to oranges and lemons.
2. OPCs - like those in pygeum bark and grape seed extract; powerful antioxidants
3 Polyphenols - like EGCG in green tea; Curcumin - known to affect cancer and cancer processes.
4. Phytoestrogens - like genestein in soy and red clover.
Many have strong anti-cancer properties. As it says in our best selling book, ’the Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer’, these bioactive compounds help you ’prevent’ and ’correct’, they are so powerful.
Vitamin P and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi won a Nobel Prize and championed vitamin P in the 1930-1950 era. He actually discovered vitamin C, and vitamin P was an important part of its action. Indeed, much vitamin C on the High Street is synthetic and thus deficient in important bioflavoids like hesperidin. Natural bioflavonoids actually help vitamin C ’work’.
Go To: Vitamin C - Synthetic ascorbic acid is not the real thing