A vitamin is just a vitamin, isn't it? With so many nutritional supplements out there, many people believe that all vitamin and health supplement products are the same. Well, they are not.

Many people just buy the cheapest vitamins or supplements available, or the one from the television ad that got their attention. Let me be clear about this, don't believe a lot of what you hear and read in advertisements.

All advertisements are designed by professional ad designers who specialize in creating sayings and images that stick into your subconscious mind, whether you like it or not. They even do studies to prove what ads are the most effective and brainwash you the most.

For every ad you see, there were dozens of other versions that were rejected. You only see, hear, or read the ad that works the best to brainwash you.

They know that if their ad hits the right triggers in your brain over and over again, you will eventually buy their product. Each company spends tons of money on luring more customers to stores instead of spending it to improve upon their products or test their quality. Great products spread the word on their own through word of mouth advertising.

Each company has advertising teams and divisions within the company that do nothing but focus on how to get you, the consumer, tricked into buying their products. Your decision to buy has little to do with any research you did on your part because you just believed everything they told you.

Ask other people, try things, make your own decisions, you will find that a lot of people have been ripping you off and feeding you a lot of B.S. Great products create a buzz and happy repeat customers on their own through word of mouth advertising.

Back to the vitamins! Let's use vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as an example. Most people would think that vitamin C could only be vitamin C, so that is why they think that all brands are the same. What they don't know is where the orange came from and how the vitamin C was extracted.

Can we agree that mother nature knows the best and most exact formula for providing vitamin C on the molecular level? I am not going to give you a science class here, but I need to prove a valid point.

Some natural health companies are selling products that are derived from nature, and nature alone. Other companies, unfortunately, do not use mother nature as their source and they end up with vitamin bricks. They look like a vitamin, taste like a vitamin, but they are molecularly different.

Other companies follow almost all of the rules except the oranges that they get the vitamin C from are not organic, and are grown with fertilizers, hormones, and pesticides. This dramatically reduces the nutrient contend within the orange, thus depleting the amount of vitamin C within the orange.

Some companies get half way there by using nature as the source, but then they isolate the vitamin from the natural ingredients it lives with in nature. Vitamin C, for example, is never found alone in nature. This breaks the bond of synergy within the orange.

This creates an imbalance with the laws of nature. The laws of nature, on a molecular level, is all your body is aware of. The only way your body knows how to build its health is by following its molecular laws. When they are broken, or your body is given something with a different molecular make up than it is supposed to have, your body does not know what to do with it.

Think of Van Gogh, or your favorite artist. Most people can recognize their work, but the original artwork is absolutely flawless and worth millions of dollars in some cases. Many prints are made every year, some duplicates are even made with texture to look just like the real thing.

But are they the real thing? To the untrained eye people would not be able to tell the difference, but you as a fan of their work, and anybody trained in studying artwork to determine its worth sure can tell.

Which copy of the artwork is worth more? The fake one or the real thing? Which would you rather have hanging in your house? Which would you tell your friends about? Would you brag about owning a fake?

Mother nature is no different, it is beautiful, flawless and is best left untouched and unduplicated. People will continue to try to duplicate nature, but I am afraid they will fail, time after time.

So do your research next time you are going to buy vitamins, or any nutritional supplement for that matter. Make sure that the company can tell you where the vitamins and ingredients came from so you can be sure that they are potent and pure. Also don't ever buy vitamins or supplements unless they have a money-back guarantee. That way you can try them and send them back if they don't work.