Testing which vitamins work best?

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KingNothing
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My girlfriend and I were talking, and she said that a way to tell if a vitamin is absorbed or not, is to mix a few different chemicals (can't remember what), and to see how the vitamin dissolves in this mixture. She said that it's because this mixture will have the same acidity as your stomach.

Does this make sense to you? I didn't think dissolution was about acidity at all. So, I'm looking for input on this.
 
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Well I guess it would matter on what you are looking for (in terms of works best). I mean all of the vitamins have their specific effects. So, I don't really understand what you mean by "works best".
 
This is exactly the way in which many pharmaceuticals are analyzed for dissolution. Remember that absorption is more complicated than that, however. Some vitamins are fat soluble and may not dissolve in the stomach very well but will dissolve lower in the GI tract. A good quality vitamin pill should fall apart in the stomach in my opinion. Absorption can occur anywhere in the GI tract, though.
 
As a side note: assume vitamins are absorbed, then you have the issue of retention.

You may have noticed that urine becomes darker yellow after consuming vitamins.
This is because a lot of the compounds you got in the pill are out of your system again in an hour or two. No retention.

Physicians who think vitamins are wasteful, sometimes talk about urinating away money.