I am mostly veggie (bacon is a vegetable), so I take a basic children’s chewable just to make sure that any gaps are partially filled.
It makes for nutrient rich pee…
3 Likes
That’s the best part! The bright yellow pee a few hours after taking your multivitamin!
1 Like
Your own little laser light show.
1 Like
I miss-read that as “eat someone who takes supplements,” and thought while that may work it is generally frowned upon.
7 Likes
Yeah, that B Monster bottled smoothie will do it, same with nutritional yeast.
On a related note, you know what’s freaky looking, and not in a good way? When you pee in a toilet where someone has just cleaned with some kind of bleach, and left the cleanser in the bowl. Pee + cleanser = blood red.
3 Likes
MMMMMM Astro Turf.
2 Likes
Just in case of some sort of apocalypse, I make sure to keep track of my young vegan acquaintances (aka health food).
5 Likes
Depending on the study, b12 deficiency may be as high as 39% in the general US population.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2000/000802.htm . No, the study didn’t see if vitamins would be well absorbed enough to remedy that.
Some people feel a minimal to mild to rarely major benefit with vitamins, and if so should be encouraged to continue with them. It’s a cheap noninvasive intervention that can be tried and discontinued if no benefit is noted.
I don’t take a multivitamin, but eat a compulsively healthy diet. Most Americans don’t cook as much as I do, eat as many vegetables/fruits, and avoid fast food like I do. I think if the energy that physicians have historically used to attack multivitamins were instead focused on the rest of the historically crappy US diet, we would have a longer lifespan and greater quality of life.
3 Likes
The fundamental flaw in this study is that it is based on a crappy multivitamin. The fact is that there aren’t really any vitamins in Centrum Silver™. Cyanocobalamin is not Vitamin B12, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride is not Vitamin B6, Ascorbic acid is not Vitamin C. These are all chemical syntheses or distillates of vitamins, similar in a stripped down scientific sort of way but they don’t actually function as a vitamin once they get into our bodies. This is why the label says that they should be taken with food; the intent is to mix them up with ‘real’ food to try to trick the body into processing and absorbing them. Without that they would just pass on through (most of them do anyway, resulting in the day-glo pee). I would be curious to see the results of a study based on whole food vitamins that actually contain the nutrients that the consumer is led to believe they are receiving.
2 Likes
I used to have chronic migraine, my nutritionally literate neurologist recommended I take magnesium, B vitamins, and coQ10. This reduced my migraines frequency by %90 and was a huge improvement in my quality of life. It is well supported by research. It was suggested by an MD. Clearly, vitamin and mineral deficiencies do exist. They also, clearly, can impact health and well being. I am much better off taking those supplements than taking expensive anti-epilepsy drugs to prevent migraine. I don’t take a multi vitamin and I don’t understand how research that cheap daily multi vitamins are not longevity-increasing so quickly becomes all-supplements-are-woo in the media. (I edited out a big ranty bit because I am pretty sure no one cares about me ranting.)
3 Likes
I tend to operate on the assumption that multivitamins are mostly placebo for me. At times when I’m putting the body under unusual stress (recovering from injury, for example), I take 'em because it makes me feel like I’m Doing Something.
Other than that, I take supplements when the body tells me that I need 'em – cramping and the like. And they’re as likely to be food as pills.
Also, Centrums have been known to pass through the digestive system without any significant digestion… (recollection from some study ages ago – I assume that they have re-formulated since then)
A few years ago, I had a physical, and my doctor said my vitamin D levels were low. This is unsurprising as I live at a fairly high latitude and have more or less Gollum’s aversion to sunlight. I started taking vitamin D supplements. I continue to have regular physicals (I’m not a spring chicken any more), and my vitamin D levels have been fine ever since.
In this day and age, supplements strike me as a more healthy source of vitamin D than sunlight exposure, which causes cancer.
3 Likes
Why should I listen to a bunch of internal medicine specialists who’ve carried out a bunch of studies over the course of what, only 12 years? You can make these long term double-blind statistical studies involving thousands of subjects say whatever you want.
Even if vitamins don’t work for most people, I’m not “most people.” Vitamins make me feel good so I’m going to keep taking them.
2 Likes
No, most multis don’t help. 90% of what you’ll find on the shelves is bunk. New Chapter or nothing for me. Right now I cant afford my mens daily- about 40 bucks for a month supply.
Couldn’t you just spend the $40 on nicer food?
See my previous comment re: entertainingly-shaped ecstasy pills. You sure you’re eating what you think you’re eating?
1 Like
The studies looked largely at prevention of chronic diseases. There are individuals who are deficient, who may feel healthier when they supplement at reasonable, non-megadose level. If you talk them into discontinuing you may be doing them a disservice. Doctors don’t give medications/treatments out calibrated for “most people” and expect absolute equivalent efficacy, they are aware there is a wide variety of individual responses to medications for a variety of reasons, including genetic makeup, diet, environment and stress. So yeah, it may some help a small statistically insignificant group in a population but not be found in a large study looking at broad parameters.
2 Likes
