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Feel better from taking vitamins?

Iamme

Philosopher
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Aug 5, 2003
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*I* don't. I take one of those daily jobs that has practically everything under the sun in it. Plus I take additional supplements of potassium, magnesium, calcium and zinc. Plus, I drink fortified V-8, and have fortified cereal. I STILL feel shot.

Then, you hear the ad for SeaSilver where they say vitamins in tablet form are almost worthless...to the tune that your body can only absorb 10-20% of the nutrients. Hmmmmm. And they claim that you can feel the difference.

There is another supplemental product that is being hyped, by the name of Focus Factor. They TOO claim that you will notice a difference. Hmmmm.

And, Coral Calcium...and....


Anyway. I would like to hear from fellow pill poppers. Notice anything? Or, are you a walking testimonial for some specific supplement? if so, let's hear it.

What amazes me is that they say we are what we eat....and yetr I have gone stretches where I have compromised my good eating habits...and then resumed them. And i can't seem to tell the difference in any way.

Is this all a big lie. Is it simply, 'food is food', as if we are like some organic burning furnace, and as long as we get 'food', we will live? The presumption is that you won't live as long if you continue to not get essential nutrients. But, what I am most curious about at this time is what supplements do for you...now.
 
I read a book a few yars ago called "The Vitamin Pushers", written by a couple of physicians. They claimed that America had the best-nourished toilets in the world.

A lot of doctors reccomend a daily multi-vitamin, indluding NPR's "Dr. Zorba". (he's also very soft on "alternative" medicine.)

The bottom line would seem to be that if you eat a balanced diet, you probably don't need additional vitamins. Of course, how many of us eat a balanced diet?

Hehe- the supplement industry is HUGE, and the followers have almost a religious-like zeal.
 
I take a couple different vitamins, the biggest improvement I've noticed is my oral health. This is likely due to remedying a previous deficiency, but I feel the net effect is worth it. I stopped getting cold sores, for example, when I started on a vitamin regemin. Last summer I forgot to take vitamins for a few weeks (due to travel) and had a major outbreak :(. That alone is worth the cost and the trouble in my opinion.

I've been doing vitamins for about five years now and feel they are a very valuable component of a healthy lifestyle. I started taking them as part of healthy lifestyle initiative I started a few years ago.

My spending is fairly low, I buy a high potency multiple at Costco and supplement it with some calcium (usually as a chewable antacid) and Co-enzyme Q10 (to combat gingivitis).

There is alot of junk science out there to be sure, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Do your research and be sure to shop generic and you will do fine.
 
I'm 52----I make my living as a hospital pharmacist.

I'm also kind of a "health nut".

I work out anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hrs /day.....

I try to keep my life simple with as little stress as possible.

I eat well....lots of fish..8-10 servings of fruit/veggies day--lot's of "good fats" like olive or flax oil.

I feel great. I used to take a multivit with minerals but don't even bother with that anymore. I don't feel any different without it.

I think vitamins are over-hyped. If you're eating a good diet it's probably just over-kill.

If you have scurvy and take vit C.....you'll feel a lot better.

Unless you have some severe deficiency disease tho---don't expect vitamins to make you "feel" better
 
i take a simple multivitamin a day just to fill in any gaps that my diet may leave. costs a few pennies a day.

i think you would only feel a pronounced change from taking vitamins if you had a deficiency to begin with.
 
I've been taking vit/min supplements for more than 20 years. As others have said, there is no feeling, good or bad, to taking them, as would be expected. I take them mostly as added "insurance" to maintaining adequate levels, especially the antioxidants. I do not take mega-doses of any of them. Also take an 81 mg aspirin per day.
 
I usually take a calcium supplement for leg cramps. Due to some medical conditions that I have, my doctor has reccommended that I take it.

It helps a little. (the pain goes from nearly unbearable to something I can almost ignore) I suspect that there is something else going on, but that's going to be hard to prove. So until then, I take the marginal help from the calcium.
 
Sort of related - I imagine that early humans developed the ability to eat almost anything due to the feast or famine of nomadic life.

Didn't we evolve to deal with eating a whole pig one day, then nothing but sticks and leaves for a week? How does having a constant balanced diet affect overall health? Is it possible that eating wildly different foods and quantities on a daily basis, which average out to fairly balanced over longer periods, might be better for our health?

Does anyone know of any real data along these lines?

Back on topic - I take multivitamins for months at a time, then forget to for months at a time. I don't notice any differences in my overall health or in the way I feel.
 
fishbob said:
Sort of related - I imagine that early humans developed the ability to eat almost anything due to the feast or famine of nomadic life.

Didn't we evolve to deal with eating a whole pig one day, then nothing but sticks and leaves for a week? How does having a constant balanced diet affect overall health? Is it possible that eating wildly different foods and quantities on a daily basis, which average out to fairly balanced over longer periods, might be better for our health?
Click to expand...

I doubt it. Just because our ancestors survived on whatever they could find to eat does not make that the optimal diet. People that push the paleolithic diet make the same argument.

Now to take this really off topic (at least the subject is a healthy food), I assume your avatar is of you, how do you like this 30+ lb king I caught up there in June (that's me in the middle)?



salmon.JPG
 
It was a great fight. Amazing state you live in, looking forward to getting back up there.
 
Kitsune: You say that you get only marginal results from calcium. If you get leg cramps at night, that indicates a lack of magnesium - one or two 200mg magnesium capsules daily should clear it up pronto.
 
B Tox---Nice fish. (Ever have a fish just jump right in your boat on you? I had a Mackerel do this on me once.)

Continuation of thread topic: What I find amazing is how, in this country of ours with all it's relatively good nutrion where we have available all the grains, meats, fruits, veggies, etc.,....that if someone becomes anorexic and literally starts to starve themselves, that they may lose, say, 50 pounds from their optimal weight (from say 120# down to 70#), and then go into cardiac arrest and die.

Yet, you see these images on shows like "Feed the People", that show starving kids in third world countries who are late teenagers being held in the arms of their mother. They are nothing but skin and bones. You can see their entire skeletal structure. Yet...at the moment, they are still alive. That fascinates me as to how that can be. Yet, the anorexic, in this food rich country of ours, who gets KINDA skinny, drops dead.

I imagine those third world country people living off nothing but porridges and breads. I wonder what all nutrients they DO get. SOMEthing must work in their favor. Maybe that if one has lived for generations upon generations with a less substantial diet, that their bodies are used to this and don't need all the nutrients that WE are grown accustomed to?

According to a post above, it sounds like this is not true. If not true, what other explanation is there for these skeletons to stay alive and not develop fatal heart arrythmias and other shut-downs of their system?
 
I am a FORMER pill-popper. I used to take every suppliment and vitamin under the sun. MEGA-dose multi's, 1200mg of C, a magnesium/calcium/zinc tab, vitamin E, a B-1000 Complex, echinacea whenever I felt like a cold was coming on, 5-HTP for mood/weight, and then 3-4 (that's right, 3 to 4) different diet pills, and as many energy/memory pills to boot.

All told, i am sure I spent $200 a month on them.

I still got sick, as often as I do today (one multi-vitamin only), and frankly, I felt the same. I used to talk to the health food store people (who ALWAYS looked unhealthy, under-weight, and sickly for some 'strange' reason) who would tell me that 'THIS is a better, more absorbable version of vitamin_00X' or, 'well, if you are feeling like this, it is your bodies way of telling you such-n-such', or 'Well, it may seem expensive, but this is YOUR body we aretalking about.' In the end, it came off as sounding like a drug dealer of the 1st degree, which, when you think about it, it was.

So, I started to lose my hair. Not male pattern baldness, and I was 22 years old. My skin color had taken on an odd shade of orange, and my gums started hurting even though I brushed twice a day. I go to my doctor, he does some blood work, and then calls me up a week later.

"Um, do you take a lot of vitamins?"

me- 'Well, not like, 'a lot' but I do take some. Why?"

"Could you tell me which ones you are taking on a regular basis?"

me- I procede to rattle them off, one by one, and after getting about halfway through the list, I started to realize just how long the list was.

He about flipped, told me to 'throw all that garbage out, and eat right! it's making you sick!'

So, that is this recovering pill-poppers story.
 
One of my friends caught me popping chewable vitamin C tablets (I like them for candy sometimes), and he chidingly said, "You're just making for expensive piss".
I think that sums up vitamin use.
 
Larspeart---My aunt and uncle were/are health food nuts since their 30's. They ate right off their farm. Then they left the farm and frequented health food stores and bought most of their staples there. They always had a well, and I'm sure the water was as pure as it could get. They lived back deep in a state forest with a lot of spring-fed lakes.They drank carrot juice like water, made their own bread and jam, ate natural peanut butter, canteloupe, millet, a concoction of seeds for breakfast, soy dinners (this was back in the early 70's), etc. Plus...they lived in the northwoods. No factories. Crystral clear lakes and air. (The northern lights were beautiful). And they never smoked or drank.

My aunt had a massive stroke inside her oven when she was 75! (Young by todays standards). But...my uncle is closing in on 90 and he is as fit as a fiddle. So what am I to think. They ate the same stuff. But....she didn't get around, move about...do the physical stuff my uncle did. But she wasn't a couch potato either. nah...she was pretty active. But she didn't walk or jog....none of THAT stuff.

She turned orange like a carrot about 10 years before she died. It got more pronounced over time. It was actually jaundice/light orange color everywhere, except her callouses were actually orange. She was probably getting carotene or vitamin A poisoning.

The folly for people who want to live long and healthy lives, carry it to the extreme, and can do more harm than good.

I really want to learn the truth though about vitamin supplements in *pill* form. DO our bodies assimilate them by more than the 10-20% that SeaSilver claims? I called the FDA themselves, and a pharmecist and their answers were like double-talk.

It might come down to the fact that food is smarter than we are when it comes to combining all the micro-nutrients in perfect combination and balance so that are bodies absorb the nutrients. If some pill has 50 ingredients in it...maybe this is a fraction of the micro-nutrients that are in whole foods, that our body needs for proper assimilation.
 
Larspeart said:
I am a FORMER pill-popper. I used to take every suppliment and vitamin under the sun. MEGA-dose multi's, 1200mg of C, a magnesium/calcium/zinc tab, vitamin E, a B-1000 Complex, echinacea whenever I felt like a cold was coming on, 5-HTP for mood/weight, and then 3-4 (that's right, 3 to 4) different diet pills, and as many energy/memory pills to boot.

All told, i am sure I spent $200 a month on them.
Click to expand...

Yes, even vitamins can be dangerous if taken in excess, as you found out the hard way. Though I the excessive diet and energy/memory pills didn't help, either.
 
Iamme said:
I really want to learn the truth though about vitamin supplements in *pill* form. DO our bodies assimilate them by more than the 10-20% that SeaSilver claims? I called the FDA themselves, and a pharmecist and their answers were like double-talk.
Click to expand...

Do not believe anything you read in a SeaSilver ad. That hogwash product has already seen disciplinary action from the U.S. government. Here's info from quackwatch:

seasilver nonsense

Regarding assimilation of vitamins and minerals from conventional pill forms, just about all are bioavailable. Here's a good site that conducts such testing (ConsumerLabs), with there analysis of multis. Only 1 out of 27 brands failed to disintegrate properly:

consumerlabs vitamin testing
 
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