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Multivitamins: intense discussions thread

Pandar

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Technically I have a bottle of women's multi-vitamins. Like one poster said they are probably a waste if you have a balanced diet. However that is an big if considering the amount of crap many people (particularly many Americans) put in their mouth. If you don't get enough of certain items or if you are exercising a lot a multi-vitamin can be quite helpful.

If you only need one or two vitamins/minerals then it would be better to take those separately than to take something that is going to 'O.D.' (literally or figuratively) on another vitamin/mineral. I take Green Tea tablets regularly (for polyphenols) and CO-Q10 (when I can afford it).
 

nanook

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i dont get it. is this even a real google app or just a visual GUI concept:

google vitamins

well so i googled for google vitamins and found nothing.
except a google directory about vitamins and minerals.
i never even noticed that google has directories.
 

Feops

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not because they ARE more important, but because they are much more difficult impossible to come by with nutrition. and they are not in vegetables, because they are no longer in american earth, nor any that i am aware of.

Which ones?

as you can see in almost everyone who does live in untouched nature, like some russians who drink water from clacies which is so full of minerals that it's called milk. they get to be up to 130 or so, not sure ...

The oldest verified human got 122. There aren't secret russian villiages with people living to 130. The average life expectancy in russia is 65. The highest in the world is japan with 83.
 

Moiety

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Vitamin pills are bullshit. If you don't get all your vitamins from your diet, then your diet is wrong and you need to change it. End of story.

Yeah, I never took vitamins in my life, and from my understanding it's really common in the US/Canada. Completely different reality here.
 

Lateralus

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Vitamin pills are bullshit. If you don't get all your vitamins from your diet, then your diet is wrong and you need to change it. End of story.
I agree with this. A healthy diet isn't as simple as picking a few chemicals and ingesting them in pill form. The system is much more complex than that (ie. some nutrients require the presence of others to be properly used) and we don't understand how it works yet.
 

Tiltyred

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I think a daily multivitamin is probably a good idea, because most of us do not eat enough fruits and vegetables or get enough calcium. I think there's no harm in a daily multivitamin and there is likely to be some good in it. The amounts are not such that would make you overdose on any one vitamin. I doubt that it makes much difference what brand you buy.

I think women especially should take calcium. It's hard to get enough in normal diet. I drink a lot of skim milk and my calcium level always shows low when my blood is analyzed.

Which brings me to the point that your doctor can do a blood test and see where you are lacking.

It's true that some believe the soil that big commercial farms plant in is not as rich as it should be, therefore the produce from that soil is not as rich in minerals, and therefore you should eat organic. That's probably a good idea anyway.

Vitamins B and C are destroyed by heat and light, so there is some loss in cooking. Some foods benefit from being cooked, though, because their food value is more easily absorbed by our systems if they are cooked a little.

There's a lot to know about vitamins and many differences of opinion, but all agree we need them, and most agree we don't get them from our diets, whether it's because the foods available don't contain enough or whether we don't eat the right foods -- in any case, taking the minimum daily requirement can't hurt and might help.
 

Tiltyred

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I've read that we all need more vitamin D than was previously thought, because you produce D from sunshine, and we don't get as much sun as we used to.
 

Synarch

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I produce more than enough. But, then I spend a lot of time in the sun. Usually, carrying it across the sky in my chariot.
 

Dark Razor

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I agree with this. A healthy diet isn't as simple as picking a few chemicals and ingesting them in pill form. The system is much more complex than that (ie. some nutrients require the presence of others to be properly used) and we don't understand how it works yet.

Yes, that's the reason why artificially composed nutrition (e.g. via the veins) was often wrong / missing something in the past (and possibly still today). We just didn't know what exactly we need to put in there, and how much. This setting (patient that is fully reliant on artificial nutrition) is also one of the main sources of information about nutrient deficiency and its consequenses. Getting the composition right is an ongoing process of trial and error.

Substitution of vitamins / minerals makes sense in clinical settings if there is a specific deficiency. If you are unsure about the nutrient content of the foods you are eating, then there are databases available where you can retrieve that information, like this one.

Some nutrients are also found in unexpected foods, for example Calcium is found not only on dairy products but also in green vegetables like kale, broccoli, and spinach.
 

Tiltyred

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How often do you eat kale, broccoli and spinach?
 

Dark Razor

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How often do you eat kale, broccoli and spinach?

Multiple times a week. Like I said, if your nutrition does not contain the necessary nutrients and you could get them by including other foods, then you should do so. Everything else are just lazy excuses.
 

Randomnity

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I think women especially should take calcium. It's hard to get enough in normal diet. I drink a lot of skim milk and my calcium level always shows low when my blood is analyzed.
According to this govt site Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Calcium, the RDA for men and women 19-50 is 1000mg calcium, whereas milk contains roughly 300 mg per 8 oz (probably less than you use in a bowl of cereal or to drink), yogurt is about 400 per 8 oz (closer to 500 if it's plain, from skim milk), and cheese has 300 mg per 1.5oz - I have no idea how much 1.5 oz is, but seems small.

Maybe I drink milk/eat yogurt and cheese excessively but I get well over 1000 mg per day according to this. They recommend 3 cups of dairy products a day, which is also pretty easy to do if you like dairy, a little trickier if you don't. Maybe you metabolize calcium exceptionally poorly, though. Everyone's metabolism is a little different.

One interesting thing is the more you take at one time, the less is absorbed. So if you take 1 1000 mg supplement (or drink a ton of milk at once), it might be less effective than eating calcium-rich food throughout the day.
 

tinkerbell

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I avoid multi vits because some of them are not required by my. I eat a good diet and you can over do the vits

I take Vit C, B compound and Floic acid, occationally iron (which is aminieral not a vit). I get B12 injections quaterly but right now monthly.

Love B12 - Had the best effect... Vit C is good too, but take the ones without addatives like zinc, also consider slow release version
 

nanook

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i did not keep track of my original sources (minerals and geographic-russian people (around glaciers)) but what i found today seems to go in the same direction:

The Weston A. Price Foundation

as in "... searching healthy people to analyse what they are doing right."

about this site, not from this site:

weston price organisation - The Weston A. Price Foundation

isolated people groups all over the world
who have
no teeth problems (less than 1% cavities)
no heart diseas
no diabetes
no cancer

do high fat diet
96 saturated and monosaturated

butter chicken fish goose red meat fresh eggs


contain
- true vitamin A
- vitamin D
- "activator X" (?)

which are fat soluble "activators"
they activate & absorb nutrients
like Vitamin D activates calcium ....

thus they are "somehow the most" important or essential factor to health as far as nutrition is concerned.



i will find and check my original sources for details on those groups who do high mineral consumption, when i have time

edit: here it is

Dr. Jackson Stockwell

at least 5 cultures with people who get to be 100 to 120 are known:

they are geographically and racially diverse ..

-russians of georgia
-folks from Azerbaijan
-folks from armenia
-the folk of axacra from the northen ural (lol, could not find anything about them)

also a little folk in eastern pakistan
a group in west tibet
also two groups in south america

what they have in comon:

these groups live in exil, for religious/political reasons.
they live in the montains neare the tree boundary
thin dry clean air, little rain
water from melting claciers
they have to water their fields manually with this glacier water
the water is also called milk, becaus it is so full of minerals or whatever the glacier has grinded.

our bodies are largely made out of "earth".
that is to say minerals does not mean "tiny things that floats around in the body".
for example bones are calcium and phosphor. minerals are essential building blocks of structure.

and something else:

Properly preparing whole grains by soaking and fermentation is equivalent to taking a multi-mineral along with conventionally prepared grains, as absorption of key minerals is increased by 50-300% (source)
 
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nanook

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haha, nutrition - allways entertaining.

Some vegans worry about the one micro-element that is never found in plant food -Vitamin B12. There is still a lot of debate about whether the B12 made in the intestine by bacteria is bio-available. For a gorilla it is, but for humans this has yet to be proved. Studies on vegans show that their bodies are remarkably good at recycling waste B12 for periods up to at least 10 years. The quantities required by the body are absolutely minute - less than one microgram per day. It is thought that many vegans derive sufficient B12 just from biological contamination of homegrown vegetables, as is suspected with certain long-established Iranian peasant vegan sects. Whatever the truth of the matter, a vegan should make double sure by supplementing with a 2 mcg tablet of vitamin B12 once a week. Vegetarians will get all they need from the occasional egg and cheese.
source:
Natural Eating Web Chapter 6
 

burymecloser

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I take a multivitamin 2-4 times a week, mostly for B vitamins. I take calcium supplements when I know I haven't gotten much calcium in my diet otherwise, and zinc when I get sick or injured.

I think women especially should take calcium. It's hard to get enough in normal diet. I drink a lot of skim milk and my calcium level always shows low when my blood is analyzed.
Some studies suggest that high intake of animal proteins (such as those in milk) results in calcium loss.

https://www.msu.edu/~corcora5/food/vegan/calcium+protein.html

Americans, whose calcium intake is among the highest in the world, also have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis ... The high protein content of milk may actually contribute to the very disease that the calcium in milk is alleged to prevent. In the United States, osteoporosis is not a problem of calcium intake, but of calcium loss.

That means this problem cannot be solved by adding more calcium to your diet; rather, you need to reduce your calcium loss. If low calcium is an issue, you might want to reduce your intake of milk. If that doesn't do the trick, try upping your consumption of plants that provide calcium or adding a supplement.
 

Unkindloving

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Currently, I'm a dork and take Multi-Vites Gummy Vitamins by Vitafusion. They smell and taste delicious, but I got sucked into buying them due to the gummy aspect. :blush:
Prior to these, I would take the Viactiv multivitamins for women.

Sadly, neither of these have iron. I'm actually very surprised that the one for women doesn't. When I'm through with these, I'll likely switch to One-A-Day for women. It is a good thing that I've been eating more spinach lately :yes:. I just don't trust myself or my diet to get everything I require all of the time.
 
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