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Multivitamins: intense discussions thread

G

garbage

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Just gonna put this out there: what sort of multivitamins do you take? would you recommend them?

I'm trying to figure out whether the ones I'm on suck or not--they're just generic store pharmacy stuff--but as far as I can tell, all of the multivitamins do pretty much the same thing. Tell me if I'm wrong!
 
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Phantonym

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Do you really need multivitamins? If they're not really recommended by your doctor, that is. Taking multivitamins all the time is not necessary. Choosing them on your own isn't really that wise either. Maybe your body only needs a certain group of vitamins. Observe you body.

The body doesn't really need all the vitamins in the multivitamin "concoction". You could have an overaboundance of vitamins that could lead to allergies and they're also a burden to the liver. Plus, all the unnecessary vitamins go flush through your body, so you'd be only wasting your money on them. You should be getting all that is necessary from your diet and only supplement with the vitamins after, for example, a course of antibiotics or something like that.
 

Moonstone3

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I take vitamins everyday. I am very particular about many things, though. I shop at the same stores, deal with the same salespeople, etc. I only take GNC vitamins. To me, they are a vitamin store, so they focus on vitamins, and may know a little more than the average grocery. Their staff is knowledgeable, and they have a member discount every 4 weeks, so...
My grandma takes vitamins and has given me several of her generics, and I didn't think they worked as well. They didn't seem as targeted on specifics. However, I take specific vitamins for joint pain, hair and nails, etc(I eat maybe one serving of meat every 2 days-so my nails flake off-painfully)
I would compare ingredients on the multivitamins. I would say those are fine from anywhere. It's the specific vitamins that would be iffy. I think generic and name brand is a marketing technique. I just watched on some show the other night about how brand name medicines have 2 or 3 years before their ingredients can be made available to become generic, and after that, any company can devise a close representation of the drug. It's like a running headstart to get the namebrand into your brain and make you not want to switch.
 

Moonstone3

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Do you really need multivitamins? If they're not really recommended by your doctor, that is. Choosing them on your own isn't really that wise. Maybe your body only needs a certain group of vitamins. Observe your body.

I really find it interesting that 'observe your body' and 'if they're not recommended by your doctor' are in the same paragraph.
I do agree that by all means you should know what you're doing when deciding health for yourself, but a doctor recommendation is not always needed, in my opinion. Every medicine has been recreated by man from something already found in nature. You can take medicine, or vitamins. You can suppress the illness and hide the symptoms, or you can treat the person and the problem.
Doctors are well educated, yes, but you have been educated in your body for your entire life, in a very specific way. A doctor prescribing something can be just as wrong as you could be. I'm allergic to bendryl, and have to take it each time I make a Dr. visit just to prove it, because they always tell me to take benadryl. Like so:
Dr."Go home and take some bendryl, and this will clear right up."
Me:"I'm allergic to benadryl."
Dr:" Are you sure? I've never heard of someone being allergic to bendryl?"
Me:"I knew you would think that, so I took some right before I came in." Raises shirt to expose red and purple hives on trunk.
Dr: "OH! Don't take benadryl. Try this..."
And vitamins are for wellness, not health. Yes, they are separate. So, to maintain your wellness, you should use your own approval.
 
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Phantonym

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I really find it interesting that 'observe your body' and 'if they're not recommended by your doctor' are in the same paragraph.

:laugh: Nothing "interesting" about it, in my opinion, they were meant as two separate parts that might or might not be applied simultaneously. You can observe your body to notice the changes. You can go to the pharmacy and stock up on every vitamin available. If you're knowledgeable enough and have experience, you can make choices that bring relief. You might be right or you might be wrong, time will tell. But if you're not or if it's not helping, you can, if you need, consult a doctor who can recommend you some. They can only give you recommendations on how to proceed further based on your own observance of you body. You can follow the doctors blindly or you can consider the validity of the recommendations to make up your mind about trying things that might help. The choice is yours.
 

Dark Razor

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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.
 

Feops

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I've heard a lot of conflicting information regarding multivitamins, but I've seen nothing conclusive, so I assume they're a waste of money. A balanced diet should be providing the body with the nutrition it needs anyway, so multivitamins on top of that are essentially doing nothing.

I do think there's merit in specific supplementation based on personal needs however. Vitamin D for people living in latitudes with restricted sunlight, protein for weightlifters, iron for those with iron deficiency anemia, etc.
 

Stanton Moore

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I don't take any 'vitamins', but I do take supplements that I have researched and found to be useful (yes, I 'listened' to my body):

turmeric powder
Vit. D
L-carnitine
Phosphatidylserine
 

swordpath

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I'm taking GNC's MEGA MEN SPORT.

ARRGGHGHHH!H!!!!! MY MANLINESS IS RISING TO CATASTROPHIC LEVELLSSWWSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111
 

gromit

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As a vegetarian I take this pill called blood builders (Iron, Vitamin C, Vitamin B12, and Folate) whenever I can remember. I try to eat a range of foods anyway, but I figure it cannot hurt. Plus I'm not sure if I eat enough dairy to get all the B12 I need...
 

Randomnity

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I'd like to know if vitamins are really useful for someone eating a diet with sufficient and varied vegetables, fruits, grains and meats.

I've taken multivitamins before but was unable to detect any effect. I've heard that omega-3 supplements are good since most people don't get enough through their diet - though I'm not sure what "enough" means.

I'm interested in being healthy but highly skeptical about most of these, mostly due to the people typically promoting them (mostly IRL). Have any of these supplements been scientifically shown useful for people eating a fairly healthy diet? (my guess is not really, and that it's more important to focus on getting vitamins directly, from food?)
 

nanook

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i believe most people (=average nutirtion) need at least B vitamins, preferable with some basic time mechanism. (i dont know all the english words)

i believe they make a difference that can actually be observed. it's not that i feel better, or can concentrate better, but i am more creative. this is difficult to observe, of course. i frequently lack B vitamins, and each time i take them for two days i notice this difference, the second day. it's subtle. i could be wrong.

other vitamins can be stored so its more easy to have them.

BUT: taking minerals is more important!!!

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.

one of 100s of the symptoms of a lack of minerals is early death, somewhat around 70 years,

which is not the normal limit,

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 ...


and you must not waste money for minerals besed on carbonats (calciumcarbonat/magnesiumcarbonat...) - depending on technique the body can either absorb no more that 0 point something percent of them, or (with cilliated minerals) it can absob 50 percent in which case the carbonat (something like metall) is also absorbet into the cells (not sure if that is acceptable).

plants/mushrooms convert carbonat based minerals in human digestibel minerals. from this procees, there is cultivation of so called colloidal minerals, which are available and they are expensive.

this is common info from the internet, which lies sometimes.

there may be financial interest in what Doctor E Jackson Stockwell, but i found nothing wrong with the german translation of one of his essays. then again i don't know shit. i just have reason and a comprehensive worldview.

edit: duh, the link is just a few sentences. i cant find a full lenght copy right now. i listened to a german translation
 

Randomnity

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BUT: taking minerals is more important!!!

not because they ARE more important, but because they are much 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.
Maybe you're talking about a specific mineral (?) but iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc and sodium are considered minerals, and they are all in food (especially vegetables).

Although I've heard that cooking vegetables reduces their mineral content, though this could be a myth.
 

nanook

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i do a low carb diet, all natural (paleo inspired), currently ketonic, and i use the software dietorganizer to track everything i eat. the software is verry nice and roughly feature complete, but lacks details like omega3/6 distinction (but it knows the satureated/poly/unsatiurated distinctions). it knows most vitamins and some minerals, but not all of them.

anyway, my point is, that rough estimation of both nutritional value and caloric content of my nutrition has certainly allways misled me, like totally.

i just started to look up all those funny words, one at a time, and what they really mean in terms of good or bad, and learned a lot over the last weeks.

it's just hard to get around all the horrible propaganda.
 

nanook

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Maybe you're talking about a specific mineral (?) but iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc and sodium are considered minerals, and they are all in food (especially vegetables).

Although I've heard that cooking vegetables reduces their mineral content, though this could be a myth.

might depend on your dosage, but i eat a lot of meat and nuts and seeds and eggs, some older cheese (1000 kcal a day), all of which contain more (of the basic) minerals (uhm in relation to the dosage that i would eventually eat with a more "green" approach, i guess) than vegetables (again, i currently believe the claims according to which there are no longer minerals in monocultered earth, which is supposedly reflected in vegetables), and i am still below RDA.

but the comparsion with those funny russians and some other folks seems to suggest, that RDA is WAY to low. RDA is average for people who plan to die around 70 which is average in our modern societies. it's questionable though, wheter optimal mineral intake would help us survive the plastic in the drinking water for more than 70 years ;)

but there are still other diseases, than early death. like all the people with osteoporosis, who have been taking those carbonat scams for years.
 

nanook

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there are i believe 60 minerals and all of them are important, so tracking them is really impossible, also taking calcium and magnesium does not do the trick at all. eventhough it may prevent cramping.

i believe this colloidal technique can produce products which contain all minerals, but i have to read about that myself first *g*...
 

Randomnity

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RDA is what I'm interested in, how do they come up with these things and how do you really know what the ideal vitamin levels are? And also how different levels of some vitamins/.minerals affect absorption of others, it's really interesting.

I do vaguely remember some recent studies comparing organic vs. conventionally grown vegetables, and while there were some differences in mineral content (some higher in organic, some lower), they did find nutritionally significant levels of minerals in the vegetables. Perhaps you are right though that we need far more than we can get in the diet, that's what I'm curious about.
 

nanook

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isn't organic vegetalble grown in the same earth on land with the same conditions (errosion or whatever has been done to nature over centuries) than conventionally grown?

this doctor i linked to recites a study from 1930 or so (dont remember) which claims that american vegetables have gone down in minerals significantly, over a couple times of 10-years. and they have been organic ("not sprayed") back then.
 

Donna Cecilia

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I take multivitamins. Because my schedule is paying its toll on me now.

I don´t have many time to eat properly (the "four meals per day", and the right type of food), so, they were prescribed to me by my doctor.

The name is Supradyn, by Bayer Shering Pharma.
 

Mole

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i believe most people (=average nutirtion) need at least B vitamins

I have started sprinkling dried yeast on my oatmeal and wheatgerm for the B vitamins.

The yeast has a nice flavour and I feel better.
 
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