Do I Need To Take Vitamins?
I get this question all the time. And my answer is: it depends. Read on to decide this for yourself.
Easy Wins As a behaviorist and fellow struggler I am always happy when I find easily taken steps that enhance my health and more importantly, create positive momentum for the more challenging changes. Taking vitamins and drinking water are two easy wins for me. When I bring my vitamins or my special water bottles with my reds, purples and oranges on vacation, I actually end up eating better. Go figure. One small step for me…one giant step for defeating “vacation mentality”!
Professional Brands Most of the information you get via the mainstream media about vitamins that is negative is because the brands they are studying are commercial not professional brands, are poorly made, are not absorbable, are the wrong forms or often don’t even contain the active ingredients for which you are buying them! The companies I recommend have done their homework to stay on top of the emerging science.
The vitamin industry is not regulated. Professional brands voluntarily subject themselves to all sorts of tight standards and extra screenings that are not specifically required by law.
Don’t I get what I need from my diet?
Take a look at your overall nutrition – and not just whether you are getting in the recommended servings (i.e. 9 half-cup produce servings of produce a day), but also your food sources (organic? local? grassfed? ), how you prepare your food (raw, blanched, or as my mom prefers her broccoli – cooked to a “fare thee well”), and the biggie – how much junk (aka anti-nutrients) are in your diet.
Yes, anti-nutrients. I never preach perfection and never will but it is valuable to understand that highly processed foods are not only lacking nutrients, but also pull from your tissue storage those vitamins and minerals they need to be digested and assimilated.
For example: grains require chromium to be utilized by your body, but the processing of white bread or white pasta removes the chromium, so your body steals yours. For more detail, read The Micronutrient Miracle by Mira and Jason Calton.
Eat Well I would still encourage you to do the very best you can to get as much good nutrition as you can from clean proteins, healthy fats and tons of non-starchy, colorful produce. Vitamins can’t fix a poor diet. They work with your food not instead of. Resistant starches (like jicama, dandelion greens, radishes) help to make your good gut bacteria flourish. Naturally fermented foods contain the same healthy bacteria that we attempt to replace with probiotics.
For more detailed information and food programs that promote self healing, check out Dr. Terry Wahls book. The Wahls Protocol.
Diabetes Risk Chromium is required to make GTF (glucose tolerance factor). What does this have to to with “the gathering storm” in American health (aka Type 2 Diabetes)? Dr. Walter Mertz, former director of the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center says Type 2 Diabetes is not a disease but the lack of a natural ingredient known as GTF (glucose tolerance factor).
Sugar and Appetite Regulation Here’s just one small example of how nutrient deficiencies could be affecting your own personal appetite experience: Eating sugar causes calcium and magnesium deficiencies. Calcium and magnesium deficiencies cause sugar cravings. And around we go.
This is not even considering the food industry’s relentless pursuit of the “bliss point” in the engineering of our foods and snacks to push us to override our natural appetite off buttons and eat more of these “Frankenfoods” in place of real food (read, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by Dr. David Kessler, former Surgeon General).
Just imagine the consequences if you (or your kids) are essentially cancelling out the benefit of a bunch of your diligently selected nutrient dense foods 24/7 with all your highly processed foods like crackers, bagels, cereals, chips, cakes, cookies, candy, etc.? What percent of your diet are you then left with to provide nutrition?
Artificial Sweeteners Are you using artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Splenda and Sweet ‘n Low? Studies have shown that in just a few days of use, a significant percent of the good gut bacteria have been replaced by the bad guys which can affect cravings and increase the amount of calories absorbed from your food. Scarily, excess weight itself messes up the balance of these critical critters. Read “Gut Bugs and Obesity, Seriously?!!”
Antibiotics Who in America hasn’t taken antibiotics which notoriously kill the good guy gut bugs right along with the bad ones? Have you been re-establishing the correct balance with a either fermented foods, yogurt with live cultures at the very least or better yet with a quality probiotic?
Vitamins cannot substitute for an unhealthy diet. All vitamins and minerals are best derived from real food as much as possible where they function together as a symphony orchestra. But ask yourself this: If I don’t need a vitamin supplement and I take one, what do I lose? But, if I do need a vitamin supplement and don’t take one, what do I lose?
In my experience most of use could use some “nutritional hole patching”, especially for:
- those with blood sugar issues for extra chromium, pantethenic acid, magnesium, etc.
- menopausal women for adequate minerals for bone health
- those on statin drugs which deplete CoEnzyme Q10
- those deficient in vitamin D which can be ascertained from a blood test
- those who don’t get adequate Omega 3 from wild caught fish
- those who would benefit from a comprehensive probiotic – aka most of us!
For more specifics to meet your needs, visit Vitamin Basics
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