Recently after finding out that some of my vitamin levels are low I started taking a new multi vitamin. I decided on Centrum, Caltrate Plus D, and B12 1000 mcg on the advice of my doc. While she didn’t tell me what brand of vitamin to buy, I was quite overwhelmed with all my options. I knew I wanted a tablet form rather then a plastic capsule, but other then that I didn’t know what to get. I stood there forever and ended up grabbing what was on sale. Do you take a multi vitamin? Is there a brand you prefer or would recommend?
Hello there! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading through your blog posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same topics? Thank you so much!
A lot of people seem to be trying to pass off the information they received in a 5 minute consultation with their naturopath. Rachel certainly has the right idea.
Kim, I’m not sure what you are trying to suggest when you say that the vitamins you’re promoting are “soluble”. Every vitamin is “soluble”. Some vitamins are fat-soluble, some are water-soluble. As Rachel said, the water-soluble ones will be excreted in your urine if you take too much, whereas the fat-soluble ones are not (and thus, getting too much of a fat-soluble vitamin can be dangerous). Excreting excess vitamins in your urine does not suggest anything about the vitamin you are taking other than the fact that you’re getting too much. No multivitamin is going to give you energy unless it’s correcting a particular deficiency.
This is very basic stuff that you would learn in any nutrition course. It was taught in the first-year Kinesiology course that I took years ago in University, and I had read all about it prior to that. I guess when companies are promoting over-priced products with bogus “advantages”, they would simply prefer to be the ones giving you their biased “knowledge” so you can use that to promote their products.
Since you all have access to the Internet, I would suggest doing some of your own research. Search engines are wonderful things. The best thing to do is to examine your own diet and determine what nutrients you should already be getting. Use a site like this one: http://nutritiondata.self.com (it took me about 5 seconds to find this site by searching for ‘cheese nutrition’)
If all of the food you eat already contains these labels, I would suggest eating more fruits and vegetables. Otherwise, figure out what you’re not getting enough of and try to correct it through your diet. If you can’t, or you want “insurance”, get a cheap multivitamin that has what you’re lacking. Most of them are the same, but some, such as the gummies, tend to be missing a few things. Of course there are some tailored to specific demographics as well, and some brands will vary a bit.
If you feel like you still need to talk to someone about it, make an appointment with your family doctor and outline your concerns. I would suggest a GP over a naturopath that may very well end up trying to SELL you the product that they recommend. It may help, but their product is really no better than anything else out there.
This all applies to the average individual. If you have a medical problem, you should already know what extra steps you need to take.
Thanks Stacey and Hadathickwallet. Bought the Kirlkand brand at Costco.