19 ms·

Older Americans Are ‘Hooked’ on Vitamins

174 points by HillaryBriss 9y ago

marze 9y ago
So awesome. You don’t need vitamins, because your food has enough. Why? Because vitamins are added to your food.
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  Especially Vitamin C. It's added everywhere because it's a preservative.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Or if you eat fresh / not overcooked plants. (Most have non negligible amounts.)
miketery 9y ago
I was walking in Manhattan at a pretty busy corner, and noticed this supplement store. Typically they're filtered and you forget you ever saw it. But I couldnt help but think about the amounts of pills or supplements this store had. The various varieties for any kind of "need" one might have. How was it selling enough to rent real estate... I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them (as opposed to the usual remedy of sleep, exercise, and good diet). Than I asked my self, maybe I'm missing something! Should I be taking supplements too?
- jcoffland 9y ago
  These stores do just fine. They prey on hypochondriacs and people who believe they have a special condition or are in on some sort of health secret. The vitamins are mostly harmless and come in colorful plastic packaging adorned with outlandish but noncommittal promises. Each type of supplement comes at a range of prices. There's the cheapo which no one expects to work and few people buy; it's there so you feel good about the higher priced item your about to purchase. Then there are a handful of mid priced supplements. These are the ones people actually buy. They are also tiered so the store can capture the price point of the varied economic classes of its patrons. Finally, come the ridiculously over priced uber strength supplements. They have price tags starting around $80 and heading into the hundreds. Only fanatics and the most gullible dupes actually purchase these. Their main purpose is to make you feel like the money you blew on gelatin, starch and lactose was well spent.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  As a teen, I worked at a vitamin store. They thrived on ignorant people. Their customers were rich and middle class. No one questioned where the supplement was manufactured, or The Placebo Effect. We had to ware these Dr. Smocks, and once that clown suit went on, it seemed like the customers just believed. Body builders were the worst, but boy were they good customers. I'm still shocked over people whom are swayed into buying vitamins with colorful packaging, or bottles designed to look like they were manufactured in a pharmaceutical company. So many vitamins/supplicants are made in a garage somewhere. I really thought by now the average consumer would be more savvy? (And those huge Vitamin stores, with no customers--well some days; I wonder if they are just fronts for laundering money?)
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  I read that 1 in 6 Americans have an autoimmune condition. I'm not sure if it's true however if it is that may explain a lot of this. Often autoimmune condition treatments include non-mainstream diets that can be extreme and therefore require supplementation.
  - mclide 9y ago
    The AARDA autoimmune patient advocacy organization says more than 50 million Americans suffer from an autoimmune disease, with 75% being women. https://www.aarda.org/news-information/statistics/ https://www.aarda.org/news-information/statistics/
- teamhappy 9y ago
  > I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them Read Amazon reviews. It's pretty amazing what people can come up with. I take the usual suspects: Magnesium (I run almost every day) and a Omega 3/Vitamin D combo (I don't eat fish and we don't get a lot of sun here in northern Germany). Seems like a reasonable thing to be doing but I can't for the life of me tell any difference with or without them. I do buy the cheap ones though - maybe I'd feel 10 years younger if I'd buy the top shelf ones...
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    You have to get blood work done to see if there’s a difference
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Half of the stuff in a supplement score is either too specific for the general population or just plain BS (protip: the more over the top the name is - I dunno, "Drol-mass-max" or something - the more BS it is) Then you have the dietary macronutrient supplements (Protein, Omega 3, etc), the multivitamins and the specific functional foods. Your "good diet" is probably lacking some micronutrients (some websites or fitness trackers allow you to set your diet and they will show exactly what's missing related to the guidelines) so I'd rather go with multivitamins (or at least Vit D)
nielsole 9y ago
I didn't see anything about being 'hooked' in the article. Might have missed it, otherwise the title is clickbait
- miketery 9y ago
  Maybe hooked is over doing it - probably overly optimistic or misguided is more correct. But this passage is most relevant. > Often, preliminary studies fuel irrational exuberance about a promising dietary supplement, leading millions of people to buy in to the trend. Many never stop. They continue even though more rigorous studies — which can take many years to complete — almost never find that vitamins prevent disease, and in some cases cause harm.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  Quotation marks are the magic here. 'Hooked' means hooked but also not hooked.
jaggederest 9y ago
So far as I can tell, the only reasonably common deficiencies are vitamin D and magnesium, and among women anemia. Every other deficiency is in the tenths of a percent range, well outside of the level at which people in the general population would be treated if it were e.g. antibiotics or other non dietary drugs.
- smt88 9y ago
  Vitamin D supplementation is also still controversial, so there isn't even good consensus on that.
  - s4vi0r 9y ago
    Can you elaborate? I've never heard anything about that before. Your body can handle massive amounts of vitamin C and D, so its a bit surprising to hear that supplementing the (generally) small amount you'd find in a vit D pill could be harmful.
    - rowyourboat 9y ago
      While it is basically impossible to overdose on Vitamin C, you can overdose on Vitamin D. It is fat-soluble, thus overdosing has a cumulative and delayed effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D However, that does not mean that vitamin D supplements are suspect in principle, just that before starting on a course of supplements, it might make sense to have your Vitamin D levels checked and the right dosage determined.
      - im3w1l 9y ago
        From your page: > The recommended dietary allowance is 15 µg/d (600 IU per day; 800 IU for those over 70 years). Overdose has been observed at 1,925 µg/d (77,000 IU per day). So it seems you could even take 10x the recommendation and be fine. The risk of a reasonable supplement pushing you into overdose territory seems negligible.
oceanman888 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087 Similar post at the same time. Did this one go up because it has a shorted title?
- guiambros 9y ago
  Probably because it was NY Times...
DataWorker 9y ago
Didn’t they recently find out that vitamin b causes cancer in higher than average doses?
- bufferoverflow 9y ago
  Not just vitamin B. B increases chances of lung cancer by 16% and breast cancer by 20%. A increases lung cancer odds by 28% among smokers. E increases prostate cancer among men by 17%. Men taking multivitamins are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161208-why-vitamin-supplements-could-kill-you http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161208-why-vitamin-supplem...
  - MSM 9y ago
    This is one of those facts that sounds scary but it's really hard to interpret. Prostate cancer is extremely common; I've heard that upwards of half of men that die of old age have developed prostate cancer, though not all have gotten to the point where it's been noticed and diagnosed. A quick google says that 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with it. So on the surface it sounds like the vitamin will kill you, but in reality what if it's helping enough that you're now living long enough for the prostate cancer to actually become a problem? What if people that take vitamins are more health-aware and more apt to get regular physicals, increasing their "occurrence" of cancer? There's a lot of variables that the article doesn't discuss and I'm not confident they have been controlled for.
- princeb 9y ago
  Hmm that’s interesting. I’m on 1g of B a day (neurobion) for herniated disc. That’s quite a lot; most supplements do about 50mg of B. This warrants more investigation.
  - amelius 9y ago
    B is divided into different forms. Some of them you can take a lot of (e.g. B12), while others you should be careful with (e.g. B6). I suggest you do some research.
jmnicolas 9y ago
Yet I manage to totally suppress hay fever symptoms with mega doses of vitamin C. Something I can't do with Cetirizin or other "real" drugs (they make me sleepy too).
- 0x45696e6172 9y ago
  What makes you sleepy is that the drugs cross the blood-brain barrier. Newer drugs containing fexofenadine do not have that side effect.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Cetirizine is also a newer drug and is not supposed to cross the blood-brain barrier as much.
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  Tip: try to lower your carbs intake to below 30-40 grams/day. My hay fever disappears after 3 days of low-carb diet (I tried this diet just for fun, and now I skip carbs for 2-3 weeks every spring and I don't need antihistamines at all.)
  - kaybe 9y ago
    Do you have more information on this?
    - wincy 9y ago
      Sorry, also anecdata, but I've experienced a similar result. Was on daily allergy pills, eye twitches during allergy season, that sort of stuff, and started a low carb diet, my skin cleared up and I stop being so damned itchy. I suspect it's because the diet eliminates some foods that I'm allergic/sensitive to (how could it not with how many foods it necessitates cutting out?), so the causation might not actually be the low carb diet, as some vegans claim a similar result. In that context it stands to reason that both sets of dieters are finding existing sensitivities and chalking up the gains to the diet. I found out that for me glutamate, both from natural and artificial sources, causes substantial headaches, which is a bummer because I love bone broth. Beans also give me restless legs at night. So while it's hard to be absolutely scientific in your everyday life, it doesn't mean it's impossible to glean any sort of improvement in your health and well-being through personal experimentation.
AstralStorm 9y ago
Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies. (Either due to lack of or insufficient amounts of the active ingredient.) Vit. D, B12, magnesium and potassium are most common in western world. Depending on the kind of salt or algae you used iodine might be a minor concern. More rare but also high impact are folic acid metabolism problems which require specific forms of folate. (There are reliable genetic tests for this.) And most important part is that in older people impairment of metabolism can go either (worse absorption/production or clearance) way making RDA not reliable as it was calculated on healthy people.
- jerf 9y ago
  "Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies." I am someone who actually needs supplements. I have at least a moderately bad case of Celiac disease, the one that everybody knows as "that disease wot gave us all those gluten-free freaks", but is much lesser well-known as being a disease that makes it so the digestive system is not as good at extracting nutrients. I have experienced, diagnosed, and corrected several deficiencies in myself over the years. (Sometimes I feel like I have to pack my digestive track with nutrients the way one has to pack a black powder pistol... get in there, you stupid nutrients, tamp tamp tamp...) So unlike someone who is just sort ambiently taking nutrient supplements in the vague hope that maybe they'll be helpful, I have actual symptoms to compare them against and see whether they address the issue. So I can tell you with great confidence that there are a lot of very bad supplements out there. What you find in the grocery stores may be worthless. What you find in speciality stores may even be worthless. Fortunately, you can usually find things online. Several people here have mentioned magnesium deficiencies as being one of the common ones. Unfortunately, if you just walk down to your local drug store and buy magnesium supplements, what you'll get is magnesium oxide. Fans of chemistry may recall that oxygen binds pretty tightly. I don't know exactly how bioavailable that is, but I can certainly attest that when I switched to the chelated magnesium you can find online and nowhere else I've seen, I saw huge differences very quickly. Trying to supplement magnesium via magnesium oxide seems to be about as successful as trying to supplement your iron by eating iron oxide. Won't work. The drug store also stocks a lot of supplements that use a lower-quality or less bioavailable version of whatever it is. Vitamin D seems to have gotten enough attention that they mostly stock the good ones now, but a lot of the other ones verge on worthless too, despite their labels claming to have 1000% of your RDA. The good news is that you can find good stuff if you look hard enough. The bad news is that it can take some time and effort. The weird news is that often the good stuff isn't all that much more expensive. Do you want to spend $7 on something that doesn't do squat or $9 on something that does? The former is hardly a savings.... Anyway, I would say to anyone who does feel like experimenting, do a bit of research and at least try with something that may actually work. The data is useless otherwise.
ipunchghosts 9y ago
The truth that I have seen is that many Americans suffer from some type of ailment that traditional medicine offers no elucidation of the cause. It could be diet, lack of exercise, mental health but there is not explicit test to say, "yes, you have ailment X because of Y." So what is one to do? IMHO, the best one can do is to persevere and try to survive the best they can. One way of doing that (and I think a very productive way) is to be a scientist of your body and try different things. For some exercise works, for some vitamins, for others a certain type of diet. I will not judge another for trying to take care of themselves as best they can. However, I will judge against how scientific they are about doing so to a degree only to critique their methods in hopes they can reach a state of reasonable comfort if they havent already obtained it. Spend an afternoon reading examine.com. Follow the studies. Read conflicting studies. Read about placebo. You will see that these supplements do help a significant portion of the populate for condition X. Not everyone though and likely because conditions X is really a superset of conditions X0, X1, ... XN. Until we can elucidate condition X into its true subcomponents, I think Americans will continue to seek their supplements.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  The whole problem with being your own scientist and blind testing things is the potentially long transitions to deficiency. And then there is the matter of spotting problems. Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day? (A full dietary and extra of "feel" plus any ailments. Do extended bloodwork every some time.) Then knowing how to apply statistics properly? This is not viable for most people even with modern tools... On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking according to a few studies.
  - ipunchghosts 9y ago
    > Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day? I'm currently working on a paper showing you can track 2 things every day (total of 3 measurements) and make quite an improvement for a common health condition. > Then knowing how to apply statistics properly? Yes and no. The ultimate gauge is how the person feels. If its placebo then so what. If they can afford it, who am I to say its wrong. Also, many intelligent people are involved in the supplement movement and beginning to organize well and document. Applying an ANOVA isn't that difficult to do. Any large university will also have a statistical consulting center which you can visit to have them review your "tests" and explain a good way to do the stats (I've done this). > On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking according to a few studies. Yes, you are correct.
ipunchghosts 9y ago
Zinc Status and Deficiency https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3 https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3
ponderatul 9y ago
Precautionary principle. When we are taking supplements, we are really playing the odds. And the odds are that there will be side effects. What side effects and how many people will be affected is the question. That's because it's hard to pinpoint the interactions between substances in the supplement and what's in the body. It's all the more difficult to see the second and third order effects that might happen. My principle, taken from NN Taleb's work is try not to take anything unless you are really sick. It's really a thumb rule, more than anything. Read Taleb's work.
- mtgx 9y ago
  Dr. Valter Longo, who has been researching the fast-mimicking diet (also autophagy and longevity) says you're probably safe taking vitamins every 3 days. Because that should minimize or eliminate potential long term damage of the vitamins while also ensuring you don't become deficient in certain vitamins. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In a previous HN thread some were mentioning that "Vitamin E causes cancer" study. But it was over a 12 year period and the people were taking like 15x the RDA dose every day. And even then I think it only increased the "chance" of cancer by like 20% (I may be not be remembering that part right, though).
misja111 9y ago
I see this as another symptom of USA consumerism. Your feel a little stressed? Take this tranquilizer! You feel tired? Take these vitamins! As a consumer the idea that you can let your problems go away by just swalling a couple of pills is tempting. And the doctor and the farmaceutical company are making some money on it as well. The reality is that staying healthy and vital at an older age takes discipline and effort: you need to eat and drink moderately, keep a balanced diet, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. But that's a tough message to sell and nobody is making money on it.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  "Balanced diet" is just a way of hiding the difficulty. How many dozens of ways does a diet have to balance, and how much leeway do you have on each one? Nobody really knows. A supposedly-balanced diet could still be lacking in vitamin D or iodine or... If you can solve some of those factors with a pill, why not? Supplementation is not a cure-all but it can help in a lot of cases. Note that I'm talking about small doses here, not taking tons and tons of arbitrary substances.
  - pizza234 9y ago
    For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is a good enough "balanced" diet. The attitude of "taking the pill" is very detrimental, because it typically mistakes solving the symptoms with solving the cause.
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      > For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is a good enough "balanced" diet. That - naively - assumes that people know what / how to eat and cook when you take away junk food. I also gathered there's huge areas and neighbourhoods without access to a normal grocery store - you know, places where they sell vegetables and such.
      - secstate 9y ago
SuoDuanDao 9y ago
Who is funding all these studies about vitamin supplementation? It's clearly not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published, but who else has an interest in the outcome?
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  > It's clearly not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published Do you honestly believe that or was that cynical? Probably not directly but the vitamin industry is a big industry and it's in their interest to promote taking supplements.
  - xvaier 9y ago
    Considering that the article lends the reader to understand that studies are indicating vitamin supplements are not as necessary as we'd like to believe, I don't think op was being cynical. Random quote from the article: > I faithfully chewed those calcium supplements, and then a study said they didn’t do any good at all,” said Ms. Bentley
philip1209 9y ago
Americans enjoy how a convenient pill can "fix" their micronutrient problems and make them "healthier." In reality, their macronutrients are so imbalanced that these little micronutrients do little to counterbalance overall bad dietary choices. Specifically - the carbohydrate-heavy diet in the USA is unequivocally contributing to skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Separately - I'm surprised that this article does not mention Vitamin D. Recent research seems to indicate that it is so important that it is closer to a hormone than a vitamin. [1] [1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916 Edit: For anybody interested in this topic, check out the product and blog of the startup Virta Health. They are using diet to cure type 2 diabetes. Raised $45M this week. (I'm not associated with them). https://www.virtahealth.com/ https://www.virtahealth.com/
- namelost 9y ago
  The American diet isn't carbohydrate-heavy, it's food-heavy. Americans eat a lot more of every macronutrient than the average person on this planet.
  - gepi79 9y ago
    I guess a grey font means being downvoted. For those who tend to downvote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients Regarding low carb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj-Wmmt0FE&feature=youtu.be&t=303 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj-Wmmt0FE&feature=youtu.be...
  - philip1209 9y ago
    I disagree. I believe that the core of these problems are carbohydrates. Insulin spikes from carbohydrate consumption cause fat retention. Sugar doesn't create satiety, so it compounds eating. The "it's an over-eating problem" fallacy keeps getting introduced by sugar companies. It happened in the states, then moved to South America, and is currently hitting India [1]. It's a playbook by the sugar industry that echoes of the tobacco industry's old tactics. Suddenly, societies that have maintained healthy BMIs for thousands of years are having obesity problems as sugar gets introduced. They didn't develop gluttony overnight - it's a sugar problem. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/health/india-diabetes-junk-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/health/india-diabetes-jun... Edit: Sugar is basically weaponized carbohydrates.
apatters 9y ago
One dissenting opinion of note mentioned in the article is the Harvard School of Public Health's recommendation in favor of a daily multivitamin: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/ I don't plan to stop taking mine; it seems like the potential benefits outweigh the risks.
truculation 9y ago
All right, but apart from Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, B12, K2, iron, iodine.... what have supplements ever done for us?
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  caffeine, taurine...
- gascan 9y ago
  Northerners with a vitamin D deficiency, 3rd-worlders with iodine deficiency, vegans with B12 deficiency, carnivores with K12 deficiency, women with iron deficiency, etc- yes, supplements are quite helpful, when you're acutely deficient. But if you're not actually deficient, they can be legitimately harmful, and your average person reading HN is probably not acutely deficient in any of these things you listed except possibly vitamin D.
  - truculation 9y ago
    I'd rather not wait until I'm 'acutely deficient' before acting -- mildly deficient is good enough for me, especially given the concept of triage: metabolism prioritises certain processes over other still important processes according to intake of key nutrients. Hence recommended minimal amounts may be sub-optimal in various cases. Also, given the increased tendency to ban and censor stuff nowadays, I want to help protect individual choice in this area. If medics have to prescribe them you know they'll be slow and 50X pricier.
    - gascan 9y ago
      At least seek to be smart about it, and perhaps supplement with low values- 10% of DV instead of 10,000%. Toxic iron dosage can be as low as 2x the therapeutic dose, and men are especially at risk (most of us on this thread are probably men). Long term studies have also repeatedly found negative expected outcomes from supplementing various vitamins/minerals in large quantities (Calcium, C, E, & A come to mind)
  - ryandrake 9y ago
chubot 9y ago
The way I think of this is: "Food is not a linear combination of nutrients". The system is more complicated than that. It includes your body and the food supply. Science is inherently reductionist (isolating variables), and in the case of nutrition, this can fail badly. The holistic view is more accurate. (Although, this is all relative to what has come before; there are of course basic nutritional deficiencies like lack of vitamin C causing scurvy.) I have to give credit to Michael Pollan for writing clearly about this over many years.
snikeris 9y ago
Ideally I would periodically track my diet for a few weeks and only supplement for deficiencies, but I've found that when I track what I'm eating, I eat differently. So instead I take half a multivitamin to ensure I'm not totally deficient in anything. Reasoning: > On this point, let me emphasize the logical corollary which I've spelled out repeatedly but that people keep missing: unless your diet is composed entirely of fries, Coke, and fast-food burgers with the lettuce, ketchup, and tomato thrown out, no one should be taking a full daily dose of any commercial multivitamin. You are absolutely guaranteed to get too much of many nutrients, and to create or exacerbate imbalances in others. From: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyWVsH0J:www.longecity.org/forum/stacks/stack/122-michaels-tiered-supplement/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyW...
- Jolter 9y ago
  What does it cost to go to a doctor and get tested for deficiency? You'd only need to do that once a decade or after implementing major changes to your diet. I have a feeling it would come out to less than your strategy of eating pills "just in case".
  - freedomben 9y ago
    It's not quite that simple.. Firstly, it is surprisingly costly and it's getting more so because of several factors (a big one being insurance company regulation around requiring tests to be linked to diagnosis codes. This makes the doctor look bad for giving "unnecessary tests" which in turn makes them not want to give you a test if there isn't clinical evidence to warrant it, regardless of your desire and willingness to pay for it). Secondly, you need to be tested much more often than once a decade. Levels can vary wildly based on diet in sometimes complicated ways. For example? Vitamin D levels are dropping despite no changes in vitamin D intake (and sun exposure). This turns out to be a calcium deficiency, which is required for vitamin D absorption. The calcium deficiency in turn results from some other condition not necessarily related to diet. You also need to be re-tested potentially many times after beginning a supplement to determine if you are at the correct dose. In some cases when the supplement can be dangerous at high levels (such as Vitamin B6 or Iron) you need to be tested regularly for a while to ensure you aren't overdosing (especially B6 levels too high can cause nasty symptoms). Source: personal experience doing exactly this with a variety of vitamins and minerals
mathlizard 9y ago
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but my granddad took multivitamins faithfully for years. After my grandma passed from cancer, and due to not eating as much food with those vitamins, his body had a calcium build up to a state of calcium poisoning. This did a number on his kidneys. His kidneys did not recover. Instead of dialysis , he chose hospice. Multivitamins have the potential to give too much for the body to handle.
- dude01 9y ago
  Yeah, that's a great point -- especially for older people, you have to tell doctors all supplements you take, because some can affect how fast your blood will clot. For instance, I believe garlic supplements reduce blood clotting, so an older person (especially) might have complications during a surgery.
pasbesoin 9y ago
You need independent studies. Unfortunately, the FDA has undergone regulatory capture to a significant extent -- more from the pharmaceutical companies than from the supplement manufacturers, including the former trying to use political influence to kill off or capture the latter. And universities and their programs have become increasingly dependent upon and so captured by commercial dollars for funding. So, we need science to help sort this out. But at the same time, our practiced science is becoming more political, commercial, and biased. P.S. We also need science to say "we don't know" instead of "we don't have a scientific explanation, ergo it's bollocks".
perseusprime11 9y ago
It is not about eating right but eating right every day that makes it hard. The way vitamins work is that you need them every day which is why there is a daily recommended percentage of all our foods. Which is why it is still a good idea to supplement with a vitamin tablet.
yubiox 9y ago
Last winter I got five colds, each lasting two to three weeks. The winter before that, I got four, and every winter I can remember before that I got three colds. Two winters ago I tried an experiment. I washed my hands religiously and didn't touch my face at all. I had hand sanitizer with me at all times. It didn't help at all. I asked my doctor what to do and he said wash your hands. Last fall when the cold season started I got a cold. Around the time it went away I started taking 200mg vitamin C every night before bed. I have not had a cold since. This might be anecdotal but I am now a big believer in vitamin C.
- kriffo 9y ago
  Last fall came before last winter...so you were cured before last winter?
  - yubiox 9y ago
    feels like it is still winter I guess
- syngrog66 9y ago
  vitamin C daily, plus, good hand/face practices, combined, have correlated with a huge drop in the rate I get colds/flu/sinusinfections/pinkeye. for me, these are all nearly zero now. and I always weigh first-hand direct experience much higher than any academic theory or random stranger's arguments on the web. I'm sold.
Greenisus 9y ago
I'm trying to be as healthy as I possibly can be. I do this with a ketogenic diet, fasting, jumping rope, stretching, and trying to get enough sleep. I also take a lot of vitamins. I did it by evaluating them one at a time. But at some point, maybe it's too much. So I'm taking the idea of "email bankruptcy" and starting a "supplement bankrupty." So, at some point this year, I'm going to stop taking everything, see how I feel, and then reintroduce supplements again one at a time. I don't know if this is a good idea or not yet, but hopefully it's helpful, so I thought it was worth saying here.
- theNJR 9y ago
  What are you taking? I cycle keto, do IF (with 3-5 day fasts a few times per year), lift heavy, etc. I've greatly reduced my vitamins to just vitamin D and a probiotic. It's really nice not throwing back a ton of pills throughout the day. In their place, I focus on eating more green vegetables, I take a greens drink, and Udo's oil (omegas) and drink a ton of BCAAs throughout the day. Feel much better than when I had 15 different pills.
  - Greenisus 9y ago
    Happy to talk about this outside of here! <my-hn-handle>@gmail.com
lucas_membrane 9y ago
Link to a recent lecture on the difficulty of using supplements expeditiously: https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863 https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863

174 points by HillaryBriss 9y ago

marze 9y ago

So awesome. You don’t need vitamins, because your food has enough. Why? Because vitamins are added to your food.

Double_a_92 9y ago
Especially Vitamin C. It's added everywhere because it's a preservative.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Or if you eat fresh / not overcooked plants. (Most have non negligible amounts.)

miketery 9y ago

I was walking in Manhattan at a pretty busy corner, and noticed this supplement store. Typically they're filtered and you forget you ever saw it. But I couldnt help but think about the amounts of pills or supplements this store had. The various varieties for any kind of "need" one might have. How was it selling enough to rent real estate... I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them (as opposed to the usual remedy of sleep, exercise, and good diet). Than I asked my self, maybe I'm missing something! Should I be taking supplements too?

jcoffland 9y ago
These stores do just fine. They prey on hypochondriacs and people who believe they have a special condition or are in on some sort of health secret. The vitamins are mostly harmless and come in colorful plastic packaging adorned with outlandish but noncommittal promises. Each type of supplement comes at a range of prices. There's the cheapo which no one expects to work and few people buy; it's there so you feel good about the higher priced item your about to purchase. Then there are a handful of mid priced supplements. These are the ones people actually buy. They are also tiered so the store can capture the price point of the varied economic classes of its patrons. Finally, come the ridiculously over priced uber strength supplements. They have price tags starting around $80 and heading into the hundreds. Only fanatics and the most gullible dupes actually purchase these. Their main purpose is to make you feel like the money you blew on gelatin, starch and lactose was well spent.
icantdrive55 9y ago
As a teen, I worked at a vitamin store. They thrived on ignorant people. Their customers were rich and middle class. No one questioned where the supplement was manufactured, or The Placebo Effect. We had to ware these Dr. Smocks, and once that clown suit went on, it seemed like the customers just believed. Body builders were the worst, but boy were they good customers. I'm still shocked over people whom are swayed into buying vitamins with colorful packaging, or bottles designed to look like they were manufactured in a pharmaceutical company. So many vitamins/supplicants are made in a garage somewhere. I really thought by now the average consumer would be more savvy? (And those huge Vitamin stores, with no customers--well some days; I wonder if they are just fronts for laundering money?)
rorykoehler 9y ago
I read that 1 in 6 Americans have an autoimmune condition. I'm not sure if it's true however if it is that may explain a lot of this. Often autoimmune condition treatments include non-mainstream diets that can be extreme and therefore require supplementation.
- mclide 9y ago
  The AARDA autoimmune patient advocacy organization says more than 50 million Americans suffer from an autoimmune disease, with 75% being women. https://www.aarda.org/news-information/statistics/ https://www.aarda.org/news-information/statistics/
teamhappy 9y ago
> I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them Read Amazon reviews. It's pretty amazing what people can come up with. I take the usual suspects: Magnesium (I run almost every day) and a Omega 3/Vitamin D combo (I don't eat fish and we don't get a lot of sun here in northern Germany). Seems like a reasonable thing to be doing but I can't for the life of me tell any difference with or without them. I do buy the cheap ones though - maybe I'd feel 10 years younger if I'd buy the top shelf ones...
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  You have to get blood work done to see if there’s a difference
raverbashing 9y ago
Half of the stuff in a supplement score is either too specific for the general population or just plain BS (protip: the more over the top the name is - I dunno, "Drol-mass-max" or something - the more BS it is) Then you have the dietary macronutrient supplements (Protein, Omega 3, etc), the multivitamins and the specific functional foods. Your "good diet" is probably lacking some micronutrients (some websites or fitness trackers allow you to set your diet and they will show exactly what's missing related to the guidelines) so I'd rather go with multivitamins (or at least Vit D)

nielsole 9y ago

I didn't see anything about being 'hooked' in the article. Might have missed it, otherwise the title is clickbait

miketery 9y ago
Maybe hooked is over doing it - probably overly optimistic or misguided is more correct. But this passage is most relevant. > Often, preliminary studies fuel irrational exuberance about a promising dietary supplement, leading millions of people to buy in to the trend. Many never stop. They continue even though more rigorous studies — which can take many years to complete — almost never find that vitamins prevent disease, and in some cases cause harm.
HillaryBriss 9y ago
Quotation marks are the magic here. 'Hooked' means hooked but also not hooked.

jaggederest 9y ago

So far as I can tell, the only reasonably common deficiencies are vitamin D and magnesium, and among women anemia. Every other deficiency is in the tenths of a percent range, well outside of the level at which people in the general population would be treated if it were e.g. antibiotics or other non dietary drugs.

smt88 9y ago
Vitamin D supplementation is also still controversial, so there isn't even good consensus on that.
- s4vi0r 9y ago
  Can you elaborate? I've never heard anything about that before. Your body can handle massive amounts of vitamin C and D, so its a bit surprising to hear that supplementing the (generally) small amount you'd find in a vit D pill could be harmful.
  - rowyourboat 9y ago
    While it is basically impossible to overdose on Vitamin C, you can overdose on Vitamin D. It is fat-soluble, thus overdosing has a cumulative and delayed effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D However, that does not mean that vitamin D supplements are suspect in principle, just that before starting on a course of supplements, it might make sense to have your Vitamin D levels checked and the right dosage determined.
    - im3w1l 9y ago
      From your page: > The recommended dietary allowance is 15 µg/d (600 IU per day; 800 IU for those over 70 years). Overdose has been observed at 1,925 µg/d (77,000 IU per day). So it seems you could even take 10x the recommendation and be fine. The risk of a reasonable supplement pushing you into overdose territory seems negligible.

oceanman888 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087 Similar post at the same time. Did this one go up because it has a shorted title?

guiambros 9y ago
Probably because it was NY Times...

DataWorker 9y ago

Didn’t they recently find out that vitamin b causes cancer in higher than average doses?

bufferoverflow 9y ago
Not just vitamin B. B increases chances of lung cancer by 16% and breast cancer by 20%. A increases lung cancer odds by 28% among smokers. E increases prostate cancer among men by 17%. Men taking multivitamins are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161208-why-vitamin-supplements-could-kill-you http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161208-why-vitamin-supplem...
- MSM 9y ago
  This is one of those facts that sounds scary but it's really hard to interpret. Prostate cancer is extremely common; I've heard that upwards of half of men that die of old age have developed prostate cancer, though not all have gotten to the point where it's been noticed and diagnosed. A quick google says that 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with it. So on the surface it sounds like the vitamin will kill you, but in reality what if it's helping enough that you're now living long enough for the prostate cancer to actually become a problem? What if people that take vitamins are more health-aware and more apt to get regular physicals, increasing their "occurrence" of cancer? There's a lot of variables that the article doesn't discuss and I'm not confident they have been controlled for.
princeb 9y ago
Hmm that’s interesting. I’m on 1g of B a day (neurobion) for herniated disc. That’s quite a lot; most supplements do about 50mg of B. This warrants more investigation.
- amelius 9y ago
  B is divided into different forms. Some of them you can take a lot of (e.g. B12), while others you should be careful with (e.g. B6). I suggest you do some research.

jmnicolas 9y ago

Yet I manage to totally suppress hay fever symptoms with mega doses of vitamin C. Something I can't do with Cetirizin or other "real" drugs (they make me sleepy too).

0x45696e6172 9y ago
What makes you sleepy is that the drugs cross the blood-brain barrier. Newer drugs containing fexofenadine do not have that side effect.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Cetirizine is also a newer drug and is not supposed to cross the blood-brain barrier as much.
sz4kerto 9y ago
Tip: try to lower your carbs intake to below 30-40 grams/day. My hay fever disappears after 3 days of low-carb diet (I tried this diet just for fun, and now I skip carbs for 2-3 weeks every spring and I don't need antihistamines at all.)
- kaybe 9y ago
  Do you have more information on this?
  - wincy 9y ago
    Sorry, also anecdata, but I've experienced a similar result. Was on daily allergy pills, eye twitches during allergy season, that sort of stuff, and started a low carb diet, my skin cleared up and I stop being so damned itchy. I suspect it's because the diet eliminates some foods that I'm allergic/sensitive to (how could it not with how many foods it necessitates cutting out?), so the causation might not actually be the low carb diet, as some vegans claim a similar result. In that context it stands to reason that both sets of dieters are finding existing sensitivities and chalking up the gains to the diet. I found out that for me glutamate, both from natural and artificial sources, causes substantial headaches, which is a bummer because I love bone broth. Beans also give me restless legs at night. So while it's hard to be absolutely scientific in your everyday life, it doesn't mean it's impossible to glean any sort of improvement in your health and well-being through personal experimentation.

AstralStorm 9y ago

Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies. (Either due to lack of or insufficient amounts of the active ingredient.) Vit. D, B12, magnesium and potassium are most common in western world. Depending on the kind of salt or algae you used iodine might be a minor concern. More rare but also high impact are folic acid metabolism problems which require specific forms of folate. (There are reliable genetic tests for this.) And most important part is that in older people impairment of metabolism can go either (worse absorption/production or clearance) way making RDA not reliable as it was calculated on healthy people.

jerf 9y ago
"Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies." I am someone who actually needs supplements. I have at least a moderately bad case of Celiac disease, the one that everybody knows as "that disease wot gave us all those gluten-free freaks", but is much lesser well-known as being a disease that makes it so the digestive system is not as good at extracting nutrients. I have experienced, diagnosed, and corrected several deficiencies in myself over the years. (Sometimes I feel like I have to pack my digestive track with nutrients the way one has to pack a black powder pistol... get in there, you stupid nutrients, tamp tamp tamp...) So unlike someone who is just sort ambiently taking nutrient supplements in the vague hope that maybe they'll be helpful, I have actual symptoms to compare them against and see whether they address the issue. So I can tell you with great confidence that there are a lot of very bad supplements out there. What you find in the grocery stores may be worthless. What you find in speciality stores may even be worthless. Fortunately, you can usually find things online. Several people here have mentioned magnesium deficiencies as being one of the common ones. Unfortunately, if you just walk down to your local drug store and buy magnesium supplements, what you'll get is magnesium oxide. Fans of chemistry may recall that oxygen binds pretty tightly. I don't know exactly how bioavailable that is, but I can certainly attest that when I switched to the chelated magnesium you can find online and nowhere else I've seen, I saw huge differences very quickly. Trying to supplement magnesium via magnesium oxide seems to be about as successful as trying to supplement your iron by eating iron oxide. Won't work. The drug store also stocks a lot of supplements that use a lower-quality or less bioavailable version of whatever it is. Vitamin D seems to have gotten enough attention that they mostly stock the good ones now, but a lot of the other ones verge on worthless too, despite their labels claming to have 1000% of your RDA. The good news is that you can find good stuff if you look hard enough. The bad news is that it can take some time and effort. The weird news is that often the good stuff isn't all that much more expensive. Do you want to spend $7 on something that doesn't do squat or $9 on something that does? The former is hardly a savings.... Anyway, I would say to anyone who does feel like experimenting, do a bit of research and at least try with something that may actually work. The data is useless otherwise.

ipunchghosts 9y ago

The truth that I have seen is that many Americans suffer from some type of ailment that traditional medicine offers no elucidation of the cause. It could be diet, lack of exercise, mental health but there is not explicit test to say, "yes, you have ailment X because of Y." So what is one to do? IMHO, the best one can do is to persevere and try to survive the best they can. One way of doing that (and I think a very productive way) is to be a scientist of your body and try different things. For some exercise works, for some vitamins, for others a certain type of diet. I will not judge another for trying to take care of themselves as best they can. However, I will judge against how scientific they are about doing so to a degree only to critique their methods in hopes they can reach a state of reasonable comfort if they havent already obtained it. Spend an afternoon reading examine.com. Follow the studies. Read conflicting studies. Read about placebo. You will see that these supplements do help a significant portion of the populate for condition X. Not everyone though and likely because conditions X is really a superset of conditions X0, X1, ... XN. Until we can elucidate condition X into its true subcomponents, I think Americans will continue to seek their supplements.

AstralStorm 9y ago
The whole problem with being your own scientist and blind testing things is the potentially long transitions to deficiency. And then there is the matter of spotting problems. Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day? (A full dietary and extra of "feel" plus any ailments. Do extended bloodwork every some time.) Then knowing how to apply statistics properly? This is not viable for most people even with modern tools... On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking according to a few studies.
- ipunchghosts 9y ago
  > Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day? I'm currently working on a paper showing you can track 2 things every day (total of 3 measurements) and make quite an improvement for a common health condition. > Then knowing how to apply statistics properly? Yes and no. The ultimate gauge is how the person feels. If its placebo then so what. If they can afford it, who am I to say its wrong. Also, many intelligent people are involved in the supplement movement and beginning to organize well and document. Applying an ANOVA isn't that difficult to do. Any large university will also have a statistical consulting center which you can visit to have them review your "tests" and explain a good way to do the stats (I've done this). > On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking according to a few studies. Yes, you are correct.

ipunchghosts 9y ago

Zinc Status and Deficiency https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3 https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3

ponderatul 9y ago

Precautionary principle. When we are taking supplements, we are really playing the odds. And the odds are that there will be side effects. What side effects and how many people will be affected is the question. That's because it's hard to pinpoint the interactions between substances in the supplement and what's in the body. It's all the more difficult to see the second and third order effects that might happen. My principle, taken from NN Taleb's work is try not to take anything unless you are really sick. It's really a thumb rule, more than anything. Read Taleb's work.

mtgx 9y ago
Dr. Valter Longo, who has been researching the fast-mimicking diet (also autophagy and longevity) says you're probably safe taking vitamins every 3 days. Because that should minimize or eliminate potential long term damage of the vitamins while also ensuring you don't become deficient in certain vitamins. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In a previous HN thread some were mentioning that "Vitamin E causes cancer" study. But it was over a 12 year period and the people were taking like 15x the RDA dose every day. And even then I think it only increased the "chance" of cancer by like 20% (I may be not be remembering that part right, though).

misja111 9y ago

I see this as another symptom of USA consumerism. Your feel a little stressed? Take this tranquilizer! You feel tired? Take these vitamins! As a consumer the idea that you can let your problems go away by just swalling a couple of pills is tempting. And the doctor and the farmaceutical company are making some money on it as well. The reality is that staying healthy and vital at an older age takes discipline and effort: you need to eat and drink moderately, keep a balanced diet, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. But that's a tough message to sell and nobody is making money on it.

Dylan16807 9y ago
"Balanced diet" is just a way of hiding the difficulty. How many dozens of ways does a diet have to balance, and how much leeway do you have on each one? Nobody really knows. A supposedly-balanced diet could still be lacking in vitamin D or iodine or... If you can solve some of those factors with a pill, why not? Supplementation is not a cure-all but it can help in a lot of cases. Note that I'm talking about small doses here, not taking tons and tons of arbitrary substances.
- pizza234 9y ago
  For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is a good enough "balanced" diet. The attitude of "taking the pill" is very detrimental, because it typically mistakes solving the symptoms with solving the cause.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    > For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is a good enough "balanced" diet. That - naively - assumes that people know what / how to eat and cook when you take away junk food. I also gathered there's huge areas and neighbourhoods without access to a normal grocery store - you know, places where they sell vegetables and such.
    - secstate 9y ago

SuoDuanDao 9y ago

Who is funding all these studies about vitamin supplementation? It's clearly not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published, but who else has an interest in the outcome?

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
> It's clearly not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published Do you honestly believe that or was that cynical? Probably not directly but the vitamin industry is a big industry and it's in their interest to promote taking supplements.
- xvaier 9y ago
  Considering that the article lends the reader to understand that studies are indicating vitamin supplements are not as necessary as we'd like to believe, I don't think op was being cynical. Random quote from the article: > I faithfully chewed those calcium supplements, and then a study said they didn’t do any good at all,” said Ms. Bentley

philip1209 9y ago

Americans enjoy how a convenient pill can "fix" their micronutrient problems and make them "healthier." In reality, their macronutrients are so imbalanced that these little micronutrients do little to counterbalance overall bad dietary choices. Specifically - the carbohydrate-heavy diet in the USA is unequivocally contributing to skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Separately - I'm surprised that this article does not mention Vitamin D. Recent research seems to indicate that it is so important that it is closer to a hormone than a vitamin. [1] [1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916 Edit: For anybody interested in this topic, check out the product and blog of the startup Virta Health. They are using diet to cure type 2 diabetes. Raised $45M this week. (I'm not associated with them). https://www.virtahealth.com/ https://www.virtahealth.com/

namelost 9y ago
The American diet isn't carbohydrate-heavy, it's food-heavy. Americans eat a lot more of every macronutrient than the average person on this planet.
- gepi79 9y ago
  I guess a grey font means being downvoted. For those who tend to downvote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients Regarding low carb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj-Wmmt0FE&feature=youtu.be&t=303 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj-Wmmt0FE&feature=youtu.be...
- philip1209 9y ago
  I disagree. I believe that the core of these problems are carbohydrates. Insulin spikes from carbohydrate consumption cause fat retention. Sugar doesn't create satiety, so it compounds eating. The "it's an over-eating problem" fallacy keeps getting introduced by sugar companies. It happened in the states, then moved to South America, and is currently hitting India [1]. It's a playbook by the sugar industry that echoes of the tobacco industry's old tactics. Suddenly, societies that have maintained healthy BMIs for thousands of years are having obesity problems as sugar gets introduced. They didn't develop gluttony overnight - it's a sugar problem. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/health/india-diabetes-junk-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/health/india-diabetes-jun... Edit: Sugar is basically weaponized carbohydrates.

apatters 9y ago

One dissenting opinion of note mentioned in the article is the Harvard School of Public Health's recommendation in favor of a daily multivitamin: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/ I don't plan to stop taking mine; it seems like the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

truculation 9y ago

All right, but apart from Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, B12, K2, iron, iodine.... what have supplements ever done for us?

0xfeba 9y ago
caffeine, taurine...
gascan 9y ago
Northerners with a vitamin D deficiency, 3rd-worlders with iodine deficiency, vegans with B12 deficiency, carnivores with K12 deficiency, women with iron deficiency, etc- yes, supplements are quite helpful, when you're acutely deficient. But if you're not actually deficient, they can be legitimately harmful, and your average person reading HN is probably not acutely deficient in any of these things you listed except possibly vitamin D.
- truculation 9y ago
  I'd rather not wait until I'm 'acutely deficient' before acting -- mildly deficient is good enough for me, especially given the concept of triage: metabolism prioritises certain processes over other still important processes according to intake of key nutrients. Hence recommended minimal amounts may be sub-optimal in various cases. Also, given the increased tendency to ban and censor stuff nowadays, I want to help protect individual choice in this area. If medics have to prescribe them you know they'll be slow and 50X pricier.
  - gascan 9y ago
    At least seek to be smart about it, and perhaps supplement with low values- 10% of DV instead of 10,000%. Toxic iron dosage can be as low as 2x the therapeutic dose, and men are especially at risk (most of us on this thread are probably men). Long term studies have also repeatedly found negative expected outcomes from supplementing various vitamins/minerals in large quantities (Calcium, C, E, & A come to mind)
- ryandrake 9y ago

chubot 9y ago

The way I think of this is: "Food is not a linear combination of nutrients". The system is more complicated than that. It includes your body and the food supply. Science is inherently reductionist (isolating variables), and in the case of nutrition, this can fail badly. The holistic view is more accurate. (Although, this is all relative to what has come before; there are of course basic nutritional deficiencies like lack of vitamin C causing scurvy.) I have to give credit to Michael Pollan for writing clearly about this over many years.

snikeris 9y ago

Ideally I would periodically track my diet for a few weeks and only supplement for deficiencies, but I've found that when I track what I'm eating, I eat differently. So instead I take half a multivitamin to ensure I'm not totally deficient in anything. Reasoning: > On this point, let me emphasize the logical corollary which I've spelled out repeatedly but that people keep missing: unless your diet is composed entirely of fries, Coke, and fast-food burgers with the lettuce, ketchup, and tomato thrown out, no one should be taking a full daily dose of any commercial multivitamin. You are absolutely guaranteed to get too much of many nutrients, and to create or exacerbate imbalances in others. From: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyWVsH0J:www.longecity.org/forum/stacks/stack/122-michaels-tiered-supplement/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyW...

Jolter 9y ago
What does it cost to go to a doctor and get tested for deficiency? You'd only need to do that once a decade or after implementing major changes to your diet. I have a feeling it would come out to less than your strategy of eating pills "just in case".
- freedomben 9y ago
  It's not quite that simple.. Firstly, it is surprisingly costly and it's getting more so because of several factors (a big one being insurance company regulation around requiring tests to be linked to diagnosis codes. This makes the doctor look bad for giving "unnecessary tests" which in turn makes them not want to give you a test if there isn't clinical evidence to warrant it, regardless of your desire and willingness to pay for it). Secondly, you need to be tested much more often than once a decade. Levels can vary wildly based on diet in sometimes complicated ways. For example? Vitamin D levels are dropping despite no changes in vitamin D intake (and sun exposure). This turns out to be a calcium deficiency, which is required for vitamin D absorption. The calcium deficiency in turn results from some other condition not necessarily related to diet. You also need to be re-tested potentially many times after beginning a supplement to determine if you are at the correct dose. In some cases when the supplement can be dangerous at high levels (such as Vitamin B6 or Iron) you need to be tested regularly for a while to ensure you aren't overdosing (especially B6 levels too high can cause nasty symptoms). Source: personal experience doing exactly this with a variety of vitamins and minerals

mathlizard 9y ago

I know this is anecdotal evidence, but my granddad took multivitamins faithfully for years. After my grandma passed from cancer, and due to not eating as much food with those vitamins, his body had a calcium build up to a state of calcium poisoning. This did a number on his kidneys. His kidneys did not recover. Instead of dialysis , he chose hospice. Multivitamins have the potential to give too much for the body to handle.

dude01 9y ago
Yeah, that's a great point -- especially for older people, you have to tell doctors all supplements you take, because some can affect how fast your blood will clot. For instance, I believe garlic supplements reduce blood clotting, so an older person (especially) might have complications during a surgery.

pasbesoin 9y ago

You need independent studies. Unfortunately, the FDA has undergone regulatory capture to a significant extent -- more from the pharmaceutical companies than from the supplement manufacturers, including the former trying to use political influence to kill off or capture the latter. And universities and their programs have become increasingly dependent upon and so captured by commercial dollars for funding. So, we need science to help sort this out. But at the same time, our practiced science is becoming more political, commercial, and biased. P.S. We also need science to say "we don't know" instead of "we don't have a scientific explanation, ergo it's bollocks".

perseusprime11 9y ago

It is not about eating right but eating right every day that makes it hard. The way vitamins work is that you need them every day which is why there is a daily recommended percentage of all our foods. Which is why it is still a good idea to supplement with a vitamin tablet.

yubiox 9y ago

Last winter I got five colds, each lasting two to three weeks. The winter before that, I got four, and every winter I can remember before that I got three colds. Two winters ago I tried an experiment. I washed my hands religiously and didn't touch my face at all. I had hand sanitizer with me at all times. It didn't help at all. I asked my doctor what to do and he said wash your hands. Last fall when the cold season started I got a cold. Around the time it went away I started taking 200mg vitamin C every night before bed. I have not had a cold since. This might be anecdotal but I am now a big believer in vitamin C.

kriffo 9y ago
Last fall came before last winter...so you were cured before last winter?
- yubiox 9y ago
  feels like it is still winter I guess
syngrog66 9y ago
vitamin C daily, plus, good hand/face practices, combined, have correlated with a huge drop in the rate I get colds/flu/sinusinfections/pinkeye. for me, these are all nearly zero now. and I always weigh first-hand direct experience much higher than any academic theory or random stranger's arguments on the web. I'm sold.

Greenisus 9y ago

I'm trying to be as healthy as I possibly can be. I do this with a ketogenic diet, fasting, jumping rope, stretching, and trying to get enough sleep. I also take a lot of vitamins. I did it by evaluating them one at a time. But at some point, maybe it's too much. So I'm taking the idea of "email bankruptcy" and starting a "supplement bankrupty." So, at some point this year, I'm going to stop taking everything, see how I feel, and then reintroduce supplements again one at a time. I don't know if this is a good idea or not yet, but hopefully it's helpful, so I thought it was worth saying here.

theNJR 9y ago
What are you taking? I cycle keto, do IF (with 3-5 day fasts a few times per year), lift heavy, etc. I've greatly reduced my vitamins to just vitamin D and a probiotic. It's really nice not throwing back a ton of pills throughout the day. In their place, I focus on eating more green vegetables, I take a greens drink, and Udo's oil (omegas) and drink a ton of BCAAs throughout the day. Feel much better than when I had 15 different pills.
- Greenisus 9y ago
  Happy to talk about this outside of here! <my-hn-handle>@gmail.com

lucas_membrane 9y ago

Link to a recent lecture on the difficulty of using supplements expeditiously: https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863 https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863