For a few years now that I have been seeking advice from nutritionists and doctors on the subject of vitamins, but none could provide a safe and convincing explanation that really helps. But one thing I discovered about vitamins is that if you take too much, you'll end up with something known as expensive urine.
The reason I said you would make expensive urine is your body absorbs about 15% from a vitamin supplement, assuming you don't have a deficiency for a particular nutrient. The rest is excreted in your urine.
Your body can absorb around 10 to 15% of the nutrients in a vitamin pill. The rest goes down the toilet as urine. So for every $10.00 you spend on supplements, you could be flushing $8.50 down the toilet. Your money would be better spent on food. The human body prefers to take a food, break it down and take the nutrients it needs. Remember that you are dealing with a cave person's body. I think you are depending too heavily on the supplement and not giving enough credit to the nutrients in your food.
So what about people who take in multivitamin pills on a daily basis? Does it make multivitamins helpful or excessive? This all depends on whether or not your diet contains enough food and variety to supply all the nutrients your body needs. If you eat more than 1600 calories and a variety of food, you may be wasting your money and making some very expensive urine. Though, taking one multivitamin per day that has 100% of the Recommended Dietary Allowances for vitamins and minerals will not hurt you. If you are consuming less than 1600 calories per day, you are not getting all the vitamins and minerals you need. In that case, I would suggest you take a multivitamin that has 100% of the RDA for all vitamins and minerals.
On the other side of the case, I've gotten queries that if they take a multivitamin every day, they believ it balances out what they don't eat right in their diets. Most people want to know what ingredients will give the best balanced diet.
If the multivitamin has only 100% of the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for each nutrient in the supplement, it definitely doesn't harm the body. There are RDA's for protein, vitamin A, D, E, K, C, B6 and B12, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folacin or folic acid, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine and selenium. The bottle's label should give you the measured amount of each nutrient in each pill and what percent each pill contributes to your RDA.
A vitamin is like an enzyme or catalyst. It assists in a chemical reaction. By themselves, they will help prevent a nutritional deficiency and in persons on very low calorie diets which is less than 1200 calories per day, vitamin supplements provide missing nutrients. Vitamins though are not enough. You need protein, fat and carbohydrate to build and maintain the human body. If you focus on eating a variety of foods, your requirements of vitamins and minerals will probably be met. Unless your doctor has recommended a specific vitamin for a health problem you have, you may be wasting your money on supplements. |
