Vitamins and Minerals

PharmD1284
PharmD1284 Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Does anyone have a good source to look at vitamins and minerals a person should take regularly? And has anyone done anything with functional medicine testing?

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,935 Member
    edited March 2023
    A person should take what they need to make up for deficiencies in their eating as compared with their needs, and needs depend on situation (active or not, losing weight or not, taking certain prescription meds or not, experiencing certain negative health conditions or not, etc.): I don't think there's a generic "should take".

    Here in the US, the USDA has a "Dietary Reference Intake Calculator" that will show you the recommended levels of various vitamins and minerals for you, along with their tolerable upper limits (TUL).

    https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/dri-calculator/results

    In general, those reference intakes are IMU generally more to be thought of as minimums to avoid under-nutrition, not necessarily optimal intake levels. The TULs are not "never go over this", but more like "don't consistently eat more than this".

    IMO, a reasonable source of evidence-based advice is this site:

    https://examine.com/

    Their business is selling more comprehensive reports (not selling supplements), so you won't find comprehensive reports for free there, but you can look at selected reports about specific supplements and see their summaries of research, plus links to the research itself.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,967 Member
    Copied what I posted in a similar thread......

    My thought on vitamin deficiency is that you do not need to take anything unless it is a specific thing for a specific proven purpose - ie your body is deficient as shown by blood test or a specific reason like women taking folate pre pregnancy or Vitamin D in osteoporosis.

    If people want to take a general multi vitamin because they feel their diet is not nutitionally balanced for some reason - sure, no problem

    But dont do anything more than that , if even that, without proper medical guidance.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,868 Member
    edited March 2023
    A lot will depend on your overall diet (blood test will determine what you actually need) but generally supplements are mostly a money maker for companies that import from China and India for almost nothing and they're not regulated at all.....basically a scam. Saying that I do take Vit.D lol. Cheers

    Here's a list of essential vitamins and minerals from Harvard.
    https://health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/listing_of_vitamins

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