Does anyone know much about vitamins and minerals?

if you eat a good variety of foods you can pick up most of those from food. Vit C from broccoli, for example, Omega-3s from fish or flaxseed.

There are a long list of micronutrients / trace elements as well as essential vitamins, proteins and fats. The list is a lot longer than that. Where's Vitamin D for example.

If you get a good high-quality multi-vitamin and eat a proper diet you should be able to get most of what you need. Ginseng is an herb, not a nutrient. If you are afraid of being exposed to sunlight - vitamin D is a must. There is a whole range of B vitamins - B12 for example is important to supplement if you are a strict vegetarian or vegan as it is found naturally in animal products.

I am not advocating this particular site or its particular diet - though there's nothing particularly wrong with a whole-food diet if you want to pursue it - but this is a handy bunch of hyperlinks to the micronutrient data for a bunch of foods to consider before deciding if you need to supplement:

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

if you have a balanced diet including a wide range of nutritious food including fruit, vegetables, foods rich in fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids (e.g. egg yolk, oily fish) and protein, then really you shouldn't need supplements.

One possible exception is vitamin D, because the skin makes vitamin D from the sun, and it may not be possible to get enough purely from food. If you're not getting enough sunlight, or if your skin's too dark to make much vitamin D at the latitude you live in (e.g. dark skin + UK sunlight) then consider a vitamin D supplement.

Also some medical issues may make a difference to how your body absorbs or processes some vitamins, so may require supplementation of some vitamins.

If it's hard to get a varied enough diet, vitamin supplements may help but be sure that the supplements are giving you the ones your diet's actually missing, and bear in mind that some vitamins are toxic in overdose. It's better to get them from real food where possible, it's nearly impossible to overdose on vitamins just eating real food. Bears liver is an exception (you can overdose on vitamin A if you eat too much of it) but most people don't eat bear's liver. During pregnancy it's advised to avoid eating liver.

If there's a clinically diagnosed vitamin deficiency, then you should take supplements for that (a doctor should prescribe them) AND get dietary sources as well, then when the levels of that vitamin in the body are back to normal, the doctor can advise whether it's necessary to continue taking the supplements or if you'll be fine with just ensuring you're getting enough through food.

What a body needs will vary greatly person to person... get your labs done, see how your numbers are. You can have all of those things checked. You'll need different things also based on age, if you had surgery, diet etc.

I have my labs done twice a year .. I have always been iron deficient so I take 60mg a day nd was told never to give blood again (oops! took me months to recover from that) I take a multi-vitamin, a large dose of vitamin d (after a 6 month winter I need it!) biotin (hair, skin, nails) and calcium citrate. Sometimes I'll throw in a b-complex but when you take that and your pee turns glow worm yellow you can tell you don't need it. (I think its the B6 that you just pee out if you have excess and its a pretty freaky color!)

After doing some research on my own, I no longer take omega 3 or zinc or any of the other strange things they mentioned... I don't see any need for that.

Thanks for all your posts... I am wondering if there is somewhere that I can go to find out what my diet is lacking and what vitamins I should take?? Its all so confusing!!

You find out from going to get your yearly physical and having your labs done

+1

Your doctor should be the one advising on vitamins and supplements.

Hi All

Does anyone have any real idea about what vitamins etc you are meant to take or do you just make sure your eating is healthy? The reason I ask is I went to a talk a few weeks ago at Befit..... and this is what they told us we should all take daily!!

Omega 3
Chronium
Magnesium
Q10
Vit E
Siberian gynsing
Vit b
Vit c

Now this is what she said we would all need to look after our bodies... really is this right?? I have no idea if I should even take some of it let alone all of it dosnt that sound like a huge amount of stuff to put in our bodies??

Thanks for anyones ideas on this!!

That seems like a one fits all judgement and considering you can get some (if not all that) from food I don't see the need to buy the pill versions.

I remember seeing something on tv a while back saying that a lot of vitamin deficiencies can be detected from the mouth and tongue. Found this online -http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Nutritional_deficiencies_-_What_signs_to_look_for_if_you_think_you_may_have_them - but if you have any hypochondriac tendencies then you'll come away sure that you have lots!!

On the whole though I agree with everyone else, with a balanced diet, and since you aren't vegetarian or exclude any food groups then you should get pretty much all you need from food. The exception is also if any of your medications cause vitamin deficiencies, one of mine causes b12 deficiency so I have 3-monthly injections to counteract it, it's a known thing so I had 6 monthly blood tests done routinely to check for it.

I don't know whether a doctor here in the UK would be likely to do blood work to check for vitamin deficiencies unless you had cause to believe you had some, wouldn't hurt to ask though! If anything I'd say just go with a multivitamin, don't waste your money on getting tons of pills that you probably don't need!