Vitamin Supplements

While most of us get all the vitamins and minerals we need simply by eating a balanced diet, there are times when a little vitamin boost wouldn’t go astray; especially when we’re not taking care of ourselves as well as we should.

Yet, vitamin pills have received quite a bit of bad press lately with the medical fraternity giving the thumbs down to mega dosing, a popular trend among those wanting to be mega healthy!  

The thing is, there is little evidence to support any benefit whatsoever from mega-dosing on vitamin supplements.  In fact, this practice will certainly not make you mega healthy and can actually be quite dangerous.  We’re talking nausea, hypertension, muscular weakness, faintness, liver damage, hair loss, blurred vision, headaches, stomach aches and diarrhoea just to name a few nasty side effects of vitamin pill overdose.

Clearly too much of a good thing can indeed have unexpected consequences but more commonly, it’s our wallets that tend to hurt the most from the purchase of a needless supplement, which can be quite costly.

So, if you are getting enough water soluble vitamins from your food, and most of us do most of the time, additional vitamin supplements won’t help.  They won’t make you healthier and they won’t ward off that annual winter cold!  Instead excess vitamins are naturally flushed out of your system in your urine which is why it’s sometimes a funny colour after taking supplements.  And that’s a lot of money going into the toilet each year!

Our advice is to stick to fresh whole foods as your best sources of vitamins and minerals because they offer three main benefits over vitamin supplements:

	Greater nutrition (including micronutrients)
	Essential fibre
	Protective substances

However, there are times when vitamin supplements can be useful, especially when:

	Pregnant or lactating
	Lacking whole food groups
	On a calorie restrictive diet
	Suffering from lack of appetite
	Suffering from a digestive illness

We advise you avoid supplements in pill form and go for a nutritious, fibre-rich format such as a supplement shake which tends to be better absorbed in the body than the pill equivalent.

However, in the main we urge you to enjoy eating real food with real flavour and save your pennies for something that takes delicious and is good for you rather than putting it towards a box of manufactured pills with dubious health benefits.