Vitamins & supplements

891 views

I’ve made it this far without taking vitamins regularly at all. Should I? What do they do for me? What even is a vitamin?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Vitamins are just substances your body can’t create and so you need to ingest them directly from food. They do a lot of different things, but they’re all very important. If you eat a healthy diet, you should get most of your vitamins and minerals you need.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Unless you have a pathology or are vegan, the only vitamin that you May Need to take is D.

Prescribed by a doctor After a Blood test.

Every other vitamin you need to be healty is part of a correct diet, no need to supplements.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The word “vitamin” is more or less short for “vital amines” which, as the name suggests, are molecules that are necessary for proper functioning. There are 2 basic groups of vitamins: water-soluble and fat-soluble. The fat soluble ones are vitamins A, D, E, and K. You need to be relatively careful if you’re taking these vitamins because they can build up in your body and cause some adverse effects. The other vitamins (eg, vitamin C, B vitamins) are easily removed from your body by the kidneys. Your body takes what it needs and gets rid of the rest. This essentially results in expensive urine. As mentioned before, a balanced diet will provide the vitamins that you need without additional supplementation. However, there are certain cases where you need additional vitamins (like if you’re anemic, you may need additional vitamin B12 or iron). That needs to be decided by your doctor. In general, taking vitamins is generally considered to be safe, but taking them when not needed may not provide any benefit.

Supplements are slightly different. Again, you don’t need to take them as they are, by definition, supplemental. You have to be a bit more cautious with supplements because they are generally not medications, not needed by your body, and can potentially cause issues (either on their own or they can interact with medications). For example, St. John’s wort (which some people take for depression) has many interactions with medications that could be harmful, all the whole having little evidence that it does anything helpful at all. Garlic extract has been shown to increase risk of bleeding, which can be problematic for people on blood thinners. Basically, supplements carry many claims but usually there is minimal evidence that these supplements do anything useful.