= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Jodika comments on Open thread, September 22-28, 2014 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (213)
I don't know how many people here have medical or nutritional expertise, but for those who do, I have a question.
The benefits and risks of multivitamins have been discussed a little in the media, but as a layperson I find it difficult to look at the conflicting studies online and come to any particular conclusion as to what I should do.
Specifically, I am looking at this as a person with a chronic illness who finds it difficult to feed myself a diet as healthy as I would like due to money and time/energy constraints. I am therefore looking at supplementing eating as healthy as I can manage with a cheap multivitamin; but I would really appreciate if anyone with specialized knowledge, or just someone better at analyzing the available data than I currently am, could help me understand whether the reported risks are something I should be more concerned about than whatever benefit it may provide.
A basic blood panel is unlikely to tell you much about your micronutritional status if your diet is even remotely normal and you don't have problems with absorption i.e. gastrointestinal disease. The only vitamins they might sample would be vitamins D, B5 and perhaps B12 and folate. I don't think these are even part of any basic health check at least for younger people.
However if there are gross deviations in a basic blood panel then nutrition is probably the least of your problems.
Just thoughts of an MD from Finland, I'm not much of an expert on nutrition. I don't eat extremely healthily myself and based on this literature review I don't bother supplementing anything else than vitamin D, which I consume 50 ug a day. I wouldn't be scared of multivitamins either, while relative risks might look scary, the absolute risks involved are miniscule.
Thanks for the link and advice; I was basically looking for a review like that but lacking the studies-savvy to find it.
The average person should get a blood panel if they want to know what's going on with their body, and that goes double for a person with a chronic illness. With a bit of effort you can probably figure out a combination of cheap foods and supplementation that you feel good about.
WRT multivitamins specifically, the effect on your stress level dominates the negative impact on your health in all likelihood.
I'm not sure it's possible to just get a blood panel on the NHS. My instinct is that I'd need to actually show symptoms of a vitamin deficiency.
Thanks anyway though.
A basic blood panel is more or less the first thing doctors try when faced with uncertain symptoms. Go to your MD and complain about general weakness, random pains, strange headaches, and occasional fainting spells :-)
They shouldn't be too expensive to have done privately. We were able to get a basic panel in the US for under $200.
Yeah I had a quick look and that's about right for the price over here - certainly not doable for me, anyway.
As far as understand the situation is as follows:
If you are a vegetarian, then you have to supplement B12.
There inconclusive evidence on whether supplementing Vitamin D3 is helpful. Human's don't have Vitamin D2 naturally, so taking it instead of D3 is a bad idea. I personally think that supplementing it helps for people who are mostly indoors and don't get their needs meet by synthesizing it while being outdoors. At the moment there a randomized control trial underway that will gives us more information in a few years.
There no evidence that the average person benefits on an average day from taking multivitamins. Any decision to take them should be made on an individual basis. If you don't have a well trained sense of listening to your body that means going to the doctor and getting blood test.
If you do have a chronic illness you should discuss questions like this with the doctor responsible for treating you for that chronic illness. He might know specific things that apply to you based on your illness.
What you can do for your health is getting 3 times per week 30 minutes of exercise that get's your pulse up.
There are also various things with can be experimented with to see whether they reduce the symptoms of your chronic illness.