VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS... BEGIN THE QUEST

A PERFECT WORLD

In a perfect world you don't need supplements. All the things your body needs will be there, in your food. Plenty of vegetables, plenty of fruit, and likely plenty of meat and dairy products. Eating these things will provide you with everything you need for you body to nourish itself fully. But getting all the nutrition you need, that's a bit less than certain. So the reasonable thing to do is supplement what you're getting from food with something that can provide you with the things you aren't getting...and in a way your body can use them...in quantities high enough to help.


ISSUES

Simple problem, simple solution. There are multi-vitamin pills, you buy them, and you go on. But that may not be all there is to it. Just buying vitamins appears to have a "life or death" component to it. It would appear a vitamin may not actually "be" a vitamin in some cases. And a vitamin, by itself, may be only half of what you need...to use the vitamin.

I'm like most people, I was pretty confident that what I have bought at the local drug store was all that I needed. Just buy something and go. I saw the various other things on the shelf, the protein powders and other "body builder" items. The shelves have become even more populated with all sorts of formulations with a sharp focus on one quality or another...for men, for women, kids. There is a lot to choose from.

And then there is the Internet. Shopping there with a search engine can bring back a vast ocean of products. All sorts of claims are made about the revolutionary new formula each company has. There is near disdain for the products of their competitors. Then there is the MLM (multi level marketing) aspect to toss in. There is a thriving forest of competitors. And all you want to do is get a decent vitamin supplement at a reasonable price.

The average person may have to spend a few good hours just sorting them all out. If you didn't major in chemistry, biology, or medicine and nutrition, there may be some gaps in your knowledge that make it difficult to sort through it all. Its important to try, every time you pick up a bit more useful information, and eventually you can become comfortable with your personal plan of action.

I took the time to begin that process. Not as a doctor, but as a consumer. I can't tell you how many times I "thought" I had found the next miracle product that would solve all but political problems. That journey is not over, but I have a few facts that I didn't have before. If you already know these things you are better prepared than I was. And you have probably solved this puzzle to your satisfaction. It won't take long for you to gauge the situation.

But there are a few very important things to know when deciding what type of supplements you want to put into your body. Most of us don't know very much about the specifics of digestion, or the steps that are involved. The digestive process dictates whether or not the vitamins and minerals you are taking are actually getting absorbed. So the first step to knowing the value of vitamins and what you can get from them is knowing what nutrients your body needs and what it will do with them. A simple synopsis of eating and digesting is where we need to start.