Vitamins - What to take?

TopShopGamer

To preface my problem, I have food allergies. Lots of them. I can't have most fruits or vegetables. My diet mainly consists of bread, meat, and dairy. This obviously isn't the healthiest diet but I do try to stay way from fast food at least.

I want to start taking vitamins to supplement what I'm missing out on but I don't know what I need. I've started taking Centrum because it's something I have around the house but I have to imagine there's some better options.

Could anyone give me some advice?

Ain't No Sunshine

In general, almost every generic multivitamin contains everything that your body can't produce on its own from other nutritional sources. More money does not usually buy you more value. Centrum is a relatively expensive brand and will have a lot of other things in it that you won't benefit from unless you're middle age or older. A quick Google search revealed this site:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002399.htm

This says a bit about essential vitamins, the kind that you definitely need. Eating meat will generally provide you with enough of the trace minerals you'll need, so focus on finding the cheapest generic multivitamin that provides all your essential vitamins. The local grocery may have its own brand.

Please keep in mind that eating a diet heavy in meats, dairy, and carbohydrates will predispose you to high cholesterol, iron overload, and potential weight gain from fat. Make sure to minimize your use of red meat (2 times/week or less is best) and to replace it with lean white meats and especially fish. Drink less milk, and replace it with water. Doing this, along with taking a generic multivitamin and regular exercise, should have you covered.

PirateJon

Greens+. It's precicely what you need.

http://greensplus.com/index.php/cPath/34_36

The Cat

Keep an eye out for something containing chromium - I've noticed a lot of the cheaper brands don't, but its a good one to have for regulating blood sugar levels. This is valuable, since your diet does appear to contain a fair amount of simple carbohydrates.

Also, you might need to beware of formulations that contain 'energy' supplements, like ginkgo, ginseng and such (or withania in women's vitamins), given your allergies.

Frenchii5

If you can't eat very many fruits and vegetables, then you're going to need to make sure that your multivitamin contains (at least): Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Vitamin E, Potassium (to balance out all the sodium in your diet), and Magnesium.

Another very important nutrient that your diet is missing is phytochemicals, which are available in supplement form as well. You should also try to get more plant sterols in your diet (to lower your cholesterol).

Also, you said that you can eat carbohydrates, so I would recommend that you start eating whole-grain products, such as whole wheat bread, pasta, bagels, cereal, english muffins, everything that you can. Whole grains will give you a lot of the vitamins and minerals that your current diet is lacking and is an easy change.

Also make sure that you eat a lot of nuts and get enough mono and polyunsaturated fats in your diet to lower your cholesterol and try to cut back on saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol in your diet.

What specific food allergies do you have?

Thanatos

Donating blood regularly will help with the iron overload, and is just a good thing to do in general.

LondonBridge

Here is what you need my friend.

Centrum, but you're already taking it so good job.

Omega-3 from Fish or Flax Seed Oil

Zinc-50mg

Ain't No Sunshine

The [edited: general rule from dieticians] is that nutrition comes from food. It seems a little obvious, but it should be obvious. The things that your body needs are the things that you have evolved eating, and only in very limited circumstances (essential vitamins) will you need to look for things that come in pills. Everything else you need, your body will produce on its own.

Eating just about any meat will be sufficient to provide your trace metals (zinc, magnesium, chromium, potassium). "Phytochemicals" are not metabolically essential, and could be helpful, but eating whole grains and whatever fruits or vegetables that you can already tolerate will give you plenty, as they act in small concentrations. Just make sure to have some of these fruits or vegetables that you can eat each day. Plant sterols can "lower your cholesterol", but you need to understand how they work in order to understand why you shouldn't try to take them as a dietary supplement.

Plant sterols are competitive uptake antagonists with the cholesterol acquired from meat and dairy products. What this means is that, as food passes through your intestines, there's only a certain amount of cholesterol-like molecules the intestine can absorb (the rest will not be absorbed - you'll excrete it).

If you eat only cholesterol in one meal, you'll absorb X amount of it. If you eat only plant sterols in one meal, you'll absorb X amount of that. If you eat both at the same time, the cholesterol and plant sterols will fight over which gets to be absorbed, because the total amount of molecules absorbed will only ever be X.

Once they're in your body, cholesterol is what can cause damage to your heart and blood vessels, while plant sterols cannot. Therefore, the idea behind eating plant sterols is that at any given meal, eating plant sterols along with it can be good for your heart because it prevents cholesterol from being absorbed.

Unless you take a dietary supplement with every meal, having one with plant sterols inside will not do any good for you.

tl;dr: You don't need special vitamins beyond maybe a cheap, basic pill for essential vitamins, and you may not even need that. Balance your diet with some servings of whatever fruits or vegetables you can eat each day. Eat whole grain bread. Don't take plant sterol supplements.

PirateJon

tl;dr: You don't need special vitamins beyond maybe a cheap, basic pill for essential vitamins, and you may not even need that. Balance your diet with some servings of whatever fruits or vegetables you can eat each day. Eat whole grain bread. Don't take plant sterol supplements.

OP is explicitly not getting a balanced diet. Therefore, supplementation.

Greens plus
http://www.johnberardi.com/research_summary.pdf

Thread about the product (members only, free to read after sign up)
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/members/showthread.php?t=5599&highlight=greens+plus

TopShopGamer

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm gonna make a list and head out the local GNC soon. I'm glad to hear about multivitamins since I don't want to have to take a handful every morning for each specific thing. I can switch to whole grain foods with no problem, I actually prefer the taste.

As for my actual allergies, I have Oral Allergy Syndrome. Wikipedia has a list of the allergies attributed to it. Aside from that list just some berries and most nuts.

Thanks again everyone. I'm not sure what all of a change I'll see when I start getting the things in me I need but I'm sure it'll be good. I'll think of you guys when I start seeing some changes.

Tiemler

I take a generic men's daily multivitamin from Costo. The Kirkland Signature one.

I picked it because, in addition to the regular 100% RDA on all the key vitamins, it has some extra Vitamin E, which is good for the skin and hair, and Zinc, which is good for :winky:

ViolentChemistry

It is important to have healthy eyebrows, or the ladies will not be interested.

poshniallo

I have Crohns Disease so I am limited in what I eat. When I read your post I thought that your doctor must be useless. With such an extreme food allergy, your doctor should be prescribing particular vitamins and monitoring your weight, blood chem etc. Isn't this happening? If so, you should make it happen. When your diet is strongly circumscribed like this, you can get very unusual longterm nutritional deficiencies which are hard to fix on your own.

Basically, get more help from your doctor.

Ain't No Sunshine

PirateJon wrote: »

tl;dr: You don't need special vitamins beyond maybe a cheap, basic pill for essential vitamins, and you may not even need that. Balance your diet with some servings of whatever fruits or vegetables you can eat each day. Eat whole grain bread. Don't take plant sterol supplements.

OP is explicitly not getting a balanced diet. Therefore, supplementation.

Greens plus
http://www.johnberardi.com/research_summary.pdf

Thread about the product (members only, free to read after sign up)
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/members/showthread.php?t=5599&highlight=greens+plus

I'm explicitly aware of the OP. There is no need for specialized vitamins in this case. Balancing should be done with the fruits and vegetables available, and supplementation limited to essential vitamins except as a feel-good measure. You can go for more, but you will quite literally be pissing away the investment; unnecessary vitamins just flow right through you.

Crohn's disease is problematic because of the vast areas of intestine that it affects, essentially denying access to the places in the intestine where particular vitamins can be absorbed. This requires special supplementation. Allergic responses are not this - normal absorption can occur from any food that does not provoke a reaction. Therefore, balancing available non-allergenic foods can equate to a fully rounded diet, after you make up the essentials you're lacking from greens.

Costco brand, for instance, would do just fine.

[Edit: the reason why I'm being so explicit is that my medical opinion probably seconds that of the OP's doc. He/she would have done a fine job by not overreacting. The simple solution here really is the correct one.]

[edit 2: Don't forget that it's very affordable to request a consult with a clinical dietitian if you need help with the balancing. http://www.dietitian.com/ is a handy website if you want to try it yourself first. In the long run, this will be much cheaper than choosing any vitamin regimen.]

TopShopGamer

Unfortunately, the only things I can eat really are watermelon, small amounts of tomato, iceberg lettuce, avocado, onions, broccoli, and asparagus. While I used to love all of those I can't stand eating too much of them anymore. On the bright side I can still have a burger with all of the fixings.

As for the doctor, yea, when the allergies first developed the one I had sucked. I had to argue with him until he referred me to a specialist for tests. On a scale of 0-4 I was 4+ in just about everything. They started giving me shots, 3 a week for over a year, but no change. Nothing was mentioned as far as a diet goes though. I may be surprisingly skinny and fit for a diet like mine but my overall health isn't great. Come to think of it, it started deteriorating about the same time my allergies developed.

The next time I go to my new doctor I'll ask about it. While the old one misdiagnosed me a few times I would hope he would have mentioned something about the nutrients I'd be missing out on. Even if he was I doubt he'd be thinking long term.

PirateJon

OP, until such time as you do meet recommended intake levels take greens plus. I'd order from canada as their food suppliment regulations are much better than in the US.

Not Getting Your Fruits and Veggies?

---

I've gotten alot of questions about "green food" lately as most people are becoming aware that their diets are woefully deficient in fruits and veggies.

While the recommended intake of these dietary goodies is between 5-10 servings/day, less than 5% of the North American population gets even 3 servings per day.

This is why people are turning to supplemental "green foods" and why I suggest using them if you're falling short.

greens+ is my green food of choice and here are 5 reasons why:
greens+ Research

While green+ can't replace a diet sufficient in vegetables, the blend of antioxidants, enzymes, phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals these products contain can be extremely helpful. I add a serving of greens+ to every protein shake I drink.

greens+ - US
greens+ - Canada

Check out the attached PDF for one full study detailing some subjective benefits of taking greens+.
Attached Images Boon - Greens+ Effects on Health Outcomes.pdf (65.5 KB, 60 views)

__________________
Dr John M Berardi, CSCS
Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Texas
President, Precision Nutrition

Click here to learn more about me

And click here for the PN forum home page

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/members/showthread.php?t=5443&highlight=greens+plus


Links didn't come thru in the quote. visit that link to read the about the studies yourself.

Pheezer

While supplementation will help round out that diet a bit, the thing is, vegetables are cheap. Fruit can be a bit pricey to eat if you're on a budget, but vegetables are dirt cheap, and if you steam or stir fry (using water and just a touch of olive oil) you can easily work them into meals that you'd normally eat. I would suggest that you seriously reconsider relying on supplements, but that's your call in the end.

Ain't No Sunshine

Pheezer FD is right - it's better to come up with newer ways to eat real vegetables than to supplement. Even so, it is your choice to try supplementation, and some people just feel better doing that, although it's usually just the placebo effect.

PirateJon

This product prides itself on its awards, yet none of these are recommendations from actual medical organizations. The website you've linked to is chock full of vagueness, inaccuracies, and outright false claims, including:

"Extra sources of antioxidants, vitamin C, and calcium are always beneficial."

Wrong. Hypercalcemia is a serious condition and excess vitamins are excreted with no effect.

"GREENS+® contains only 600 micrograms of caffeine per serving. This is less than a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Even highly allergic individuals can safely take GREENS+®."

The idea that it's 'too little' to irritate an existing problem is false. It's also the stimulant that probably creates the artificial sensation of having 'more energy' when taken regularly.

"The colon cleansers in GREENS+® (apple fiber, alfalfa, barley, wheat grass, chlorophyll) gently work a way through the intestine, and blockages sometimes occur."

The very idea of colon cleansing is ridiculous and has never been scientifically defended. Even worse, the fiber-containing ingredients indicated here have the physiological effect of relieving constipation, not exacerbating it.

There are more, I only picked out the first ones I came to. This product claims to do everything ("Improve your immune system! Lose weight!") and in the process screams false science. Linking to a page with a list of "papers" doesn't establish the validity of these claims. Furthermore, I've explained the physiology of vitamin absorption particular to this case, and you still haven't explained why supplementation is necessary for the OP, beyond repeating your claim that it is.

With some time on my hands, I lurked the forum and found references to precisely one study after perhaps fifteen searches:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15217524&dopt=Abstract

This is a fine example of a bad study. Note the shotgunning of variables, looking for whatever the researcher can get lucky and find. There aren't multiple controls for multiple variables, neither is there control for known active ingredients in the placebo (the "energy" placebo, for instance, doesn't contain caffeine). Note the subjectivity of variables ("general mental health", "vitality"). Note the low N, but more importantly the low follow-through of only 60%. Note the generous interpretation of statistical significance at 0.055, but more importantly the utter lack of a measure of clinical significance. Note the generous conclusion given the poor findings - "Of course it must be working, but we didn't prove it very well this time, so we must study it further (and continue to make unfounded claims/money on it in the meantime...)"

I'm going to change my advice a little bit, OP. If you do choose to supplement your diet, do not use Greens+.