Take Your Vitamins, On Pain Of Pain

dacap writes "The American diet continues to deteriorate. In the news is the exacerbation of bone disease from a deficiency of vitamin D. Too little vitamin D also causes muscle pain and joint problems. How is it that we let something so easily remedied affect us? Details are in USA Today. The ultimate solution to this and many other health-related problems that techies suffer is a proper diet coupled with a multivitamin supplement and regular exercise. Too bad that these choices are so unpopular. A sound mind and sound body go together."

Comments

This isn't really too suprising

[eXtro]

Even in high school physical education hardly any time was spent on learning about caring for your body. You'd learn various sports, spend a bit of time learning to dance and a little bit of time learning how to not knock up a girl. No time that I can recall was spent on learning how to stretch or how to build a meal that has all the nutrients you need. I've learned a lot of these things on my own but most of the other engineers I work with never did and just bitch and moan that they're sore after 30 minutes of water skiing, don't have any energy while pounding a Big Mac, fries and a gallon of Coca-Cola into their mouths.

Don't drink Milk or get multivitamines ?

[Lord Satri]

Well, benefits of milk are largely contested. Generaly, only north americans drink milk during their mature life. Montignac's last book (I never read any of his books) discuss the milk myth.

On the multivitamin issue, these are really "dangerous" if taken everyday. This was the result of an study I made many years ago. The reason is simple, multivitamins added to normal meal might give you too much of liposoluble vitamins and makes you sick ! (liposolubles are elements that goes in the body fat and stays and accumulates there, may eventually generate problems...)

I guess the trick is easy, just eat a balanced diet. (but what is balance ? ;-)

Re:Don't drink Milk or get multivitamines ?

[Mattcelt]

There are only 3 or 4 liposoluble vitamins - A, K, D and some forms of E. All other vitamins are hydosoluble. The relative doses of these are taken into account with most products, and with the USRDA. You would have to be comatose in most cases not to use the amounts of liposoluble vitamins present in most multivitamins (at least in the US, don't know about elsewhere). It would take some work to overdose.

To say that multivitamins are useless based on the presence of these few fat-soluble ones is sort of like saying that the ocean in useless because there are sharks. Nonsense.

I have been taking Shaklee vitamins almost daily for 20+ years, and I can say with certainty that the benefits of taking them far outweigh any possible risks.

Hard to understand...

[Beatbyte]

how people who spend hours and hours working on a machine to make it pur like a kitten and run at its peak efficiency can eat garbage, fatty, high-carb food. and on top of it, not exercise.

WHAT YOU PUT IN YOUR BODY, IS EQUIVALENT TO WHAT YOU GET OUT!

It's like putting a 486SX with 8MB RAM in a cluster of decent machines and expecting it to do the same amount of work. I doesn't happen.

Lots of water, vitamins, no fatty foods, moderate exercise = better quality of life, self-esteem, etc.

And speaking as someone who has lost 40 lbs. in the last year, I can attest to that.

Re:Screw the multivitamin

[tiled_rainbows]

Enough Vitamin A will kill you.

Polar animals store massive amounts of Vitamin A in their livers, for some reason. Scott, when exloring the Antarctic, actually died of a Vitamin A overdose from eating the livers of his huskies, rather than dying of lead poisoning (as previously believed). Not strictly relevant, I know, but if you're ever in a survival situation in the Antarctic, you might be glad I told you.

Re:There goes the Atkins-bashing again.

[TimTheFoolMan]

It's interesting to note that much of what you see in the Atkins diet is now getting more respect, and nutritionists are starting (just starting) to question the validity of the much-vaunted "Food Pyramid." In more educated circles, the high-carb/low-fat pyramid is being questioned for its role in the current obesity epidemic in the US. Arguably, we are eating (as a nation) more low-fat products than ever before, but also far more low-deitary fiber carbs. We've also ignored the glycemic index, which is a crucial component of how quickly a given carbohydrate is processed by the body into a given blood sugar level.

Oddly enough, we love our processed foods, and don't seem to have any interest in oatmeal, fresh vegatables, and other low glycemic index foods. We also seem to have the massive fear of red meats, eggs, and other "instant heart attack" foods that were blamed for all manner of heart problems.

Instead of blindly bashing Atkins (which has demonstrated remarkable staying power over the last 10 years, and therefore hardly qualifies as a "fad diet" anymore), people would do well to do some serious research about nutrition, from people who don't have a specific product to sell.

Of course, that requires using your brain...

Tim