Vitamins and pills (source: Pixabay)

One of the things I’m trying to do right now is to get control of my health.  I want to get to a place where I can feel comfortable in my own skin.  I’ll never be back to “svelte” but I want to get back to some facsimile of healthy.  One factor that touches all aspects of health is diet.  That brings us to the question of vitamins.

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with vitamins.  On the one hand, I understand that the nutrients we consume are vital to overall health.  On the other, it is super easy to get caught up in the numbers game where vitamins are concerned.  Did I get enough of this vitamin today?  Do I need to bump that one up, just a little bit?  If I eat, say, spanakopita to bump up my iron, do I then move my fat intake too far in the other direction?

There are plenty of people out there, too, who want to “help” you to manage that process.  There are services, apps, “communities” you can join.  Some people find them helpful.  My use of quotes here probably shows that I am not among them. I think most people who have any kind of obsessive disorder in their psyche will find those tools to be more harmful than helpful.

(I’m more grateful than I can express to the doctor who pointed that out to me.  She freed me from searching for yet another service that wouldn’t work, and showed me why it wasn’t helping.)

Anyway, vitamin supplements sound like a great idea, don’t they?  I took vitamins from the time I was a little kid.  They were just a basic part of preventative medicine.  Too bad studies don’t support the idea of multivitamins preventing much.

The best way for us to get the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients we need is from food.  Our bodies just don’t absorb supplements taken in pill form as well as they do vitamins taken from the foods we eat.  The issue comes when our diets become somewhat deficient.

That’s not necessarily a criticism.  People whose diets lack one particular nutrient, or even several, aren’t lazy or stubborn.  Some of them may be chowing down on fast food a lot of the time, but it’s not for you or me to judge them for it.  When I was working two jobs and still barely scraping by, fast food was something I could eat while going from one job to the next.  You do what you can with what you have.

And there are other people who wind up having trouble getting the nutrients they need for other reasons.  All kinds of people have to cut some things out of their diets, for a variety of reasons.  One of my closest friends developed a meat allergy as an adult – yes, it’s related to that tick disease – and now finds herself deficient in several nutrients.  She has to supplement.  I developed a dairy allergy at some point along the way.  Yeah, I should be supplementing.

I just don’t like meat.  Does this mean I should choke it down and call it a virtue?  No.  I can supplement.

Many Western people believe chugging back vitamin supplements will somehow cure all of our ills and prevent a host of diseases as we age.  That isn’t proven by science.  Eating a balanced diet and living a healthy lifestyle can mitigate some risks.  Taking supplements can help fill in gaps, but it can’t substitute for eating moderately, in balance.

I do take a B-complex supplement, when I remember to do so.  I’m not sure it helps with anything, but it makes me feel like it does.  There have been studies that cite its efficacy with ADD and anxiety, although that’s still kind of inconclusive.  I’m willing to try it, since my diet could be better and I feel like my symptoms are better when I take it.

I’m about to start taking an omega-3 supplement too.  Vegan sources exist for this important nutrient, and honestly, I feel better when I’m consuming them.

Hopefully, making changes to my diet will help me get the vitamins I need to get back to health.