Supplements and naturopathy

[rebeccmeister]

The trouble with having read Food Politics is that it has made me more acutely aware of questions/concerns with respect to nutritional supplements and herbal remedies, and thus I am skeptical of the benefits of trying anything falling into these categories (I bring this up because my mother is recommending a mega-dose of vitamin C to aid in recovery from mono). I recently walked into an unfamiliar grocery store in Somerville and was amazed to realize that approximately 1/3 of the store was shelves full of bottle after bottle of pills. Clearly, Americans equate food with medicine.

The real trouble is this: among all of the bogus snake-oil fads, there will occasionally be remedies that actually do something beyond filling our need for sugar-pill cures (provided one has a way of obtaining consistent doses of said remedies--products marketed as supplements aren't under nearly the same quality standards as prescription medicines). Of course, "something" may only apply to certain people at certain doses. I refuse to take multivitamins unless I'm feeling sick because my diet should provide adequate amounts of all of the vitamins and minerals I need (there's no point to generating expensive urine). But I always have niggling doubts about such matters, especially when sick.

The advice that we receive from established medical authorities is always based on extensive testing using scientific and statistical knowledge, but this also means that it's usually based on average responses, and there can still be wide degrees of individual variation in such responses.

Throw on top of that enough knowledge about physiology to make me dangerous, and I'm stuck wondering what sort of treatable side effects come along with the increase in leukocytes (white blood cell, or, more specifically, B cell and T cell) that is the major defining characteristic of mono. Mono is viral, and we always hear "Feed a cold, but starve a fever," suggesting that I try to eat a lot (try that with a severely sore throat--ha!). I've been craving a bit more protein than usual, which could be logical...or not. And altogether, when it comes to viruses, one must simply trust that one's immune system knows best how to address the situation.

Comments

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Whether one's faith (and that's what much of it can be chalked up to, really) lies in multivitamins or the countless herbal supplements out there (talk about expensive urine), I think too many people fret needlessly about it and would do well to simply eat a varied, balanced diet.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree. The basics of nutritional advice have remained unchanged for some time: eat a varied, balanced diet. (although this message has also varied based on population-level nutritional patterns; for a long time, the message was actually "Eat More," not "Eat Less.") But I also think that certain circumstances (i.e. illness) merit a temporary change in eating habits. I'm just not sure what change is merited.

[faisdodo.livejournal.com]

i was always under the impression that overdosing on vitamin C is 'okay' because you basically just pee out whatever your body can't use.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

That's true for vitamin C and other water-soluble vitamins (although it is actually possible to overdose on C...but you'd have to go crazy with it). But why pay extra money just to have nutritious pee?

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

To prevent scurvy from afflicting your toilet?

[faisdodo.livejournal.com]

arrr! you never know...

[earthlingmike.livejournal.com]

You can get a kidney stone by overdosing on vitamin C.