Vitamins and minerals and herbs

[Sadmia]

I have read many articles and posts, and I'm wondering if my health problems are caused or exacerbated by lack of certain vitamins and minerals.

I had crohns in my youth, and wonder if absorption is poor, contributing to the unsuspected onset of diabetes, non specific high blood pressure, possible low iron, etc.

Does anyone have any opinions on this? Are manufactured multivitamins sufficient, any suitable for ointments,? And any ideas on restorative herbs, that are suitably helpful, and safe.

[andyswarbs]

I would opt for good nutrition from real whole foods that, by definition are packed with nutrients. So focus on foods in which the nutrients you think you are short of everytime over specific supplements. So for example, bromelain is an extract from pineapple, so if that is a nutrient you are short of - eat pinapple regularly. Doing it this way the body has a much better ability to avoid accidental overdosing. For another example broccoli is steaming with calcium!

Multivitamins are associated with reduced longevity, and part of that story is that if you extract a nutrient then you are essentially creating a processed "food." Bottom line, treat supplements with the same skeptiscim you treat drugs with. After all most are produced by the same drug companies!

This is not to say there are not times when it is useful to take supplements. I take B12 (very cheap from amazon) regularly, and recommend them for everyone regardless of diet, age, gender etc. But that is because in our hygenic society we don't get easy access to it. Most animals are fed B12 supplements in their feed. So if you are eating meat then you are consuming the same kind of supplements anyway, so why not cut out that expensive filter!

[Sadmia in reply to andyswarbs]

Not knowing what I am missing is part of the problem, pretty sure magnesium is one mineral, b vitamins come in marmite 😉 in small quantities. I have difficulty with nuts, just end up chewing into sawdust, phleh!

And if I have poor absobtion in my gut, where does that leave me...

Thanks for your suggestions.

[andyswarbs in reply to Sadmia]

A great feature of a whole-food plant-based diet is that you can almost guarantee, especially for someone with no illnesses, that all nutrition targets will be met.

You might want to try entering your meals into cronometer.com/, which is free to begin with. This will tell you whether what you are eating is meeting your nutrition targets. You can tune it for your weight, gender, exercise etc. Try it for a few meals - you have nothing to lose.