4.6 Vitamins You Should be Taking

By Tommy Leung on 10/11/2010 in Fitness

Firstly, I’m going to admit that I cannot swallow pills with water. Be it prescribed medicine, over the counter stuff like aspirin or vitamins, or any other supplement in convenient pill form. Size didn’t really matter either. Certainly, those giant NyQuil capsules are no good but, neither were the tiny Dimetapp pills–those were like a 50/50 gamble. My body considered swallowing pills unnatural and refused to do it.

But, this wasn’t a problem of physical inability. I can down meat like a boa constrictor. Chewing? Ha! Who needs to do that? I thought whole foods were healthier anyway. This was a psychological problem. Nonsensical and irrational: the prerequisites for psychological issues. But, I am somewhat of a smart guy. I did figure out a way to outsmart myself.

All I had to do was take the pill with food! Yea, okay, I know, that doesn’t take a genius to figure out. I should have probably tried that a long time ago but, I didn’t. As I experimented with my pill consumption through food, I discovered that I didn’t need much solid food to transport the pill. In fact, yogurt could do the trick. Pretty much anything that wasn’t as liquid as water would work: a cracker, grape, baby carrot, or piece of cheese. So all those pills that say “take on an empty stomach” or “between meals” get’s a tiny bit of food along with it. That’s right, I’m a rule breaker.

Where’s My Jetsonsesque Food Pills?

It’s not 2062 so I guess we are still 52 years away from flying cars, Rosie the robot, and meals as pills. Today we only have hybrid cars, Roomba the robot, and vitamins from our food as pills. We’re close!

Having solved my pill consumption problem, I proceeded to try a whole slew of them! No, I wasn’t taking every drug under the sun. I don’t like drugs. My health philosophy is to avoid as many drugs as possible. I don’t take cold medicine to preempt a cold. My Dad think’s I’m insane for doing so. I think he’s insane for taking drugs so easily. Each to his own.

So, no drugs. Instead, I tried a bunch of vitamins. I am in fairly good health. I am also in my 20′s so I’m practically invincible. This is not the age that I’m susceptible to most illnesses. Even if I was running my body into the ground, the symptoms would be mild. And since there’s so many sick people in the good ole United States of America, normal would consist of symptoms everyone has. And if everyone has them, it must be fine!

The logic works. Too bad it isn’t actually fine.

I’m naturally a health enthusiast. I think it has much to do with my competitive nature. I always want to be slightly better than the guy next to me. A little silly perhaps but, it keeps me on my toes. It leads me to learn about a lot of topics including human wellness. Using myself as a guinea pig I have settled on four vitamins/supplements that everyone should taking.

When in Doubt, Bomb Everything

If you are like the majority the American public then you are probably deficient in a multitude of vitamins and minerals. It’s not entirely our fault. Our food is just crap and our government wouldn’t know nutritious food if they served it at the White House. Our benevolent gods of food at the FDA are also quite inept on the subject of human nutrition. The staple of the food pyramid is better suited for cattle than humans. But really, cattle shouldn’t even eat that way. So, it’s suited for no living thing.

Lucky for you, I am not trying to convince you to change your diet. I will concede that you like grains, bread, and starch. Fair enough. Just know that grains are only slightly more nutritious than cardboard relative to meat, vegetables, and fruits. Because the staple of the American diet is a nutritional void, it would behoove all of us to take a multivitamin.

Multivitamins aren’t particularly costly relative to their benefits. The human body is a streamlined machine. Give it what it needs and it’ll take care of you. The alternative is to get sick and go to the doctor for medicine. I hate doctors. Not the person but the experience. There are no healthy people in doctors’ waiting rooms. It’s a little depressing.

Not all multivitamins are created equal. Bluntly: some suck. You don’t want the multivitamin that only barely meets the recommended daily allowances. RDA amounts are sufficient to keep you barely alive but, not so much if you intend to actually live a full life. So aim for multivitamins that would make those who like to follow official government recommendations faint.

I recommend Now Foods Adam for men and Now Foods Eve for women. Not only are these potent multivitamins but, they are cutely named them Adam and Eve! I can’t be the only person who finds that adorable.

My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

If there is one vitamin that I am almost sure 99% of all office-bound, working adults are deficient in, it is vitamin D. Being that most of us are indoors in our climate controlled offices, we don’t see the sun much. Apparently, our children are terribly deficient as well. Is no one playing outside anymore? The body’s only means of getting vitamin D is through skin exposure to the sun. A tiny fraction comes from fortified foods–fortified because we’ve pumped these vitamins into them like milk.

Most of us also run away from the sun like we’re vampires. Sunscreen on every inch of our body as if we’ll burst into flames otherwise. This is great for the manufacturers of sunblock but, not so much for your health. Yes, I did just say that. I’m not oblivious to skin cancer but, I am not convinced a little sun exposure is detrimental.

We evolved in sunny places and sunscreen is a modern invention. It would be rather ridiculous that any contact with the sun would result in skin cancer. Paleolithic man and woman walked around half naked in the sun all day. It would put the theory of evolution in question if the species of humans that survived were not the ones who could tolerate the sun.

Regardless of your feelings on the matter, I am not here to argue for or against the idea that sun exposure causes skin cancer. I am arguing the vitamin D is good for you and helps in reducing the incidence of at least 17 other types of cancer. I don’t want any cancer any more than you do. Vitamin D has also been found to be able to cure a whole host of incurable diseases and improve physical performance. So, you want to have enough of it.

Since we aren’t getting sufficient vitamin D from sun exposure due to working indoors most of the day and a conscious avoidance of the sun, that only leaves the option of supplementation! The RDA for vitamin D is a paltry 200 IU. Granted, vitamin D can be toxic if too much of it is consumed because the body can’t get rid of it. This is only a problem if we orally consume vitamin D but, not if we were getting it through sun exposure. Your body will stop converting the sun’s warm rays to usable vitamin D once it’s had enough.

By taking vitamin D in pill form, we bypass the body’s natural means of operation. Nonetheless, 200 IU of vitamin D is barely enough to keep your systems running. The Vitamin D Council, a not for profit group of concerned citizens and scientists who believe people are needlessly dying or suffering from vitamin D deficiencies, recommends 5000 IU a day.

Companies do sell bottles of vitamin D3 in 5000 IU potency. You can also get them in 2000, 1000, 500, and 200 IU. I recommend Now Foods Vitamin D-3 5000 IU. Now Foods recommends you take one pill every couple of days. I ignore that and take one a day. I’ve taken as much as 10,000 IU a day for a short period. It takes an incredible amount of abuse to reach toxic levels and vitamin D is not addictive. It does look very bright and happy like sunshine in a pill.

If you are shopping around for vitamin D, make sure you get the D3 variety. That is the form of vitamin D that the body can use. Others like D2 are not as easily used by the body. Your skin creates vitamin D3 so there is little reason not to mimic your body as best as you can.

Get Fat, It’s Good for You

Here is one place where mainstream information is correct. Omega-3 fats are good for you. They are generally sold as fish oil due to the generally high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in salmon and other fish. Omega-3 is an essential fat like omega-6. Essential because the only way to get them is by consuming it. Your body cannot create it on its own from other sources.

Omega-6 may be essential but, we are getting more than our fair share of them. The way most of our meats are raised–on grains and corn–causes them to have higher levels of omega-6 than omega-3. The optimal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 is somewhere between 1:1 and 1:4–the lower the better. This is what our bodies have evolved to like.

Omega-3′s are anti-inflammatory. Why does this matter? Virtually all modern illnesses are a problem of inflammation at it’s very core. They all have different names that you’ll hear in any episode of House. Again, I’m not trying to convince you to stop eating grains but, grains happens to be a major player in creating inflammation in the body. Sorry, I didn’t create the rules.

In a healthy body, the immune system goes to attack foreign invaders to keep us healthy. This is all fine and we need our immune system to do this. However, the immune system will sometimes go rogue and start attacking the body in general. It really isn’t the immune system’s fault. It doesn’t WANT to kill us. It’s goal is to protect us.

The short of what happens is that certain foods we eat cause damage to the gut wall–grains, dairy, and legumes in particular. A damaged gut wall does not function correctly and so virtually anything you consume can now escape into your body where it doesn’t belong and where your immune system does not want it. This is a condition known as leaky gut. Now that you have crap floating around in your body where it shouldn’t, your immune system is on alert every where: inflammation.

Obviously, inflammation can be mild or strong. The worse the inflammation the more likely you are to eventually develop more symptomatic illnesses. It is entirely not fun. What you want to do is to heal your gut and not eat things that will damage it in the first place. But, if you refuse to give up the pasta there is little you can do outside of merely controlling the inflammation with anti-inflammatory agents like omega-3′s.

It is important to note that flax seed oil touts omega-3′s as well. However, the fatty acid from flax seed, hemp, and other non-meat sources are of the ALA variety. Most of the health benefits of omega-3′s that you hear about are from the EPA and DHA fatty acids. Those are the ones you really want. ALA is also not as easily used by the body.

It is also important to look at the labels of omega-3 supplements. I suggest you find an omega-3 product that contains as close to 1000 mg of EPA/DHA per pill as you can. The label will list how much of each is in the pill. Most do not come remotely close to 1000mg per pill. GNC’s Triple Strength Fish Oil is good as well as Now Foods Ultra Omega-3. While GNC’s product is more potent, Now Foods is more cost effective per pill.

You’re Full of Bacteria

The problem of leaky gut is a serious one. Being strong, healthy, and disease-free is particularly difficult with a leaky gut. There is nothing you eat that doesn’t first need to go through the digestive process and no amount of vitamins that you ingest will do you any good if your gut can’t process them. An impaired gut is an impaired human being.

Our gut is home to trillions of bacteria. Some good, some bad. We want more of the good guys. The good bacteria will help heal a leaky gut and keep the bad bacteria at bay. There is essentially a turf war going on inside your gut at all times. As long as the good guys are winning, everything is fine. Unfortunately, our modern diet is not aiding the good guys in this battle.

But, we can help them out by consuming probiotics. The popular probiotic is Lactobacillus acidophilus or sold simply as acidophilus. Other popular probiotics are Propionibacterium freudenreichii, shermanii, and Bifidobacterium bifidum. It’s all Latin to me too! All we need to know is that these incredibly long and odd named fellas are good for us.

I don’t really have a favorite probiotic supplement. I am currently taking Now Foods Acidophilus and Bifidus 8 Billion. I’ve also tried Now Foods Gr8-Dophilus and CVS brand acidophilus. I’m of the persuasion that the higher the sheer number of bacteria and diversity of bacteria the better.

This is Your .6

I did promise 4.6 vitamins that you should be taking and I’ve already discussed 4 of them. Here are your .6. These are two product specific supplements that I like for gut health and physical performance.

Candida Clear

Candida Clear is a supplement from Now Foods designed to take care of excessive Candida in the body. While Candida is naturally occurring in the body, problems arise when it starts to take over because of an upset in the balance of bacteria–more reason to take those probiotics! Candida then starts running wild and can release 70 different toxins into the body. Awesome, I guess it’s a party.

Candida will do bad things to every part of your body once it gets loose. The more popular symptoms of Candida are yeast infections but, it may also be the perpetrator or co-conspirator in a host of other maladies like irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, food allergies, headaches, acne, low sex drive, and mental health.

Sounds terrible? Quite.

Candida is primarily caused by sugar, processed foods, and grains as well as antibiotics. Antibiotics indiscriminately kill all bacteria in the body so that is bound to disturb the bacterial balance. We know what sugar is and we should avoid that like the plague if we can. We don’t need it and it does no good to our body. Processed and refined foods are almost everything we eat in modern America. Most, if not all, grain-based foods we eat are processed and refined to some degree and they do harm to the gut.

Once the gut is damaged, anything can find it’s way into your body. In the case of Candida, it is Candida that leaves the gut and enters your body causing havoc everywhere. Candida Clear will help you fight the Candida but, you still need to fix your gut to prevent it from coming back. You could stop eating grains, dairy, and legumes or just continually take this supplement to minimize the symptoms. I guess that’s up to you!

CON-CRET

The lovely people at BodyBuilding.com sent me a sample of CON-CRET in a recent order from their store. I have never taken any form of creatine until I tried CON-CRET. CON-CRET is concentrated creatine. With this product you don’t need to do any loading or cycling and there are no negative side effects like cramping, water retention, bloating, or diarrhea. They also claim to be 59 times more potent than regular creatine monohydrate. Basically, this is super creatine.

I was unsure of creatine as a supplement many years ago. I have since read enough about it and know enough about what it does that I’m not concerned with it’s health risks. I don’t believe there are any health risks. No studies show that creatine is dangerous and the science behind it doesn’t point to any obvious dangers.

Creatine is naturally occurring in the body and is indispensable in the body’s process of using ATP for energy. You probably remember seeing those three letters together in Biology 101 and promptly removed it from memory after finals to make room for more important stuff. Here’s a little picture refresher on how ATP works. Think of ATP like a rechargeable battery. It stores energy until we need to use it and releases that energy as ADP when we do. This is where creatine enters the picture.

Your body will recharge it’s ATP stores after use. Creatine helps ATP recharge faster. The faster you can recharge, the more energy you can expend. That’s how creatine allows athletes–or anyone–to work longer and harder. The longer and harder you can work, the bigger, stronger, and faster you can get. This is not how anabolic steroids work in case any one thinks they are similar. Steroids literally make you grow by acting as testosterone. You know, that awesome hormone that makes men manly. Of course, it’s not just grow when you go the route of confusing your body with a mysterious source of testosterone. Messing around with a foundational hormone is a lot trickier than merely consuming something that gives you more energy–if you drink coffee you know the drill.

I went through my sample pack of CON-CRET and loved it so I bought some more. I have to admit that I didn’t use BodyBuilding.com for that purchase because Amazon had it for significantly cheaper–sorry guys! This rarely happens. There are virtually no supplements that BodyBuilding.com doesn’t sell for the best price anywhere. Any of the other vitamins and supplements I discussed are priced best at BodyBuilding.com.

I never used creatine in the past because of all the work that was involved: loading and cycling. Of course, the known side effects of water retention wasn’t particularly appetizing–not that I like cramping, bloating, or diarrhea either. The effort involved with creatine monohydrate was not worth the benefits in my opinion. CON-CRET is literally as simple as popping a pill 1 hour before a work out. I can do that.

CON-CRET recommends 1 pill per 100lbs of body weight. I don’t listen to them. I just simply take 1 pill. I’m way heavier than 100lbs but not near 200lbs either. I can’t take half a pill so 1 pill it is. You could get the powder form of CON-CRET as well but, that takes away the convenience for me. One pill makes a noticeable enough of a difference.

Go Live Optimally

Hopefully, I’ve motivated you to look into your health! I am pretty confident that the 4 vitamins and supplements I’ve suggested will benefit everyone. But, I am not your doctor, a medical professional, or a nutritionist. I only know as much as I need to make sure that I am as healthy as I can be. Naturally, a lot of what works for me has overlap with others. We are all people in the end. We share a lot of similarities!

Obviously, whether you choose to live an optimally healthy life or not is no skin off my back but, I would like more people to be healthy. The obesity problem in America is frightening. I’ve been weary of it since I was a teenager and that has played a huge role in keeping me out of that statistic and learning as much about health and fitness as I can.

I encourage you to do the same. Go live optimally!