Training & Nutrition - Vitamins

Anyone have any opinions on vitamins? More specifically, a B-Complex vitamin. I remember reading that thr B vitamins help reduce free radicals in your body after you workout. Anyone subscribe to this? Feel strongly against it? Really never considered it?

If you have a healthy and balanced diet, you will get all of the vitamins that you need -- in fact, all of the vitamins that your body can actually use -- in your food. You'll just pee out the rest.

Not that taking vitamins will hurt you, it's just that, in most cases. they won't do anything. On the other hand, taking a multivitamin might be a good thing, particularly when your diet varies in the winter and you start eating more processed and preserved foods... And I can see how a vitamin D supplement might be useful for the winter.

Other than that, you're probably making a drug company richer for only marginal -- if any -- results.

[If you're wondering, this is what I've heard from my physician and nutritionist.]

I seem to do OK without them. I think they are only of use to people who basically live on McDonalds sh*t. If you have a proper diet, you simply don't need them.

This is the never ending story of nutrition. I would have to say that IF you eat that balanced diet leave the vitamins on the shelf. However, not many of us today have the time to buy and prepare foods for that balanced diet. Not to mention what nutrition is reduced or loss in cooking process.
Vitamins taken in normal balanced amounts could not really hurt. Vitamins A,C,E as well as CO-Q10 are great to control oxidation cell damage.

One of my favorite web sites is http://www.junkscience.com

Its basically a daily collection of headlines and links about health and environment scares. And what it adds up to is: This week caffeine good, last week caffeine bad etc. etc.

A quote I remember (I'll see if I can find the source) "People who take vitamins ahave the most expensive pee in the world"

Now, that said, I pop vitamins like smarties (M&Ms to our colonial cousins) But I just like pills. If someone has taken all the trouble to develop a good pill, its the least I can do to take it.

I remain unconvinced about the free radical stuff and anti-oxidants. We're living longer and healthier than ever before and yet we are obsessed with our health. Doctors talk of a new phenomenon - "the worried well". Health has become like a religion, gyms are our churches. We feel more guilty about gaining weight and skipping gym than we do about shagging the guy from the office or being *****y about colleagues.

I include myself in these symptoms btw, I'm obsessed with training and weight and I'm a slave ot my training schedules and mileage. but to get of my rant and back on topic . . .

I believe research is either conflicting or insufficient to show any great benefit in extra vitamin consumtion for healthy people who have no deficiencies in their normal diet.




But I still take them :rolleyes:

stew

I can't find the source of the quote, but a google search on "most expensive urine in the world" threw up lots of results. It seems to have become folklore

Stew

As long as vitamins are not taken in large / toxic amounts your body will absorb them. Balance is the key word here.

Vitamins Good

Ride Enriched
Pat