For those of you that happen to watch TV on Monday nights, there is a show on CBS called ‘The Big Bang Theory’. Basically a couple ‘geeks’ live next door to a ‘hot girl’ and they hang out showing us the differences they two have.

In yesterdays episode Sheldon, the double doctorate and masters degree holder having a job in theoretical physics, goes shopping with the girl next door. At the market Sheldon interrupts her buying a multi-vitamin. He tells her that a multi-vitamin does have some benefits but your body  can only take in so much. Sheldon says ‘usually all you end up with is some really expensive urine.’

What a laugh. I have discussed this before in a previous post. Your body simply only takes what it needs. Many energy drinks on the market are full of Vitamin Bs and of course caffeine. since Caffeine makes you urinate, you go to the bathroom quickly after drinking an energy drink. You now see that your pee is an ultraviolet yellow. This is how quickly your body has removed all these excess vitamins from your body.

Vitamins need only be supplemented when you are deficient in them! There has NEVER been a gain documented (that i have read) that has come from someone taking more vitamins than needed. Well, this also goes for proteins and many other things, but people still feel the need to supplement there too. Most vitamins are made by our bodies already. Guess what we need in order to make these vitamins? In most cases MINERALS! Basically eating the right food will get you all the vitamins your need which your body doesn’t make and everything you need to make these vitamins. Now, make sure you do a little research here because you need Sunlight on your skin to make Vitamin D.

So lets talk about a popular Vitamin that your body can’t make, Vitamin C. Now lets look at a small problem we may have if we are taking a supplement or multi-vitamin. People seem to think that Vitamin C prevents and cures colds and they love to take when they are sick. I will add here that there is no real proof here that Vitamin C can be used for preventative maintenance and that Vitamin C has never shortened the duration of a cold. It has only ever reduced cold occurrences in really active people in cold climates. Now, the daily recommended dosage of Vitamin C is about 100mg, which is very easy to get. Having some type of fruit and/or vegetable for lunch and dinner will almost always satisfy this. I have seen tests that show that about 300mg a day is an optimal dosage and shows gains in the human body. Again, this is not a difficult feat to obtain. Just look up what you ate yesterday and look up all the Vitamin C content.

Now, I know that Vitamin C has a history of debate over dosage, but this may be the first time you have read such information.

Lets look up a couple popular products with Vitamin C to look at this. First is Airborne a dissolvable tablet that is supposed be taken at first symptoms of a cold and taken to really knock down the length of a cold. Airborne has 1,000mg of vitamin C per tablet. Next I chose the ONE A DAY ‘ACTIVE’ multi-vitamin which has 120mg of Vitamin C. Emergen-C which also has 1,000mg of Vitamin C (I’ve seen numerous commercials on this lately so i wanted to include it). And lastly I am going to use a generic name vitamin C supplement by itself. These range from 350-1000mg, so I will pick the popular 500mg one. Now the Tolerable Upper Intake of Vitamin C is 2,000mg which is set by the government based on testing. Now the generic vitamin and the ONE A DAY are both just single supplements. Since I picked the generic 500mg, you are probably in little harm here. So even with a normal day of meals and you end up taking in 100-300mg of Vitamin C on your own, you are in the safe zone here. However the 2 marketed at ‘colds’ and ‘energy’ not only give you a single dose of 1,000mg that combined with a healthy diet puts you border-lined to much, but they both recommend taking 2-4 of these daily or ‘as desired’. Are you kidding me? Vitamin C is TOXIC in large doses. just following the instructions on Airborne could lead you to taking in 4,000mg of Vitamin C, double the recommended max! Vitamin C is an antioxidant as it sits. However, in high levels it turns into possibly making free radicals in your system. It makes you over urinate which is not good, can lead to kidney stones, birth defects, and can stop the assimilation of B12. Well there goes your ‘energy’.

Supplements are exactly what they are called, supplements. They should be there to supplement your need for vitamins at certain times when you are not getting the vitamins you need. As discussed before, minerals would qualify as more important than vitamins anyway. Assess what you need and take those vitamins. If your body could actually assimilate synthetics as it could food, then there would be food replacement pills! But there isn’t, and there wont be any time soon! Buy supplements as needed and make sure you keep in the ranges you are supposed to get.