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Coach Santana
Is there a “real” difference in high end “bio-available “ vitamin & mineral supplements or are standard supplements from GNC, COSCO, etc sufficient?
I think I’ve had good results with Nutrilite Double XX vitamins BUT they are relatively pricey at $70 a month (and it is Amway... so there is that 😜)
Difficult to say without independent testing. What are you defining as "good results?
Within 2-3 weeks of taking, my hair and finger / toe nails start growing like crazy. I view this as a generalized proxy measure for cell activity and So it would aid in growth and recovery.
Are you having brittle hair, skin, and nails? How much protein are you consuming?
Ha! No hair : yes. Brittle hair? No. 50 yr old male, 220#, 200 grams protein / day, about half from supplements.
I did something novel and spent more time searching the site...
I think I have the answer...
Protein and Barbell Training | Robert Santana
Sounds like you are getting plenty but get that split to 75/25 if you can. Lots of micronutrients (e.g. zinc, b12, iron) in food sources that you don't want to miss out on. Glad you found your answer in the oddest of places.
Thanks Coach
Robert, with the exception of actual deficiencies it has been my understanding that supplements of the vitamin and mineral type really show no benefits to strength, health or longevity. Could I have your informed opinion of that?
I generally agree with that. The problem is twofold. First, if you are eating enough carbohydrates, proteins, and fats you should get a wide assortment of micronutrients. The flipside is that the amount in the raw food may not be the amount absorbed in the human body. Various factors like heat, sunlight exposure, cold, fiber content of the food, and protein content of the food can all impact the amount of a given vitamin or mineral you actually absorb. The RDAs, AIs, and ULs account for this and for some nutrients will overshoot the recommended amount (e.g. niacin equivalents (NE)). The other half of this goes back to the fundamental issue with all nutrition research on human subjects: actual intake of food outside of the intervention is not measured in a reliable way. Even if you look at inpatient feeding studies, the duration is too short to draw meaningful conclusions. So the question as to whether you should or should not take a multivitamin or multimineral really depends on the quality of your diet and on whether you actually see results from taking them even if those results may be placebo (because why not? Still a desirable result isn't it?). The questions then become:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alchemist
1) Are they harmful?
2) Can you afford them?
First, megadosing A,D, and E can have potentially toxic effects. In fact, a random factoid that I learned back in my undergraduate studies, was that humans should not consume polar bear liver because the vitamin A content is so high that it can lead to a lethal case of hypervitaminosis A. Since polar bear liver is not the most common thing to get a hold of, it's not a major public health concern. Vitamin D and E also get stored in the fat cells (whereas A gets stored primarily in the liver) so it is unlikely that we will get hypervitaminosis from those vitamins consuming most commonly available foods. Now, if you start megadosing supplements the risk increases.
Minerals, on the other hand, have a different issue. They tend to compete with each other for absorption. So for instance, if you take magnesium with milk and the calcium content of the milk exceeds the supplemented magnesium, you will absorb the calcium and not the magnesium. Same deal with most other minerals. Iron is the one to be careful for the most if you are male or female that doesn't menstruate. This is because iron is considered a "one way nutrient" meaning that we do not have an effective method of excreting it other than giving blood of menstruating (if you are female). So it is generally advised that men and females that do not menstruate give blood a couple of times per year to clear out their iron stores.
So to answer your question, it has been my experience that if macro balance is achieved, microbalance is likely at a good place if the weight on the bar is going up and muscle mass increases. That isn't to say more may not help, rather that any added benefit is not likely to be perceived by the lifter, which leads to my questions above. If you don't mind spending the money and they aren't causing harm, then I won't fault you for taking them.
