Taking Vitamins

I had to go to the vitamin store today. Not for me. I don't take any medications, never have and never will unless my life depended on it. Aside from the standard and inexpensive multi vitamin tablet each morning I am chemical free. But Jane has been told that a B vitamin complex will help her reduce her migraines headaches or prevent acne (I can't remember which), she is almost out of them and as a result I headed fro a Vitamin supplement store just a few blocks from my home.

Buying vitamins is like buying a car. The same product in different forms exists in huge numbers, at very different prices and with claims about each one's effectiveness that are impossible to believe. Fortunately, I knew what I wanted to buy (I had the empty bottle from the last time I bought them) and did not have to compare guess, ask salespeople what to purchase etc. But still....the experience of buying vitamins is a challenging one. The claims on the labels are often as much subjective as objective, and the regulations for vitamins are more about minimum requirements than proof in advertising.

I found the shelf for Jane's B complex and noticed so many of them with variations in price that equaled more than 100%. No problem, I just purchased the same vitamin item as she has been using. When buying vitamins it is best to pick one and ask few questions, sort of like buying candy with a small child. If you ask the child for an opinion you'll get too many, and either never choose one or you'll wind up with more candy than you want.

Anyway, most physicians say that unless suffering from some vitamin deficiency, other than purchasing a multi vitamin you are wasting money when you purchase the others. The are basically peed out when used, as the body already has enough of the vitamin you are adding. And all those herbs and other new age remedies they sell and make grand claims for at a vitamin store are nothing more than big profit makers for the seller. I think people who buy those are just addicted....not the the chemical they buy but rather to an idea that swallowing a plant root extract is somehow natural and therapeutic.

Vitamins were not even discovered until the early 1900's and the first synthesized into vitamin pill didn't come into production and sale until 1937. That was with just one vitamin in a pill, vitamin C. Those multi vitamin pills we take today came after World War II, more as a marketing gimmick than for health reasons. So all throughout the history of the world humans have done just as well without the vitamin, mineral, herb and other medicinal drug cache we see at stores today. This is quite upsetting! We are being hoodwinked. Hmmmm I wonder if I can buy a pill to take to alleviate being hoodwinked.