Word of advice: don't take vitamins ADEK without advice from a physician for extended periods or in high doses. These are fat soluble so you can have too much of them.
This should be reiterated: Please consult a professional before drastically altering the chemical composition of your ephemeral body.
I know it sounds downright crazy, but it's possible that someone who's studied medicine and practiced it for years, actually knows better than random anonymous forum users.
>>I know it sounds downright crazy, but it's possible that someone who's studied medicine and practiced it for years, actually knows better than random anonymous forum users.
As the link in the OP actually denotes, no, that's not always the case.
Bodybuilders and performance trainers - as well as Soviet Union sports scientists - have known for decades that Vitamin D supplementation is vital. This has been rejected by a significant number of general practitioners and other medical experts who are and were anti-supplement simply out of rote thinking.
Yes, people should be tested for their levels. But this simply isn't feasible for poor people, and telling them to get serum tests for Vitamin D before taking a lower-bound amount of the cheap supplement from the grocery store is ridiculous.
I don’t think that the drug regimes of the Soviet Olympic Teams should be held up as a good example to follow - a lot of damage was done to a lot of people. On a related note, the Russian team just got banned for trying that crap again.
The difference is that when medics suggest a certain amount of vitamin D as optimal, they do it because they have done the research. When bodybuilders do it, it's just an article of faith for them and not something you should follow.
It is always possible to arrive at a correct conclusion through entirely incorrect reasoning.
Or, as the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day.
Unfortunately very few doctors keep learning and try to be up to date with the current research (I don't blame them, they are extremely overworked). Especially their diet advices are so laughable.
I had a friend 10 years ago, diagnosed with lupus (living in the NYC/Tri-state area). Her doctor told her, "Don't take supplements. Just eat a balance diet and you will be alright. Supplements interfere with your body's chemical balance." So patients have to read up on and talk with others to avoid quacks like that one.
Dermatologists still prescribe antibiotics for acne. For some specializations, it's all about the maintaining the status quo.
Truth be told, doctors still don't know much about IBS and/or Crohn's. Or even conditions like rosacea and/or dermatitis. Mark my words, better gut flora/microbiome will be the cure for these conditions in the near future and doctors will contest this up until the evidence is too loud to ignore.
Unless you have your own organic garden this is a pipe dream.
A fruit or vegetable that have traveled thousand of miles before being delivered to you has almost no vitamins left in it and probably didn't have much to start with considering soil depletion.
I believe (emphasis on believe) that supplementation is necessary even if you "eat right".
This advice is not useful when physicians exist that will tell you a non-useful thing--or even a wrong thing--according to current consensus among nutrition specialists, because nutrition is not their specific area of expertise.
For instance, overdose quantities may be different among the various vitamers of a specific vitamin. Your physician will advise you not to supplement ADEK because people have overdosed on retinol or ergocalciferol, whereas you can eat carotene until you literally turn orange, and 15-30 minutes of daily midday sunlight can make 10000 to 20000 IU each time.
The danger of vitamin D oversupply (even as cholecalciferol) is calcium related, which is why you have to balance it with vitamin K (as menatetrenone), but it's called vitamin K from the German for "clotting factor", so then your doctor worries about clots. But vitamin E (as RRR-alpha-tocopherol) is also an anticoagulant. It's almost as if you have to consider every vitamin as just one part of a balanced system of nutrition...
So in order to give you good advice, your doctor would have to have detailed and intimate knowledge of your current nutritional state and your physiology, but we only have 15 minutes and I don't want a malpractice suit for giving you the wrong advice, so just f' it and give 'em the boilerplate: "You don't need to supplement. Just eat a balanced diet with plenty of dark green vegetables, and get some exercise."
So there you go. I just saved you a copay, unless your particular physician has an interest in nutrition-based medicine.
Don't get your vitamins from the corner pharmacy or the grocery store. Most of them will use the cheapest chemical that technically qualifies as a particular vitamin. You need specific vitamers if you intend to exceed the general recommendations. Do your own research, and remember that you can damage your own body by doing something stupid with it. If you consult a physician, make sure they have enough training and education to be credible with respect to nutrition and biochemistry before you fork over money for an office visit. You can read the same articles and papers that they read, if you are motivated enough to do so.
