Vitamins are determined by their biological functions, not by chemical structure. Compounds which satisfy the functions of a particular vitamin are known as vitamers of that vitamin. For example cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin are both vitamers of B12 despite being chemically distinct.
It's true that some vitamers are more easily metabolized by certain routes than others. In the example I gave, methylcobalamin is superior when it comes to oral supplements.
Also if you can, try taking a multivitamin without minerals, and take a mineral supplement separately. A lot of minerals interfere with one another's absorption along with that of many vitamins (zinc, calcium, and iron should all be taken away from each other and from vitamin supplements).
I read somewhere that a large part of the "quality" of vitamin pills come down to how crumbly they are. Small dense vitamins are so good. Big pills are.
Not a shill, have Crohns so can get absorbsion issues with food/nutrients. This stuff noticeably helps over a multivitamin pill... maybe placebo but I absolutely feel the difference.
Look, I can write a bullshot article telling you that you need to take vitamine frroorofrom and then offer to sell it to you for $20 a pill. If you want to believe it and spend your money, good for me!
On the other hand the $5 a jar multivits cover all your actual supplement needs.
There is a concept of bioavailbility. Some vitamins & minerals are more absorbable than others, and if you have issues you can be asorbing or converting certain ones not as well as you may think:
Also do we know all the nutrients people need and amount also considering what is optimally healthy, genetics, age, medical conditions? Definitely not.
Terry Wahls, the doctor who claims she reversed her MS through diet would only partly agree. In her book 'The Wahls Protocol', she spells a diet regime out from a functional medicine perspective.
Unfortunately for people with MS (like myself) she’s wrong. Her original experience is in fact quite “normal” for the behaviour of MS. It gets significantly worse, then significantly better, then worse, etc etc.
Her study that then followed up did find a positive result, but had a very small sample size, nowhere near large enough for a highly variable condition like MS. Drug companies have to spend billions running 5-10-20 year studies with 1000’s of participants to verify the efficacy of their MS treatments for good reason.
A recent Cochrane review on diet interventions for MS which references her study (amongst others obviously) concluded that “at present there is insufficient evidence to determine whether supplementation with antioxidants or other dietary interventions have any impact on MS related outcomes.”
The biggest giveaway that a medical treatment is snake oil in my experience is when it comes with a book for sale for £20 on Amazon.
Meta: I deeply appreciate this article explicitly stating "The evidence is current to May 2019." It's so hard for noobs like me to sherlock this stuff.
> supplementation with antioxidants or other dietary interventions
Those other interventions are macronutrients, to benefit your mitochondria. I'll go back and look, but I don't recall Wahls saying much about antioxidants.
FWIW, I believe, but cannot prove, that Wahl's advice to resume eating meat, esp organ meat, benefitted me. I had been working towards vegetarian and suffering terribly from inflammation and autoimmune stuff. I have no idea how or why. I only know that whenever I resume my prior dietary habits (more carbs, less meat), I decline. My fat and produce consumption has remained more or less constant. A lot coconut oil, olive oil, and every big leafy green that fits into the blender.
