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Coincidence?

BritspinBritspin Posts: 1,655
Having written in previuos post that I don't believe in coincidence..& being wrong there...I have an interesting occurence oris it coincidence?

After attending lectures, reading articlesetc about nutrition it seems my daily multivitamin, cod liver oil supplemntation is a waste of money, only making expensive pee (not that expensive Holland 7 Barrett specials), so i thought I would experiment, for the first time in years I stopped taking my daily about a week ago..woke up this morning with a sore throat & slight headcold, & I am racing on Sunday of course. I only supplement on top of a good diet as mentined in other posts..so coincidence??? Oh and like most of you I guess I avoid anyone with cold symptoms like the plague, but I have not knowingly encountered anyone at work or socially that was suffering. So I have now restarted my vitamins...stable door & all that..anyone better qualified than me (or not) got comments, similar occurences?

Comments

  • TommiTriTommiTri Posts: 879
    I think whether you need multivitamins and cod liver oils etc is all based on the situation you are in. I personally think that most of the vitamins we take are a complete waste of time. That is because most people do have enough fruit,veg, fish etc to provide all the vitamins we need!

    But vitamin supplements can be really handy for people with deficient diets, the problem is these people are often the ones who don't consider properly what they eat so dont figure they might need a supplement! I used to take quite alot of vitamins etc when I was at university, when I knew my diet wasnt as good as it should be, now i think my diet is good enough that I dont need it.



    Another opinion i have on supplements is that I dont want to get a few more years down the line and look back and wish I had taken them just in case.



    Also, and this one may interest the people in some of the other threads struggling with meniscal tears, but I had a meniscal tear,posterior horn of the medial meniscus, I did it last august, but after 5-6 months, it was still bothering me. I had had the diagnosis confirmed on MRI, and was due an arthroscopy. But in about feb I started to take a large amount of glucosamine and chondroitin supplements, after a couple of months (april) I was due my arthroscopy, but my pain had gone, so I had to have another MRI to check what was going on, and the tear had healed.

    Could have been coincidence? could have been the supplements? I have seen many patients with meniscal tears that have taken years to heal, if at all. so........
  • BritspinBritspin Posts: 1,655
    And today I feel really crappy...
  • legalbeaglelegalbeagle Posts: 208
    I never take any suppliments but always follow some advice I was given years ago - if you are near people with a cold (best avoided but not always possible) - never eat sweet stuff. Sugar lowers your immunity. So, when you get to your friends house for dinner and they great you at the door with a streaming cold saying "oh it's nearly gone now and I'm sure you won't catch it"!! remember to give the pudding a miss
  • Have to agree with you there Britspin - the vitamins definately work.

    After arriving in UK in Oct - proceeded to get the mother of all colds(new climate and all that).

    Started on a multivit per day since then with no problems-until now that is.

    Ran out of tabs last week and didnt get to the shops for new ones - what happens? A nasty little bug snuck up and tapped me on the shoulder- or rather, tapped me on the throat!!

    So lesson learnt for me.

    My personal opinion is that when people are training alot(hmm...that counts me out), the fruit/veg that we have may not always be enough because of the constant pressure we are putting on our bodies- any extra assistance is worth the small cost.



  • tony btony b Posts: 57
    I take a cod liver oil supplement with glucosamine (buy from Holland & Barrett in bulk when they have their sale) and I think it helps my joints and also helps me get over injuries quicker (glucosamine helps there). I haven't come off it to see the difference - don't want to, really. I believe the articles I have read about the benefits, but I do know someone, a little older than me (and I'm almost 40) who did for a month or more, and noticed a big difference in his joints. He tried it to save money.
  • Tommy Tri - i'm one of the guys with the recent meniscul tear. I am interested to hear about your experiences.



    I want to do some more research before giving it a go but definitely like the idea of not going under the knife again thats for sure.



    I just had a look online for somewhere to buy them though and came up stuck - any recommendations?



    Thanks,



    Jack
  • TesseractTesseract Posts: 280
    I'm a strong believer in supplement use, however I guess the whole debate comes down to personal preference. The weight of sceintific studies seems to sway from one side to the other, but the majority are positive (which is why it's big news when a negative study comes out).



    If anyone wants a good read on supplementation, and why we should do it (as athletes) Michael Colgan is good, although sometimes a bit evangelical about it all.



    In short the argument is based around how much nutrition you get from your diet, and sadly, unless you are eating very fresh raw organic foods, you don't get much. Modern farming methods mean there is little nutrition in the food to start with, and the longer it is stored, and then cooked, the more the nutrition is destroyed.



    All the above being said you should still try to eat as healthy a diet as you can afford to eat as there are so many micronutrients that just don't go into suplements, and probably a number that haven';t even been identified!
  • BritspinBritspin Posts: 1,655
    At a recent lecture the presenter (a Loughborough professor whose name escapes me) says that this has not been proven...that fruit veg etc are not over depleted, his logic being that they produce the vitamins etc for their own use, not ours, so they would wither & die themselves if they were so poorly comprised....
  • TesseractTesseract Posts: 280
    I'm no professor, but I'm fairly confident it has been proven, and nutritional content is one of the main drivers of the whole organic movement (that and the levels of chemicals used by non-organic sources that haven't been tested over long term). Having said that there's always studies to contradict, but it comes down to the weight of evidence, and whether the studies are valid or not.



    I can't quote anything to back this up, as I leave it to others to do all the research, but the argument that the plants would die sounds like feeble bs to me - that's like saying battery hens are as healthy as free range, or farmed salmon is as good as Atlantic caught etc. Additionally it only addresses the nutrient content of the fresh produce, there is still the depletion caused by storage, and cooking.



    There's probably some irony here though, that the healthiest option is a diet, where there has been as little human intervention as possible (organic, fresh, raw etc.) and yet we are talking about taking chemicals to make us healthier/ fitter.



    At the end of the day I would love to have the time and money to be eating fresh organic local produce every day, but I don't so I top off my diet with supplements. Like I said in my first post it's personal preference. I believe it helps me recover and improve from my training, but it could all just be a placebo effect and I really am wasting my money
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