Sometimes I profile or tell you about a company I have used or a product I think is interesting.
I don't receive any type of reimbursement from the companies I profile, unless I have indicated I do (and so far, I never have)
I do use vitamin and other types of supplements on occasion. There is a wonderful book that exists in many editions called:
Balch's Prescription for Nutritional Healing
It is in its fifth edition, and has a great deal of really valuable information. It's about fourteen dollars on Amazon.com and may be had for less than that at www.half.com on occasion. The earlier editions are also quite helpful, and I still have one. This book talks about correct and careful supplementation of vitamins and minerals on a disorder by disorder basis. Have dry scaly skin ? Then, a zinc supplement could be in order, for example. There is also a Spanish version of the book also available on Amazon.
In an era where our unimpeded access to our primary physician could be more and more tenuous, then staying healthy using careful supplementation as a strategy could be one modality to staying healthy.
In addition to reading carefully and following the guidelines in a variety of disorders, you might find that your grocery store or your Wal-Mart doesn't have all the supplements suggested I use taurine, coenzyme q-10, and magnesium glycinate, for example, and these are not always easy to find, especially in the doses I use. The vitamin shop by mail I have been using is not only reasonable, but has a lot of the unusual things I might choose to use. In addition, one of my sons needed to supplement biotin, but in the stores locally, they were flavored as a chewable natural cherry. He is allergic to cherries and so we needed to find a natural biotin flavored with orange or strawberry. Swanson Health Products had it, and everything else I have used lately. They also had them with significant discounts over vitamin shops and with expiration dates far into the future. (The expiration dates are not a hard and fast rule, but I try to obtain things with as long a shelf life as is reasonably possible.) Swanson also runs occasional specials where there is free postage. I was fortunate that for my last order, this was running.
This is a listing of some of its products are uses:
http://www.swansonvitamins.com/VitaminsAndSupplements
Certainly, your physician should be aware of any supplements or vitamins you take on a regular basis. Some of them interact with prescription or OTC medications. Some physicians don't believe that supplementation is necessary. However, I have seen great differences in patients who have found some type of supplement for something of which they were deficient. I have seen brown hair come back where gray was growing when zinc was supplemented. I have seen biotin grow longer hair in a person whose hair did not grow, as a simple side effect of the vitamin. I have seen apparent eczema clear on supplementation with zinc. I have seen improvements in people's vision when they supplemented specific products for improved vision. My own atrial fibrillation all but disappeared on supplementation with physician's permission, of taurine, conenzyme Q-10, and magnesium glycinate, and the discontinuation of Prilosec.
Certain disorders actually burn through more vitamins and minerals than normal, and it's natural to consider that some of us might need some supplementation while others might not. We are all individuals with differing genetic predilections to disease.
Remember that your physician should be the best historian on your health and what it is safe to supplement. If he isn't, it's time to locate someone with more of an interest in health maintenance rather than collecting your money when it's time for treatment. I assure you, that there are good physicians out there.
