I like to think we are not kidding ourselves when it comes to vitamins. Or supplements. Although I find that I can only commit to one or two at any given time, otherwise I fear becoming someone who must live like an ill person, enslaved to one of those days-of-the-week pill boxes. My father, who is 88, has not one but many days-of-the-week pill boxes and he carries them about with him, rattling as he goes. But he is nearly ninety. I am a sprightly [text redacted] and shouldn’t have to do that yet.
At the moment I am committed to two supplements: magnesium glycinate to help me sleep and glucosamine & chondroitin complex for my cracking knees.
(N.B if you are considering a magnesium supplement for sleep, it has to be the glycinate - unless my pharmacist was messing me about - as that’s the one for sleep. Magnesium Citrate is for migraines.)
Ohh but then, I think, we are getting into cough and cold season. Perhaps I should take a daily Zincovit. And when it starts getting dark a daily spritz of a Vitamin D spray is only sensible, surely. Then I remember that pot of collagen powder that I slacked off on before the summer and then before I know it I’m in Holland & Barratt, snatching digestive enzymes and milk thistle and St John’s Wort off the shelves in a sort of blind panic and then having to spend a good half an hour of every day choking down huge pills, eyes watering, contemplating subscribing to Athletic Greens, now completely deaf to the inner cynic who strongly suspects this is all horseshit.
But is it, though? Is it horseshit? I’m pretty sure the magnesium and the glucosamine work. Shall I do the vitamin D? And the Zioncovit? Or will all the vitamins and supplements eventually cancel each other out?
How about you? Are you a crazy rattling pill box lady, or do you just cold swim every day? Please leave a comment to amuse and inform the group in the handy box below.
This is so late but hope okay. I’ve taken them all. I think they do help if you have a deficiency, but then how to you know which one it is? I’ve been looking for blood tests for mineral and vitamin deficiencies and don’t really know where to go.
The ones which have worked -
- evening primrose oil (think starflower also would) in mega doses prescribed by a breast consultant when I had terrible hormonal problems after having kids, fake mastitis, night sweats. Years of it and then gone.
- zinc when I have a slight whiff of body odour (it’s amazing)
- magnesium for sleep and also when I have terrible neck pain from stress, had latter for years and then by day 2 it had gone
- l-glutathione for long covid, although that’s a short boost only
- CoQ10 after a blood test showed it was so low I should pretty much have expired during long covid - much more energy
On long covid, for the poor ladies commenting - I was prescribed low dose Losartan by (another) consultant and it’s the thing which got me back to normal. But it seems everyone’s different. The electrical equine cuff did not work.
Great to have a good laugh. I think all the pill popping is rubbish but I do cold swim every morning! Which is more crazy?