Daily tablets to take?

Rye93_2

Hi,

I was looking for some advice on taking daily tablets for general health. I just wanted to ask that if taking a multi vitamin and cod liver oil daily along with my prescribed medication would be benificial and a good start to improve my general wellbeing? 

If it helps, I currently take 50mg of sertraline a day, am a 30 year old male and not exactly the fitess, but not the worst. Just wanted to try something to improve and make some changes.

Any advice and input is welcome and suggestions.

Thanks

elsien

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/do-i-need-vitamin-supplements/

Personally, because we’re not allowed to give medical advice on here, for myself I prefer to get out and about and get the benefits of sunlight and exercise for my well-being rather than taking vitamin D, for example. But some people will be vitamin D deficient at this time of year and for them there are clear benefits - it’s very much a personal circumstances thing. 

Obviously, if you have any questions about multivitamins and your prescribed medication, you should check that with your GP. 

Multivitamins have a place, but there are other things that you can do to improve your general health and well-being, with regards to diet and exercise. Taking a vitamin tablet on its own isn’t enough. 

fatbelly

Again, not sure what we're allowed to say.

In an ideal world you would discuss this with your GP, they would run tests to see what your status was regarding levels of various vitamins, minerals and other markers, and would prescribe any tablets needed in order to optimise your health.

I mean, good luck with that.

On Vitamin D this is the official position

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/

Dustyevsky

It's not a 'one size fits all.' The likely needs of a 30-year-old are different from a pensioner's, while lifestyle and medications further confuse the situation. 

Research moves on. The paper quoted above is not exactly out of date, but more is now known about the role and importance of Vit D3, for example. However, large self-administered doses of D3 may have undesired side effects without counterbalancing measures, and so on.

That's why we can't give advice. Doctors are unlikely to know all the latest research either, but they can advise about conflicts with any medication, which is the minimum anyone should know. The rest is out there for people to learn themselves, always remembering there is as much controversy and conflict of interest in medicine, as there is in, say, economic advice.

A balanced diet, plenty of exercise and a means of countering stress are probably the basics to aspire to. The last one is often overlooked.

lisyloo

Do you have any medical insurance by any chance?
I had some blood tests recently via vitality - it's part of the package, no excess and they came to the house.
They identified a few deficiencies (one being Vitamin D).
I could then get prescribed by my GP (for free in my case) and then the GP checked me afterwards.
So worth checking if you conveniently have such a package available.

Your GP won't do those blood tests unless you have a clinical justification.
Persuading a financially incentivised private GP to do something included in an insurance package is far easier.
The bar for GPs is being clinically unwell. 
The bar for private cover is not feeling well which is very different.

fatbelly

It seems the more that researchers look into Vitamin D, the more bodily processes they find that use it.

It seems well known that levels are low in Northern countries, particularly in winter and particularly in darker skinned individuals.

Dietary sources are few which is why in Scandinavian countries foods are fortified. Here, apart from some breakfast cereals, we don't seem to go for that.

There are a couple of useful sources that could be better.

Eggs contain it, and if the chickens are fed on fortified food, not only are they healthier, it filters through to the eggs in greater quantities. Happy Eggs are a commercial example of what could be done.

A veggie source is mushrooms and if they get sunlight, like us, they manufacture Vitamin D. Aldi used to sell light-treated mushrooms but I guess there was little interest amongst consumers.

KxMx

The body is better at (and indeed designed for) extracting small amounts of the good stuff from a well balanced diet, than having to process and sort a big hit of everything all at once in the form of a multi vitamin pill.

olgadapolga

Dustyevsky said:

Doctors are unlikely to know all the latest research either, but they can advise about conflicts with any medication, which is the minimum anyone should know.

A little off-topic but some GPs (including ours) are useless about medication contraindications. We have both been prescribed a medication that was in direct conflict with either a medication we were already taking or with a particular health condition.