What vitamins do I take?

In the article ‘What have vitamins got to do with my sore foot?’ I wrote about the fact that nutrition is a critical factor in overcoming chronic pain. This article explains how this is true and answers the question ‘what supplements should I take?’

Here’s how it is.

Most chronic pain, as you may have read in my other articles, is ‘myofascial pain’. This type of pain is referred from skeletal muscle, fascia and tendons. Now your skeletal muscle and fascial systems take up at least half your body weight and demand a regular intake of vitamins and minerals to function every day.

The problem is these systems – your muscle and fascial systems – are not ‘critical’ to survival. In other words if you were in a desperate survival situation, starving, your body would literally ‘burn’ skeletal muscle to survive. Your brain, heart and internal organs are critical to survival and get priority over your good ol’ skeletal muscle system (not critical to survival). So … if your vitamin and mineral intake is at all lacking guess who misses out? You betcha – skeletal muscle.

So when your pain is referred from skeletal muscle and you are not getting adequate nutrition, then your pain struggles to resolve. This is simply due to the fact that the nutrients you are getting are prioritised to anatomy other than the musculoskeletal anatomy. Pain either reoccurs regularly or continues 24/7.

Are you talking about a vitamin deficiency?

No.

I am not talking about ‘vitamin deficiency’. Vitamin deficiency is the situation where your vitamin intake is so poor that the body literally begins to breakdown. For example a vitamin C deficiency causes a vitamin deficient illness called ‘scurvy’. Scurvy will cause connective tissue to break down. One of the symptoms is bleeding of the gums. You may remember from history lessons in primary school that many of the ‘First Fleet’ emigrating from England to Oz died of the nutrient-deficient disease scurvy. Why? Not enough fruit (vitamin C) on the boat!

In this article I am talking about vitamin inadequacy. This is not a clinical illness. This is the situation where you are getting enough vitamins and minerals to sustain life and prevent nutrition-related illness but you are not getting enough to function as well as you could. Most nutritionists and naturopaths would agree that just about the whole population has vitamin inadequacies.

Without going too far down the rabbit hole for one little article let me say that our agricultural techniques, poor quality of soil, fruit and vegetable storage/freezing/gassing and so on are to blame for our poor quality produce. In short the consumer can do everything right – eating heaps of fruit and vegetables – but due to the fact that the nutrient density in the food is so low we still end up with vitamin inadequacies. This situation is ridiculous and merely a result of man’s economic ‘wisdom’, I mean, greed.

To educate yourself in this area a bit more have a watch of Food Matters. This one-hour doco is on Netflix and YouTube. It is a good look at the problem I am describing here.

What vitamins do I take?

That’s great Tim thanks for the scare tactics. So what vitamins do I take?

Although there are eight or nine specific vitamins and minerals that are the most important to healing musculoskeletal pain, the most effective approach is NOT to take lots of each individual nutrient. This is because vitamins and minerals are ‘synergistic’. This means that they work together. In fact they not only work together but they multiply one another’s effectiveness. In other words 300mg of vitamin C has numerous benefits. Yet in the presence of vitamin A, vitamin C is much more powerful, and in the presence of E it is more powerful again. Therefore it is better to take a ‘multivitamin’ that has A,C and E in it than to take heaps of C alone. Get it?

But you don’t just need A, C and E. You need B1, B6, and B12 as well as a handful of minerals. And these are just the ones that are particularly important for musculoskeletal symptoms. Did I mention that the ratios need to be correct, they need to be in a bio-available state (in other words to just dissolve is not enough, the have to be absorbed). Vitamins need other vitamins and minerals and many need specific amino acids or enzymes attached in order to be of any benefit at all.

I write this to underscore that nutritional science is complicated AND nutritional science is a young science. New stuff is being learned all the time.

So I am encouraging you to ‘not get smart’. Don’t decide I need this one or that one. Vitamin companies sell vitamins individually because it gives them more products to sell! Not because it is the most effective way to consume them. So in short you need a high quality broad spectrum MULTIVITAMIN from a company that is reputable and has done their homework. Many haven’t.

The bottom line is get a GOOD QUALITY broad spectrum multivitamin.

This will resemble the natural nutrient intake in food because food naturally has multiple vitamins and minerals in every fruit or vegetable. You don’t get a vitamin C fruit and a vitamin D vegetable. In nature it’s all mixed up and much more effective. You would almost think God designed fruit and vegetables to complement our incredibly complicated human organism. Every time humans ‘modify’ food we make it worse, never better.

You will have to pay for a good product, cheap stuff is cheap for a reason. Unfortunately, the multivitamin industry is ‘unregulated’. In other words as long as you can ingest it without getting sick, it passes. So … it doesn’t have to work. Your cheap products won’t do much. Talk to a health food shop or naturopath for a recommendation and just ask for the best broad spectrum multivitamin they have. Now some brands, of course, know all of this and so their products cost a small fortune. These are excellent products BUT there are many high quality broad spectrum multivitamin supplements that work that will cost approximately $20 AUD per month. The naturopath in our clinic has an excellent product for a bit less than this, for example.

The supplements I have recommended to Leena and patients like her have cost about this. And the results have been measurable.

Please call the clinic if you want a recommendation and by all means punch in your email address to receive articles as I write them in the future.

Please call the clinic if you want a recommendation and by all means, punch in your email address to receive articles as I write them in the future.

Wishing you the best of health,

Tim