Vitamin C (1000 mg twice daily)
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free skin care · Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:01 am

Hi Josee

Sadly there just aren’t as many studies as we need out there to prove how important nutrition is, but your right, nutrition alone isn’t the magic bullet (but I don’t believe there is one so to speak, as aging truly is a combination of different factors).

The studies that you mention re high dozes though are also questionable as they never really divulge the bigger picture in my views. For example they rarely state or detail the health of the groups (or the genetic backgrounds), their general health, what type of vitamin C they were taking or brand (which can have a huge effect in my opinion as many brands often combine their vitamin C with other stuff for example commonly its combined with bioflavnoids in many brands in the UK, and unless you know the science behind them you can mistakenly believe your taking the best, but there may be one ingredient in there which just isn’t right for your own personal body). As well as other details like medication, other supplementation being taken, foods eaten (and even how many meals they eat a day) all which will deliver different results to different people, so even with a study, its always open to debate. Like you I always urge people to be cautious but to pay attention to how their bodies respond as I think our bodies give us such accurate feedback if we are aware of them. I think data can always be manipulated to sometimes create an effect, and often supplementation is manipulated quite badly.

I think its important to aim to get as much as our nutrients as possible from food, but think if people are serious about aging well (and being healthy) you have to seriously consider supplementation. Our bodies are very complex systems (in fact I am not sure I would label our body as a system, as its more of a group of systems for example, circulation, digestion, lymphatic etc) and your right, that our foods contain so many different things we haven’t even registered yet, but I think there is so much that can be done to help our bodies be as healthy as possible by making educated choices, and threads like these are fantastic because they do educate others, even if it helps people to consider something they might never have thought or considered before.

Although we may take vitamins, it doesn’t mean our body uses them all to the extent it needs to. Much in the same way, even if you eat a healthy diet, it doesn’t mean your body is able to process and assimilate all the nutrients from the food.

Interestingly enough many of the studies on longevity although they don’t comprise specific nutritional studies, they often touch upon the diet and lifestyle of the cultures involved. For instance the Okinawa’s in Japan has many centurians, and partly this is both because of their lifestyle, genetics but also their diets are a factor that needs to be considered in relation to that. They also have great oxygen (i.e. very little if any pollution), their lifestyles aren’t as stressful as perhaps ours might be (or more likely they have been taught how to handle stress – something that we in the Western world haven’t yet gained a proper insight on yet).

Its great that you mention farmers, as I really do believe they have difficult times nowadays and are in my mind often unsung heros who don’t get the recognition they deserve, with over overly commercial world and supermarkets, and many times in our supermarkets the vegetables and fruits are often sprayed with various chemicals to ensure the products have a longer shelf life. This is also something to factor into the equation also.

Re comb, well I think I didn’t explain myself correctly, I wasn’t recommending everyone to take a sole vitamin, but to find out what their bodies are lacking or deficient in and then take steps to remedy that through food and/or supplementation to get the body back into harmony.

Great posting though, and thanks for the comments, its always good for my brain to do some thinking and I hope you don’t mind me sharing on some of the points you raised too, but please also let me know your thoughts re my comments. I think its truly important to share this knowledge!

free skin care · Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:54 am

SeanySeanUK wrote:

The studies that you mention re high dozes though are also questionable as they never really divulge the bigger picture in my views. For example they rarely state or detail the health of the groups (or the genetic backgrounds), their general health, what type of vitamin C they were taking or brand (which can have a huge effect in my opinion as many brands often combine their vitamin C with other stuff for example commonly its combined with bioflavnoids in many brands in the UK, and unless you know the science behind them you can mistakenly believe your taking the best, but there may be one ingredient in there which just isn’t right for your own personal body). As well as other details like medication, other supplementation being taken, foods eaten (and even how many meals they eat a day) all which will deliver different results to different people, so even with a study, its always open to debate. Like you I always urge people to be cautious but to pay attention to how their bodies respond as I think our bodies give us such accurate feedback if we are aware of them. I think data can always be manipulated to sometimes create an effect, and often supplementation is manipulated quite badly.

Actually the studies I'm talking about are randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which are the highest-quality study design available.
In those studies, people are randomized to either receive the vitamin or placebo. What randomization achieves is that the 2 groups are essentially the same with the only difference being vitamin taken. The trials describe precisely what kind of vitamin was given, the lab it was manufactured at and usually have independent tests to confirm the composition of the pills.

That's why in general, results of RCTs are quite conclusive.

SeanySeanUK wrote:

I think its important to aim to get as much as our nutrients as possible from food, but think if people are serious about aging well (and being healthy) you have to seriously consider supplementation.

The thing is that we all say this, but we have no evidence that supplementation does anything about aging well and the RCTs that have been done haven't really found a difference. The "vitamin industry" which moves trillions of dollars worldwide so they have tried very hard to convince us that we need supplements and that supplements will make us live better, but in fact there's no evidence to that. It's just so ingrained in our brains that we just believe it and find it very intuitive.

SeanySeanUK wrote:

Interestingly enough many of the studies on longevity although they don’t comprise specific nutritional studies, they often touch upon the diet and lifestyle of the cultures involved.

Yeah and what is interesting is that even though time and time again it's affirmed that it's not simply "nutrition", or "xyz supplement" that leads to a long healthy lifestyle, we still want the "magic" pill or the "lazy way out" even though there's none Sad

For e.g., I see many overweight people very keen on supplements, doing lots of research about them, etc, etc. However, no amount of supplements will offset the negative consequences of being sedentary and overweight. So although the vitamin industry is keen on selling us all they can, I think that most of us would benefit A LOT more by "going back to basics" and making sure we eat well and do some sort of exercise thank by spending thousands of dollars per year on vitamins. Probably that money would be better spent on better food or a gym membership Smile

Keep your thoughts coming, I love discussing different perspectives!

All the best,
Josee

free skin care · Fri Aug 14, 2009 9:30 am

Hey Josee

Wow a fellow enthusiast!

The controlled studies that I have seen though rarely give you that kind of information, usually its pretty non-descriptive. For example, I am aware of one that simply said about a placebo and actual vitamin C was 40-45 year olds and that was the only information given about the group. It gave nothing for example about their lifestyle, careers, stress levels or food intake, and I haven't seen any one where it describes the supplement extensively - but am really interested in learning more - if you have got time.

Re 2nd point, thats a definite. As I said, I don't think of nutrition as being the only factor, but one that combines with many to give a person's overall picture of health. The vitamin industry can be just as corrupt as the pharmaceuticals for sure, and thats something that often frustrates me, as they tend to compete between themselves rather than doing specific studies about increasing peoples deficiencies and monitoring those results.

In fact many of the studies I read frequently always come from Europe, which is surprising to me especially when I consider the size of Europe compared with the US, you would think it would be them doing the most studies. Of course, its easy to understand that many governments (across the world) make money from taxes on pharmaceuticals etc. I was even more surprised when I learned of an attempt of legislation in the UK to ban supplementation altogether (talk about taking away free choice).

Agree with you entirely, its never nutrition or supplements on their own, but I do really believe they play a role in the picture thats presented. Having studied nutrition, I know exactly where your coming from about consequences of overweight etc, and your 100% no vitamin or supplement is going to be the cure for that, however, I do think that they can play a really vital role in the future, but to me its about working out the body's deficiencies (which differs from person to person), and sometimes it can be that the body is not absorbing it from a food because for example its stomach acids it needs to digest are not strong enough, or there is a health concern in place.

I do hope that as time goes by, more will be done to improve our knowledge of it though for sure.

Sean

free skin care · Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:59 pm

i understand that if you take too much, the body will just flush out the extra. wouldn't it be a waste?

free skin care · Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:39 am

It will if taken all at once, and as its water soluble, the body will just pass it out, but taking small dozes throughout your day is a better way of keeping the body topped up, without it passing through.

mayhua wrote:

i understand that if you take too much, the body will just flush out the extra. wouldn't it be a waste?

Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:06 am

first, foget it is good or bad about taking vit C. if you take too much vit C for a long period of time, the most effected part is the ability of vit c consumption. when too much vit c around your body, and your body wouldn't dig very hard in order to get vit c from veg or fruit, so , it is damaged your ability. if that so, you would not consume vit c from normal food when you stop taking pills.our body is comlicated systems . we have been being evolved for million year, hearlth supplement only started maybe hundred years ago, I don't know, but anyway, if compare with our history, it is just nothing, and our body still follow the rules, which health supplement is out of this pic. we don't fully understand it, and to be persicely to say, we only understand a bit. So, why just take this big stake and push yourself to the cliff, all you hear about hearlth supplement is marketing, and make more people to be billionnar. I am not a perfessional in any kind, I am just a normal person, and took health supp for a while then doult it is right or wrong. evantully I think, the best way we can do is back to the start, follow the old wisdom. don't poision yourself. drug harms no matter what drug it is. if you have a balanced diet , there is nothing to do with health supp,
cosidering have a better health condition Question

, going outside and running, jogging, jumping walking ,whatever, it is much much better then stay inside face to computer or watching stupid TV.

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