Question of the Day. How do I choose a course of vitamins for myself for the fall?

Feeling lethargic, fatigued and completely unwilling to get up early in the morning to work? Perhaps the main problem is not outside the window, but inside your body. Together with doctor Alexei Bezymyanny we will try to understand what vitamins are most effective to take in the fall, how to identify avitaminosis and not to get to the hospital with hypervitaminosis.

How to feel that our body lacks vitamins?

Alexei Bezymyanny, doctor: “Vitamins, like other medicines and supplements, should be used as prescribed by a doctor, you should not rely only on your feelings. For the average person, unfortunately, it is much more natural to catch hypervitaminosis and go to the hospital in the department of drug allergies than to suffer from avitaminosis.”

What is avitaminosis?

“Nowadays, as such, avitaminosis is practically uncommon. This disease is due to a deficiency of vitamins that come from food. We have to live on a desert island to not replenish the stock of vitamins and trace elements, or sit on a mono-diet, like the Dukan diet, where the protein diet is predominantly protein. Then really the amount of vitamins decreases. And so in general, all the products that are available now, contain most of the vitamins and trace elements.”

The first symptoms of avitominosis: mood swings, sleepiness, fatigue, tongue ulcers, pallor, irritability.

Why do we feel tired specifically in the fall?

“Everything I have already said works for a healthy person. Unfortunately, we have almost no such people now, everyone has diseases, from dysbacteriosis to banal overwork. In addition, there are people who have a predisposition to some disease or increased energy expenditure during the day. They, of course, need to take vitamins.”

What kind of vitamins are there?

“Vitamins come in water-soluble and fat-soluble. It is necessary to look and read at once, which ones you buy. The main thing is not to have both in the composition. If they are separate, everything is fine. As for prebiotics, it is desirable that they are used separately from the vitamin complex.”

How to choose vitamins for yourself?

“When a person is mentally active, his body constantly needs foods enriched with B vitamin, or B vitamins as a supplement. Athletes also need vitamins, even micronutrients, because the work of muscles is associated with the work of ionic balance – potassium plus sodium. Due to this there is a contraction of the muscles and a person who leads an active lifestyle needs to potassium and magnesium in sufficient amounts. Many athletes take preparations containing potassium and magnesium, plus B vitamins.”

Vitamins to be careful with

“It’s important to talk about calcium and D vitamins here. People should know not only about the benefits, but also about the harms of uncontrolled supplementation. Everyone knows that we need vitamin D, and many people associate its intake with good moods. This is essentially true, but there is one “but”, it improves calcium absorption. And if you take it uncontrollably, hypercalcification occurs. This leads not only to excessive deposition of calcium, which is not bad, but to formations in the blood vessels, and calcification of the heart valves, this can lead to heart defects. So taking vitamins uncontrollably, I repeat, you can not.”

Useful supplements

Omega-3

“If we talk about Omega-3, this supplement is for a specific purpose – to reduce bad cholesterol. People are different, there are those who have cholesterol at a normal level, there are those who have it elevated. Not only the nutritional factor plays a role here, but also predisposition. Some people have cholesterol associated with a certain genetic feature of the liver. And such patients need to take supplements enriched with omega-3 and polyunsaturated fatty acids for life.”

Prebiotics

“In addition to vitamins, there are also prebiotics, which sometimes go in the same composition with vitamins. I won’t name the brands now, but they are available, both Russian-made and Western. Prebiotics are one of the main components that populate our microflora. They are responsible for digestion and assimilation of food. If we have intestinal hyperthyroidism, which is formed due to stress, alcohol abuse, due to antibiotic treatment and so on, then our intestinal microflora is disturbed and vitamins enter our body to a lesser extent. That’s when we need to add prebiotics. They normalize the microflora and a person’s vitamin intake improves. The usual course to normalize the microflora lasts about 30 days.”

Looking for vitamins in natural products

“In the fall, it is necessary for a person to diversify the diet. This can be done by buying products in small portions at the market, in the store. It is not necessary to buy the most expensive ones. You can buy today one carrot, tomorrow celery. It will not affect the overall budget, but in this way you can diversify your diet.

For example, you can buy a buckwheat group, which contains vitamin B, or dried fruit, and magnesium will enter the body. Athletes love apricots with nuts because this dish contains a lot of energy.”