<p>IDad for the win! So rewarding! Maybe this is the week I get it under control.</p>
<p>I think it’s your week, MOWC.</p>
<p>I have learned yet another lesson in this whole maintenance equation. It is in my best interest to keep using food tracking as an occasional reset tool. For me, it’s about snacking in moderation. I needed the reset for apples and nuts.</p>
<p>Good deal on multivitamin. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TZ60RS”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TZ60RS</a></p>
<p>I’m not 100% sold on the necessity of a multivitamin, so I’m not recommending that anyone else take them. However, I think I probably come up short on a few vitamins from diet alone (mostly because I don’t eat breakfast cereals with multivitamins added to them), so I do take one a day. I’m sold to the extent that I don’t think much harm comes from taking a vitamin.</p>
<p>I just came across a very good deal on a Kirkland Multi-vitamin from Amazon. 400 tablets for $15.50. Works out to about $1.20 a month for a year’s supply. Prime shipping included. I guess it’s Costco’s generic brand ($13 at Costco). Identical to Centrum Silver (for those of us 50 and older).</p>
<p>Much cheaper than Centrum or One A Day at the drug store.</p>
<p>Here’s the ingredient list:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.costco.com/Kirkland-Signature™-Adults-50%2B-Mature-Multi%2C-400-Tablets.product.11491606.html”>http://www.costco.com/Kirkland-Signature™-Adults-50%2B-Mature-Multi%2C-400-Tablets.product.11491606.html</a></p>
<p>Calories 1863</p>
<p>26% Protein 122g
53% Fat 111g
21% Carbohydrate 97g</p>
<p>Dietary Fiber 21g
Net carbs 76g
Sugars 25g</p>
<p>I take a vitamin that supplies me with my daily amount needed each day. My schedule is so hectic that sometimes the most I’ve eaten on a given day is a granola bar. It just might be the reason I’m not undernourished. 
</p>
<p>I wish I could find a multivitamin that has enough of everything. I know the Vitamin D in a multivitamin is not even close to enough for me and, really, not even close to enough for most people unless they live in southern climates and spend time in the midday sun several times a week without sunscreen. Where I live, it is impossible to make Vitamin D from sunshine for at least half the year.</p>
<p>I’m also coming up short of the recommended 1200mg of calcium for people over 50. Despite eating a virtually 100% whole food diet including a good bit of dairy and leafy green veggies and a multivitamin, I can only see 800mg to 900mg for a typical day. That’s probably not a dire shortage, but I’m adding a calcium/magnesium/zinc supplement that adds another 333mg of calcium (it was cheaper with the magnesium/zinc than without) and cheaper than the easiest source of calcium - TUMS.</p>
As long as you are not taking too much of Vit A and E, you should be OK. I’d rather buy another bottle of Mg supplements. 
<p>A glass of milk is yummy. 
But that is a nice alternative to fill in the gap. My multivitamin only has 50% of my daily recommended value. I should probably fill in the gap…but…I’m doing fine without it. (At least I think so…)</p>
<p>I used to drink a lot of milk before I left for college. I could easily (and happily) go through two gallons of milk a week. </p>
<p>I’m counting the 150 mg of calcium I get from 5 ounces of half and half a day. I just don’t like milk enough to drink it when I’m thirsty. I’d rather drink water.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, the Vitamin A is the big reason you shouldn’t double up to two-a-day on multivitamins. Looks like safe upper limit for Vitamin A is 10,000 IU day (of retinol, not including beta-carotene). These Centrum Silvers (and generic equivalents) have 1,500 IU, so I should be OK even though the lettuce, carrots, and red peppers I eat are pretty high dietary beta-carotene.</p>
<p>Looks like the big three for those of us who want to keep from breaking bones are calcium, vitamin D, and weight bearing exercise.</p>
<p>I drink almond milk. Zero sugar ,2.5 gram fat and twice as much Calcium as cow’s milk.</p>
<p>There are some studies indicating that absorption of calcium sourced from cow’s milk is very low. My wife, who is a chocoholic, stumbled onto a calcium supplement call Adora. 500 mg of calcium in a delicious milk or dark chocolate “delivery system” the size of a piece of chocolate from one of those chocolate sampler boxes. </p>
<p>Those Kirkland vitamins are poor - lousy mineral forms (oxides, carbonates, sulphates, etc - basically ground up rock), lousy forms of vitamins (synthetic vitamin E and only one of the 8 forms, niacinamide, K instead of K2, etc). Plus, they are tablets, which will start to dissolve in your mouth when you take it, which is nasty.</p>
<p>They are cheap, though. I wouldn’t take them.</p>
<p>re calcium - if you are getting enough vitamin D, K2, and magnesium you most likely don’t need a calcium supplement, what is provided by your diet should be enough for most people. If you do take calcium, find a form that isn’t ground up chalk. It will be a lot more expensive, though.</p>
<p>There are calculators that will track your micro-nutrients, you may want to try one to see if you even need a multi or if you just need targeted supplementation, such as <a href=“http://cronometer.com/”>http://cronometer.com/</a> .</p>
<p>
The calcium in Adora is calcium carbonate, a.k.a. chalk.</p>
<p>Learn something new every day. NRE, how do you know these things? </p>
<p>
That means I can drink even more! :D</p>
<p>I’ve seen some of those studies… They have a hiden agenda - save the cows. </p>
<p>Here is a link that explains why milk may not be the best source of calcium for some groups:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/”>http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/</a></p>
<p>
I did a lot of research when I got interested in supplementing.</p>
<p>In case anyone is interested, here’s the vitamin I take:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aor.ca/products-page/advanced/ortho-core/”>http://www.aor.ca/products-page/advanced/ortho-core/</a></p>
<p>Click through the tabs, there is a lot of interesting info there.</p>
<p>A full dose is 6 capsules a day, but since I do eat food and don’t expect to get all my nutrition from a pill, I take only 2 caps a day. It’s not perfect - some of the mineral forms could be better - but the good mineral forms tend to be giant molecules which take up a ton of space, so you have to make compromises somewhere.</p>
<p>It’s not cheap - iHerb.com sells it for $54/bottle, which has 180 capsules. At 2 per day, this costs me $18/month, compared to the Kirkland vitamin which will cost $1/month or so.</p>
<p>I also separately supplement Mg, vitamin C, vitamin D vitamin K2, and iodide, along with fish oil and some herbal stuff.</p>
<p>The best form of calcium, IMO, is a molecule called calcium hydroxyapatite - it’s basically ground-up bone. You would need 5 or 6 capsules a day of this to get 1000 mg of calcium because the molecule is so large, and it’s not cheap. I don’t scrimp on this stuff though.</p>
<p>Trainer and spin. I was a show off. </p>
<p>We are iced in. Literally can’t walk outside- ice everywhere. No one is supposed to drive, so I’m home for the day! SO glad I have the treadmill. 4.1 miles done in my 60 degree basement.</p>
<p>Dr. Michael Holick, the Vitamin D expert who discovered both the circulating form (Vitamin D 25-hydroxy) and the activated form (1,25-hydroxy) and writes extensively about calcium supplementation in is book and lectures says that there is absolutely no benefit to taking one type of calcium supplement over another with one exception. Calcium Carbonate (“chalk”) is 40% calcium by weight. Calcium Citrate is 21% calcium by weight, so you have to take more. Both get broken down by stomach acids and the calcium is absorbed by the intestine. The one exception is that people on stomach acid blocking medication may not dissolve the calcium carbonate properly. This is not as issue if you take it with meals, where it gets ground up along with the food you are eating.</p>
<p>He actually recommends TUMS as a calcium supplement. Regular strength tablets are 500 mg of calcium carbonate (200mg of calcium). Ultra Strength Tums are 1000 mg of calcium carbonate (500mg of calcium). I got the supplement pills because they are a little cheaper and because TUMS have a little sugar (they are chewed).</p>
<p>As far as vitamins in tablet form … so are One-A-Days and Centrum. Big ol’ horse tablets. I chug them down with my glass of water/fiber. I’ve never had a problem with them dissolving in my mouth.</p>
<hr>
<p>BTW, Holick is quite an entertaining speaker:</p>
<p><a href=“Michael Holick - The D-Lightful Vitamin D for Good Health - YouTube”>Michael Holick - The D-Lightful Vitamin D for Good Health - YouTube;
<p>The only caveat is that the links between Vitamin D and many of the diseases are from observation population studies and, thus, can’t establish that Vitamin D causes improvements – just that people with higher Vitamin D levels have less disease in many studies. Might be the Vitamin D, might not. However, the important role of Vitamin D in bone health is indisputably established, which is reason enough for “middle aged” people like me to make sure we are getting enough. To the extent that it might actually play a role in other diseases (heart disease, cancers, etc.) would be icing on the cake. It’s virtually impossible to do the kinds of long-term random controlled studies that would be necessary to prove that a vitamin reduces a disease that doesn’t show up for years. We are pretty much stuck with observational population studies, which is why you can always find “scientific evidence” to support diametrically opposed theories on anything nutrition related.</p>
<p>At that point, all you can do is decide if there is enough solid evidence that it might be helpful and is there any risk from supplementing. With vitamin D, it’s established that if you live in a northern climate, the odds are overwhelming that you will not be making enough vitamin D at least six months a year. It’s established that Vitamin D definitively improves bone health. There’s a lot of observational evidence that it plays a role in other health areas. And, there’s virtually no risk of toxicity with normal supplementation.</p>