<p>Oldest D has been told by her Dr that she should work on improving her immune system. Suggested she start taking vitamins and folic acid. My D has always had a difficult time swallowing pills. She needs them to be small or gelcaps. She has a tendency to reverse swallow and even after treatment for the tongue thrust swallowing pills is still difficult.
Any suggestions on a mult vit with folic acid that is not the size of a horse pill. Also has anyone tried the One a Day that you put in water?
Also any ideas to easily add more health to her diet. Between school. work and outside activities she rarely cooks. She pretty much survives on 1 meal a day often from Taco Bell. She is allergic to soy.</p>
<p>What about those new gummi adult vitamins? They have folic acid: [One</a> A Day VitaCraves](<a href=“http://www.oneaday.com/vitacraves_gummies.html]One”>http://www.oneaday.com/vitacraves_gummies.html)</p>
<p>I saw a tv commercial just a few days ago about a vitamin that is a gummy. Sorry, can’t remember which brand (One a Day?) but check at your grocery store or Walmart. I just googled “gummy vitamin adult” and there are several brands.</p>
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<p>You should be aware then that almost every menu item from Taco Bell has soy in it…</p>
<p>[TACO</a> BELL Food Allergens & Sensitivities](<a href=“http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_tb.asp]TACO”>http://www.yum.com/nutrition/allergen/allergen_tb.asp)</p>
<p>Also, when considering vitamins that aren’t swallowed directly (i.e. drank, chewed, etc) it is the B vitamins that have that yucky vitamin taste to them.</p>
<p>CVS has a multivitamin that’s relatively small called CVS Daily Multiple Essential. They’re round red tablets, sort of like the original One-A-Day vitamins used to look like. I have a hard time swallowing those huge vitamins, too, but these are easy. </p>
<p>CVS has several store brands with Daily Multiple in the name. The ones that I’m talking about have a green label. [Buy</a> CVS Daily Multiple Tablets online at CVS.com](<a href=“Shop Beauty, Vitamins, Medicine & Everyday Essentials | CVS Pharmacy”>Shop Beauty, Vitamins, Medicine & Everyday Essentials | CVS Pharmacy) By the way, they contain 400 mcg of folic acid.</p>
<p>I like Emergen-C packets, I dissolve them in 50/50 mix of juice/water. They come in multiple flavors and vitamin contents. The Glucosamine one that I’m taking has B6, B12, but not a whole lot of folic acid. I can even eat this stuff dry, like that fizzy candy sticks!</p>
<p>Costco sells the adult gummy vitamins. Probably similar to the ones online. Only problem is they taste a little TOO good…tempted to eat more than I should. Has 100% of the suggested folic acid dose.
Regarding taco bell once a day…yeah she needs to do better. Tell her to buy apples, almonds, string cheese, whole grain crackers, and other related items - and snack during the day. Drinking water is good.
Ask her to try eating healthy foods for a couple of weeks…just to see if it makes her feel better. If she does, maybe she’ll stick with it.</p>
<p>jbusc- thanks for that link. She only eats the bean burrito. No soy.
Gummy vitamins will work. I will also look for the CVS vitamins.
Bunsenburner- we looked at Emergen C. My husband swears by the stuff and uses it each morning. Already checked for the amount of folic acid and it is not enough.
She is allergic to apples, carrots, celery and a wide assortment of fruits and vegetables. String cheese is good. protein.</p>
<p>I’m a little confused by your description of your daughter’s problems. Has she been tested by an allergy specialist and found to be allergic to all those foods? Or is it based on observation? Has she been checked for celiac disease, which often hides as a wide variety of allergies?</p>
<p>If she doesn’t have an allergy to flax seed, flax seed oil was recommended to me as a natural anti-inflammatory/immune system booster. After seeing its effect on my highly allergic dog, I started taking it myself–it has worked wonders.</p>
<p>I work as an OB nurse and we often have pregnant patients who cannot swallow prenatal vitamins (they’re huge!). We tell them to take Flintstones Chewables. Even though they’re a kid’s vitamin, they are labeled with an adult dose, since lots of adults take them.</p>
<p>Mom60 - Can she eat the celery, apples, etc., when they are cooked?? DD has the same allergy. We also thought she was allergic to soy, but it turned out it was barley malt - we couldn’t figure out why some soy products bothered her and others did not. She has never had a severe reaction, but when she went to college she talked to her daughter and got an epi pen. </p>
<p>As to the vitamins, she still takes chewable kids vitamins, just a larger dose</p>
<p>I second the Costco adult gummy vitamins. Can’t understand how they can make the old yucky tasting vitamins taste so good now. Couldn’t they figure this out years ago? I love those gummies. They’re so good that it makes me wonder if they really work.</p>
<p>Speaking of nasty-tasting vitamins, I have some sort of auto-immune thing going on, and my endocrinologist recommended taking selenium. I take it, but have to hold my breath before opening the container.</p>
<p>She needs to get more of her vitamins from food. Vitamin pills and such are merely supplements and cannot substitute for the primary source of nutrition. And many vitamins do not dissolve in the digestive tract; physician friends of mine call them “bedpan bullets.”</p>
<p>Have you considered taking her to a nutritionist? She needs to improve her eating habits. If she won’t cook, she needs better quality take out.</p>
<p>To ensure you buy a quality vitamin, make sure it is USP verified. That means the USP has tested the vitamin, and it has what it says it has and will dissolve. [USP</a> Verified](<a href=“http://www.usp.org/USPVerified/]USP”>http://www.usp.org/USPVerified/)
The first manufacturing requirements have just been implemented. Last year, large companies had to be compliant, this year, medium sized companies have to be compliant, and next year, small companies will have to be compliant.</p>
<p>Nova10: Thanks for this information.</p>
<p>She also has asthma. She has been allergy tested by an allergy specialist. Same Dr who treats her asthma. She always complained that certain foods made her throat itch when she was young especially apples and carrots and refused to eat them. She also often complained of stomach aches. Both myself and her regular Dr would sort of humor her and tell her to take a tums. Thought she was just wanting to not eat fruits and vegetables. At 13 she was taken from a soccer game to the hospital and diagnosed with asthma. The Dr we were referred to tested her for allergies. Suddenly all the stomach aches and itchy throat and ears made sense.
She has an epi-pen but she has never had to use it. She is pretty good at avoiding foods that bother her. Sometimes she will have a reaction to a processed food and it is usually found to contain soy. Some foods she shows more of a more severe reaction. She is allergic to wheat by testing but it doesn’t seem to cause her any reaction so she eats wheat products. She is allergic to peanuts and can’t eat peanut butter or a snickers but she isn’t deathly allergic. The peanut allergy is especially bad since a PB and Jelly sandwich would be a good eat and run food.
Carrots bother her cooked or raw. Apples seem to not be as bad. She can usually eat them cooked.
I picked up some gummy type vitamins at Trader Joe’s and will stick them in her next package.
Chedva- she could definitely use a nutritionist. But I think part of the problem right now is she is so busy that even if she knows what is good for her she is not making the time to bring more healthy foods into her life. She is often out of the house from 7 am till after 9 at night. By that point she is starved and will often pick something up on her way home. She knows she is eating poorly.
She did go to the grocery store today. Yogurt, string cheese, rye bread and cream cheese and a couple of frozen food items. She hates to buy anything she might not eat and have to throw away.</p>
<p>Mom60 - Apparently when DD was young, she would think to herself that she loved the taste of apples, but she thought everyone’s head would itch when they ate them. So far, as I said, DD can eat the fruits and veggies when they are cooked, apparently it breaks down some type of protein. I would still check into the barley malt. Apparently it is often used in conjunction with processed soy products - a nutritionist who is a vegetarian was the person who gave me this info.</p>
<p>I really feel for our girls. Some people must think DD is a little strange when she starts to list her allergies if they ask her to eat something at a dinner or buffet. Somehow she has been responsible without being neurotic. Our closest friends - the H - has exactly the same allergies as D. Sometimes to a greater or lesser extent - but the same. When we are all out to dinner, they sometimes consult with each other. His wife and I have always joked that it is a good thing my DD is a dead ringer for her dad!</p>
<p>worknprogress- My D has only come across a few people who have her weird allergies. Some people do look at them strange. How many people are allergic to carrots! She was not tested for barley malt but I think you might have the answer to why the soy in many processed foods bother her but she can eat a chinese chicken salad at some places without a reaction. When she has a reaction to some food and is surprised she will usually find soy on the label. But now thinking about it I bet it might be something else.
She can eat eggs. So I am going to suggest she hard-boil some to have as a quick food to grab.</p>
<p>My DD, too, is allergic to soy as well as legumes, but peas rarely bother her, avocados make her itch right away, etc. Also fighting pollen allergies makes her itchy more often than not, thank God for Zyrtec.</p>
<p>Soy is a tough one as it is in so many products, we did a soy free year when she was in elementary school, I even had white bread baked for her soy free. I could tell when picking her up at school if she had eaten anything from another kids lunch, one oreo would make her so brittle and cranky.</p>
<p>At the end of the year she decided she did not want to work that hard at it (if the kid is not going to work at it, there is no reason to fight it) so we relaxed our intensity and she tries to really get the feel of how she is doing. During pollen season she eats more carefully, luckily no breathing issues, but her sisters say she ought to be forced to eat right to avoid the b****y issue :D</p>