What are good natural sources of B-12 vitamin?
Congrats on becoming a vegan! No walnuts do not contain b12 neither does most nutritional yeast. Walnuts do contain omega 3 though! Some good sources of B-12 are fortified cereals, fortified soy/rice milks, meat substitutes/soy analogs, some brands of fortified brewer's & nutritional yeast (such as Red Star & Twinlab). Sea vegetables like seaweed, dried nori, & spirulina, may contain vitamin B12, but their content varies and may be unreliable, lactic acid fermented products such as like tempeh, msio, beer & sauerkraut, but their content as well varies and may be unreliable. Marmite, So Delicious Dairy Free Yogurt, Manging Star foods, and other vegan store bought foods also contains B12 (Cyanocobalamin). You should check out the site below, it contains a lot of vegan nutrition information and links: http://veganpeace.blogspot.com/2008/02/v...
Do you really need to take prenatal vitamins when your pregnant?
In theory, if you have a great diet then you don't need the vitamins, however reality can be a lot different. In the first few months of pregnancy you might be unable to eat some foods - I generally couldn't eat much at all without throwing up and some food groups were out of bounds for the whole pregnancy with even a whiff of them setting my stomach off. But any pregnancy is a toll on the body and suppliments can really help, particularly with calcuim and folate. Now that women are regularly taking folate, the drop in children being born with neural tube defects (eg spina bifida) has been dramatic as these can be prevented with adequate folate. Things you need to know: statistically, most women eating regular diets do not get enough iron, calcium and folate. There are also conditions such as coeliac disease that may affect your body's ability to absorb these vital nutrients and some of these conditions might be asymptomatic - I have CD and it was undiagnosed for years. Had I tried to get pregnant, I was told that, based on my blood tests at the time I was diagnosed, I would have been at great risk of miscarriage or having a child with a neural tube defect, if I'd been able to get pregnant in the first place. There are some companies who make totally natural suppliments. Blackmore's in Australia is one such company. Tell her to talk to her doctor, a dietician and/or perhaps a naturopath for more information, and even to take her own mother along to get the information first hand. I know that it can be difficult to go against your Mum's ideas, but sometimes a knowledgable third party such as a doctor can really help. By the way, yes women have been giving birth to babies for years without using suppliments, but how many women had miscarriages and bad outcomes over those years due to problems that could have been resolved with suppliments? How many babies born with spina bifida could have been born without this condition? Medical research does teach us some things, and one of these things is that suppliments taken correctly can vastly improve outcomes for mothers and babies.
Can a person live without actually eating solid food? Can they actually live a healthy life strictly with natural vitamin supplements?
Can they? Yes, it’s technically possible to live without eating solid food. People live with that sort of situation every day. There are side-effects to not having any solid food, though - mainly that it’s going to cause some digestive troubles while your body readjusts to a purely liquid diet; once you’ve graduated from nursing to solid foods, your body isn’t really designed to switch back to a liquids-only diet.As for a healthy life on purely vitamin supplements of any kind - no, it’s not likely that they could. Even if you managed to precisely calculate the quantities you need every day, you still need to get enough calories to survive. And vitamin supplements aren’t really high in caloric value. Plus, they wouldn’t be very filling, so you’d still feel hungry even if you managed to create a set of pills that would satisfy your dietary needs. It’s why food pills haven’t really caught on, for all that they’re really good science fiction; there’s a psychological element to the act of eating, it isn’t purely physical satisfaction,
Why do I feel drained/exhausted EVERY TIME I take multi-vitamins?
Women's multi-vitamins contains specific vitamins and minerals that constitute 100%-200% of these nutrients that you consider lacking in your diet. What I see from your dietary and activity history is that you eat as much as you can in times that you can, at the same time, take these nutrients from the food you eat. Adding these nutrient from a supplement can cause certain degrees of toxicity which can cause adverse drowsiness and fatigue instead, rather than the expected energy. Iron is found in beef and 3 matchbox sizes of meat can provide that 100% iron you need. Calcium is found in milk, and 2 glasses of milk may provide 100% calcium you need as well. Women's vitamins povide additional 100% of these minerals and causes an overflow of your needs. Too much iron in the bloodstream means that there is too much red blood cells produced, causing a high demand in oxygen consumption. You have a regular load of oxygen supplied from you lungs, so when there is too much red blood cells, your lungs has to compensate for the extra need in oxygen. That makes you fatigued. Calcium, when its too much in the bloodstream, may leak out calcium reserves in you bones, since your body thinks that there are too much calcium in your body. The pituitary gland then releases hormones for the thyroid gland to control activity. It tells the body not to move too much, for it might break a bone. So you feel drowsy and lifeless. These women's multi-vitamins also has some effects on women's hormonal levels. The combinations of calcium, iron, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamins ADEK, folic acid and selenium are computed in combnination since their nutrient values are so computed and designed to meet a woman's need. So it feels like chaos in a woman's body after taking the pills. So if you have a healthy diet, and feels like you don't have to tyake in extra stuff from suplements, i strongly suggest, go natural on the foods you eat!
Why would I feel sluggish and weak while eating healthy as opposed to when eating "bad"?
Junk food is pretty much chock full of sugars and carbohydrates. If you cut out the junk food, you probably cut way down on those which would normally be keeping you feeling more energetic and you're feeling sluggish because of it. Give it time and your body will adapt to the new diet. If after a while you aren't feeling better try taking a multivitamin and make sure you're getting enough protein. Fish oil is also good I hear, though I don't know from experience. Vitamin C will get you going though if you take a lot of it. Honestly though, there's no reason to completely stop eating "bad" foods or drinking soda. If you can just moderate yourself, then that's probably a better way of doing. That way you won't feel sudden strong cravings for say, brownies, that would drive you insane.
Can I take vitamins instead of eating vegetables?
You may and you can take vitamin pills instead of vegetables, but whether they will substitute for vegetables is another matter entirely.So-called vitamin pills are called supplements, not substitutes, and there are good reasons for that.Pills have no fiber, which is a nutrient in its own right.Pills have no water, which most veggies have plenty of.Pills that only provide vitamins will not supply you with the minerals you get in many vegetables.There's no vitamin pills that substitutes for the health benefits of eating a salad with friends.That's just for starters.Food is much more than chemicals, so no chemical pill is as effective.
Are vitamin supplements really necessary?
My brother in law sells Amway vitamins and has become totally obsessed (brainwashed if you ask me) with the whole vitamin fad. I eat really well so I feel I don't need to take vitamin supplements. When I do, I end up peeing them out and therefore I must be getting my daily nutients in what I eat. He says that even though I eat well I still need to take supplements. I don't agree. Also, he went on about natural vs. synthetic vitamins. Really, even natural vitamins have been processed!! What's the scoop on all the vitamin hoopla anyway???