So I'm just took two of these Mega Man pills

Factual Questions
1

So far I haven’t had Dr. Wily visit me or been forced to fight large robotic cats throwing dancing toads. Give me a little bit.

OK, so I’ve decided to go on a health kick. Losing 25 pounds in 16 weeks is my goal. I went to GNC this afternoon and, after looking around a bit, picked out these Mega Man pills that give you about a gazillion times the recommended daily value.

Honestly, I’m looking on the side here and wondering what I’d need with 4 times the necessary Vitamin C and 19 times the needed Thiamin per day, every day. I asked the clerk, and he said that your body doesn’t always absorb all the vitamins and minerals in the pill, so having extra is a good thing. Plus, extra of most vitamins aren’t harmful and the bad ones if taken to extreme(A and K) aren’t provided in excess.

So my questions are: did I just throw away my money? Is this a scam or will this actually help me? Also, is it possible, despite what the clerk said, that 19 times what you need isn’t really a good thing after all?

2

The USDA recently issued a new set of standards for nutritional nuts & bolts. New to the list were some maximums. For example, more than 40 mg of zinc will interfere with your intake of copper. I was taking more than that, and I suppose that’s why I couldn’t get a decent suntan (just a joke.) After I threw out my 60 mg zinc pills, I went to CVS to buy the new, downsized zinc pills. No can do. All they had was 50 and 60. I asked the pharmacist. She hemmed and hawed, and pretty much called the USDA mistaken. My daily multivite kicks in 15 mg, and I can only hope that’s enough. There are claims (and I don’t know the hard data on this) that zinc is frittered away by a human under stress. I have more than my RDA of stress.

3

Well, this thing has 25 mg of Zinc which is 167% of my DV. I’m just wondering why anyone would need 1665% more Riboflavin and 1400% more B-12 than necessary. What good can that do me?

Also, apparently I injested 10 micrograms of silicon Dioxide. What is that? Sounds like a piece of a pentium chip.

There are 18 things in this pill which are so obscure, there isn’t even a recommended daily value. Do I need Nettle Leaf Powder? Is L-Cystine better than L-Methionine? Is one of these things so toxic, black widow spiders would die just touching it?

I just want to know what the heck this pill does to me.

4

You probably get more silicon dioxide than that on your typical trip to the beach. That’s what sand is mostly made of. Accidently eating a couple grains of sand will give you more than 10 micrograms. It won’t hurt you but isn’t likely to help you much either.

A few years ago I was taking some multi-mineral supplements. After a while on these things, I noticed I was having sort of a perpetual cold. The symptoms were not severe, but they would never clear up. As an experiment, I stopped taking the supplements and in a couple days, the “cold” was gone. As a further test, I started taking them again, and the “cold” returned.

The same thing happened with a couple other supplements, one of which had nothing in common (in terms of active ingredients) with the mineral supplements. I came to the conclusion that I was mildly allergic to some commonly used filler (yes, they’re supposed to be hypoallergenic, but try proving that they are for everyone). Anyway, I don’t take supplements any more.

As to how to lose the weight, my recommendation is to skip the expensive supplements, eat a balanced diet and get plenty of exercise. By plenty of exercise, I mean at least an hour a day, six or seven days a week. Two hours, if you can spare the time. Lift weights every other day, and get an aerobic workout (cycling or running) every day.

5

Ender, sorry but I don’t have time to go find cites for this (and besides, if you look it up yourself you’ll remember it better next time :smiley: ), but you can get really sick from overdoses of both Vitamin A and Vitamin D. They’re fat-soluble vitamins which are stored in your liver, unlike water-soluble vitamins like Vitamin C, which your kidneys excrete.

That clerk, not surprisingly, was blowin’ smoke, dear, when he said, "your body doesn’t always absorb all the vitamins and minerals in the pill, so having extra is a good thing. " That is, like, a total crock, in several different ways.

First, the health aspect–he’s wrong. Your body sometimes absorbs more than you realize, and next thing you know, you’re in the Emergency Room 'cause your skin has turned orange. Also, “your results may vary”–what’s true for the FDA’s test subjects might not be true for you.

Second, the “Smart Consumer” aspect. Why would you want to spend your money on extra vitamins and minerals that your kidneys are just gonna literally piss away?

Third, the UL aspect. You oughta know better, you’ve been at the Straight Dope long enough. You don’t recognize a suspicious factoid when you hear one? :smiley: “Your body doesn’t absorb all this…” Um, then why are they packaging it and selling it if your body’s not gonna use it? “Having extra is a good thing…” “I’m talking you into buying this…”

Final Answer: yeah, sorry, IMO you wasted your money. You could have gotten a perfectly adequate multi-vitamin and mineral supplement down at Wal-Mart, house brand, for about, oh say, $5.00 for a 2 months supply. Instead you spent, what, 20 bucks? For nettle leaf powder? Poor baby. :smiley:

(And what is nettle leaf powder good for, you ask? Why, darlin’, it’s excellent for fattening the wallets of nutriceuticals manufacturers. :smiley: )

6

You have to be careful with supplements as too much can cause what you are trying to avoid. Your body doesn’t store vitamin C so taking mega doses isn’t going to accomplish very much except thin your wallet.

If you’re trying to lose weight eat sensibly and get some regular physical exercise and see what happens.

7

How are vitamin supplement pills related to losing weight? Are you attempting to survive purely on pills, and not eat?

Large doses of fat soluble vitamins build up in the body, and can poison you. Large doses of water soluble vitamins are dumped to your urine.

I strongly suggest you check out the following site.
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/suppsherbs.html

This website is maintained to describe quack medical practices - focusing on alternative or complementary medicine claims. It has several links on topics you ask about.

8

Well, these pills are not a replacement for eating. I don’t think I could handle that. I like eating! However, I have noticed in the last day that my appetite has significantly decreased. I had two moderate meals yesterday, some fruit as a midnight snack, and I was fine. I wasn’t snacking all day because I didn’t feel hungry. Is that the pill or a placebo? I dunno.
My feeling is that yes, I should have checked it out here and on other sites before going ahead and buying it (yes, for $20 dollars, but I got 33 pills free. Whatabargain!) Anyway, I’ve already paid my money so I might as well get some use out of it. Here’s hoping I don’t keel over sometime next week.

Irishman Interesting site. My dad made me take Flinstones vitamins growing up. Turns out I didn’t need it after two years of age, the bastard!

DDG, yeah, I’ve got your daily required value right here, baby!

And exercise? I’m going, I’m going. Sheesh. I just don’t get why they put those stairmasters on the second floor. That’s such a hassle!

9

IIRC, when Vitamin C reaches the “bowel tolerance” point, you become best friends with Charmin.

10

One other thing. May I suggest you not use weight loss as your goal. Weight is not a very good measure of progress for getting in shape. It’s like trying to measure the Gross Domestic Product by counting train car loads of goods shipped by manufacturers. Yes, there’s some correlation, but it’s not very exact and can be very misleading.

Instead, I suggest you get your body fat percentage measured at the beginning of your program and then again every two or three months. In the meantime, don’t even bother to weigh yourself, or if you do, don’t take it seriously.

Your weight can go up and down for reasons having nothing to do with the amount of fat on your body.

11

Another thing that’s important to remember about taking vitamin supplements when you’re dieting is that vitamins are relatively difficult for your digestive system to absorb - especially Vitamin B12. They take longer to absorb than most other nutrients, some of them need co-factors to be present since they aren’t effectively absorbed on their own, and some are absorbed in the stomach (most nutrients are mainly absorbed in the small intestine)
So, if you take pills on their own or just with a drink the co-factors some vitamins need for absorption might not be present, and the pills might not stay in the right areas of your digestive tract for long enough to allow absorption to take place.