Vitamins?

[Thomas Linton]

Most vitamin tablets have WAY more of each vitamin than you need. For water soluble vitamins like C- and under non survival situations- that is not a problem. Fat soluble vitamins like A,D,E,and K can be a problem in high concentrations, but that is not what I am getting at. All of the extra water soluble vitamins that you body cannot absorb and use (your body doesn't store water soluble vitamins like it does fat soluble ones) are excreted. That is why your urine is neon orange when you are taking vitamin suplements. Vitamin suplements are diuretics and that can be a problem in a survival situation. Just something to think about.

How much of any vitamin you "need" depends on you and how much you are obtaining from all sources, including vitamin tablets, yes?

I take a "one-a-day" supplement. Thankfully, my urine is not orange, neon or otherwise.

I find no sources on the Internet that describe vitamins as diuretics, but lots of information (AMA, universities) about taking vitamins to counteract the effects of diuretics. Could you help with some links?

 

[bikermikearchery]

interesting, why hard candy?

Hard candy is simply the highest amount of calories in a non-spoiling form.
Also a moral booster.
this information came from a book on survival at sea. Still viable information for any survival situation.

 

[TDahlgren]

You won't develop any significant vitamin deficiencies in less than a week. I'd rather carry more matches.

:thumbup:

Assuming you are otherwise healthy and eat a decent diet then vitamin deficiency will be the least of your concerns for weeks if not months.

Remember, sailors only developed scurvy on very long voyages where they received essentially no vitamin C and this problem was easily resolved with the use of small quantities of citrus fruit. Just about any terrestrial environment you could survive in is going to have viable sources of vitamin C, a simple example being dandelion greens.

Most all other vitamin deficiencies take long periods with very poor dietary intake (think African famine regions etc) before they begin to manifest themselves.

The one essential dietary item you want to stock for long term survival situations?

Iodized salt.

If you are not on a coastal area with access to seafood, then lack of iodine intake can be very problematic - goiters and hypothyroidism being the effects on adults. Developmental disability (cretinism) being the biggest concern with infants and children. Adult problems are usually reversible whith iodine. Children's disabilities are usually permanent.

Endemic iodine deficiency is still one of the top (use to be #2, may still be) preventable health problems worldwide. It used to be a major problem in rural America - Appalachia especially, where the soils are very iodine poor.

 

[hlee]

Look on the back of your one a day bottle. It will give the daily recommended allowance of the vitamins each tablet. Some of them will be less than 100%, some much less, some will be around 100%, and some will be well over 100%. Usually vitamin C is pretty high, but not always. There have been no adverse reactions shown for taking vitamin C well in excess of the daily recommended allowance, even to the extent of taking greater than 10,000% the recommended allowance. However, vitamin C is a diuretic, as are all water soluble vitamins. They make you urinate because you need to get rid of what your body cannot use (your body does not store them so it washes them out the only way it can, in your urine). This is why there are few to no adverse reactions to taking large excesses of them. Taking too much A, D, E, or K can be very bad (read fatal) as these are fat soluble and are stored in your fatty tissue. Your body does not clear these as it does water soluble vitamins. Yes, taking vitamins can counter the effects of diuretics, when taken in moderation, but they can become diuretics themselves if you take alot. There is a difference between a one-a-day and a 1000 mg Vitamin C tablet. If you have a varied and well balanced diet, you could save your self some time and just throw the multivitamin directly in the toilet, but most people don't have a varied and well balanced diet. Multivitamins are great because they are broad spectrum. They are not good for you because you need ALL of the vitamins that they contain, but are good for you because you need A FEW of the vitamins that they contain. The rest are washed out through your urine (water soluble vitamins and minerals) or stored (fat soluble vitamins).

Most people will never notice the diuretic effects of a multivitamin because they are well hydrated (and urinate frequently) anyway, and if they are not, then they can go over to the water cooler and get a drink. This would only become a problem in the event of not having a water source available, such as being stranded in the wilderness.

 

[hlee]

Quoted from Thomas Linton...

"I take a "one-a-day" supplement. Thankfully, my urine is not orange, neon or otherwise."

From this statement I would guess that you are well hydrated in general, urinate frequently during the day, and take your one-a-day in the morning. Nothng wrong with that. I've always heard that if you don't need to urinate, then you need to drink.

I would suggest an experiment to illustrate what I am saying, though. Instead of taking that multi in the morning, take it right before bed, and after that last urination before bed. Then observe the color of your urine the next morning (or when ever it is that you need to get up). My guess is that it will be more colorful than usual. Why, because all of those vitamins that you don't need get washed out.

 

[znode]

Most people with a healthy diet do not need multivitamin supplements, and it really is a gimmick they who sell vitamins or enzyme supplements to the average person eating balanced meals. It's your college kid subsisting on ramen who may run into vitamin deficiencies, and even then it's quite a long term, low-effect effect. There is no such thing as an enzyme deficiency unless you have existing metabolic or digestive disorders to start with, nor do extra enzymes do anything for a healthy person. (One common legitimate enzyme supplement is lactase, for people who don't produce them -- lactose-intolerants)

There is nearly no reason to bother with vitamins in most less-than-a-month survival situations, especially since the space can be used to store other much more essential items.

A potent B-complex would help convert the meager food you would find/get into energy. A full spectrum enzyme capsule would aid in efficient digestion of stuff your guts may not be used to.

Not true. A "potent" B-complex will mostly end up in your urine. An enzyme capsule will pretty much do nothing, as the body will produce any enzymes it may need.

nto the Wild (1996) by Jon Krakauer studied the plight of Chris McCandless who starved to death, even though he had shot a moose (or caribou) that he only ate a small part of.
One theory (may not be in the book) is that he ate some vegetation that disrupted his (liver's?) ability to deal with any food except sugar.

This was claimed not to be correct, supposedly by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. (I've only found one magazine article saying so.) Supposedly, No toxins were detected in the wild potatoes that McCandless were supposed to have eaten, and Krakauer published his book before the results were obtained.

Halls Vitamin C drops suggestion. Makes a lot of sense.

As hlee says, large doses of Vitamin C will do very little, or worse, under a survival situation. At best, they are not shown to do much against any potential colds you may have. At worse, the side effects of large doses of ascorbic would be excessive urination, indigestion, diarrhea, none of which you would want to deal with.

 

[fnc]

Thinking of the water soluble vitamins,
you might be able to cut some vitamin tablets and take
a smaller dose which would be sufficient.
Or, take a tablet every 4th day.

:thumbup:
Assuming you are otherwise healthy and eat a decent diet then vitamin deficiency will be the least of your concerns for weeks if not months.

Remember, sailors only developed scurvy on very long voyages where they received essentially no vitamin C and this problem was easily resolved with the use of small quantities of citrus fruit. Just about any terrestrial environment you could survive in is going to have viable sources of vitamin C, a simple example being dandelion greens.

Most all other vitamin deficiencies take long periods with very poor dietary intake (think African famine regions etc) before they begin to manifest themselves.

I agreed with you about severe symptoms, but it had been many years,
since I had read anything about vitamins and length of deprivation.
I was concerned about mental (maybe decision making, judgment, etc.)
found little on "mental effects" so far. I'm not sure the experimenters
designed the tests for "metal ability".

I just started reading on the web and found some info:
29 day deprivation of Vitamin C caused symptoms.

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/3/556

Hodges et al.7 fed, through a gastric tube, five prisoner volunteers in the Iowa State Prison, on a diet containing no vitamin C for 84–99 days. They reported that the first sign of clinical scurvy, petechial haemorrhages in the skin, appeared after 29 days of deprivation compared with 182–238 days in the Sheffield study. The longer period in the latter may have been due to the fact that all the Sheffield volunteers had been on a diet containing 70 mg vitamin C daily for the 6 weeks before the deprivation period started. The Sheffield study showed that scurvy could be prevented or cured by a daily intake of 10 mg of vitamin C. The Iowa group found the same.

The one essential dietary item you want to stock for long term survival situations?
Iodized salt.
...

I agree with your "inland" or non-seafood eater recommendation to
have Iodized salt. Eating fish from Great Lakes (fresh water) don't work.

I have seen the resultant mental retardation first hand; though these
people were friendly and kind to others, they had the mental abilities
of a young child: with trouble, they could read simple text. It makes
me so sad to think they could have been normal or even above normal,
who knows.
Nebr, S.D. and other central USA states had this problem in the 40's, 50's.
Expectant mothers and infants needed special attention.
I do not know what the situation is or was in the last few decades.

 

[ironraven]

On the whole starving, eatting fatty moose, then dieing...

During the Seige of Stalingrad, the Nazi troops were living mostly on starches and sometimes dried vegetables and lean meat (starved horses), and dropping dead even though they are getting enough calories (well, sorta). Nazi's send in a doctor, he determines it what we call rabbit starvation. His answer was to add fatty meat paste (think spam made with beef and pork, rather than chicken and pork, and with crisco rather than gelatin- yuck!), cheese and butter to their diets. Then they drop dead AGAIN, from heart attacks.

Turns out, the starvation had dropped some enzyme or mineral level through the floor, and the addition of the fat was somehow made their heartbeats get out of wack. Stand up too fast, or try to run, or just be "that messed up", and their hearts would pop. That might be the enzyme that znode, but when I came across this, I think it was a potassium issue. Not sure if the enzyme in question used potassium, but I know potassium is involved in the regulation of the heart.