Your Nutritional and Vitamin Supplement Information Resource

posted by Ronald on Nov 20

Taking a vitamin supplement on a regular basis requires us to form a habit.  In much of the literature about habits, most experts agree that it takes two to four weeks to adopt something as a habit.  The more frequent the daily occurance the quicker the habit will form.  With many of the pill supplements, you’re forced into taking them 2 or 3 times per day.  After about two weeks, you should be able to ‘remember’ or form the habit of taking the pills in the morning, around luchtime, and just before dinner.  

Getting into the habit of taking the pills runs into a bit of difficulty if you have a variable schedule.  For example, if you frequently travel on business or if you have different schedules for different days of the week.  Many parents with kindergarten or pre-school children may have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule that is different than their Tuesday-Thursday schedule.  Remembering to take your pill form of a vitamin supplement then requires more discipline - especially when first trying to form the habit.

There are studies that also indicate people actually get tired or dread taking the next round of pills.  Maybe its the setup with a glass of water, picking out the right pills to take at this particular hour, or just the gag reflex that keeps us from maintaining the habit of taking the pill vitamins over the long term. 

Part of the problem is the frequency.  If you could take one set of vitamin pills in the morning, you would stand a better chance of maintaining the habit.  You would eliminate the ‘too busy’ or ‘no water’ or ‘just forgot’ excuses that inevitably occur as the days click by and your pills pile up.  But to reduce the frequency you would need to increase the potency of the pill.  Make it longer lasting in the body.  If your body were able to absorb more of the nutrition out of the vitamin pill, you could take one pill in the morning and satisfy your supplementation needs for the day.  Unfortunately, pills are made with binders and other agents to hold the pill together.  The vitamin pills that are more potent, more easily absorbed contain less binders and filler material but require you to take them several times per day.  We’re back to where we started, taking a synthetic vitamin pill or pills several times per day.

There is an alternative.  Instead of a pill, try a liquid.  Studies have shown that medication in liquid form is taken more regularly and is more easily absorbed by the body than a pill.  What that means for us is if we take a liquid supplement, our bodies should be able to absorb more of the nutrients which means we should be able to consume it in lower doses and less frequently.  But you do need something that is what I call Nutrient Dense. 

I define Nutrient Density as the amount of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, glyconutrients, amino acids, etc. that you get from one recommended dose of your supplement.  A Nutrient Dense supplement to me is one that contains more than 110 identified nutrients in one single dose.  What I do is:

1. Get the data sheet of my preferred liquid nutritional supplement
2. Get the data sheet of a vitamin supplement that I am trying to decide whether to take or not
3. Pick a vitamin, mineral, enzyme, etc. from my preferred supplement and see if it is provided in the other supplement
4. Continue the process until I get a good idea of which supplement provides the most nutrition

But there is a catch to the process - YOU MUST COMPARE IT DOSE FOR DOSE.  Be careful that your pill form of vitamin supplement doesn’t require two pills three times per day.  Usually a liquid nutritional supplement is a single 2-4 ounce dose.

There is something else to note.  A liquid nutritional supplement may also be a whole food supplement.  A whole food supplement that is natural, 100% organic, and cold processed means that it is very similar to taking all the fresh vegetables, putting them in the blender and making them into a liquid.  Note they’re not adding preservatives.  Ther’re not heating it so they keep all the enzymes, amino acides and other nutrients alive.  You also will not see x% of the FDA’s Recommended Daily Allowance.

Why no FDA statement on a whole food supplement?  That’s because you would need to add man-made synthetic vitamins to the supplement to ensure it had that specific amount of vitamin in it.  You don’t see it on an orange or a pear or a piece of brocolli do you?  The reason is that whole foods vary with the season.  They age and must be refridgerated (or sealed in a container) to ‘preserve freshness.’  Preserving freshness means keeping the nutrients alive and intact.

So when you compare your vitamin supplement to a whole food supplement compare two things:

1. The size and frequency of the dose
2. That a vitamin, mineral, enzyme, etc. that is in one is in the other.

One final item.  My preference is a liquid, whole food, 100% organic, nutrient dense (remember this means more than 110 nutrients in a single dose) supplement that I can take once per day.