The “whiplash” to endure winter is back; more than 10 million French people consume vitamins but mainly to lose weight, age better, and tan faster.
Not a doctor escapes the recurring request: “Doctor, what do you think of vitamins to give me a little boost before winter”? Pharmacies and gazettes have understood the appetite aroused by frost and darkness. However, we must be clear: the balanced Western diet, which is the rule for most of those who complain, provides exactly what the body wants. Physical exercise three times a week and regular exposure to the sun’s rays, even weak ones in winter, are enough. On the other hand, how many seasonal depressions, certainly not violent depressions, go unnoticed and find a bad resolution in these complacent prescriptions?
There are as many articles in the medical literature to glorify vitamins as to destroy them.
Vitamin D and cancer
An example, in the Journal of American Medical Association, the famous JAMA, there is evidence of the preventive effect of vitamin D in colon cancer; but in the same medical journal, a study appeared which concluded that, because most of vitamin D is synthesized by the skin under the effect of exposure to the sun, if the British Isles had the climate of Florida , in Great Britain there would be 22,000 fewer deaths from this disease per year.
Vitamin C, beloved ex
Doctors had a certain tolerance for vitamin C, which passes quickly from the mouth to our urine without having any effect in the event of an overdose; less since we know that if the catch continues for a few months, it promotes kidney stones, without really solving our fatigue, more likely linked to much else: inactivity, overweight, lack of sun, projects or leisure … There are many studies to show that when the vitamin and mineral status is good, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer are less frequent, but it is obvious that we are also less sick when we are in good general health! This is often the case with followers of food supplements …
French people are in a state of “deficiency”
Because the problem is more complex than it seems at first glance. Contrary to what doctors think, vitamin deficiencies are very frequent and affect – the figures vary from one study to another – practically half of the French population which struggles to eat healthily. No starvation, because calories are the rendezvous of “junk food”; but loss of vitality and increased susceptibility to disease. All these potential patients do not have more financial means to buy food supplements than fresh fruits and vegetables which would lead to the same result.
The only exceptions to this finding of uselessness are situations where the needs are greater than normal and cannot be compensated by an increase in the diet: adolescents, pregnant and breastfeeding women, practicing sport at least three times a week, smokers , drinkers (more than three glasses a day) without forgetting the very old people, often undernourished or who for lack of financial means, energy or quite simply teeth, neglect their food. Which makes a lot of people but alas, few requests and prescriptions.
What to answer to the cohort of those who for years have happily consumed these saving lashes? Assure them that they are right, but that we should not be ashamed if the circuits of form must pass through those of psychiatry, and insist on finding a medically more “correct” explanation than the very practical one for the lack. of vitamins.
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