I recently altered my vitamin supplements - in particular, I upped my intake of vitamin C and chelated magnesium. And the constipation problems that I had been having went away. Oh, and my hayfever has eased off too, I haven't had to keep on taking antihistamines. I suppose these people would say I was imagining that, then?
I used to be of the opinion that if it makes a difference, Holland & Barrett don't sell it (eg paracetamol and cigarettes), if it makes a noticeable difference, you need a prescription for it (eg Prozac and Valium) and if it makes a big difference, it's illegal (eg cocaine). My attitude has totally changed now that I've started to see real differences.
Vitamins, minerals and oils appear in food, so to say that they don't make a difference is a bit like saying that food doesn't make a difference either. And if food doesn't make a difference, then that rather defeats the point of going on a diet, and it makes nonsense of the idea of the existence of such a thing as an "eating disorder".
That Oxford research cited in the article Voyajer quoted at
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...?threadid=52854 doesn't prove that vitamins have no effect. All it proves is that there are other causes of cancer and heart disease besides deficiencies in antioxidants. But we knew that already, otherwise we wouldn't have started low carb diets, or made such a fuss about quitting smoking. Tell us something we
don't know!
I think there definitely is a point. Nutrients make a difference. However, I think it's not unreasonable to think that some of the effect of some nutrients, either from food or supplements, may be somewhat lost on you if you also happen to be eating lots of refined sugar, drinking coffee or cola, smoking, or taking guarana, ephedra, yohimbe, SSRI's, MAOI's, benzodiazepines or illegal drugs.
In order for the brain to work and minimise the chance of depression, anxiety and insomnia, I believe it helps to ensure you're having a good dose of all the B complex vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, calcium, zinc and omega-3. Not all the off-the-shelf multivitamins can be relied upon to have adequate amounts of these nutrients by themselves, and you'll definitely have to take oils separately - fish oil is best but if you're a veggie you'll have to make do with flaxseed. Once you've got that far, there are other vitamins and minerals that can help with other specific things about your health that you want to improve.
Few nutrients are dangerous on overdose, and those which are are usually labelled. A deficiency is usually more dangerous. Do you really want to risk your health by relying on getting all the nutrients you need from your diet, just to save a bit of money? Besides, even ignoring health concerns, sometimes it's a false economy. Sure, you eat when you're hungry, but you don't want to force feed yourself, especially if you're otherwise restricting your diet to try to lose weight. Finding adequate food sources of particular nutrients can sometimes be more expensive than taking the equivalent supplement anyway.