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Sharing - What Supplements/vitamins Work For You?

T.H.

By T.H.
in Super Sensitive People

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T.H. Community Regular
T.H.
Posted

I think one of the really challenging things to find, as a super-sensitive, is supplements that don't make you sick. Probiotics, vitamins and minerals, digestive enzymes - all the things that can be really helpful, but we have to find safe sources.

So, what brands of supplements/probiotics/other 'gut/body helpers' do you take that don't make you react?

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dilettantesteph Collaborator
dilettantesteph
Posted

I use homemade yogurt. I found a whole milk source with nothing added. In addition the cows are pasture fed and not supplemented with gluten grains or oats. I use their yogurt for first culture, but make my own from my own four more times. How much more can that be stretched? The sources I read said three, but I've taken it to four so far. Maybe I'll try 5.

Tigercat17 Enthusiast
Tigercat17
Posted

I think one of the really challenging things to find, as a super-sensitive, is supplements that don't make you sick. Probiotics, vitamins and minerals, digestive enzymes - all the things that can be really helpful, but we have to find safe sources.

So, what brands of supplements/probiotics/other 'gut/body helpers' do you take that don't make you react?

Hi Shauna,

This is a really good question. I wish I had some answers for you. So far I have reacted to many muti vitamins. I think I tried about seven different companies and I still haven't found one that I can take. After the last time I'm really afraid to take any and I've completely given up on them.

Back in Jan of this year I was so sick from vitamins and it took me four months to realize it. The doctor thought I had lymphoma and I had to go through a laparoscopy surgery to remove enlarged lymph nodes in my stomach. And all because of "gluten free" vitamins... <_< Even the doctors didn't think it was because of the celiac disease. All the path reports came back negative for cancer , but a reactive lymph node was the diagnosis. Which means it could be from an autoimmune disease. Duh -celiac disease! It wasn't until two weeks after the surgery I started to make the connection to the vitamins. And I had to go through even more testing for other autoimmune disease -everything came back negative, Thank God! I stopped taking the vitamins and wouldn't you know all my symptoms went away and I starting feeling really great again. I even thought about suing the company, but the lawyers thought in the long run it wouldn't be worth it. So I actually had to have surgery because of vitamins. :angry:

Right now I take:

Slow Fe iron -red pills

Nature Made Calcium with vitamins D (but not everyday)

I haven't tried anything new since last May so I thought I'd try another multi vitamin two weeks ago. I tried the Nature Made multi vitamin (gluten free) and the next day I felt I got glutened pretty bad so I had to stop them right away. I always have reactions the next day after I get glutened and I made sure I didn't try anything else so I know it was the vitamins.

After two years, I've just come to the conclusion that I'm just too sensitive to take any muti vitamins and I just try to eat really healthy. I'm thinking that there are just too many ingredients in the multivitamins that it makes it hard for them to be uncontaminated by gluten.

If there are any muti vitamins that the super senistive people take without any problems I'd love to know, too.

Thanks Shauna for posting this. You must have been reading my mind... :)

dilettantesteph Collaborator
dilettantesteph
Posted

I had the same problems with vitamins. There are so many vitamins and supplements recommended here, it makes me nervous, but I haven't tried all of them to know that I react, but just about everything I tried, I did react to. They aren't well regulated and I think that it is difficult to get things really gluten-free when there a lot of ingredients, especially processed ones, as stated above.

I do manage two:

Thyadine iodine supplement and Life Extension Vitamin D3 2,000 I.U. liquid emulsion. I diluted it with my safe olive oil.

I found that I reacted to the Nature Made Vitamin D. I am sensitive to crazy low levels of cc.

I have tried to get vitamins as concentrated as possible with as few ingredients as possible. The few ingredients limit the chances of cc. The concentrated form means that we take less so that the cc is less likely to bother us.

It is crazy when you feel better when you stop taking your vitamins. Vitamins are supposed to make you feel better, right?

  • 4 weeks later...
RollingAlong Explorer
RollingAlong
Posted

My spouse felt loads better when he stopped the vitamins. I bought them carefully, they were high quality and free of gluten, casein and soy.

T.H. Community Regular
T.H.
Posted
  • Author

Jeeesh, that's so awful, for vitamins to cause this much trouble! I haven't been able to find any multi-vitamins or calcium supplements that don't make me sick, either, although some I had an allergic reaction to early on, so I never got to try it when I was having my super-sensitive reactions. I have one iodine source, but I just don't know if I trust it - not for gluten reasons, but for whether or not it's actually iodine that I can absorb. The company seems a bit odd, to be honest. If I find out it's good, I'll put the name out here!

One thing I've been investigating - although it's not perfect by a long shot - is herbs. A number of herbs seem to be fairly high in certain vitamins, so I've been trying to grow as many herbs as my backyard can support. Finding accurate information on estimated herbal vitamin levels has been difficult, though. The most detailed information on this I've found here: Open Original Shared Link

The site lists some of the nutritional information from the USDA, some cooking uses, other information. Although I'm still researching which vitamins can survive heat and which can't, that sort of thing.

I started this a little bit ago, and then as usually happens, the rest of life barged in and it's kind of fallen by the wayside, even though I really need to keep it going!

I have no idea how much this has helped or not, but I have found it interesting that eating plainly as I do now, with salt and my own herbs for the only alternate flavor, I'll find myself craving one or two of the herbs for a few days in a row, then a totally different set for the following days. Not even necessarily herbs that I like the flavor of, even, but I crave them just the same. Makes me wonder if those herbs are high in vitamins that I'm need at that point, you know?

Considering that this has been my only vitamin source (aside from the iodine I try) for over a year now, and my vitamin levels checked out well at the last doctor check, I figure at least they aren't hurting! :)

dilettantesteph Collaborator
dilettantesteph
Posted

I had always been iron deficient and took iron supplements. After going gluten free my iron levels were high so I stopped the supplements.

I think that avoiding gluten may be more important than taking supplements when it comes to getting our vitamin levels where they should be.

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RollingAlong Explorer
RollingAlong
Posted

We've been trying to eat oysters and liver regularly

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    • knitty kitty
      Son's legs shaking

      By knitty kitty · Posted

      Blood tests for thiamine are unreliable.  The nutrients from your food get absorbed into the bloodstream and travel around the body.  So, a steak dinner can falsely raise thiamine blood levels in the following days.  Besides, thiamine is utilized inside cells where stores of thiamine are impossible to measure. A better test to ask for is the Erythrocyte Transketolace Activity test.  But even that test has been questioned as to accuracy.  It is expensive and takes time to do.   Because of the discrepancies with thiamine tests and urgency with correcting thiamine deficiency, the World Health Organization recommends giving thiamine for several weeks and looking for health improvement.  Thiamine is water soluble, safe and nontoxic even in high doses.   Many doctors are not given sufficient education in nutrition and deficiency symptoms, and may not be familiar with how often they occur in Celiac disease.  B12 and Vitamin D can be stored for as long as a year in the liver, so not having deficiencies in these two vitamins is not a good indicator of the status of the other seven water soluble B vitamins.  It is possible to have deficiency symptoms BEFORE there's changes in the blood levels.   Ask your doctor about Benfotiamine, a form of thiamine that is better absorbed than Thiamine Mononitrate.  Thiamine Mononitrate is used in many vitamins because it is shelf-stable, a form of thiamine that won't break down sitting around on a store shelf.  This form is difficult for the body to turn into a usable form.  Only thirty percent is absorbed in the intestine, and less is actually used.   Thiamine interacts with all of the other B vitamins, so they should all be supplemented together.  Magnesium is needed to make life sustaining enzymes with thiamine, so a magnesium supplement should be added if magnesium levels are low.   Thiamine is water soluble, safe and nontoxic even in high doses.  There's no harm in trying.
    • lizzie42
      Son's legs shaking

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      Neither of them were anemic 6 months after the Celiac diagnosis. His other vitamin levels (d, B12) were never low. My daughters levels were normal after the first 6 months. Is the thiamine test just called thiamine? 
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    • lizzie42
      Son's legs shaking

      By lizzie42 · Posted

      Thank you! That's helpful. My kids eat very little processed food. Tons of fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs and occasional red meat. We do a lot of rice and bean bowls, stir fry, etc.  Do you think with all the fruits and vegetables they need a vitamin supplement? I feel like their diet is pretty healthy and balanced with very limited processed food. The only processed food they eat regularly is a bowl of Cheerios here and there.  Could shaking legs be a symptom of just a one-time gluten exposure? I guess there's no way to know for sure if they're getting absolutely zero exposure because they do go to school a couple times a week. We do homeschool but my son does a shared school 2x a week and my daughter does a morning Pre-K 3 x a week.  At home our entire house is strictly gluten free and it is extremely rare for us to eat out. If we eat at someone else's house I usually just bring their food. When we have play dates we bring all the snacks, etc. I try to be really careful since they're still growing. They also, of course, catch kids viruses all the time so I  want to make sure I know whether they're just sick or they've had gluten. It can be pretty confusing when they're pretty young to even be explaining their symptoms! 
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