Expensive Urine

My doctor recently informed me that I’m low in Iron. No, I’m not a pasty, pallid, vampirish white, as I’m not deficient as such, but my blood tests suggest that I am low in this necessary mineral.

Apparently, this is common in women of my age group. But don’t run away yet! I won’t start talking about menstruation, or my gynaecologist, and I promise to be skepbitchy…

The gist is, for the first time ever, I’m on prescriptive vitamins.

This gave me reason to ponder, just how many people need supplementary vitamins, as opposed to how many people take supplementary vitamins?

Are we just a bunch of pill-popping vitamin junkies?

These aren’t the days of arduous sea voyages spanning many months, where passengers consumed a meagre, unvaried diet, and developed scurvy, with bleeding gums and sunken eyes.

Chances are, if you live in the ‘Western world’, even if you have a really shitty diet, you consume enough vitamins and minerals to avert being low, let alone deficient. Chances are, if you’re deficient, it’s some sort of essential condition, rather than diet-related neglect.

Yet the vitamin industry is a multi-billion dollar one!

Consumers are being duped into purchasing unnecessary drugs (yes, these fulfil the definition of drug) by their naturopaths, homeopaths, iridologists, chiropractors, herbalists, aromatherapists, chakra-aligners, acupuncturists, reflexologists, psychics, medical intuitives, osteopaths, massage therapists and aura readers.

Or…consumers self-diagnose.

Typing symptoms into search engines, we think (hope) we can ‘cure’ hemorrhoids with horse chestnut, and reverse male-pattern baldness with saw palmetto (men: I see you looking this one up now!).

All of a sudden, you’re an expert, recommending echinacea to your friends with the flu, and apricot kernels to those with cancer. Then you’re quaffing homeopathic sugar pills purported to retain the ‘memory’ of supposed ‘healing’ properties.

Say, did you know that a goiter can be cured by the touch of a hanged man’s hand?

…I love my Mom, but she’s a classic example of such a consumer. Her goal is noble, to help her friends, and herself, but her methods are questionable.

Mom, never a day spent in Chemistry class, has her own chemistry set. An amateur apothecary, Mom makes her own moonshine… sorry, I mean colloidal silver. Quite simply, Mom synthesizes heavy metals for her own consumption. At the very least, ingesting these particles of silver could turn her skin an ashen-gray color by way of a disorder called argyria.

Often, a meal of tablets accompanies Mom’s meal. Heart condition? No. Chronic pain? No. Mom is a pill-popping vitamin junkie.

And so are many people.

But surely vitamins are natural, and safe?

But they aren’t invariably ‘natural’…have you forgotten that tablets are processed and factory prepared? They aren’t invariably ’safe’…for example, toxic levels (which aren’t always ridiculously high quantities of a vitamin) of Vitamin A can cause hair loss. Even taking saw palmetto won’t help you then…

So, before you go popping pills, in the hope of a miracle cure, or a bigger penis, or a libido to use that bigger penis, apply some critical thinking.

Do some real research (not reading the biased ‘product information’ listings online), try Pub Med rather than the Vitamin Shoppe, see a good doctor, and have a fucking orange, or something.

We obviously give a shit about our health, but not enough.

At the very worst, your unnecessary ’supplements’ can be contraindicated against your prescribed medication, and you can friggin’ die, man.

At the very best, you’ll have expensive urine…