{"id":996,"date":"2019-02-25T07:29:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T07:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/?p=996"},"modified":"2019-02-25T07:29:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T07:29:51","slug":"niki-bezzant-supplement-superior-or-money-down-the-drain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/?p=996","title":{"rendered":"Niki Bezzant: Supplement Superior or Money Down The Drain?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>How vital are vitamins? Niki Bezzant explains pill popping for better health.<\/p>\n<p>Vitamins and other supplements are big business. Around a third of Kiwi women and a quarter of men regularly take some sort of supplement; it&#8217;s estimated we spend more than a billion dollars a year on supplements like vitamin C, omega-3, garlic and echinacea.<\/p>\n<p>We often take supplements because we think they&#8217;re going to improve our health in some way. They&#8217;re promoted as ways to boost our immunity, balance our hormones, improve our mood, relieve stress and give us energy. Some promise to keep us young and lubricate our joints.<\/p>\n<p>But do these things really work? Do we need them to get or be well? Or can we get what we need from food? Are supplements super, or are they a waste of money?<\/p>\n<p>The answer to that is not straightforward, it seems. When you talk to registered dietitians or nutritionists they don&#8217;t like to give a blanket answer; that&#8217;s because individual needs are very different. Some people with specific health conditions may benefit from expert advice and expert-recommended supplements. By expert I mean a degree-qualified dietitian or nutritionist, not someone in a pharmacy, health food store or on social media.<\/p>\n<p>Vitamin C is an example of something often promoted as a miracle cure for everything from cancer on down. But it&#8217;s not something we can use in mega doses. I recently heard Otago University&#8217;s Magreet Vissers interviewed: she is an expert in vitamin C and spends her time researching vitamin C and cancer. Yet she&#8217;s the first to say healthy people don&#8217;t need vitamin C supplements; she herself eats a kiwifruit a day to get her daily dose. If we simply eat five serves of vegetables and fruit a day, we&#8217;ll get the 200mg of vitamin C we need to reduce our risk of chronic disease.<\/p>\n<p>Continue Reading at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/lifestyle\/news\/article.cfm?c_id=6&amp;objectid=12204226\">NZHerald<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How vital are vitamins? Niki Bezzant explains pill popping for better health. Vitamins and other supplements are big business. Around&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vitamins-supplements","tag-alternative-medicine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alternativemedicine.today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}