Vitamin Information Center

I woke up with a sore throat and a bad attitude last week.

The sore throat was the first symptom, followed soon after by a runny nose and a lot of sneezing. And the raunchy mood resulted when I realized I was coming down with my second cold in less than a month.

I do not have time to be sick!

I went months without any kind of cold, and then to have two within weeks of each other, well, it was very discouraging.

So I immediately began doubling my daily intake of Emergen-C. Normally I take a packet in the morning and a packet at night. Sometimes, after a run of more than six miles or so, I take a packet before and after the run to deal with an occasional post-run headache.

By the second day, the cold was worse, but my resolve to beat it remained. I took six packets a day, in bottles of water, and by the fourth day, the cold had gotten much better. Six days after that first sore throat, I am almost symptom-free.

As I was driving home one night this week, I heard a radio commercial for a vitamin C supplement. What I found interesting is that it cited two studies that found higher doses of vitamin C can lengthen your life, help with PMS, and are a natural anti-inflammatory. Seriously, can this be true? And was it possible to overdose on vitamin C?
So I did some research. At first, I was more confused than ever as different studies and scientists offered different opinions.

But I did find some of what I was looking for. First, if you take more vitamin C than your body needs, you will just get rid of it.

“You really can’t overdose on water-soluble vitamins,” said Ken Hollen of Diet and Sport Nutrition, who has become my go-to guy on supplements. “What will happen is that you will get diarrhea.”

A person would need to take 10,000 to 13,000 mg to get to that point. I was taking six packets of Emergen-C, which has a lot of other vitamins and minerals in it, but that means I was taking 6,000 mg of vitamin C. (In fact, one article I found said it’s best to take vitamin C in conjunction with other vitamins or nutrients because of the synergistic effect that mimics whole food and reduces negative side effects.)

Another article made the point that megadosing any vitamin or mineral can throw your system out of balance, so you should consult a doctor or nutritionist to make sure you don’t create a different problem for yourself.

Hollen also pointed out, as did two of the articles I read, that taking vitamin C with calcium ascorbate can buffer your stomach and make sure you don’t increase the acidity of your system. Unfortunately, many supplements, including my beloved Emergen-C, use ascorbic acid, which can cause increased acidity.

As for all of those fabulous things that infomercial said vitamin C could do for you, there are studies that show significant impacts on health by increasing the intake of vitamin C. The one I was most interested in was the anti-inflammatory properties. Hollen explained to me that because vitamin C is found in the fluid around the joints and ligaments, it removes some of the inflammatory properties, but it’s not significant enough to be taken for that purpose alone.

Interestingly, nearly all of the articles and studies I read said increasing vitamin C even a little bit would most likely make most people feel better.

A garden may mean different things to different people. To some, it’s a way to trim back the grocery budget. If laid out properly and maintained, a 50-by-50-foot garden could produce all the vegetables a family of five would need for a year. Even a 20-by-20-foot plot could produce enough food to greatly impact that weekly trudge to the grocery store.Some find it relaxing, some, a source of exercise. Light gardening will burn 170 to 240 calories an hour, while vigorous work such as spading and hoeing will burn 250 to 350.
Most have found how much better homegrown harvest tastes than the store bought stuff and how much better it is for you. Tomatoes that are picked green will ripen with 1/3 less vitamin C than vine ripened ones, and broccoli will lose 2/3 of its vitamin C six days after harvest. But even when stored for a period of time, good amounts of disease fighting beta-carotene are found in winter squash, carrots and sweet potatoes.

Why should it surprise us that fresh, just-picked veggies are the best for us? You wouldn’t need to take another store bought vitamin if all your vegetables came from your garden.

Going down the list we find that asparagus is high in vitamins A, C, B1, and Calcium. Because they root deep they become a good source of minerals too. Beets are high in A and C, while turnips are packed with B2 and E.

Besides the beta carotene found in carrots, significant amounts of B1, calcium, and phosphorus make the carrot one of the best snacks you could give your little munchkin. They would consider it a tasty treat if it came from your garden; the store stuff can taste pretty bad sometimes, thus leaving a bad taste in their mouth for veggies.

Parsnips, when harvested in the winter under 12 inches of leaves, will give you a whole new appreciation for this B6, C and potassium packed, cream-colored, carrot-looking thing. Other vegetables whose flavor sweetens with each passing frost include broccoli, which has more body-ready calcium than a glass of milk could ever hope for. Brussels sprouts are just plain stuffed with everything. And just one serving of Cauliflower will give you all the vitamin C your body will need for that day. Cabbage goes beyond that, adding good amounts of vitamins B1, B2, A and calcium as well.

Onion and leeks rate high in vitamins A, C and E, with corn adding vitamins A, B and some minerals, though not in very big amounts. My wife says there is not much nutrition in sweet corn; and I guess after it’s been smothered in butter and sprinkled with salt, any good has probably been canceled out. But I tell her, “It’s got to be better than a Twinkie.”

There are many more, including spinach. We around 50 years old know what gigantic muscles can be had by downing a can of this stuff, and these are necessary when protecting our Olive Oyls from the Blutos in our lives (I still don’t know what he saw in her, what a bean pole).

If gardening is your thing, whatever your reason, be it saving money or good health, your tastes buds and, more importantly, your children’s buds will say, “I didn’t know veggies could taste this good.”

If you have any questions about your landscaping, lawn, or garden, enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and write to Niemeyer Landscaping, 3368 Perry St., Hudsonville, 49426, or e-mail NiemeyerLandscaping@Juno.com.