multi vitamins/minerals

I take the chewable gummies (some containers suggest 2/day and others 1xday)...depending on how I feel and the season I take 1-4...in winter when I am at my lowest energywise I take up to 4 but in the summer when I am chugging homemade fruit smoothies I don't bother taking them at all.

Check the minimum daily requirements of most of those vitamins and you will see that they are wayyyy under what you really need...but then again you eat food too, don't you.? 

So they sort of bump up your nutrition level but do not replace a good healthy diet.

Have your blood work done 2xs/year...once going into the winter and once coming out of it  and adapt your intake in both energy and vitamins to that (a trick that my old GP-homeopathic doctor taught me 30yrs ago)...it really does change things...you will see if you need more iron and other supplements (or not) and be able to control your intake.

Sharon

There's not really great research supporting multivitamin use, though there are plenty of opinions. Nevertheless, I take a multivitamin daily, and I get vague hints that it's helpful. I need much more Vitamin D than your multivitamin has, but that's based on blood tests.

Thanks, after a bit more searching found Forvia which looks good for pouchies.

I'm the same as Scott; I know there is no definitive proof vitamins works, but given my extremely limited diet, I do take supplements.

My question is: do people think chewables are better than the capsules?

Gin

I have taken chewable vitamins from day 1 since my surgery.  My surgeon told me that I could have issues absorbing daily recommended quotients of vitamins with a J Pouch. I was told to take Flintstonse's Complete, which at that time (1992) was one of the few good chewable multivitamins out there.  Now there are a bunch, and I am now taking Vitafusion Men's Complete Multivitamin Gummy.  Vitafusion also makes a Multivitamin Gummy for women.

Regarding research, I don't think the chewable vitamin companies have invested any money into research on the vitamin nutritional needs of J Pouchers.  They make their money on people buying chewable vitamins for kids and their formulations are intended for kids.  If they give you an adult dosage as well as a kid dosage, I do not know what that recommendation is based on, other than scientific speculation.

For most J-pouchers, who have a well-functioning stomach and nearly all of their small intestine working as designed, absorption of vitamins is unlikely to be improved by chewable or liquid formulations. By the time it gets to the pouch the work is done. If the vitamin depended on the last part of of the small intestine for absorption, it will be absorbed equally well (or poorly) whether tablet, liquid, or chewable.

OTOH, if the small intestine is unusually short or the transit time extremely quick there might be some benefit to these alternate formulations.

They say if you put your vitamin pill in a glass of water not meaning the chewables and it doesn't dissolve with in10 to 15 minutes that it will not do anything for you, I take capsules, you can open them and pour the powder in a drink or over your breakfast food.  I do take them every day. I also have to take extra Vit D as most of you do   and I do go for B12 shots.  I have been taking the liquid iron that Scott recommended, it can be costly so I don't take it every day. I know I should be but when buying all these things to keep healthy it becomes costly.   Grace

Excess motility issues could be another factor in absorbing vitamins that come in other than chewable or liquid formations, and in the past I have excreted pills as well as partially digested foods into the toilet.  This suggests to me that chewable vitamins are the way to go as well as the fact that it was my surgeon's specific order after takedown - and I never questioned his wisdom on any piece of advice he gave me.

CT, some of what your surgeon advised may have been specific to your age at takedown. In any case, liquid and chewable vitamins work fine, too. I (unfortunately) have to take a variety of tablets for a variety of conditions, and as long as I stay away from extended release forms they all seem to work just fine. Vitamins aren't a special class of tablet.

I was age 29 at takedown and my interpretation of my surgeon's order was that chewable vitamins was something I would need to take the rest of my life.  I think it came up in conversation or in the written materials his office gave me on diet. It seemed like it was a blanket instruction or "standing order" that was given to all of his thousands of J Pouch patients at the time.  Daily metamucil was also part of that standing order.

Sorry, CT - I keep misreading your sig, which says "...9 year old Takedown..." though the two parts of that are properly attached to the words before and after.

I still think most J-pouchers dissolve tablets in their stomachs and duodenums quite well. If that weren't working for me I'd have much bigger problems than vitamin issues.

If you are going to do the "vitamins in a glass" test you should not use water, but warm vinegar. This is to more closely approximate the stomach acid (which is way more acidic than vinegar). Plus, give it more like 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes, instead of 10-15. It does not need to completely dissolve in that time either.

Jan

Yes.  Your advice makes more sense using vinegar  Before my surgery a nutritionist in the hospital told me about the water method with pills.

I like the toilet bowl test.  If you have crapped out the pill whole or only partially dissolved its time to go to chewable or liquid vitamins. A bit more empirical in my book.