Vitamins: The Fountain of Youth?

Well, the title might be a bit of an overstatement, but if you ever go to the vitamin section of just about any drugstore or supermarket, you can get lost with all of the stuff on the shelf when you're looking for your particular item. You would think if you took all of it, you'd live forever! (Who knows)
You can definitely sure rack up quite a tab on supplements- they've got 'em for every ailment, condition, disease and situation.
But, behind all of the marketing (supplements are BIG money), there are some vitamins and herbal products that really do work, and they may not be "the fountain of youth," but the right combination can make you feel that way nd at least be "the fountain of health."
As far as some of the herbal stuff goes, do you really know if it's helping you out? We all pretty much know that vitamins on the other hand, are absolutely required by the body, as has been proven by doctors and scientists. Now of course if you use the RDA (recommended daily allowance) of them, it's probably just enough to keep you alive. For instance, if you look on the back of a bottle of a good multivitamin (Centrum, Geritol, ect.), the RDA for B-12 is 6mcg.
Say you had been out partying and had a "few to many," then that wouldn't even be close to the amount you'd need. More like 500 or even 1000mcg before you would see a difference.
Now also, remember B-12 is in the water soluble category, so your body gets rid of what it doesn't use. Now take vitamin A. That's a whole different ball game. Too much can cause some pretty serious problems. In fact a few ounces of polar bear liver has enough vitamin A to kill a 200 pound man.(Not that I serve polar bear liver, just thought I'd share that with you).
Now suppose you take away vitamin C. You can develop anything from scurvy, to dry skin. This is another water soluble vitamin, so they could stand to jack up the RDA on this one.
I could go on for the many more vitamins, but I just wanted to shed a little insight. Fact is they may not keep you from getting old, but they may slow it down a little. Supplements are big bucks and they can put a lot of hype on some of the labels, but I would go with the essentials before moving on to the exotic herbs and potions.
I have some related articles on Triond.com under my pen name "keyboardologist."You can also visit my websites: www.nopoundsforyou.com
www.marksbigworld.com