VitaLady vs. other sources

I went on VitaLady's website to check the prices for the pre-packaged vitamins. WOW!  That's expensive, plus like 32 pills a day!  Why are her vitamins so much better than what I can buy at Costco or Walgreens, etc?  I know you don't have to get the pre-packaged, but are her vitamins actually better than what we can find at our local store?  I'm currently taking a multi vitamin that has all the zinc, etc. and it also has A, D, E, K.  I take separate Iron with C, calcium, vit B and Biotin, so it's a lot fewer pills a day, and satisfies the required dosages my NUT had given me.

Hers work as proven by my labs. You have to get the right stuff in the right doses that work for you. So far hers are the ones that work. I don't do pre-packaged though, I sort from the bottles to save some money. I am confident in what I get from her. She and her hubby take the same as she sells. She's one of us and she's a struggling small American-owned business. I'm supporting her.

--gina

Those all in ones are inadequate for our post op needs.  Don't rely on your nut.  They very rarely have a clue as to what we need post op.  You should be taking A, D3, E and K Seperately and in dry form.  Vitalady, biotech and amazon are the only places to get the doses of A and D3 we need....dry A 25,000 units, dry D3 50,000 units.  Get labs done every 3 months for your first year and then every 6 months thereafter.  Get copies of all your labs and track them to watch for trends.  You need to tweak your vite doses with each blood draw as needed (another thing you CAN'T do with all in ones).

The A,D,E, and K in multis is largely un-absorbable my DSers, and woefully inadequate doses even if we could absorb 100% of it. You need to take those separately, in dry form. You'll also need to be able to adjust the amounts based on your lab results.

 

Vitalady does have the benefit of a lot of experience. I buy some vits from vitalady and shop around for others. You can certainly shop around for cheaper equivalent vitamins. Especially things like calcium citrate.

Yes, there are more pills to take if you separate out the different vitamins and then take those with a standard multivit but you may find that the total cost is cheaper and making adjustments based on your labs much easier if you are not taking an all-in-one. There are also people that feel they absorb the vitamins better if they separate them out so they can take different things spaced throughout the day. 

In the end lab results rule. Track your labs so you can see trends. Be pro-active with your health. I have yet to see any vit list that doesn't get tweaked based on labs. You might be fine with the all-in-one but most people don't seem to stay with them. 

You might also have a talk with your nutritionist about how they arrived at their dosages and see how many DS patients they have actually tracked under those dosages. My Doc's program is pretty RnY centered and the original list I got was straight from the RnY booklet. I looked around at what other people were doing (incuding vitalady) and made my own adjustments. 

Check the archives - vitamins are a recurring topic. Mainly as a newbie there seems to be no "right" answer until you figure out what works for you. I have 6 month labs next week and I am anxious to see how I am doing.

 

FWIW I take 100,000 iu of vit A and 100,000 iu of dry D3 a day. Deficiencies are easier to prevent than to recover from. Vitalady offers us sensible doses, in the correct form as well as being batched together in a reasonable manner.

I buy most of my vitamins from Vitalady.  I do get some from other sources, but have found her A,D,E,K1 and K2 and copper far superior and more easily absorbed.  Plus, she has been one of the few who has supported the WLS community through out the years, so I like giving her my business.  She has answered questions and helped so many of us with our nutritional issues.  

 

You don't have to buy everything from vitalady. What is most important is that you know, yourself, the doses someone with the Ds needs to maintain good nutritional health. the amounts of different components you will get from standard multi's or even from ADEK's doesn't come close to what we need. And you also need to understand that many formulations of the fat soluble vitamins, including prescription forms, come packed in oil, which we don't absorb, so you won't absorb the vitamins contained in them either. That's why you need the "dry" forms that Vitalady carries.

It's fine to get your multi at Costco (that's that I do) or the drug store. And I don't take 32 pills/day. I do use Vitalady's dry D, A, and K. I also purchase the Bariatric Advantage calcium citrate lozenges from her, at prices better than from the manufacturer...but I'm also someone who doesn't swallow big pills well. If you can manage big pills, or cut them up, you could purchase calcium citrate at Costco. Just make sure it's the citrate form as they do also sell the carbonate form, and make sure you take two at a time to get the full 500 mg dose.

I purchase zinc from whatever store has it on sale and my levels are excellent, so you can get that inexpensively as well. You could use any form of Vitamin C (I use costco) as it's water soluble and we absorb it just fine. I haven't needed any B vitamins, many DS'ers don't, you will need to go by your labs for this one (this is different from people with gastric bypass, who absorb B12 very poorly and definitely need to supplement. I don't take biotin and I'm not sure why you would need this.

So if you individualize things and follow your labs carefully, you can take less pills and save some money...but if there is a vitamin you really do need, don't try to skimp there, as you will be skimping on your health.

Larra

Everyone has given you great guidance.  But if it comes down to money (I am unemployed, so I scrape everywhere I can), buy these from Vitalady: dry ADEK

Go to Costco and buy the huge bottles of Kirkland Calcium and multi-vitamins.  They are as good as Centrum and a little cheaper.  Vit C and magnesium is good to get at Costco also.

The rest of the vits - look on the vitalady sight and see what form is being sold.  Specifically shop for that form on Amazon, Vitacost, Nutrition.com, etc.  If you can't find that specific formula (like the iron she sells), then buy that from her.  Go through each vitamin in her list and see if you can find it cheaper. 

Also look at the dosage in the pill, compared to the dosage in Vitalady pills.  For some vits, her dosage is 50,000UI while everyone else is selling 2,000UI (and therefore everyone else looks a lot cheaper than Vitalady but you will have to take 20 bills a day to equal her dosage in one pill).

You can save money by shopping around, becoming savvy on what vits cost and where to get the best deals.  But it's a lot of work.  And you don't want to let it slip because of the health risks everyone has mentioned.  You are better off taking the 32 pills as a newbie then to start off with defincencies so early in your journey.

Definitely do a search on historical posts regarding vits.  You will learn a lot about how to take them, what food interacts with them, what vitamins should not be taken together, which ones should be paired together because they help the absorbency of each other, etc.

 

You all rock!  Thanks so much for the valuable advice!  I did buy the multi with A,D,E,K from Celebrate vitamins, and thought they would know what's best.  However, that bottle is nearly gone, so I will now buy them separate from the multis.  I have found it impossible to find vitamin K in any of the drug stores around me, which is why I went with that one from Celebrate.  But I'll become a Vitalady customer as well as shop around. 

It sort of troubles me that the NUTs at the bariatric offices may not be giving us the best advice, since they are supposed to be on our side and advise us post-surgery.