Multivitamin help!

uh oh ... watch out for the troll attacks because you aren't taking calcium! Oh wait, you are a VSG patient too ... but I guess we all need to follow the rules of the RNY patients because it seems to make them upset.

Aren't you just a peach. Bless your heart.

I am not trying to add flames to a fire nor upset you in any way. However, the vitamin regiment you are suggesting is not sufficient. Folks, be it the rny or the vsg people, are correct. We need to take calcium citrate. It also is a problem to be prescribing Flintstones, as they do not have the needed vitamins. You are correct that we do not have the same malabsorption than the rny folks, but that does not mean we do not need the correct supplementation. I am not trying to imply that you should go against what your docs are suggesting (although if it were me I would be questioning it)... but for folks new to the process reading this please do not use this supplement regiment.

I am advised to take a multivitamin with iron twice daily, calcium citrate twice daily and 2 hours after or before the multi. My D3 was always low and I take that also a few times a day. This is what I did before switching over to the Patch.I am horrible about taking my supplements, and

I am horrible about taking my supplements, and actually, after reading this thread I am going to stop slacking. I have been using Patch MD for about 2 years and feel like it is working well. I did confirm my labs, but next appointment is coming up in a few weeks. For a long while I would only remember to use it 3-4 times a week, but my labs held. I am now averaging 3 times a week and that is not enough- time for me to get my act together. There is an odd type of complacency that has settled in for me this far out, and I need to stop that crap :)

Why on Earth is someone getting so upset over the merest whiff of the suggestion that one err on the side of oversupplementing, rather than coming up deficient and suffering health consequences down the road?

Over supplementing can just as bad for you as not enough (depending on the vitamin). But that isn't really the issue here. people seem to be losing their minds over what my doctor recommended that I take for 4 months during my healing diet, and the form of calcium I take (not the dose)

Be advised that calcium in blood will always be good because your body will leach it from your bones. A truer measurement is a 24hr urine collection test, which I've done twice. As Grim said, a baseline bone density scan now would be a good idea. I've never heard of any program recommending carbonate and this is not something you want to mess with. Osteoporosis is not something you want to open the door to.

Jen

I think it's great you've decided to go with the nutritional advice of someone who apparently disregards every Bariatric Center of Excellence as well as the American Society of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery.

Indeed, if you want to use Tic-Tacs as a supplement, that is entirely your business.

However, giving this ill-informed advice to others is reprehensible and dangerous. The very idea that at three months out one would believe that blood tests show anything comparable to the long term research done by the ASBMS and the experiences of long-term vets is utterly ridiculous.

I personally never take the advice of someone who doesn't have to live with the consequences. Osteoporosis and multiple vitamin/mineral deficiencies are not a consequence I am willing to live with.

TO the OP: Please listen to the vets here and not a newbie who is giving you very poor information.

Calcium CITRATE is advisable for ALL WLS patients (and is indeed the most absorbable and usable for all people, really) -- and bone loss/osteoporosis is a real a present threat for us. Additionally, Flintstone vitamins are INCOMPLETE and not recommended AT ALL.

Additionally, I was advised to begin vitamins immediately after surgery. I was literally swallowing pills on the third day. My surgery was preformed at the Cleveland Clinic.

Just because you are a "veteran" doesn't make you a doctor. As a matter of fact all it means is your information is old. 2013? Weren't they still pushing the lap band as a good option? Oh wait ... new information came out that proves it to be prone to complications and with fewer long term benefits. Now I'm not telling ANYONE what to do, as a matter of fact I tell people to follow their plan and listen to their doctors. Even the girl whose NUT is telling her not to have protein drinks knowing that it goes against what EVERYONE else is doing. The only suggestion I made was to ask her NUT why ... and take in a label to ask what is wrong with it.

Finally, the question here wasn't "what should I take" the question was "what do you take" so that is what I listed. You don't like it? Its different than what you were told? Tough.

To the OP: Listen to your DOCTORS, just like I do. Who knows it might be a few months down the line that they tell me I do need to switch calcium sources or that the flintstones chewables are no longer recommended. But right now that's what I've been told and that's what I'm doing.

Flintstones are for kids. They are not adult vitamins. You want to know why most doctors "recommend" them? Because patients can't be bothered to swallow an adult multivitamin; they want to chew a tasty one like when they were five. Compare your Flintstones with a adult multi and see for yourself what they are missing.

Look at the ultimate source of information on all bariatric surgeries: the ASMBS. They recommend TWO adult multis for VSG patients.

I am only three and a half years out -- I am not a vet.

When I was three months out, I was smart enough to actually listen and learn from people who had already gone before me -- especially if they'd been successful and were maintaining.

I wasn't lucky enough to know it all at three months post-op.

My information is from 2017, because the ASBMS updates it's recommendations every. single. year.

Guess what? They are still recommending CALCIUM CITRATE and advising against children's vitamins and gummy-types. Why? Because THEY ARE NOT COMPLETE and vitamin and mineral deficiencies are common come 2 to 5 years post-WLS.

Also, the band hasn't been done by the Cleveland Clinic since 2011. No one recommends that.

Do me a favor and block me like you've done with other intelligent posters. I'd like to be in good company.