If you visit almost any medical spa or aesthetics website, you’ll notice a huge push to sell vitamin shots. Vitamin shots aren’t new. They have been around for a very long time to treat nutrient-deficient people. But now they are being marketed for weight loss and beauty. Here’s why you shouldn’t buy in.
Vitamin shots were invented to inject vitamins, like B12, directly into a person’s bloodstream to avoid any absorption that would happen during digestion and to get quick results. So, if a patient came in fatigued, the doctor might run some tests and determine that that patient is deficient in B12. A multivitamin would take longer to absorb, so instead, he prescribes a vitamin shot to treat that patient’s symptoms quickly.
Somehow, treating nutrient-deficient patients with vitamin shots has transformed into a beauty and weight loss craze. For one, vitamins don’t help you lose weight. Not directly, anyway. To make this claim, the medical spas and aesthetics businesses assume that you are deficient in B12 and other vitamins, which causes you to feel fatigued. If you get the vitamin shot from them, you could get more energy, burn more calories, and thus lose weight.
The problem is virtually nobody is deficient in vitamins and minerals, at least not to the point where they are experiencing fatigue. Most of us get our vitamins and minerals from our food, assuming that we are working in fruits and vegetables at some point. If you only eat fast food, baked goods, or meat, maybe you are deficient. But everyone else is generally OK.
Probably not. Most of us don’t need a multivitamin. We should be getting our vitamins and minerals from the food we eat. Leafy greens, lean protein sources, fruit, legumes, cruciferous vegetables, etc. If you eat nutritious food throughout the week, a vitamin shot or a multivitamin doesn’t benefit you.
In fact, if you are taking a multivitamin, there has been some research to suggest that it reduces your body’s ability to identify and break down the vitamins and nutrients from the food that you eat. This is because your body gets used to getting nutrients from the multivitamin and stops producing the enzymes it usually uses to break down those nutrients from food. This can be a problem because multivitamins are not perfect nutrition. Food is a much better source. So if you take a multivitamin that isn’t perfect nutrition, and your body becomes bad at breaking down nutrients, you could become nutrient deficient!
Yes, we’ve said it before, but the best strategy for good health will always be eating a balanced diet free from processed foods, fast foods, soda, sugary beverages, etc. You should also get regular exercise, at least thirty minutes a day. And, of course, the best water to drink is alkaline ionized water from our premium water ionizers. It will reduce acid and provide your bodies with a powerful antioxidant that helps us detoxify.
So, avoid the health crazes. Stick to a good diet, exercise, and alkaline ionized water. You will be healthy, and your wallet will be happier, too!
