Vitamins- Nature's tasty, tasty pills...

Not really of course... it's not like you crack open an orange and pull out flintsone's chewables...

Anyway, I recently read, on a board of some note, about possible benefits of Pantothenic Acid and Niacinimide. Specifically, the possible weight loss benefits. Now, I'm overweight. The physical sign of this weight, is, of course, my stomach, along with other assorted fat deposits, but lets face it, it's the gut. So, I'm frequently bemoaning my weight, and appearance, but never doing much about it... not a fan of exercise, you see. Also, I'm a horrible procrastinator, don't like being seen exercising, and I have no room in my, well, room. So goes my list of excuses. These nutrients can increase metabolic rate, causing the body to burn food more efficiently, and, failing that, get rid of some of this blubber.

So I go to a site with people that I know know their shit, and ask about these nutrients. I find out they're just different forms of vitamin B, which is a water soluable vitamin (which means it's pretty damned hard to over dose on it as long as you stay hydrated. A water soluble nutrient is, when the body is using as much as it can, eliminated with urine. This is why, when you have a cold, you can just inhale great mucking masses of vitamin C without too much worry about your health getting worse, vitamin C is water soluble).

I'm also frequently depressed, mostly because of my social life, but also, at least possibly, because of my general life style. I.e. staying in doors when the sun is out. The person talking about the above nutrients mentioned some bullshit periods of times which different colours of skin require in sunlight. If you're white, supposedly 20 minutes a day is plenty, while if you're black, supposedly you should be spending every damn minute of the day in sunlight. There's some belief/research/whatever that people who don't get enough sunlight are more likely to be depressed. This is possibly because sunlight helps our bodies produce vitamin D, one of the few vitamins we produce rather than ingest.

So, yesterday, I went out and picked up a bottle of B-complex vitamin (containing the two mentioned, and something like 7 more forms of vitamin B) and one of vitamin D. I looked up each nutrient and found out how much beyond the suggested intake amount I could go safely. Honestly, the B vitamin, I doubt would do much harm even if I took the entire bottle, it's water soluble. The vitamin D on the other hand, isn't water soluble, it's fat soluble, and so it's more possible to overdose on it. However, I'd have to ingest thousands of the little fish liver oil gel capsules at a time to even get near the toxicity.

Between this knowledge, and the fact that I'm a rather large person, I figure two of each, once a day, should be fine. I take them with a meal, like the bottles suggest, and then mostly don't worry about it for the rest of the day.

I've already seen what may be results of the vitamin D. I'm house sitting for family, which usually leaves me rather depressed, due to having full opportunity to enjoy the company of some attractive peer, but not knowing anyone who actually wants to enjoy my company that way. However, I've been in a pretty decent mood today so far. Hell, I haven't really even gotten fed up with the computer I use when I'm here as much as I normally do.

Anyway, this is day two (actually day three by now, but I won't take my third day dose until after I get up when I have breakfast) of the vitamin experiment, and hopefully I'm already feeling the effects of one. For posterity sake, it's 2:15 am, July 30, 2010.