Posts tagged as:

vitamins

Vitamin D2 review: Drisdol drops

May 27, 2010

Drisdol bottle

Is it just me, or does that dropper look humungous?

Update: Sue reports that the product’s been discontinued – see the comments for more info and other options.

As followup to our parenting columns on Vitamin D (see Vitamin D for Vegan-Raised Infants and Vegan Infant Formula: Nonexistant?) we finally got around to getting some liquid form vitamin D2 in the house (remember kids, D2 is vegan because R2D2 is cool, and ergocalciferol is the good one because I’m vegan, ergo I know more about weird vitamins than anyone on the street!)

Rather than figure out international shipping (as many of you know, we’re in Canada,) we decided to let the professionals figure it out and headed to the pharmacy to order some of the Drisdol drops that Jodie pointed out in a comment on a previous post.)  We basically just printed out the PDF, brought it to the store (in our case, Shopper’s Drug Mart,) and said “get this for us, mmmK?”

And there were no hassles.  I’ll be honest, I felt a little weird custom ordering something from a pharmacy, but apparently it’s something they do all the time, and no prescription is needed.  We got the drops the next afternoon.

Just in case the PDF goes offline, it’s made by Sanofi-Aventis, and the DIN is 02017598. Ours was made in Canada for an American company, so hopefully it’s widely available.

So what’s it cost?

Jodie said it was $68 for her, but we got it for a little under $50 (Canadian.)  That might seem like a lot, but it’s actually pretty competitive with other forms of D2: the cheapest we’ve been able to find Now brand D2 pills (1000 IU strength) is $8 for 120 vcaps, which is 6.7 cents per 1000 IU.  The Drisdol drops come in a 60 mL bottle and each mL has 8,288 IU (there’s a handy dropper that’ll dose out about 207 IU at a time,) so that’s about 10 cents per 1000.  Sure, it adds up, but maybe there’s a difference between liquids and pills.  Who knows.

The Drisdol is almost a third of the price of the D2 spray we mentioned in a previous post (at the price we were charged,) so at this point it’s the cheapest D2 liquid we’ve been able to find, and liquids are pretty much the only way a newborn’s going to take it in, so we’re calling it a win.

Interestingly, if we were to dose the stuff out at 400 IU a day (that’s Health Canada’s recommendation,) we’d have  about a three and a half year supply from this bottle.  Unfortunately, it expires at the end of next year, so I guess Angela and I will start taking drops too to make sure we use it all up in time.

Speaking of which…

So how does it taste?

With such a small range of options available, there’s not a lot you can do if the drops taste like, say, raw sewage, but that’d kinda suck when you’re trying to convince a small child to take them.  Fortunately, we didn’t feel an urge to scrub our tongues with a steel-bristle brush after our taste test.

Angela and I both tried a drop directly on our tongue (the box says to add it to milk, by which I’m sure they mean soy milk, but we wanted to taste it fully.)  It wasn’t bad, but the closest flavour we could compare it to was burning.  It’s definitely something you’ll want to mix into another liquid; probably a sweet liquid at that.

For us, the D2 problem is fully solved.  If you’ve found another solution, or managed to order Drisdol from another country, let us know in the comments!

Drisdol box

(As always, there’s a warning that you should consult with your health care provider before using the product, and we did, so nyah nyah nyah.)

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Why I (now) take a multivitamin

January 4, 2010

Ill stick with one a day, for now.... Photo by bopuc

I'll stick with one a day, for now.... Photo by bopuc

As part of “2010 will be different” I’ve finally started taking a multivitiamin regularly.

For years I’ve resisted, and here are some of the reasons why, beyond my seeming inability to get into the habit:

I didn’t think I needed one. My diet has gaps, sure, but I eat a variety of foods, and overall I feel pretty good. I’ve had my B12 levels checked, and they were fine, so yay for me, I don’t need that “crutch,” right?

More and more foods have built in multivitamins. Say what you will about processed foods, but an incredible number of them have vitamins added to them already. It seems like the veg stuff is even more susceptable to this (fortified soy milk, etc) but take a look at breads and cereals the next time you’re in the grocery store. Plus I already take Vega semi-regularly, which has nutrients up the whazoo.

But those were just excuses, really. The main reason I’ve resisted so long wasn’t too hard to figure out:

It was like an admission of guilt. If I was taking a multivitamin, that was saying to the world that it was impossible to achieve a full range of nutrients on a plant based diet.

There were other reasons too, but this time, instead of brainstorming all my points of resistance I decided to think of a reason why I should take a vitamin pill that overpowered all the made up reasons not to:

I want to take full advantage of this incredible time we’re living in.

Think about this: I can take a simple, easily affordable pill that all but ensures I’m getting a full range of vitamins into my body every day. How cool is that? Plus, I’m not approaching this as an insurance policy, but rather as a bonus.

This isn’t an excuse to eat a crappy diet, which is another reason I resisted for so long. If anything, it’s made me more aware of the role nutrition plays in my diet. I like to take a look at the bottle when I take a pill and pick out a vitamin I’m not familiar with, like K2, and then I can find out what it does (acts as a blood coagulant and appears to help fight cancer) and what natural sources exist (leafy greens for the win!)

Part of this change in thinking came from some work I was doing last year to track my protein/carb/fat ratios on Daily Burn (a habit I’ve slipped on,) which led me to look into new sources of protein. At first I was disappointed because a lot of these sources were processed in the forms of powders, mock meats, etc., but then I realized something:

It’s more than possible to achieve an adequate level of nutrition on a whole-foods, plant-based diet, but supplementation of an existing healthy diet could lead to an exceptional level of health. Our ancestors might have survived on simple plants, but we’ve got the chance to be astounding.

Since I want 2010 to be an exceptional, and not merely adequate year, I’m giving multivitamins a try. In time I might try some other supplements, but as I’ve said in the newsletter, it’s best to change one thing at a time, so this is phase one.

As should be obvious, I’m not a nutritionist, dietitian, or anyone you should listen to at all when it comes to matters that people go to school for a very long time to understand. Do your own research, consult your own people, yadda yadda yadda, but hopefully the explanation of my change in thinking has helped you to examine some of your own limiting beliefs and maybe stirred you to come up with new reasons that overpower them.

And if you take any supplements, what are they and why? Let us know in the comments so others can learn!

(Photo by bopuc)

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