DO doctors have a bias against vitamins and supplements?

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DO doctors have a bias against vitamins and supplements? Especiallly as treatment for illness. every doctor i run in to says don't take more than a bare bones amount of vitamins and dont take supplements.

Doctors have very little training in nutritional matters as a rule, so they have little basis to prescribe more than the RDA of vitamins. If you are in the United States, the FDA does not allow a manufacturer of supplemants to make health claims of any kind for them.

Additionally, some supplements actually affect the effectiveness of prescribed medications, either intensifying them or actually negating their value.

Yes.

No.

yes you need x amount of vitamins and a medical doctor knows this. You could have a vitamin lack but it is rare.
Aspens says "Doctors have very little training in nutritional matters as a rule" wrong on that it's part of how the body works. It's megadoses that doctors think are not effective. As for supplements some have drug like effects. And even worse unknown amounts of active parts that have not been tested. Does it not hurt you and does it work ? Not hurting that's good but do they work very important. A bias no they want stuff that works.

Do doctors have a bias against vitamins and supplements? - Yes, they do (my view) due to how they are often trained which has been along the lines that what every customer needs is an expensive prescription medicine, not a vitamin or supplement. If one wants to find a doctor who favors supplements, the area of chiropracty is full of vitamins and supplements - at the same time - chiropractors are not given the legal right to treat people in hospitals at all - so that says a lot too. My views on vitamins and supplements have changed over the years. Today I tend to lean toward fresh, whole foods (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Newman's Own, etc.), pure water, and clean air instead of vitamins and supplements. - http://www.nutrition.gov/ - Personally I am unaware of lots and lots of testimonials as to how vitamins and minerals have turned people's lives around; on the contrary, it often seems like a silent area where one can find remarks such as persons stopping vitamins and supplements after a number of years due to an observation that they saw no incredible results for themselves and the supplementation was a waste of money. (There are exceptions). Good luck.

It really depends on the doctor. I think it also depends on the part of the country you live in too.

I've been to doctors that gave you three prescriptions before you walked out, and others who have made suggestions for natural or supplemental therapies. You just have to seek them out because they're not always as common. My husband had a doctor suggest he use l-lysine for cold sores (which works very nicely I might add). Another gave him valtrex. My son's pediatrician suggested several herbs I could take when I was breastfeeding my son as opposed to the usual prescription that most doctor would suggest.

There are plenty of doctors who are all about pharmaceuticals, but there are others who decided to go into medicine because they really wanted to help people. Those are the doctors you need to find.

I find this question difficult to answer because whether or not vitamins and supplements will help with an illness will depend on what illness it is.

Generally I think the concept of taking vitamins and supplements is not as useful as some people believe. If your symptoms are caused by a deficiency in <whatever> then taking vitamins and/or supplements to make it for it will obviously help. For instance, if your iron levels are low and are causing you fatigue, then taking iron supplements will boost your iron levels and therefore will help alleviate your fatigue.

Otherwise, if you're megadosing yourself on vitamins and supplements in the belief that it'll benefit you in some way, then AFAIK it's not that useful. Your body would just dump the excess vitamins and/or supplements out. You might as well just eat a healthy, balanced diet instead.

I'd say the doctor's opinion will likely follow that of the FDA or whatever your countries equivalent is. The FDA is classifying more vitamins as drugs, so more doctors probably are leery of them.

My heart was attacked -- I had a heart attack -- by a cardiovascular blockage in 1999. A nurse in the hospital emergency room asked what I had eaten for dinner, and that is when I finally caught on about how that day's chili dogs and many other kinds of junk food can literally kill people by blocking arteries and suffocating hearts.

I am alive today because I do *not* take the medications many doctors say I *must* have in order to remain alive, and because I *do* take a variety of over-the-counter stuff and supplements only one doctor has ever been willing to discuss with me ... and then only *after* I had told him about them, and that is because many doctors are not permitted to even mention such things even if (as did mine) they take them at home for their own health!

Drug companies, the FDA and doctors' insurance companies decide and tell doctors what they can or cannot do, and the dollar always wins.