Health: VOLUME III

In these appalling situations of Covid outbreak horrific news are passing past our ears. The number of cases in India are shooting through the roof. On the other hand, something else is going on, people are running to buy medicine, hoarding oxygen cylinders and consuming vitamins pills without any prescription. The fear and turmoil which is fermenting with lack of knowledge is way more deadly than the pandemic.

In this documentary, Vitamania, the basic theme is on the vitamins. The director has disseminated the knowledge that a person should have regarding vitamins. The narrator has told, from the starting, about the problem of vitamin toxicity-overdose of vitamin. This issue is with almost every vitamin on the earth. The various stories around the world had made it clear that how dangerous can the issue of vitamin toxicity be.

In this era, there is a race to become healthy and an astonishing affection for supplement. People, especially youth, are forgetting that our food also give us same amount of nutrients which are present in those containers of powder and pills. It is also interesting to note that these supplements are predominantly taken by the healtheir section of our society. I think, the people who are chasing these product don't even know the right amount of vitamins that one should intake. This point is clearly shown in the documentary that on daily basis we require only freckles of vitamins or less than that. Evidently, many deficiencies arise in our body due to lack of vitamins intake, at the same time their intake should also be regulated.

The big nutritional shows and supplement stuffs that we see on TV are just a marketing strategy. These products explicity shows 'clinically tested' which is nothing other than a hoax. These products are not regulated by goverment and everthing is just based on trust. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest billion dollar industry in the world. Most of the vitamins, today, are man-made i.e., the natural structure of the vitamins are duplicated in the industrial plants. I was dumbfounded when it showed that many of the vitamins are manufactured by fossil fuel and vitamin D can be manufactured by greasy wool of sheep. These astounding facts shows that how much unaware we are. These artificial vitamins had perpetrated so deeply in our daily lifestyle that we can't remove them. Almost every other item in the market is fortified with vitamins and nutrients.

I think, our daily food has every essential vitamin. The chase for nutrient is utter stupidity. The consumption of fruits and vegetables gives us enough nutrients to build and grow ourselves. The pseudoscience which is engulfing the people around is creating more panic that the real disease. There has to be a general knowledge regarding medicine among the masses but they should not start to consider themselves as doctors who are taking pills without any prescription. And another point is the hype attached to vitamins that they has no risk proposition, which is again absolutely wrong.

Be educated and generalist but don't be ignorant because, as George Orwell says in 1984, "ignorance is strength". The more ignorant you are, the more confident you will feel.