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If you’re taking advantage of the buy 1 get 2 free sale at Puritan’s Pride and buying $25 or more of products, enter the coupon code 200903 during your checkout to get another $5. That’s enough to cover the standard $4.95 shipping amount with a nickel to spare. The coupon code is claimed to last until September 30, 2009, but the buy 1 get 2 free sales is over September 19, 2009.

Puritan’s Pride carries a huge variety of dietary supplements, vitamins, amino acids, skin care formulas, and other products for your well-being. Some of our favorite Puritan’s Pride products useful to a lot of people are their Vitamin D3 5000 IU softgels and 5-HTP 100mg mood and sleep aid capsules.

Vitamin D3 Supplements

Puritan’s Pride Vitamin D3 5000 IU softgels, priced during the sale at $13.99 for 300 (3 bottles of 100). Vitamin D deficiency is rampant and has been implicated in a variety of widespread medical problems such as increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, auto-immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, weight gain and obesity, and even increased susceptibility to seasonal flu infection.

Most people don’t get nearly enough vitamin D to sustain optimal levels. We’re finding in our own experiences that what used to be considered a high dosage of 5000 IU (or more) of vitamin D3 per day is necessary for many people to achieve optimal blood serum vitamin D levels. Studies show that dosages up to 10,000 IU per day during long-term usage have little chance of side effects. Please see our article Adjusting Your Vitamin D Intake to Optimal Levels for more information on target levels for vitamin D, where to get blood tests inexpensively, and how to adjust your dosage to optimal starting with a loading dosage of 10,000 IU per day followed by a period at 5000 IU per day. These softgels are a really convenient and inexpensive choice for this adjustment process. There’s a significant likelihood you’ll end up finding you need 5000 IU or more of vitamin D3 per day to maintain optimal blood levels, so they are also convenient and inexpensive for many people for long term use, too.

Vitamin D3 is Fat-Soluble, Take It Apart From Fiber Supplements

Vitamin D3 is a fat-soluble nutrient like vitamins A and K, so it is best taken with your meal with highest fat content or with dietary supplements such as omega-3 fish oils, lecithin, and other essential fatty acids. Although most people don’t get enough fiber and fiber supplements are popular for people trying to reduce their weight and blood glucose, don’t take fiber supplements within one to two hours of taking your vitamin D3 and essential fatty acid supplements as fiber interferes with their absorption.

One strategy that seems to work well for many people is to shift all your fat-soluble vitamins and supplements away from your heaviest meal of the day. If you’re like many people, this is likely your dinner. This means you can take your fat-soluble supplements (vitamin D3, fish oil, etc.) with breakfast, lunch, or near bedtime hours after dinner. By taking such supplements together 15 to 30 minutes before these meals, you can help ensure there is adequate lipase to digest them before it gets used up by the likely less healthy fats in the food you are about to eat.

Once you have done this, then feel free to take fiber supplements such as ground flax seed, oat bran, chitosan, glucomannan, pectin, psyllium, and lipase-inhibitors (which impede the absorption of fats) such as the Alli (orlistat) diet aid that blocks about 1/3 of fat absorption with your dinner or heaviest meal. Since you’ll then be taking your vitamin D3 and other fat-soluble supplements hours before or after this meal, you can get both the benefits of fiber and fat-blocking supplements to reduce calorie absorption from that big meal and still benefit from your fat-soluble nutrient supplements.

Dr. James Dowd’s book The Vitamin D Cure explains why people don’t get enough vitamin D, the health problems this causes, and how to improve health through vitamin D supplementation.

Review

5 Stars! A mother of Dr. Dowd’s patient, June 4, 2009
By Val R (South Lyon (Detroit area), MI)

My son was lucky to be referred to Dr. Dowd when he was 13 years old. Dr. Dowd discovered he didn’t have rheumatoid arthritis (like his MD has suspected) or even “growing pains” like I suspected, but had low levels of vitamin D. After 4-6 weeks of vitamin D supplements, all his joint pain was gone! In addition, he stays much healthier (colds, flu, etc.) and much to our surprise, the warts on his feet finally went away…after three different doctors and three different methods of treatment for the warts!

Having the opportunity to meet Dr. Dowd is amazing. He is so smart and able to explain the immune system and the role of vitamin D in language even my 13 year old son could understand. Three years later, and my son is still symptom free as long as he keeps taking the vitamin D.

5-HTP Supplements

Puritan’s Pride 5-HTP 100mg Complex includes 100mg of 5-HTP, an intermediate between the essential amino acid L-tryptophan and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin is deficient in many people with depression and sleep disorders. To help the body convert the 5-HTP to serotonin in the brain and calm the nervous system, the capsules also including 5mg of niacinamide (a calming form of vitamin B-3 niacin), 5mg of vitamin B-6 as pyridoxine hydrochloride, 37mg of calcium, and 25mg of magnesium. Topping it off is 50mg of valerian root, a small dosage of the well-known calming and sleep aid.

This 5-HTP formula is much less expensive than competitor’s 5-HTP formulas with the added bonus of additional components that help the body calm down, get some rest, and improve mood. Given the formulation of Puritan’s 5-HTP product, we’ve found that a good usage pattern is taking one capsule an hour or more after dinner, one before bedtime, and one more if you wake up during the night. That’s two to three capsules per day. The best priced quantity is the 240 capsule bottles. During the buy 1 get 2 free sale, the price is $58.39 for a total of 720 capsules, almost a year’s supply if you use two per day.

5-HTP Should Be Taken Apart from Meals

Like many amino acid type products, 5-HTP is best taken at least 30 to 60 minutes apart from meals and other supplements. This is because the body tends to preferentially absorb certain amino acids and the absorption of the supplements can be inhibited if there are lots of competing amino acids in the digestive tract at the same time.

Julia Ross writes in her book The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions–Today about determining what parts of your mood are due to reasonable reactions to actual events (divorce, job loss, death of a loved one, etc.) and what parts are due to physiological reasons such as hormone and amino acid imbalances. Although psychotherapy can help one deal with events and past trauma, it is not realistic to expect it will significantly help with physiological imbalances in the body.

As part of her exploration of how to help you recover a positive mood, Ross discusses the use of amino acids such as 5-HTP and L-tryptophan and herbs such as St. John’s Wort to help reduce depression and weight gain caused by serotonin deficiency. These supplements work well for many people and generally don’t have detrimental side effects such as weight gain, sexual dysfunction, suicidal ideation, fatigue, dizziness, and low energy that are widely associated with common antidepressants including most SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) drugs such as Prozac (fluoxetine), Zoloft (setraline), Paxil (paroxetine), and Celexa (citalopram).

Notably, antidepressant Wellbutrin (buproprion) is not among these as it works via mechanisms other than serotonin modulation and is not generally implicated in weight gain and sexual dysfunction. It can be used in conjunction with serotonin modulation using 5-HTP, L-tryptophan, St. John’s Wort, and/or SSRI antidepressants and helps some people who are suffering from depression from chemical imbalances beyond serotonin deficiency.

This book can help you address your mood problems with inexpensive nutrient-based solutions that have fewer detrimental side effects. For those who do need psychiatric medications, the ideas presented may help reduce the necessary medicine dosages and related side effects. Further, 5-HTP and L-tryptophan are noted as helping to reduce carbohydrate cravings in many people, so in addition to brightening your mood you might also get some help losing weight, too. That weight loss might help your mood, too.

Further Reading

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Adjusting Your Vitamin D Intake to Optimal Levels

New Vitamin D3 Products Address Vitamin D Deficiency Crisis

Why Aging People Become Depressed, Fatigued, and Overweight

The Nine Pillars of Successful Weight Loss

Physician’s Guide: Using Blood Test Findings To Safely Induce Weight Loss

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The products mentioned in this post are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.