As a pharmacist, there are a number of things that really get under my skin. One of them is when people get sold on bogus medicine that lines the pockets of the snake-oil salesmen that sell it, without legitimately benefiting the patient (beyond the placebo effect). These charlatans give legitimate alternative medicine a bad name.
A second thing that also annoys me is when people call non-vitamins, vitamins. You see, a vitamin is an organic compound that your body needs in small amounts. A compound is called a vitamin when it cannot be made in sufficient quantities by your body and must be obtained through your diet. For humans, Ascorbic Acid serves as a vitamin. We call it Vitamin C. Some animals don’t need it in their diet, so, for them Ascorbic Acid isn’t a vitamin.
Here are a couple of bogus vitamins:
Vitamin O- This is made from water, common table salt, a few minerals and oxygen. Sounds like sea water to me.
Vitamin T (no, it’s not Tequila) is supposed to help with blood disorders. It’s made up from ground sesame seeds. It’s also found in egg yolks. There’s not a lot of information known about it. It’s not really a vitamin and hasn’t been proved useful through any significant testing yet.
There are more bogus vitamins, but we’ll leave that for another day. Just be cautious about what you hear. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
