I've got the day off and am taking it easy today after getting my overdue dental gum graft procedure done (don't worry--the problem existed long before my RPD diet, so it's not the result of that), and I've got lots of experience with mineral supplements, so I'll delve further into this subject that I've touched on before.
Well, if you think it works for you..
In my own case, artificial vitamins/minerals did nothing for me, I just pissed them out almost immediately.
Mineral supplementation predates humans. Animals that eat a diet heavy in plants need to supplement with minerals (see the video below)--and the clay-rich soils also act as a detoxicant for the antinutrients that otherwise would accumulate from eating herbivorous foods. They don't immediately piss out the minerals. If they did, they could not survive.
I sympathize with your skepticism re: minerals, Tyler, because I used to share it. I've heard the "expensive piss" argument from skeptics of supplements before and even made it myself in the past. The usual case is that the skeptic has tried certain supplements without benefit or has never tried supplements and read or heard negative information about them. Having worked in a health store and seeing that many supplements and herbal treatments did little or nothing for my customers, I do think that the benefits of supplements are oversold by the supplement companies, but if they really had no effect whatsoever, then animals would not bother with mineral-rich clay pits like the one in the video and physicians would not prescribe oral and intravenous nutrients for their seriously deficient patients. Interestingly, unadulterated minerals were one of the things in the store that actually did seem to help a good portion of my customers who tried them, yet there was much less push from the owner of the store and the distributors to sell them (the heavier push was on the latest fads, patented mixtures, and stuff that made little sense to me, like homeopathic and flower remedies), because they are basically unpatentable commodities with low profit margins.
In my own experience, I had heard the expensive urine argument from my high school biology teacher and assumed he was right for years. I developed chronic acne in my senior year. My mother was a reader of Prevention magazine and she told me about Prevention's recommendation of zinc for chronic acne. I gave her the expensive piss argument, but she persisted, so I tried the recommended dose (I think it was 25 or 30mg per day) just to get her off my back, not expecting it to work--and it didn't. I saw this as confirmation of my teacher's remark.
Years later when my various of my health symptoms worsened I became motivated to find solutions and tried nearly everything, including trying various supplements--again with little or no noticeable effect. So I again assumed that my teacher had been right.
Some more years later I tried eliminating dairy and gluten with my doctor's encouragement and experienced amazing benefits. One of the benefits I experienced was a dramatic reduction in my acne to the point where most of it was gone three and a half weeks after going gluten free. Unlike my high school days, I had access to the relatively recent invention of the Internet and I found much research about how gluten prevents absorption of certain nutrients and how components of it like phytates even act as "antinutrients," binding with minerals like zinc and magnesium and leading to deficiencies in these nutrients. I read that zinc deficiency was associated with chronic acne. I also read how going GF can heal the small and large intestines and improve absorption of minerals and other nutrients (I would later learn that consumption of dairy is also associated with acne, as is consumption of other modern foods, not just wheat).
A little while later I experienced some gradual increase in acne again. While it was nowhere near as bad as before I had gone GF, it was annoying enough to warrant treating it. But instead of reaching for my old topical prescriptions, I wondered whether going GF would have reduced the antinutrient levels in my diet sufficiently and improved my intestinal absorption to the point where zinc supplements might now help. I gave it a try and this time it worked. While a 30mg daily dose was helpful, I found that a higher dose was much more effective and I took copper with it to avoid copper deficiency and took meals with it to avoid GI upset.
I also ate lots of zinc-rich foods and hoped that some day I would no longer need the zinc supplements, just as I no longer needed the Px meds. Strangely, the zinc-rich foods seemed to make no difference whatsoever in my acne, though I did eventually notice that my acne outbreaks seemed to be worse when I had eaten more carbs than usual. It was not until years later when I went VLC and then carnivorous that I noticed further improvement in my acne and discovered several weeks after I eliminated all plants from my diet that my acne was controlled to the point where I could give up the zinc supplements completely and remain clear of acne (I am forgetful, so there had been frequent instances where I forgot to take my zinc supplements and learned within a day or two that my acne exacerbated if I didn't continue taking zinc daily, and there would still be very small acne outbreaks now and then even while taking the zinc).
So for me supplements were no miracle cure, but some supplements, such as zinc, magnesium and potassium, did greatly reduce my symptoms. As always, your mileage may vary. The optimal situation is to find a diet that works for you and provides all your nutrients and develop your body's health to the point that it is absorbing nutrients efficiently enough so that you don't need any supplements other than maybe vitamin D (the best source of which is the sun, but most people work indoors these days).
Amazing nature photography of Mount Kenya, Africa - BBC wildlifehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIZc0xVGYag&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=C35A11617ECCA92F&index=1&playnext=2&playnext_from=SPLAt 2:39 in the video: "Forest animals like the bushbuck [and water buffalo, elephants, etc.] can't get enough sodium and potassium in their diet, so they need to visit special places where the salts are more concentrated."
The difficulty for modern humans is we've apparently lost our instinct for knowing when and how much to supplement, and one can throw other minerals out of balance if one takes a single mineral in exclusion of others and doesn't know how much to take.
