This week, as I was making faces about drinking the ‘orange’ flavoured fizzy CoQ10 tablet, godchild 2 asked “Why do you drink it if it tastes nasty?”

Good question. So I thought about the supplements that I take and for lack of anything else to write about today, thought I’d share what I take and why.

Multi-vitamin with probiotic

I know that my diet should be good enough that I don’t need to take a multi-vitamin. I also know that it probably isn’t, so just to be on the safe side, I take this….and it’s stripy, which for some reason makes me happy..

Joint care tablet

I have osteoarthritis in my feet, causing bunions and quite a bit of pain, and crunchy knees, caused by flat feet.  When I was first told this, I asked my GP if there was anything I could do to slow/improve it etc. According to him, osteoarthritis can’t be improved by diet, losing weight helps (less stress on the joints) and some people have found that glucosamine helps, so I could try that but it probably wouldn’t help.  I’ve been taking this tablet, which contains glucosamine, chondroitin, fish oil and ginger all of which are supposed to help with joint health. If I don’t take them for a couple of weeks, my toes start to hurt all the time, rather than when it’s going to rain or it cold, so I keep taking it…

CoQ10

I had heard about this but not taken it until last year, when I read an article about how it can reduce the intensity of a migraine. I get migraines and having done the trigger diary, I discovered that my seem to be triggered by hormones (I only have migraines in the last 2 weeks of my cycle).  I try to make sure that I get regular sleep (it’s not enough to get 8 hours, you need to get 8 hours at the same time each day!) and I try not to eat too much junk or drink too much wine because all these things can contribute. I added the CoQ10 and sure enough the migraines are less severe, although having said that, I stopped taking the CoQ10 for a while and have just had a doozy of a migraine at the beginning of the week, which is why I was taking the nasty tasting drink and why godchild 2 asked the question!

That’s it.  It’s not a huge list but it seems to work for me. Although it didn’t help me run any faster this morning or feel any less wrecked when it was over!! Anyone else take them? Any thoughts..

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor and I know very little, I have talked to my GP about what I take and he reckons that it might help but isn’t proven (and for all I know it may be a placebo effect, in which case that’s fine by me), but this is is no way encouraging you to take them.