Quinn on Diet: Do vitamin patches work?

I typically seek the advice of with obese sufferers who’re contemplating bariatric (weight reduction) surgical procedure. For some people, the necessity to take particular vitamin and mineral dietary supplements for the remainder of their lives will not be a simple to tablet to swallow. To not achieve this, nonetheless, places them in danger for critical nutrient deficiencies.

Nonetheless, some sufferers balk at having to take so many tablets on schedule…eternally. That had led a minimum of one doctor in our space to advocate for a pores and skin patch to ship vital nutritional vitamins and minerals.

Nice thought, however how effectively do they work?

A couple of vitamins akin to nutritional vitamins C and E in some magnificence lotions will be absorbed into the pores and skin, although in restricted quantities. These “topical” ointments are solely pores and skin deep, nonetheless.

Sufferers who’ve undergone gastric bypass surgical procedure have had the higher a part of their abdomen disconnected and rerouted to their small gut. Along with making it exhausting to eat a lot (therefore, the speedy weight reduction) this process limits the physique’s skill to soak up sure vitamins. That is why these sufferers want an efficient strategy to obtain further nutritional vitamins and minerals into the physique.

Sadly, there are few human research to help the unique use of pores and skin patches for the sorts of nutritional vitamins wanted by gastric bypass sufferers. One small research on individuals who had this surgical procedure in contrast those that used a vitamin pores and skin patch with others who chewed and swallowed vitamin tablets.

After one 12 months, 82% of those that used the pores and skin patch had been missing in a number of vitamins in comparison with 40% within the tablet group. General, the researchers famous that those that used a pores and skin patch had considerably decrease blood concentrations of nutritional vitamins D, B1 and B12 than sufferers who swallowed tablets.

Iron and calcium are different vitamins sorely wanted by sufferers after they’ve gastric bypass surgical procedure. Can these minerals successfully attain the bloodstream and their desired vacation spot within the physique via a pores and skin patch?

It will certain be nice if they might, however we nonetheless do not know for certain. Some animal research have proven promise with using specifically handled patches to assist the pores and skin higher soak up vitamins however once more, information is proscribed in folks.

Extra research on people are underway, so we should always know extra quickly. Within the meantime, I would counsel the tried-and-true strategies to get important vitamins into our our bodies. Select meals that present important vitamins with every chew. And chew your meals effectively, as this helps make vitamins extra accessible in your physique to make use of.

Till we’ve extra data, I would say the perfect guess after abdomen surgical procedure is to swallow chewable or liquid types of the extra nutritional vitamins and minerals wanted.

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