Vitamins-Not

It's been nearly 4 yrs since my surgery. I am not compliant with the vitamin regimine, never have been and yet I've never felt any symptoms.  In fact I haven't even been to the doctor for a checkup in a couple years. So I have no lab work to corroborate my great health but trust me when I say I have no symptoms.  In fact I never experienced any of the post surgical symptoms others have decribed here.

Makes me very curious.

I guess you could wait until your bones start breaking easily to decide you should have been taking calcium and vitamin D all along.  You won't feel the symptoms until the damage is done.

--gina 

Thank you Gina that's the kind of helpful response I could use that whatever symptoms are you may not experience them or whatever I appreciate it.

Sounds like you're very proud of how special you are, that all the rest of us with the DS need vitamins but you don't. Some people just have to learn the hard way.

Larra

You know Laura my initial response was going to be completely different but now I've breathe deeply & counted to ten. So my response is this it's not that I'm proud it's that I'm wondering in other words questioning why and how is it that I have not experienced any negative side effects. I will suggest further that nevermind I'll just stick with my counting to 10 and breathing deeply namaste have a good day

Curiosity brings out my inner scientist. What would you think about getting lab work to confirm what's going on? I suspect the need for supplementation really varies. After my sleeve surgery I took B12 and found out that I had really high levels and shouldn't supplement. On the other hand I can't get enough D. Seems worth looking at the data to find out your specific details.

What are you most curious about? Variations from person to person or if something is different about your surgery or your body?

Britt

Me too which was the purpose of the original post.  I mean not even talking about the vit's, I have never even had the typical post ds symptoms.

My body is quite different, my surgery was fraught with nonstandard complications.  Heretofore unheard of complications in fact that the surgeon said he has never even heard of happening to anyone let alone seen before.  

you will likely crash and burn one day and then you will likely have a hell of a time rebounding. Hopefully none of the damage you are allowing to happen will be permanent, but if it is ...4 years is nothing. Your body has been busy depleting all that it has stored for just such a situation.

Coming from a pre-DSer, I'd just like to say that your post does kinda sound like you're bragging (unintentionally, obviously!) and probably wouldn't be good for some the soon to be's to read and think we could be so lucky and take the chance of starting out not being compliant. 

From the hours of research I've done re a true DS and it's cousin surgeries, it sounds like you might not have a true DS? The Sadi / Loop DS folks have better vitamin absorption with longer channels.... Do you happen to know your lengths that you would be willing to share with us? 

I'm very curious! :)

SADI patients do have a longer common channel, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have better absorption of VITAMINS and MINERALS, just CALORIES.

You see, vitamins and minerals can only be absorbed in specific receptor sites. (Unlike calories, which are absorbed readily throughout the entire small intestine.) There are different receptor sites for differents things, and there are receptor sites that accept more than one thing. (This is why it's important to separate calcium and iron, since they use the same receptor sites. Calcium's a bully, and knocks iron out of the way every time.)

These receptor sites are spread throughout the small intestine, BUT they are more concentrated in the duodenum and the the jejunum. The lower half of the duodenum and most, if not all, of the jejunum is bypassed in both the traditional DS AND the SADI. So far, we just plain don't KNOW how SADI patients' supplementation needs are going to compare to those of traditional DSers over the long haul. We won't know until there are being a sufficiently large number of SADI patients 10+ years out to provide meaningful data.