If you've listened to the radio at all in the past month, you might have heard the Centrum One commercials... they go something like this: "Some things are made for women. [insert stereotypically female interests such a shoes and department store sales.] Now there's Centrum One-a-Day for Women... blah blah blah to support women's health..." They have a mirror commercial for men. And seeing as, but insert burgers, sports, and prostates. Same thing. I needed to buy a multivitamin this weekend, and actually was thinking about what I would need to look for in an appropriate multivitamin.
Being on testosterone, I no longer lose blood every month, so instead ofthe iron-enhanced prenatal vitamins I'd get previously to combat my chronic anemia, I would now need iron-free vitamins. I could stand much higher doses of vitamin A to help clear up my testosterone abused skin since pregnancy really isn't an issue for me anymore. Optimally, we would find multivitamins that would match the needs of our sexed bodies... these vitamins, on injestion, would say something like, "Ah ha! I am inside the male body, and when I disintegrate into my elemental parts, I will vitalize this male body as I see fit." Or something like that. Same thing for women. (I'm certain whenever I take a multi-vitamin, it looks around and says something like, 'WTF?!?') It occurred to me, I don't need a multi-vitamin that supports breast or prostate health, seeing as I have neither. I have ovaries, sure, but they don't do much anymore. So do I need a multi-vitamin for men or women? Are they really THAT different? (The answer is, yes, they are.) What do other health-conscious trannies think about this. When will Centrum create Centrum One for FTMs and Centrum One for MTFs, and break each of those down into pre-operative, post-operative, and pre-/presently on HRT? Oh... questions, questions.
(BTW, I found a good vegetarian --vegan?-- multivitamin for men at Whole Foods that I've been on for a few days now. It makes my piss fluorescent green. But if that's the worst that happens, at least I know that my urine can be bottled and used to guide aircraft during low-visibility, night landings...)
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While there are lots of frustrations to not being on hormones--like being consistently misgendered even when WEARING A SHIRT THAT READS "TRANS MAN"--a benefit, I admit, is that at least medical stuff that's formulated based on sex should work for my body.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your pee is likely fluorescent green 'cause of B-12. Happened to me when I first started taking vitamins, and I was kinda freaked until Dr. Google explained things to me. :)
For what it's worth, while the composition of the vitamins is different, my understanding is that how our bodies use them is pretty much the same. Both "men's" and "women's" vitamins have way more of most vitamins than anyone who eats a decent amount of fruits and vegetables needs, and that excess just gets peed out. When I was vegetarian I just used a children's multivitamin with iron because I didn't see much worth in paying more (and not being able to have cute animal shapes!) for my body to just pee out the excess. But by selling "sex"-specific vitamins, companies can get household to buy more bottles (and given how many people buy a bottle and then never get around to using it up, that presumably boosts their profit margins a good deal).
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