Hello friends. Am I the only one who gets overwhelmed trying to figure out what vitamins are needed? Does anyone have a trick or suggestion? I found vitalady website and the list she has, but I would like to find some I can purchase in Canada instead of online.
Welcome to the board, @Dawn. I am an Ontario-based DSer from the old days when OHIP paid to send us to the US due to unreasonable waiting times for WLS. While it was unfortunate we had to travel to receive this necessary medical service, it made the DS available to us, whereas most Ontario surgeries default to the RNY, with an occasional sleeve and a very very occasional DS.
My experience with supplements is:
There are some seemingly sill restrictions on certain supplements being available in or coming into Canada. We cannot obtain the "dry" vitamins (A, D, E or K). These dry vitamins, and high dosage vitamins and other specialty items useful to manage our potential deficiencies are available from Vitalady. Michelle and her staff know their stuff. I do have to plan ahead and place periodic larger orders to make the shopping and handling more efficient. And given possible backorders/out of stock situations, I always place my order with lots of lead time. I have tried shopping for price through other internet sources, but many of them do not ship to Canada, or only have some of what I need. It is more economical for me to place one order from Vitalady every 6 to 9 months and pay shipping costs just once, rather than several smaller shipments from multiple locations.
Shipments into Canada have no duty charges, but Canada Post will require payment of the HST, plus a small handling fee for taking care pf the taxes. Canada Customs has started to become stickier about larger orders (they want to limit to three months volume) and they, for some reason, don't want vitamin K coming into the country - I can't figure this one out?
Wherever possible, I get my vitamins at Costco - Kirkland brand Calcium Citrate (the formula is different than the US calcium pills and they do not include the B vitamins that cause toxicity problems in the US for DSers), Kirkland multi-vitamin (these are on sale every couple of months), iron supplements (Proferrin, FerMax 150), Selenium,, Zinc, Folic Acid, probiotics
There is a Facebook group for Canadian DSers that just started where there is some sharing about where to buy supplements. I would have to look it up - are you already connected?
and Welcome!
Ann