If you were to ask health care providers what's something that drives our patients crazy

or something that they have a hard time getting their heads around? The answer is nutrition and you can't

blame them. They're not formally trained in this. It's not well taught in school.

If you go on social media, there are a thousand people telling you conflicting things.

Like for example, your patients are told to eat your fruits and vegetables.

But when you tell them vegetables, they don't even realize what they're doing.

Vegetable is considered the edible part of any herbaceous plant.

It makes us think of things like non-sweet and not really savory foods

because we associate fruits with sweetness and kind of a bland taste with vegetables.

But vegetable actually is a collective term and it's any part of a plant that's grown for food. This can be the leaves like spinach, the roots which are carrots, the tuber, which is potatoes, the flour like broccoli, the stalk

like celery, and so many other parts. It's simply analogous too, people don't realize that a tomato is a fruit.

But that's why this week in this podcast, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be starting

a brand new series on nutrition.

And we're going to begin with vitamins and minerals.

The next two episodes, including this one, are going to be talking

about vitamin deficiencies, so that if your patients come in and they want to get that

ivy infusion like Rihanna does before her shows, well, you can tell him you probably don't need it.

But let's talk about why you want it.

I'm Dr. Nikit San Paul, your friendly neighborhood internist and

gastrantroologist.

Let's kick it off. So nutrition. Where's the best place to start? It turns out vitamins and the

reason why your patients always have questions. The most common, should I take a multivitamin?

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