Supplements, Drugs, Basic Terms
Reddit discussion one
Trans individual put on supplements: Calcium, zinc, L-arginine and vitamin D.
Technically, vitamin D is NOT a vitamin because vitamins are "essential nutrients we CANNOT manufacture in the body." People can make vitamin D, ergo it's not really a vitamin because it's not an essential nutrient we NEED to acquire from food.
It's TECHNICALLY a steroid. So don't go getting all wrapped around the axle about labels.
A search for what makes vitamin d a steroid gives me this:
Vitamin D is classified as a steroid due to its chemical structure, which includes a steroid nucleus. The hormone is synthesized from cholesterol in the body and undergoes a series of chemical transformations, including hydroxylation, which is a key step in its steroid classification. The active form of vitamin D, calcitriol, is a dihydroxy form of the vitamin D hormone, further confirming its steroid status. The hormone's role in regulating calcium and phosphate metabolism, as well as its influence on various physiological processes, underscores its importance in the endocrine system and its classification as a steroid hormone.
My hand wavy laymen's understanding is that steroids and hormones are kind of like tools with specific functions and nutrients are more like building blocks, but there's probably no clear bright line actually because those tools get built from building blocks and it can happen automatically because you put those building blocks into the system and it automatically makes stuff if you give it the right materials.
In many cases, the difference between a drug and not a drug is concentration. Coca cola has subclinical amounts of extract from the coca plant, minus the hallucinogen that makes cocaine. Historically, it also contained the hallucinogen and probably gave you a light buzz.
Natives traditionally chewed the leaves to get relief from symptoms of altitude sickness. The difference between chewing the leaves and cocaine is cocaine is a highly concentrated form of specific chemicals found in the leaves.
There are also drugs, often used for pain relief, using capsaicin which is the active ingredient in hot peppers. Eat enough hot peppers or a hot enough variety of hot peppers and you get medicinal effects.
Life is chemistry. You can absolutely use food as medicine if you are knowledgeable enough.
I wouldn't worry about descriptions of L-arginine as a sexual health thing. It's basically "marketing" because it's an amino acid, AKA one of the building blocks of protein and found in abundance in foods like turkey and chicken.
Adequate hydration could probably reasonably be marketed as "good for sexual health" to be honest. Some people might actually take hydration more seriously if we made such claims.
"Drink enough water! It supports circulatory health which is essential to getting a boner!"
Water, the new Viagra. Only with less risk of ending up in the ER with a boner that won't go away.
Trivia not directly related to this post: Cells with immune function are very frequently glycoproteins. In other words they are part carb and part protein. So the right carbs and the right proteins are critical to creating things like white blood cells.