Is Your Supplement Doing You Any Good?
So many folks come to see me with a long list of supplements they are taking. We go through each supplement one by one to understand the reason why the person is taking it. The majority of cases have questionable reasoning based on ads in health magazines, ‘it is supposed to be good for…’, ‘this if for my heart’, ‘this is for my knee pain’, ‘this is for my cholesterol’ and on and on. Most of the time either the supplement will not do the person any good because it isn’t the right medicine for their condition or the supplement is questionably manufactured so even if it is the ‘right’ medicine it cannot be utilized properly by the body. For example, if a person complains of joint pain, but they also have IBS and eczema and are taking glucosamine for the joint pain then that is an example of the wrong medicine. This person has a lot of inflammation as is evident by the IBS and eczema, therefore the joint pain is probably the result of a faulty gut and poor protein and mineral digestion (as is the eczema). Taking the glucosamine will do little to the joints because the joints are just a symptom of a problem in the gut. The digestion is what needs to be addressed so this person taking capsules of highly concentrated substances will only further weaken digestion!
The other problem is more common - the product isn’t manufactured properly and it cannot be absorbed, or if it does get absorbed it isn’t bioavailable to the body. A typical example are mineral supplements. Most minerals in pills just end up becoming expensive feces. It is hard for the body to absorbed minerals in the majority of pills because they are bound incorrectly. Minerals in pill form need to be correctly chelated in order for them to pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. How do you know if they are correctly chelated? Unfortunately it is difficult to know just by looking at the bottle because many companies will use the term chelate, even though it isn’t a real chelate. So the bottom line is to know your manufacturer or to check out the company Albion which makes mineral chelates for several manufacturers (www.Albion.com). See if you supplement company is on this list.
Even if your company is on this list though, they still may not be the best supplements for you because they are synthetic isolated compounds. There is plenty of research old and new that point to a synergetic effect between nutrients that are only found in whole foods. Isolated vitamin E, vitamin A, beta-carotene, vitamin C has plenty of research to prove its detrimental effects. But used in a whole form these vitamins also have its proper co-factors for metabolism as well as other synergetic nutrients. Unfortunately our food supply is not nutritious as it was 60 ears ago (write me if you want the reference for this research) and because of our stressful lifestyle our requirements have increased. There are several whole food supplement companies out there to help us regain some of this lost nutrition and deal with our increased demands. If you want to take a good ‘multi’ I would suggest getting a whole food supplement source through your healthcare professional and the two that I use are Standard Process and Right Foods. I’ve yet to see any products on the shelves of Whole Foods or GNC that come close to the quality of these two companies. Using a whole food (the adjective, not the name of the store) product assures us that we aren’t using isolated compounds that can toss our body into further imbalance. Taking isolated synthetic supplements can cause a deficiency in other endogenous nutrients because the body needs to metabolize the unnaturally large quantity of isolated fractions.
However there are good products you can pick up retail and one of my favorite products at Whole Foods is called ProGreens by Nutricology. There are other fine whole food green products out there as well such as Green Synergy. But beware all these green products need to be manufactured properly, just because the label says it contains lots of vegetables and green grasses doesn’t say anything about quality.
No matter what supplement you purchase it is important to know the manufacturer. Either doing your own research or trusting your practitioner. Find out if the company has a ‘certificate of analysis’ and conducts a regular random inspection on its products. Inquire about the manufacturing process and if they have any literature about their procedures. Any reputable company will be able to provide this. And I believe most important to choose whole food based supplements to give your body balanced nutrition, no need for most people to mega-dose.
Allopathic prescribing of supplements
Taking supplements in this way is no different than taking prescription drugs. It is a reductionist theory where each part is treated separately. However there is a connection between the knee pain, heart issues, and eczema. A skilled practitioner will find the connection between the physical manifestations and prescribe supplements to correct the underlying imbalance.