28 Oct Should I take supplements?

Vitamin D. Vitamin B. Magnesium. Omega 3. Melatonin. Chromium. Mineral blend. Grapefruit seed extract. Iodine. Collagen. GABA. 5HTP. These are just some of the supplements I’ve taken. Yes, just some. I have a long list of what I’ve taken over the years. I’ve taken so many supplements because I’ve been trying to feel better for awhile now. And I have a doctor who relies heavily on supplements.

So you probably think that I would encourage all of my clients to take supplements. But I don’t.

I don’t for a lot of reasons but the main one is it’s not in my scope of practice. What this means is that health coaches don’t prescribe or recommend supplements. We support our clients in their health practices. But we don’t tell clients what to do. I’m a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. So I help clients follow a plan from a licensed healthcare provider, or a plan of their own choosing. After all, clients are the experts of their own lives.

Another reason I don’t recommend supplements is that it’s complicated and many things could go wrong. They could be useless. In which case you’re paying a lot of money for nothing. Or, they could be counterproductive and actually cause problems for you. So someone like a doctor or nutritionist should take that responsibility of telling you what you need to take.

Problems with vitamins and minerals

Quality can vary widely with supplements. Many typical drugstore over-the-counter multivitamins are made with synthetic vitamins. Your body is not synthetic so it doesn’t always recognize or use the synthetic vitamins. A better choice would be vitamins derived from real food sources. Worse, some multivitamins are contaminated with pesticides or toxins. Professional brands can be a better option. These brands are available only to doctors and licensed professionals and patients order through them. Then the patients are taking quality supplements that the doctor has determined they need. That’s where I got a lot of my supplements, through my doctor, as well as buying ones she recommended that are over-the-counter.

The reason I relied on my doctor to prescribe my supplements is that they could be targeted. What this means is the doctor looked at my very thorough lab results. She used that information, as well as my history, to decide which supplements would work for me.  My doctor was targeting any deficiencies I had. She also was preventing interactions. Some supplements can interact with prescription medicines. Supplements can interact with each other. Doctors are trained to recognize all this and prevent that. For example, taking potassium can interfere with some blood pressure medications. And taking melatonin, which is a hormone, could interfere with your other hormones.

Another reason to get a doctor involved is the issue of absorption. If you don’t have good gut health, supplements may not be properly absorbed by the body. Worse, the supplements could even irritate the gut lining, making gut health worse. If the supplements contain cerrtain additives, they are more likely to irritate the gut. A functional medicine doctor will focus on restoring your gut health, and then you can benefit more fully from your supplements.

But you do need vitamins and minerals

Even better than taking supplements, including vitamins and minerals, is to get them through your food. That means to eat your vegetables (there I go again, telling you to eat your vegetables). Dr. Terry Wahls healed her MS through a diet that included nine cups of vegetables a day. She got the clue that vegetables might be the answer because she took supplements and noticed an improvement in her symptoms. Then she switched to getting the same nutrients from real food, and had much more improvement. I find the same thing to be true. Sometimes I get a reaction from supplements but I don’t get reactions from eating food with the same nutrients.

That being said, some vitamins and minerals are really hard to get through food. Or at least getting enough through food. One of these is omega 3. I take fish oil pills to get that. We can get omega 3 through grass-fed beef but we don’t get it though factory-farmed beef. We can get it from salmon and other oily fish, but we don’t usually eat enough, and there’s also the risk of mercury contamination in large fish like tuna.

Another one is magnesium. The soils in American farms are very deficient in magnesium, so our crops are deficient. Since we probably can’t get enough magnesium from food, I take that too. Our soils are deficient in most other minerals too. So we all tend to need more minerals and I take a multi-mineral supplement.

Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. This is the sunshine vitamin. We work indoors and we wear sunscreen outside. And some of us live far north where the sun is less direct and we bundle up against the cold, covering the skin. This is not my problem as I am New Orleans Health Coach, so I am pretty far south. But there’s another reason we’re all deficient in D. Glyphosate depletes it. That’s the pesticide that’s in Roundup. Most of the wheat we eat, and corn too, has been sprayed with Roundup. It’s really hard to avoid. So I take vitamin D. It’s very protective against a lot of diseases, including the flu.

I’ll help you

So I’d love to help you figure this out. I’ll help you get facts so you can make informed decisions. We’ll contrast opposing viewpoints and you’ll find what works for you. That’s because I offer personalized coaching. Contact me for a free intro phone call to see if we can work together.

 

Comments: What supplements do you take?

 

Lifespa Multivitamins

FDA Interactions

Dr. Terry Wahls

MyBioHack Glyphosate

Dr. Mercola Nutrient Deficiencies

 

 

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