How I Choose High Quality Supplements with Dr. Doni!

Hi, I'm Dr. Donny Wilson and welcome to How Humans Heal Today. In this episode, I wanted to give you a behind the scenes look and conversation about the supplements that I recommend and that I offer for purchase@drdonni.com Now, a lot of the times when you hear about someone talking about a vitamin or supplement, it can feel like it's a sales ad or something like that. And I really want to break through that and just be honest and transparent with all of you. Because when it comes down to it, this is what I've been trained in. And I want you to know that information so that you can be making wise choices for your health. Because I know that you can be searching on the Internet for different vitamins and supplements. I know you could be going to Amazon and find supplements there. But I also know that it can be really overwhelming when you start to research and you start to think, how am I supposed to choose? How am I supposed to know the right product, the right dose for my health issue? And that's why I got a doctorate degree in exactly answering that question. I'm originally trained as a nutritionist and then I completed my doctorate degree in naturopathic medicine 22 years ago at Bastyr University in the Seattle, Washington area. In the doctorate degree program, which was a five year program, I learned all about the nutrients, the herbs, the homeopathic remedies. Not only that, but I learned how do I identify the companies that are really doing a good job of producing supplements? Because believe me, I would not. There are certain places I would not purchase a supplement for myself. And there's definitely some brands that I would definitely not take myself because I'm looking for quality, quality standards. First of all, it needs to be a company that's holding themselves to high standards in their production. Most of those companies actually only make their supplements available through a practitioner like me. You're not going to find those highest quality supplements in the regular store, in the regular supplement store, or even some places online. You have to be working with a practitioner to have access to the highest quality supplements. And that's just the way it is. And it's for a reason. Because then we know. I know as a practitioner that when I'm making a suggestion for a certain dose and a clinical dose of a nutrient, for example, or an herb, then I need to know that what I'm suggesting is going to work for you. It's going to be the most likely to work because I know it was made in a quality way and it doesn't have other fillers inside of it that may contradict what we're going for with that nutrient or herb. Does that make sense? So that's what I'm always looking for with supplement companies, and there's quite a few of them. There are a lot of supplement companies that meet high quality standards and they actually also have high standards. For me, as someone who offers these supplements in my online store, there are certain supplements that require that you be a patient of mine before you can even have access to order those supplements. So if you come to drdani.com in the store and you're wondering why you can't see certain supplements, it's because I am actually required to have a login and for you to be a patient for you to be able to order them. And to me that means it's a really high quality company and a really high quality supplement. And that's one of the first things you want to look at. Then you got to look at what else they're putting in the supplement. First of all, some of you may be vegetarian and you're looking for products that are vegan or vegetarian that we have access to. And we can determine not everybody is vegetarian. But still a lot of supplements now are in vegetarian capsules. Then we have to look at the other ingredients. And I encourage all of you, if you're taking supplements already, to look at what are the other ingredients in your supplement. If there's a bunch of wax and colors or fillers or stuff that's completely unnecessary in there, then I suggest getting a different supplement because ultimately there only really needs to be. If it's a capsule, it should be usually a cellulose. It might be a. If it's a animal based glycerin gel cap, that's sometimes the case. And then there sometimes needs to be something in the capsule to help keep things from turning into a hard rock while it's waiting for you to take it. Right. So they usually will have some cellulose or another substance that helps it move through the machines when they're putting it into capsules and helps it stay in a good form in the capsule. Those are okay. Those are not going to be harmful to you. But what I'm looking for is I like to make sure there's no gluten, no dairy, most times no soy. Occasionally there's a product that may have soy in it. If you're sensitive to corn, we also need to. Sometimes we need to look and find products that are not derived from corn, but that's more Rare. Most people do not react with substances derived from, from corn. But just so you know, we can identify all of that, we have access to all of that information. And I have been using or running an online store of supplements for, I think over 15 years. Drdonnie.com as a supplement store has existed for over 15 years. So this is not new to me. And not all naturopathic doctors have an online store or their own inventory. Many naturopathic doctors will use a distributor only for their supplements. In my case, I've chosen to maintain an online store and inventory because to me then I'm really able to offer the most choices to the public and to my patients. And so that's why I've held myself to maintaining an online store and inventory, which is beyond what most of my colleagues are doing. It means that I also have to be educated in these companies and how to choose the right supplements and how to set up an online store and make sure that we can all have that available to all of you. So in fact, the online store drdonnie.com just had an upgrade in the past two months. We went from one platform to another platform. And so I'm very excited. It's a lot of work for my office to do that because we have to transition and set up all the different logins and auto ship and all of that. And it takes time, but we're getting there and we have it almost all the way set up for you. So if you go to drdani.com and go to to shop, you're going to be in the new store and you're going to be able to see everything that we've been excited to create for you, including my other company, which is Nature Empowered Nutritionals. So what I found, this is probably about 10 years ago, I found that there's certain supplements that it would be beneficial if I had them under my own supplement line. So I had to research and do a whole other learning curve to figure out how to create my own supplement line. And I named it Nature Empowered Nutritionals. In Nature Empowered Nutritionals, you can know that these are supplements that I've already been using for myself and clinically with patients for years, that they have to meet a criteria for me of actually showing that they've benefited people's health in order to even make it into my supplement line. They also need to fit with my protocol. I have my own protocol that I follow with my patients and in my programs. And that is what I have. That's what I continually then bring into the Nature Empowered Nutritionals line. So these you see here behind me with the turquoise labels, this is Nature Empowered Nutritionals. And these, again, I don't try to do things, to me, it's not about trying to make it simple for me. The idea is to make it easy for you, but also I want to make it high quality, high standards and high outcomes in terms of helping you with your health. And if a supplement, if I try it for myself or in my patient, with my patients clinically and I'm not seeing good outcomes, it's not going to be in my line and it's not going to be something that I'm recommending to people. All of these supplements have been tried and tested and that's how they get to a point where I say this is helping people. I want other people to know about it and have access to it. That's when it makes it into drdonnie.com and that's when it makes it into Nature Empowered Nutritionals. So you could know already that that's the process that we go through. And I have a team of people who help me with that. So Nature Empowered Nutritionals started with a pea protein shake because I was so committed to helping patients to be able to get protein that's dairy free, gluten free and no sugar. And that's why I first started with the pea protein shake, which you see here, it comes in chocolate and vanilla and we also have samples, so you could always just order a sample of the chocolate and vanilla to try it. But this is one of our best selling and longest existing products is the pea protein powder. And I take this every day. Both the chocolate and vanilla are great, but you can try them. If you go to drdonnie.com, you can order samples and we'll send them for you to for free. You just pay the cost of shipping them to you. So that was the beginning of our product line and then it expanded into the leaky gut line. Because to me, in my protocol, one of the first steps of healing and first steps of recovering from stress is to heal your digestion. Because we know that stress lowers your ability to digest foods and it causes leaky gut and it causes imbalance of gut bacteria. So we pretty much, no matter what health issue you have going on, we're gonna need to do some gut healing and we're gonna need to help your digestion recover from stress. So this is why we brought in the enzyme support to help you digest food, the leaky gut support to help heal leaky gut, the Probiotic support to help get your good bacteria back on track. And so this was another area of the nature empowered line that we brought on. Then we brought in the stress category. And the stress category started with three main things. The stress support, the adrenal support and the calming support. These are three key pieces of helping you start to recover from stress, no matter what stress type you are, no matter what your situation. The stress support helps with high or low, high cortisol and high adrenaline. The calming support helps support GABA levels and the adrenal support helps with low cortisol levels. Then we brought in the sleep support for those of you who are struggling with sleep. So it's meant to be rounded out of like, let's help you with these essential aspects of our healing in our life. We know that more than 90% of health issues are caused by stress. So we obviously need to help recover from stress. We need that either stress support if you have high cortisol adrenaline, or adrenal support if you have low cortisol adrenaline. And we need to support the calming part of our nervous system and we need to get good sleep. Right? So these were the supplements that we brought on first. And just in the past two months we brought in new expanded line of stress support supplements. We have the relaxed magnesium, which specifically helps metabolize adrenaline. So if you have high adrenaline, you're going to want that relaxed magnesium. Which one of our. It was a supplement that's helped so many people before. We brought it into the nature empowered line that I thought to myself, I have to bring this into the nature empowered line because it is so helpful for so many people. And then we brought in the Be Happy 5 HTP, which is a support for serotonin levels. Also one of the most common supplements I find that patients need. And I'm measuring the levels, I'm measuring patients serotonin levels. And I see how many of us have low serotonin levels. So I know that a lot of us need 5 HTP to support our serotonin levels. And then we also brought in the cortisol reset supplements. There's two of them. One is phosphatidylserine, one is ashwagandha. They work together to drop a cortisol that's way too high. So if you know your cortisol is high or you're what I call a stress magnet or night owl or sluggish and stressed, we need to bring your cortisol down. You need a cortisol reset with the ashwagandha. And the phosphatidylserine.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy, focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free 7 day stress reset program designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care, Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdani.com.

Now. We're also soon bringing in my favorite GABA support to the Nature Empowered line. It should be here very soon because GABA support it is in the calming support product. But this one is even more fine tuned. I've used it so much clinically with great success that I wanted to add it to the stress line of Nature Empowered. The other thing that we did is we have a whole nutrient and immune system line within Nature Empowered. So all of your essential nutrients we have, we have this here. What you see at the top is a daily foundation support which is packets. It has a multivitamin, a fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium and a probiotic all in little packets where you take one in the morning, one at night. And this way you can easily grab your essential nutrients in little packets. So if you don't know already about the daily foundation support, that's a really good one. We also have Omega 3 separately, we have vitamin D and K separately, we have a bone support separately we have iron, vitamin C, zinc and let's see, what am I missing?

Iron, vitamin C, zinc and folate and vitamin A. Separate each individually because these are oftentimes nutrients that we'll need individually. So if you have low iron levels, you need the iron support. If you need to support your bones, you need the bone support. If you're trying to boost your immune system like we do with so many of my patients who are having either HPV or other viral infections like Epstein Barr virus, or patients who are having recurrent sinus infections, bladder infections, any kind of infections, acne for example, or hpv, we need the vitamin A Zinc is essential for immune system as well as vitamin C. So we use these all the time. I find that sometimes one of the most common things I do is help you all get your immune system back on track. And it makes sense because actually I talked about how stress affects our digestion. Well, the next thing that stress does is it affects our immune system. So of course our immune system needs help. And so we can use nutrients, high quality nutrients in clinical doses to actually help your immune system reset. In fact, there's two immune products that I really want you to know about. And I really encourage all of you to have these on hand at home because when you are coming down with an infection, you don't want to have to place an order and wait for it to arrive the next day or two days. Our shipping, we ship Monday through Friday. And we can also do faster shipping if you need it. But wouldn't it be better if it's already in your medicine cabinet so that you don't have to go order it when you start to feel sick, right? Like if you start to, you start to get a sore throat, you start to get a runny nose, you start to get a headache, and these viruses come on quick. So I recommend. This is what I do, especially when you're traveling, by the way, and I know that more and more people are traveling and definitely at certain times of the year, more traveling. What I do when I'm traveling is I make sure I have my immune system support with me because I'm going to take it just in case I catch a virus and then I'm going to want it. And if I do get sick, I'm going to need it with me wherever I am. So there's two immune products that I have in this line. One is called Empty Immune Support. And Immune support is really good at being an antiviral. It has vitamin C and zinc. I have it right here for you. It has vitamin C and zinc and some vitamin A. And then it has herbs that are antiviral, like astragalus and elderberry and andrographis. And it also has lysine, which is an amino acid that's known to be antiviral. So this is all in this one called Immune Support, which is again a tried and true. It helps your immune system fend off viruses of all kinds. And it's a good one to have with you and to potentially take one a day as a prevention. Then just recently I brought in Immune Plus. And the difference with the plus is that it's highly focused on specific ingredients that are known to help with the COVID virus. So this also has the vitamin C and zinc. It also has vitamin D in here. Now some of you may already be taking a separate vitamin D, such as, you know, this is a vitamin D and K supplement because I like the K to help with getting, getting your calcium to your bones. That's what vitamin D. Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption. Vitamin K helps get the calcium to your bones. This is a 5000 IU vitamin D, which is a common daily dose. Of course, with all of this we need to check your blood levels and monitor and make sure you're not overdoing it. Right. There's no point in overdoing your vitamins, but there's also no point in under doing your vitamins. Let's make sure you have enough of your vitamins to keep you healthy as best as we can. And so this is what I do when I work with people one on one. And in my programs we look at your lab work and we determine what, what are the nutrients your body needs. That's unique to you, right? We don't all need the same amounts of everything. It really depends on our genetics, our body's metabolism, also our stress exposure and our whatever's going on with your health. If you have a toxin, exposure or infection you're recovering from, then you're going to need a different set of nutrients. Right. So that's why people work with me one on one to help, then I'm setting up their supplement plan for them. Exactly. I write it out for people. Not all of my colleagues do this. I know, but I actually want to make sure you know what I'm suggesting. So I write it out. Here's what I'm suggesting, here's the dose and we tweak it and we fine tune it until we get it just right for you. So if you want that for yourself, that would be a reason to work with me one on one as a patient so that I can be reviewing your information and fine tuning your doses. And I'll be suggesting which supplements are going to be the most strategic for your health, most efficient and most quality, highest quality so that you get the right outcomes. Why take more pills than you need? Better to take the right amount of the best quality pills. Right. So back to this. Immune plus. Immune plus, which this we started to see research starting to come out about COVID to say which nutrients have the most research to be helpful for fending off Covid in the moment and preventing long term symptoms. Those nutrients in Include vitamin C, which you can take individually or you could take it in a combination product. So there's vitamin C, there's zinc, vitamin D is in here. It's an additional amount of vitamin D and in addition to what else you might be taking. And then it also has quercetin, which a lot of you may have been hearing about Quercetin. Quercetin is actually a plant derived substance I learned about 25 years ago in Nature Valley Medical School. We've been using quercetin forever because it's an antioxidant, antihistamine, immune, supportive. We use it a lot for allergies and we also know that it helps with viral infections. And now the research is showing more and more how it could actually inhibit specifically the COVID virus. So that's why quercetin is in here and that's why you hear a lot about people taking quercetin. But why get a separate one when you can get it all in one? And then it also has nac, which is N acetylcysteine. N acetylcysteine is an amino acid precursor to our most important antioxidant in our body called glutathione. So NAC turns into glutathione. But I've also been using NAC for more than 25 years because it's also thins the phlegm. So if you have a cold, any virus really, right, Any congestion, and you get this thick phlegm that you're coughing up. And we want to thin it out to make it easier to blow your nose and get it out. That's the key with all this phlegm. You want it out, you don't want it sitting still. So NAC helps thin it and move it. But we've also seen how having an antioxidant like nac, well, really, vitamin C, zinc and quercetin, they're all antioxidants, right. Why isn't it an antioxidant? Well, because when we have an infection and our immune system is trying to protect us from a virus, it creates a lot of oxidative stress. Because the oxidative stress is actually the body's using it to kill the virus. But what happens is then there can be a buildup of oxidative stress. Now we have in the process of fending off the virus, our body has too much oxidative stress. Well, how are we going to get it to come back down again? We need more antioxidants. So that's why a lot of times when you look at a supplement to help you recover from any infection, it's going to have antioxidants in there, even glutathione, vitamin C, zinc, and so on, including nac. And so that's why the NAC is in here, is helping for multiple reasons. And so I just really want you all to know that immuneplus exists and that I suggest you have it in your medicine cabinet. I bring it with me in my suitcase anytime I travel. I want to make sure I have this in case I catch a virus so that I can immediately help my body, give my body the nutrients and antioxidants it needs to have a best immune response to counteract the oxidative stress and to recover faster. What we see is when, and we've known this for decades, that when people take these nutrients, they recover faster from viral infections. Believe me, I would test it on myself. When my daughter was young and I was getting viruses all the time, I would be testing these things on myself. I'm like, how much do I need to take in order to decrease the number of days that I'm sick? Because if we're sick more days, then that decreases our ability to get other things done, right? So I was like, how do I. This was my experiment with myself. How do I recover faster? Well, I'm going to stay hydrated. I'm going to avoid sugar, I'm going to avoid alcohol, and I'm going to avoid gluten and dairy. I'm going to get more sleep. I'm going to take my nutrients and herbs that help my body fend off an infection. I also highly recommend that you all have. I use, I often recommend silver nasal spray so you can squirt it up your nose and you can spray it in your throat. Really? Silver, liquid silver, we can use anywhere. We can use it on your skin. We can use it anywhere in the body. And this is available. Usually I say to get the nasal spray one, because then if you can squirt it up your nose, you can also use this to squirt it in your throat. This is great for prevention. It's also great if you get a virus or a sinus infection. So I definitely recommend this one. And we. That's why we. Again, this is why we carry it@drdani.com because these are the things that I find help people the most. And then there's, you know, there's other things. If you're like, hey, I really love a mushroom extract, we have the Stamets mushroom extracts. We also have Mushroom extracts that are the highest. When you're getting a mushroom extract, you need to make sure that the way they're making it preserves the functionality of the mushroom in there. And a lot of companies that's not the case. So you need to be going to a company that has high quality and that actually is going to help your immune system. So this is an example of daily immune support. It's a combination of mushrooms and it also comes in liquid forms. So a lot of things, there's not just capsules. A lot of times then we're finding liquids. We're using. We have liquids that can be used for children. For any of you who are not swallowing pills, we got liquids too, and powders. So there's so many possibilities. And I know it can be overwhelming when it's new to you and you're like, well, are they going to interact with each other? Is it going to interact with something else I'm taking? Well, that's why I'm. That's my training. I'm trained in which supplements can you take together, which ones are actually synergistic together, and which ones do you need to take at different times and which ones, if you're on a medication, what you should not be taking. That's what I'm trained in. I mean, there actually is a doctorate degree in that, and that's what my degree is. And that's what I've been doing for 22 years. And so it's pretty cool. I also want to share with you, we do have the peptide, which is. This is research by Dr. Cavinson. Peptides. These peptides are there for different areas of the body. And what they're doing is they're actually resetting genetic expression for each different area. So this crystogen is for the immune system. It's resetting your immune system from stress exposure. And so this you could use preventatively. I also recommend it. If you catch a virus, you're trying to help your immune system fend off a virus. And after, to help your immune system recover from an infection. This is also really important. And.

I have a blog post about more about that if you're interested in learning more about the peptides. So when stress affects us, right, there's a digestion. So we need to heal the gut, there's the immune system. We need to heal the immune system. We need to address any nutrient deficiencies that are there. We also need to address the neurotransmitters, which is some of those that I already mentioned, like 5 HTP for serotonin, GABA for GABA support and magnesium to help with adrenaline and norepinephrine levels, dopamine levels. We have those that amino acid therapy and amino acid supplements to help rebalance your neurotransmitters. You do not have to be stuck with depleted or imbalanced neurotransmitters. There is a way. And, and this is something I've been researching, researching and using clinically for 20 years. So this is what I do is help people rebalance their systems. There's also the hormones, right? So our hormones go out of balance. A very common thing when we're under stress and when we've had a viral infection is our hormones go out of balance. That includes the cortisol. We talked about how to rebalance cortisol. We are thyroid. We have, have nutrients and herbs to support thyroid function. We have. There could be imbalance in the menstrual cycle. This is actually one of the most common symptoms after having had a COVID infection or other infection is the menstrual cycle goes off track. So how are we going to get your menstrual cycle back on track unless you're say, unless this is especially the case if you're not on a hormone replacement or birth control pill? We are going to use herbs and nutrients to help get your menstrual cycle back on track. And, and we can totally do that. I help women do that every day, all the time, including during perimenopause. We can use these supplements you see behind me to help get your ovaries ovulating and your menstrual cycle back on track. Whether it's PCOS or menstrual cramps or endometriosis or perimenopause or PMS or pmdd, we can address it using herbs and nutrients. And I know that's not something you hear from the regular doctor's office, but remember your regular doctor's office, they're not trained in the use of nutrients and herbs or homeopathic remedies. So of course they're not going to recommend it. It's not something they know how to use. To know how to use these things, you really need to go get a doctorate degree like I did. And some people may learn some of this in smaller classes, but I went to the highest level of training to get trained in this. And I want you guys to know that because I want you to know, like, like I'm here for you. If there's something that I'm not familiar with. I know where to research and I know where to get the information. But I've been doing this for 22 years, so I. And I. And I was studying for a decade before that. So I know. I know all of this information already in my head. And so I want you to be able to know that you can count on me and that. That I'm. I'm going to listen to you. I want to know your questions. I want to know your concerns. I want to know, okay, what is it that you're looking for and that you need? And we can use my protocol that I've identified and written about in my books to help you actually recover and actually rebalance digestion, immune system neurotransmitters, and hormones. These things can be addressed. You do not have to stay imbalanced and stuck, including after this pandemic, including if you've had a COVID virus. You should not have to continue feeling unwell. In fact, some of the recent research that just came out in the past month is really connecting COVID infection with adrenal distress. I call it adrenal distress, which is when our adrenal glands make cortisol and adrenaline. And if we're under stress, like any infection, we know this very well in research. Any infection can disrupt adrenal function. Any infection can disrupt cortisol and adrenaline. But if we don't do something about it, then after the infection, we're left feeling tired, brain fog, just not ourselves. Our digestion's off, our hormones are off. We don't feel good anymore. And we're like, well, now I had this infection and now I don't feel good. How long is this going to go on? And we're like, this is not going to work. What am I supposed to do? And the doctors offices don't know how to address it because they're not trained in how to address adrenal distress. It's just not something that. That's a medical condition that insurance covers or identifies. So it's not something they're going to know how to address. And yet I'm seeing the research starting to come out to show us that it comes back to this same information I've been just talking to you about. When we're recovering from a viral infection like Covid, it comes back to the same idea of, we need to know your cortisol levels. Is your cortisol too high or too low? Both are possible, so we need to measure it. And once we measure your cortisol, then I can tell you, okay, you need the cortisol reset products or you need the adrenal support product. One or the other, it's going to be the stress types that have high cortisol or a stress type that has low cortisol. And I also want to measure your adrenaline so that we can address whether it's too high or too low. We can get very specific about your healing. And by being specific about these nutrients and herbs, not just, just general, but specific, you're more likely to actually find that they are helping you, that they're actually helping you feel better and stay well and prevent further infections and health issues. Because your body then is supported in the way that it needs to be supported, which is really the way I look at it. I look at it as we're gonna get stressed in life, we're gonna come across infections, things are gonna happen as humans, that part of the deal, what we need to do is support ourselves through that stress. We need to make sure we're getting good sleep, good exercise, stress recovery activities, healthy diet. And we need to give our bodies the support. We can use nutrients and herbs that are non addictive without side effects when we're using them in the right dose, in the right form. Let's use these nutrients from nature and herbs from nature. Even homeopathy is from nature. Let's use these substances from nature that can help our bodies heal and help us to be resilient to stress going forward. So that's why I'm so committed to making these supplements available to you through drdonnie.com and I want you to know that. And I want to thank you for listening in and for learning from me and to share with me what it is that you'd like to learn about next. Please follow, subscribe, write a review, send me a note, send me some feedback. Please join me back here again as I share more information with you every week and interview colleagues and experts as well, who I'm learning from and who I believe have amazing information to share with you to help you, help guide you on your health journey or life journey, to be as healthy as you can be, considering all the stresses in the world around us, so that you can do what you love without it draining you. That's the whole idea, right? How do we do what we love without getting burned out doing it? And that's what my goal is when I'm searching for the highest quality products that are going to give you the best outcomes. And you can, yes, access a lot of them, as well as free podcasts, blogs and videos and information@drdani.com and you can also then access programs with me, group programs, one on one programs so that you can get the help you need to support yourself and your health and so you can do what you love with your family and your life. All right, well, thanks again for joining me. I'm so glad you guys have an inside look at the some of our supplements here@drdonnie.com and I look forward to hearing from you and connecting with you again soon.

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