How Dietary Supplements Can Save You Thousands

Spending pennies a day in healthcare can reduce our expenditures by over $24 billion over five years. Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome back to my blog. New research from the Lewin Group has shown that spending pennies a day on a few nutritional supplements can dramatically reduce sickness and chronic disease and reduce healthcare expenditures by $24 billion over five years. So how do they come to this conclusion and why don't we know about it? The Lewin Group looked only at rigorous scientific studies that documented the benefits of nutritional supplements. they use the Congressional Budget Office accounting methods to determine the economic impact of supplements looking only at Medicare patients and women of childbearing age. That's not the rest of us. So it's just a small group and this is what they found. Although nutrients and nutritional therapies can help a broad range of illnesses, they only have four supplements and disease combinations because of the rigor and the validity of the scientific evidence available for those particular diseases and nutrients. While there are many other nutritional therapies and nutrients that are beneficial and have been proven and helpful in studies, this study looked only at the ones that were unquestionable, beyond scientific doubt, well accepted and proven. But these supplements are also underused and generally not recommended by healthcare providers. This study looked at four major nutritional supplements or combinations and the effects on four major health problems. First, calcium and vitamin D and its effect on osteoporosis. Second, folic acid and the impact in preventing birth defects. Third, omega-3 fats and their benefit in heart disease. And fourth, lutein and zeaxanthine which is from dark yellow and orange vegetables and its benefit in preventing major age-related blindness or what we call macular degeneration. So let me review these in more detail a little bit. Most of us hear the refrain from our physicians that nutrients or nutritional supplements make expensive urine or you don't know what you're getting or take them if you want but there's no scientific proof but it can't hurt you, right? My advice to them is to do their scientific homework. Okay, first let's take a look at calcium and vitamin D. I think before I can explain this, I want to point out that vitamin D research referred to in this study is older research. Newer research, as I've written about in my blogs on vitamin D, suggests that higher doses of vitamin D such as 1,000 to 2,000 units a day have even greater benefit. But just looking at the existing studies, but providing Medicare-aged citizens with 1,200 milligrams of calcium and 400 units of vitamin D resulted in reduced bone loss and fewer hip fractures and would prevent over 776,000 hospitalizations for hip fractures over five years, saving $16 billion. Omega-3 fats help prevent cardiac arrhythmias or irregular heartbeat, improve cell membrane function, reduce inflammation, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and have many other health benefits. Using omega-3 fats in the Medicare population would avoid $374,000,000,000. hospitalizations from heart disease using about 1800 milligrams of omega-3 fats a day. The Medicare savings from reduced hospital and physician expenses would be $3.2 billion. Lutein and zeaxanthin are carotenoids that are found in yellow vegetables and orange vegetables. I recommend taking them in combination with hundreds of other carotenoids that are found in yellow and orange foods, but taken as additional supplements these treat and prevent macular degeneration which is the loss of central vision in your eye. This is a major factor causing those over 65 to become dependent and need nursing home care. Avoidance of this need for dependent care in 190,000 individuals taking 6-10 mg of lutein and zeaxanthine daily would result in $3.6 billion in savings over five years. And lastly, 44 million women of childbearing age are not taking folic acid. if only a fourth of them, or 11.3 million, began taking only 400 micrograms of folic acid on a daily basis before they got pregnant, 600 babies could be born without birth defects called neural tube defects and save $344,700,000 in lifetime healthcare costs for these children. That would be over five years, that would be $1.4 billion dollars in savings. Taking together these four simple interventions which cost pennies a day could produce a combined saving of $24 billion over 5 years. This doesn't even include benefits to those in the under 65 age group or any other benefits of nutritional supplementation for improved immunity or cognitive function or mood or many other health problems. In this study, they were extremely rigorous and only looked at nutrient interventions that met three criteria. First, they made sure the supplement produces a physiologic effect which is shown on some biological marker they could measure, right? Bone density, for example, etc. Second, they had to ensure that a physiologic effect created a change in health status. Not only did it create an effect but it actually made you healthier. Third, They only looked at health problems where a change in health status is associated with a decrease in health care expenditures. So if they fixed your health, did it cost less to the society in terms of health care expenditures? The key concept here is that the studies by the Department of Health and Human Services on nutrition show that the typical American diet does not always provide sufficient levels of vitamins or minerals. In fact, 92% of us are deficient in one or more nutrients at the RDA level, which is the minimum amount necessary to prevent rickets or scurvy, not necessarily the amount needed for optimal health. In fact, the government nutritional guidelines ignore the fact that many Americans, because of genetic variations and unique needs, may need higher doses of vitamins and minerals than the minimum or RDA. I think that it's clear that nutrients do not make expensive urine that due to the unfortunate evolution of our food supply, which makes available many low nutrient, high calorie foods which are highly processed, which are hybridized, genetically modified, shipped large distances, grown in nutrient-depleted soils that many of us are nutritionally depleted. These problems do not cause acute illness like rickets or scurvy, but they do cause what have been called long latency deficiency diseases that show up as things like blindness or osteoporosis or heart disease or cancer or diabetes or dementia or more. Therefore I strongly believe based on mounting evidence confirmed by the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine that every person should be taking basic supplementation. Here are the supplements I recommend for everyone. First, a high quality multivitamin and mineral. The multivitamin should contain mixed carotenoids which include lutein and zeaxanthine as part of their mix, as well as at least 400 micrograms of folic acid or folate and a mixed B complex. Second, you should take calcium and magnesium with at least 600 milligrams of calcium and 400 milligrams of magnesium. Preferably calcium citrate or chelated versions of minerals, not calcium carbonate or magnesium oxide which are cheap, poor quality minerals commonly used and poorly absorbed. Third, you should take vitamin D, 1000-2000 units a day for a non-vitamin D deficient person. If you're vitamin D deficient, you might need more. And lastly, fourth, you should take Omega-3 fats or EPA/DHA 1000-2000 mg a day. The cost is low and the benefit is high and the risk is pretty much non-existent for these nutritional supplements for a healthy diet. Not only will you feel better, have better immune function, improve your energy and your brain function, but you will also prevent many problems down the road. So take your nutritional supplements every day.