The Hidden Power of Supplements: Transform Your Health Today!

Foreign.

This is open mind.

Today we're going to be diving into a crucial topic, the importance of supplementation and addressing very common and prevalent nutrient deficiencies. It's a staggering fact that 95% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient. And globally, over 2 billion people face simply correctable nutrient deficiencies. I mean, I just got to say vitamins and minerals are freaking remarkable. You know, at the turn of the century there was diseases like beriberi, pellagra, rickets, There diary. These diseases were from vitamin A deficiency, B vitamin deficiencies and they would create severe illness, I mean just dementia, severe dermatitis, blindness, rickets, I mean, you name it. And these are corrected with literally infinitesimally small doses of a compound literally within days. I mean, if you have scurvy and you don't have enough vitamin C, you're in bad shape. But few little doses of vitamin C and you're back to normal. I mean, there is no more powerful miracle drug than vitamin C minerals at the level of deficiency. And what we're seeing now is something called long latency deficiency diseases where we're not like fully, fully, fully always facing severe deficiency diseases. But we have these things called long latency deficiency diseases that make, for example, if you have not enough vitamin D in the short run and you're really low, you get rickets. But if you don't have it in the long run, you have a suppressed immune system, you get depression, you get muscle aches, you get back to even osteoporosis. So in this episode, we're going to discuss why supplements are necessary in the first place and why they're so important in today's world. How to navigate the supplement market. In other words, how do you make sense of what's good or bad out there and how you can ensure you're getting the nutrients your body really needs to thrive. Hi, I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and welcome to Health Hacks. Now, even with a well balanced diet, our modern agricultural practices, our declining soil quality, our fast paced lifestyle, our exposure to toxins or chronic stress, all make it challenging to obtain the necessary nutrients from food alone. And that's where supplementation comes in and it becomes really not just an option, but essential. Not just to avoid deficiencies, but to achieve optimal health. And there's a big difference between how much vitamin D you need, for example, to prevent rickets, which is 30 units, versus how much vitamin D you might need to prevent all the other things we talked about, like osteoporosis and Boosting your immune system and so on. You might need 4 to 5,000 more than 10 times that or a hundred times that dose. Now, I want to talk about the importance of supplementation and why we need to use nutritional supplements to address nutrient deficiencies that are widespread. And as I mentioned before, 95% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient at the minimum level to prevent a deficiency disease. This is staggering. Not how much do you need for optimal health, but how much do you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets. And 2 billion people, as I mentioned worldwide have at least one nutrient deficiency plays a huge role in infant mortality and and chronic illnesses around the world. Now let's talk about the difference between macro and micronutrients. Now, macronutrients, you're familiar with carbs, proteins, fats. Now, it's very unusual in our modern society to have a deficiency in any of these nutrients. Protein is a common deficiency in developing world. And you see kids with severe protein, protein malnutrition. But it's really important to get enough protein. But although we might not have a deficiency, we still may not be optimal. And I've done podcasts on that, but that's another topic. Now, micronutrient deficiencies like vitamins and minerals are far more common. And I want to explain just for a minute why nutrients are so important. Just so you understand the context here, when you look at your DNA, 1/3 of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. Now, what are enzymes? Enzymes are catalysts. They're basically a enzyme or a catalyst that converts one compound or one molecule to another molecule in your body. They're basically the facilitators of all your biochemical reactions. And you've got 37 billion trillion chemical reactions happening every second in your body. Now just digest that for a second. Right? 37 billion trillion chemical reactions every second. And every single one of those reactions requires an enzyme. And those enzymes require a cofactor or coenzyme. And guess what, folks, what are the cofactors and coenzymes? They're vitamins and minerals. Now, drugs, they affect a single pathway to create a single outcome. For example, if you have a blood pressure pill, it's a calcium channel blocker. It does that one thing. However, vitamins and minerals, they might have the effect on hundreds and hundreds of different enzymes. So magnesium or folate or other other nutrients may have the ability to affect the function of literally hundreds and hundreds of different chemical reactions. That's why they create such widespread spread problems. So Just to understand that this is a super important thing. And based on these genetic differences we have, you know, I said one third of our DNA codes for enzymes. Based on these genetic variations, different people may need different amounts of nutrients and may need different forms of nutrients. For example, if you have a gene that is called mthfr, it means you can't convert the folate from your food very well into the folate that's active in your body. 5 methylfolate. So you need to take the preformed version as a supplement, for example. Or let's say you are somebody who has vitamin D receptor issues and can't absorb vitamin D. Well, you might need not a thousand units of vitamin D a day, you might need 10,000. And so there are a lot of variations in the population. That's why it's important to test, not guess. And again, that's why I created with my colleagues and friends and co founders functionhealth.com to allow you to get all these nutrients we're talking about today tested and many more. Go to functionhealth.com mark and you can find out what's actually going on. Okay, so let's get started. What are the most common micronutrient deficiencies? Well, iron. Iron is the most common nutrient deficient globally affecting about 25% of the global population. Now the consequences include short term problems like anemia, particularly in preschoolers when nearly 50% are deficient if they're not getting iron fortified foods. Right. So the at risk groups particularly are vegans. Almost all the vegans I know and test are iron deficient. Vegetarians still menstruating in pregnant women because they use up a lot of blood in either menstruating or, you know, getting extra blood for the baby. Vitamin D deficiency, also extremely common and it may have, depending on how you look and define it, insufficiency or deficiency may affect between 80 to 95% of the population. Now while frank deficiency symptoms like rickets are not common today, although they are sometimes in the developing world, suboptimal levels have significant health impacts. As I mentioned, suppressed immune system, muscle weakness, fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression, immune dysfunction and even cardiovascular risk, cancer risk. I mean all these things are related to low levels or insufficient levels of vitamin D. The next big one is magnesium deficiency. Now this affects about 20% of the population based on the minimum amount to prevent a deficiency disease. That's 20% who have overt magnesium deficiency. That's quite serious. Subclinical deficiency could affect up to 80% of the population which is very important because why? Magnesium is crucial for over 600 enzyme reactions affecting every single biological system, affecting overall health and risk of chronic disease. Literally everything from your mental health to your immune health, to metabolic health, diabetes, control, muscle function, everything, pretty much everything. Vitamin B12 deficiency is also really common. About 80 to 90% of vegans and vegetarians may be deficient in vitamin B12 because there's not any vegetable food. Basically that's how it is, just fact of Life. Now over 20% of adults may be deficient in, not the vegans because only about 2% of the population is vegan. But basically even the rest of the population, it can be deficient in vitamin B12. Part of it has to do with, you know, our, our drugs we're taking like acid blockers. Part of it has to do with our digestive function and lack of absorption in some cases, or just lack of intake. Right, because people aren't eating B12 rich foods. Now what about calcium deficiency? Not, not that common because the body regulates calcium pretty well from the bones. But what happens is basically if you don't have enough calcium because your blood levels have to be controlled really tightly, it just sucks it all out of your bones and you get osteoporosis. So. But a survey in the United States found that about 50% of teenage girls and about 10% of women over 50 and about less than 22% of teenage boys and men over 50 meet the recommended calcium intake. So a lot of people don't meet it. And it depends on your age and your sex and so forth. But we need to make sure we have adequate calcium. But ideally you want to get it from food. Calcium rich foods are really common greens, often seeds, sesame seeds are great, chia seeds are great. So there's a lot of ways to get calcium. You can get it from bones, from a can of sardines, which I like. But anyway you probably don't like that. But I like to eat that can of salmon with the bones in. Again, that's how people lived on islands used to get calcium. Anyway. You can take a little calcium, but I don't think you want to overdo on calcium because of problems with calcium affecting heart and creating other issues. So I'd be careful about that. Anyway. Omega 3 fats, the next one. This is a big one. We don't eat the foods we used to eat as hunter gatherers, which are wild foods or a lot of sea based foods for coastal people. Those are very rich in omega 3s. But our modern industrial diet and Our lack of intake of wild fish has really dropped. And so 90% of Americans are not meeting the recommendations for omega 3 intake, which is one serving of fatty fish at least two times a week. And I think that's a bare minimum, right? And I'm talking about like sardines, herring, mackerel, maybe some wild salmon, anchovies, you know, small fatty fish. Now, there's a lot of other deficiencies, and this is from a large national study. It's called the nhanes, or National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a big mumbo jumbo, but it's a government ongoing government study that's been going on for a long, long time that tracks people over decades, tracks their blood work, their health issues. And basically they found that 45% of the population is deficient in vitamin A, 46% in vitamin C and 84% in vitamin E. Why? Because it comes from whole grains and nobody eats those. 15% are deficient in zinc. And why this matters is that these subclinical deficiencies, or just frank deficiencies, can lead to really serious health consequences. And they may not have initially obvious symptoms, but they will ultimately. Unlike these overt deficiencies or severe severe deficiencies, things like vitamin D deficiency causing rickets or scurvy from vitamin C, subclinical deficiencies get manifested in a lot less visible ways, but are really significant. So what are the health impacts of these sub optimal nutrient levels? Well, first of all, you got a weak immune system, you have increased risk of chronic diseases and the list is long. I'm not going to go through all of them. But osteoporosis, dementia, thyroid issues. I mean, for example, selenium is important for converting T4 to T3. You need vitamin D to make thyroid work at the receptor level in the nucleus. I mean, you just need nutrients all the way around. You need iodine to make sure you're making thyroid. It's just the list goes on. Chronic fatigue syndrome can be a result. Inflammation. We need nutrients to regulate our immune system. And inflammation. Depression is really common, particularly with things like low levels of folate or B12 or B6. Anxiety, same nutrients, but it also can lead to headaches. If you're nutrient deficient, like magnesium leads to headaches, palpitations, severe pms, adhd. Also there's other things that can happen if you're nutrient deficient. Eating disorders, hormone imbalances, insulin resistance. For example, we talked about magnesium being critical. Insomnia, Again, magnesium can be a factor there. Muscle spasms, reflux, cognitive decline, I mean, the list goes on and on. Think about Your body has 37 billion trillion chemical reactions every second. And all of them need nutrients. And if you are not getting enough, or even if you're not getting the optimal amounts, things don't work well. And if you're not getting the optimum amount for you, they don't work well. So it's really important. Now what is the difference between Frank deficiency, which is really severe deficiency, and optimal levels? Right. Or the optimal range. There's RDA or RDI Recommended Dietary Allowance or RDI Recommended Dietary Intake. These are basically based on criteria that were developed decades and decades ago when there was true malnutrition. Uh, so they were really trying to address this widespread malnutrition that was going on in nutrient deficiencies. They discovered vitamins in the early turn of the last century. And you know, they, they had kind of polished rice and polished flour, you know, white flour and white rice. And all of a sudden people weren't eating the, the grain in a whole form which has all these B vitamins and nutrients and so forth. And so there was a lot of deficiencies. So these were established to just put, prevent these deficiency diseases. The average intake is basically sufficient to meet the needs of basically 97 to 98% of the population who are healthy within a specific age or range and gender. Now, they're not, again, as I mentioned, designed to say what is the optimal amount of vitamin D you need for optimal health, Right. To prevent Covid or the flu or to not get cancer or heart disease or dementia or not have depression or not have muscle weakness or. I mean, just the list goes on, right? They're not talking about that. They're just saying how much do you need to not get rickets? Again, these are also based on the average population. So when we look at data and you look at populations, the way they come up with statistics essentially based on this idea of this normal range. And the normal range is based on the average of the population. But if you're a Martian landing in America today, you would assume that it's quote, normal to, to be overweight because 75% or more of Americans are overweight. So it's the normal state of the average American, but it's not optimal. And the problem is most Americans are sick. So these reference ranges are not for, for sure not optimal. 93% of Americans, for example, have metabolic dysfunction, meaning they're somewhere in the spectrum of pre diabetes and diabetes. Six in 10Americans have at least one chronic disease and four in 10 have many. And this is why the RDAs just don't reflect the needs of individuals striving for optimal health issues. You really want to be optimal healthy, you've got to get the optimal levels of nutrients. So what are these optimal levels of nutrients? Well, they require a higher dietary intake than the recommended dietary Allowance in order to get your labs in the optimal range. And this is key tests. Don't guess. You just got to know what your levels are. I have a gene, for example, that makes it difficult for me to convert folate in my diet into methylfolate. So I have to take a preformed version of this methylfolate if I want to keep my homocysteine level down, which is an indicator of these B vitamin deficiencies. And I do eat a lot of foods with B vitamins, but I just have this genetic need for higher amounts of this certain nutrient and also a special form of the nutrient. That's why sometimes genetic testing can be very helpful and helping to personalize your nutrition. And we call this nutrigenomics optimum. Vitamin D levels are much, much higher than what's required to prevent rickets. Right. The standard reference range is generally 20 to 30 nanograms per deciliter. If you're 30 or 20, that's, I think, significant because that means you're extremely low. The optimal range is probably 45 to 75. And there may be higher levels that are safe even up to 250 based on the data. So even if you're up to 100, it's not an issue. You're not gonna get vitamin D toxicity unless you're taking massive doses for a long time. But the studies are really quite compelling on this. And for example, Michael Hollock has done a of work on this. He's, he's a highly published researcher on vitamin D. But in, for example, in the flu vaccine, if your vitamin D level is over 50, it works actually better than the flu vaccine in preventing flu. A 75% reduction. Covid, there was a study out of Israel where they looked at people whose vitamin D levels were over 50 and not a single person died. If your vitamin D levels were low, for example, during COVID you are far more likely to end up in the hospital and in the ICU and to die if your vitamin D level was low. So this is how important this is, and it's actually, I think, more effective than the vaccine. If you look at the data, some people say, well, can't I get all my vitamins and minerals from food? And why, if I'M eating a healthy diet. Do I really need them? And here's what I basically say to people. Look, you don't need vitamins and minerals, but only under these conditions. One, you hunt and gather your own wild food. Two, you only drink pure, clean water. Three, you're not exposed to any air pollution or environmental toxins at all. Four, you sleep eight hours a night. And five, you have no chronic stress. If that describes you, you do not need any vitamins and minerals. Okay? But the rest of us, yeah, we do, and here's why. You know, our agricultural system has just affected dramatically the nutrient density of the food we're eating. Because of how we've tilled the soil, destroyed the microbiome of the soil, which is essential for helping plants extract the nutrients from the soil. It has a huge impact on the nutrient density of food. So, for example, your broccoli today has 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago. And these industrial farming practices, the soil tilling, the heavy use of pesticides and glyphosate, for example, as a microbiome destroyer of the soil, all of these things really cause huge problems with our soil, which then causes problems with our plants, which then causes problems with humans. So basically, we're tied into the agricultural system. I think Wendell Berry said eating is an agricultural act, and I couldn't agree more. Also, we're exposed to heavy metals, which are everywhere, right? Metals from pollution, coal burning, cement plants. It's in the air, it's in the water. Arsenic, lead, mercury, to varying degrees. And these, these bind with nutrients. They compete with the central other minerals for absorption, and they require more nutrients to actually help your body excrete them. So basically, because of this declining soil quality, it's basically let us produce what is far less nutritious food than it was in the past from 1940 to 1999. And this is important. Essential minerals in their food have seen serious declines. For example, broccoli now has 40% fewer nutrients than it did 50 years ago. The nitrogen in the soil has decreased by 42%, phosphorus by 27%, and sulfur by 33%. These are all key nutrients because of how we're damaging the soil, we're turning soil into dirt. Now. Magnesium in vegetables has declined by 25% between 1940 and 1991. And this is all data we have in the show notes from, for example, this is from the American College of Nutrition. Trace minerals like manganese, zinc, copper and nickel have decreased, while toxic minerals which we don't want, like aluminum, lead, cadmium, are on the rise in our soil and on our, in our food. But it's not just our soil that's the problem. It's the food itself. And here's why. There's been a massive amount of breeding of vegetables and plants for yield, for starch content, for disease and drought resistance, for getting the perfect shape and shelf stability, and for being able to transport along long distances. They've not been bred for flavor, for nutrient density or phytochemicals. And what that means is that this breeding process has literally bred out the phytochemicals, has bred out some of the vitamins and minerals, and has bred out even the levels of protein. So we're seeing our food today has far more starch and less protein on the vegetable side, just because of the changes in the kinds of things we're planting and growing now. Grain fed factory farmed beef has significantly fewer nutrients and healthy fats like Omega 3s and other really cool ones you probably don't hear about like conjugated linoleic acid, which is anti cancer. It's metabolically active, it's really great. But these factory farmed cows don't have any of that. And the grass fed regenerate raised beef do. And also there's another big issue of why we're nutrient depleted. You know, most people don't realize this, but why do you need nutrients? Well, yes, to do all these chemical reactions, but they're also running your metabolism, right? They're really running your metabolism. And so every time you have to process food, you actually need vitamins and minerals to do it because of all these enzymes. But what we're doing is we're eating a diet, it's full of calories and energy, right, with starch, sugar and ultra processed foods. But those foods don't have nutrients. And so we end up in a situation where we're, we're kind of effectively nutrient deficient and we're, our metabolic system's not working. And also when we eat these foods, we get depleted of really important nutrients like magnesium for example, and potassium and B vitamins and chromium and vitamin D and calcium and zinc because of how these foods affect our absorption or our utilization. And so we get really in a bad situation. And there's another reason we're nutrient deficient. We are exposed to over 80,000 environmental chemicals and there's just so many introduced that have never been tested. And we're just burdened with these like you can't imagine. I'm one of the mom on the board of The Environmental Working Group. And you can check it out to learn more. EWG.org, but basically we're kind of in a toxic soup. We can do these to avoid it and reduce our exposures, but we are stressed by them. And what these do is they deplete us also of essential nutrients. So toxins, the stress we have, even stress causes you to deplete B vitamins and magnesium. So basically everything we're doing in our modern life, our agricultural system, all causes nutrient depletion. If you're drinking soda, if you're eating sugar, you know, drinking alcohol, all these things cause our bodies to become nutrient depleted. This is why a perfect diet, even if you're having organic whole foods and ultra processed foods, it's really hard to get the necessary nutrients to do the job they need to do because of the declining quality of our food and our incredible stressful lives and the demands on our biology from our modern lifestyle.

Say what you want about AI, but it's here and it's helping businesses get more done in a day. Wix's website builder is infused with AI so you can stay ahead. Create a beautiful, functional website just by describing your idea, Track how your site appears in AI search results, create custom images on demand, or launch an entire campaign in a matter of minutes. WIX gives you AI wherever you need it. Try it now for free@wix.com.

Nutrient gaps are common for most of us and we need to be thinking about supplementing. And I had one patient who didn't really want to take supplements and she's like, was obsessive. She had spreadsheets, she had charts, and basically she said, gee, if I have, you know, four Brazil nuts a day, I get my 200 micrograms of selenium. And if I have, you know, 27 pumpkin seeds, I'll get enough zinc. And if I have, you know, she goes on like this. If I have, you know, two cans of herring a day, I get enough omega 3s and my vitamin D. And if I eat porcini and she like went on and on and on like this. So, I mean, you can do it, I guess. But, you know, I don't think people want to spend all their time, I'm sorry, obsessing over what to eat or doing spreadsheets on which foods have which nutrients to make sure they meet their optimal levels. So it's really important to think about supplementation. And that's why it's so crucial for optimal health and really for our survival. They're not just necessary to Avoid deficiency diseases. Right. The other side of this is optimal health. So nobody really looked at that like what do we define as health? What is health? How do we achieve health? Right. We're thinking about disease, right? How do we prevent disease? Well, you need just a tiny bit of vitamin C to prevent scurvy. You don't need very much. Right. You might need, you know, 60 milligrams, but you might need a thousand to help with your immune system. So really different, different framework here. Here's why this is important. Nutrients aren't just there to prevent deficiency. They're active molecules in the body that work as, as I mentioned, these co factors for enzymes. And this drives everything, our metabolic function, our immune function, tissue repair, healing. And if we're deficient, these systems just can't operate as effectively. And what happens is you get these long latency deficiency diseases that I talked about. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, obviously things like osteoporosis, all are related to these long latency deficiency diseases. And I get it. You know, people are confused about supplements. They don't know what to take, they don't know what's good, they don't know what they should believe or not believe. And there's a lot of mixed messages out there. And it's not your fault. It's not that you're dumb and you can't figure it out. It's because it's sort of intentionally confusing by the regulations we have in this country around supplementation called the DSHEA Act. And there's just not a lot of regulation in the supplement industry. And so it's regulated by the fda, but it's not really. Basically unlike prescription drugs which kind of have to go through rigorous testing and approval, dietary supplements aren't required to go through this pre market approval for safety or efficacy. They're sort of just grandfathered in. Now they'll step in if there's a problem with a supplement. They see it's unsafe and they get off the market. And that can lead to sort of harmful products and maybe distress from consumers when the products are withdrawn from the shelves. But without really better regulations, there's really no guarantee that the ingredients listed on the supplement label are actually what's in the bottle. Either the nutrient itself or the, the dose or if it's pure has contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides or other harmful substances. All those can be in the vitamin you're taking and you have no idea. In some cases, supplements even have been found to contain different ingredients than those listed on the label. So when they take this stuff off the shelf, they send to a third party lab, they test them, they go, oh wow, it says this, but it's got that in it, right? Or it says it's got, you know, 10 milligrams, but it's got a hundred. Or it's got, says it's got a hundred, but it's got five. Also there's other stuff that they don't necessarily list on the label that they add in. There's lactose, there's gluten, there's all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, Centrum has titanium, which there's no biological need for, and it's a toxin. So I don't know. They have dyes and coloring. I mean, who wants to eat a blue pill for the rest of your life with all these dyes every day? It doesn't make any sense, right? So people with allergies or sensitivities or just everybody shouldn't be taking things that you don't need in your body. Sometimes there's a lot of confusion also because there's all these health claims on supplement labels and you just don't know what to believe. Problem is, you know, we kind of with the DSHEA regulation, you could say it supports the function of some such and such system. You can't say it treats or cures a disease. So you can say vitamin C supports a healthy immune system, or vitamin D supports healthy bone health or something like that, or omega 3s support heart health. You can't say, you know, omega 3s lower triglycerides, for example. Right? You can't say vitamin D treats osteoporosis, for example, but you can kind of get around it. And a lot of these claims get really confusing. So people don't really know what they mean. And it's part of the way that the regulations have been set up that are, make it vague and, and they're not really held to the same standards as drug claims. Now the lack of regulation allows companies to market supplements with exaggerated or unfound health benefits. And those can lead to consumers making ill informed choices about their health. And then of course, there's the research. So how incentivized are supplement manufacturers or drug companies to do research on vitamins and minerals? Well, they're not. Here's why. You cannot patent something that is natural. Right. If it's from nature, you can't patent it. Right. You can't patent water, you can't patent vitamin B12, you can patent a certain form of it, a delivery mechanism. Like an injection or whatever, but you can't patent the actual thing. So nobody's funding a lot of research on this. The government does some, there's little, but unfortunately there's really a lot of research that's not been done. There has been a lot of research that has shown benefit. Right. So it's confusing, but I think there's enough data to show that many of the nutrient deficiencies that we have are causing harm and that supplementing can make a big difference. Uh, and, and you know, you have to know how to sift through all the data. But, but you will, you, you kind of can look and see what's going on. Now another concern people have is that they don't think there's research on the validity and efficacy of supplements. Um, and it's a common misconception that there's a lack of scientific evidence that supports the effectiveness of many supplements because there is a lot of evidence. There's some confusing evidence. Right. And some contradictory evidence, but that's usually based on low quality studies and other confounding factors that, that are in these studies. For example, healthy user bias or sick user bias. Right. If, if someone's doing a lot of behaviors that are already healthy, like eating well, exercising and they're eating a nutrient dense diet and so forth, you might not see a big impact from a vitamin. But if you example, take a bunch of people with vitamin D deficiency and you give them vitamin D, you'll see a big impact. And that kind of confuses the results. But a lot of studies show the effectiveness of supplements. Now a recent study on multivitamin use and mortality is a perfect example of how these studies can give you kind of confusing or often contradictory or maybe even wrong results. And this study I want to talk about was published in jama, Journal of the American Medical Association. It looked at the relationship between people taking vitamins for a long time and mortality. And they looked at about 390,000 adults and they found a slight inconsistent increase in mortality, about 4% for daily users of multivitamins compared to non users. Now, the result was not statistically significant in the whole study, but just in the first follow up period. Now, the study's findings are questionable and here's why. There are a lot of potential biases, something called the healthy or sick user bias, which basically means that maybe all the sick people were taking vitamins to see if they could improve their health and get better and that's why they look like they had higher mortality. Or maybe healthy people who felt good didn't take vitamins because they were generally felt okay and of course they weren't sick. So there's, there's limitations in the design. Now another limitation was they only measured outcomes in healthy people and they excluded people with pre existing health conditions who would most likely benefit. So it's kind of a rigged study in a way. Now the, the, the study suggests that multibodies may not extend lifespan. It doesn't provide conclusive evidence for, on their broader health impacts like correcting nutrient deficiencies which have widespread benefits for preventing chronic disease and promoting longevity. Studies like this often lead to these stupid headlines, right? A multivitamin a day won't keep death away or don't waste time or money on dietary supplements. This is from Harvard Health Headline, Right. These issues just contribute to general mistrust among consumers regarding the safety and effectiveness of supplements. And it's no wonder. I'd be confused too if I wasn't a doctor and if I hadn't read all these studies myself and actually could kind of sift through it from a scientific point of view and kind of separate the wheat from the chaff. Now some people might avoid supplements altogether because of fears about them. Maybe they think they're contaminated, maybe they think they're ineffective. But I think these people are missing out. They're missing out on the benefits that a high quality, and I stress high quality supplement can actually provide. So what's the truth about supplements? Well, getting enough vitamins and minerals is not just about preventing deficiency diseases. Well, that's part of it. They're also essential nutrients to power every aspect of our biology. As I said. Right. Vitamins and minerals and amino acids play key roles in a whole set of biochemical reactions in the body. As I mentioned, they act as CO factors. I'm just saying this again because it's so important to understand. They literally are the grease that lubricates the wheels of our massive metabolic and biochemical machinery. They power metabolism, our detox systems, our energy production, our antioxidant systems, which all are important for overall health. I mean, your antioxidants need nutrients to work. For example, you need zinc and copper to activate and manganese, one of the most important intracellular antioxidants called superoxide dismutase. So nutrients are key for everything. Right. For example, you can't make ATP for energy for your cells without magnesium. If you want to turn tryptophan from your turkey into serotonin, which is good for your mood, you need B6 for that chemical reaction and you need magnesium and you need folate, right? So if you're low in those, and they're really common to be low in, of course you're going to be depressed. You want to make thyroid hormones, right? To make thyroid hormone T4 you need iodine. And then to make T3 you need selenium and zinc and vitamin A and vitamin D to make the thyroid hormone work at the cellular level. So without optimal levels of these essential nutrients, our biochemistry just can't function properly. And that leads to these low level functional imbalances. And they manifest as just feeling crappy right now, like we call it feel like crap syndrome or FLC or worse. They can lead to these long latency deficiency diseases, accelerated aging, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, depression and, and, and worse. And also they lead to immune dysfunction. That's why the elderly often having higher risk of, of illness, infection because they tend to, you know, have poor diets, they tend to have trouble absorbing nutrients in their stomach as they get older and so they tend to have more deficiencies. Now a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrit, blood levels of magnesium, really important, my favorite mineral, and homocysteine, which is a measure of B12, folate and B6 function in the body. And they looked at these levels in about 172 healthy middle aged people from Australia and they found that low levels of magnesium and high homocysteine were linked to an increase in DNA damage. Now what is the minimum RDA for magnesium? It's about 400 milligrams, which is fine. That's a pretty good, good amount. But here's the deal. In order to get that much magnesium, you'd have to eat 115 almonds, seven avocados and 12 and a half bananas to meet that amount magnesium. And that's why supplementing is so important in today's modern world. There's still some debate about this, but I would say it's largely due to misinformation. So what are the misconceptions again, the misinformation about supplements. Now some doctors from top medical institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins say that basically vitamins are not essential if you're eating a healthy diet. And other doctors say, oh, it just creates expensive urine. You know that's nonsense, right? You say, oh I'm not going to drink water because I'm going to pee what I don't need out. Well, your body uses what it needs and then it gets rid of the rest. That's normal. Now they believe that it's well balanced diet should provide all the necessary nutrients without the need for supplementation. But it's just not true. The reality of modern diets is that eating not such a good diet, we're not eating a healthy, unprocessed whole foods diet. We're just not. And the prevalence of processed foods, right. 60% of our diet as adults, 67% of kids diets that combined with our nutrient depleted soil, other stressful lifestyle factors, the load of environmental toxins we have to deal with, the stress we have, means that even those who strive to eat well might still fall short of their nutrient needs. Even a diet rich in fruits and veggies, whole grains, good protein, just all the modern food production methods and environmental factors just result in nutrient deficiencies. Even if we're eating a good diet, where are there examples that supplementation is acceptable for preventing deficiencies? Well, in the medical community it's pretty widely acceptable that pregnant woman should take folic acid or folate from a folate to prevent a terrible birth defect called neural tube defects or spina bifida and many other problems that can happen during pregnancy. So, you know, we understand that. Yeah, if you're for example, a pregnant woman or breastfeeding woman, you need more nutrients. But why don't the rest of us, right? Why is this just siloed in pregnant women? If folate is essential for pregnant women, why is it not the same for other nutrients for the general population? Now, the need for essential nutrients is not limited to pregnancy. That's ridiculous. Everyone can benefit from ensuring they have optimal levels of vitamins and minerals. Now our age, our genetic uniqueness, our gender, physical activity levels all affect our individual nutrient requirements and actually determine what we need to thrive. I don't. You just want to survive. You want to thrive, right? So how do you know you're deficient in a nutrient? Well, you test, right? Test, don't guess. And this is part of why I co founded Function, which helps you get a comprehensive look at over 110 biomarkers for 4.99 a year with twice a year testing. And we're talking about key nutrients like vitamin D, magnesium, omega 3s, ferrin, which is a measure of iron and other iron status, zinc, selenium. We do comprehend hormone testing, lipid testing, immune markers and lots more. And it's, it's quite amazing. You know, in our cohort, and this is, I, I think, I mean first adopters, the early adopters of Function health are probably a more healthy population, but even within that population, in the few nutrients we looked at 67% were deficient in one or more nutrients. Not at the optimal level. Right. But at a true deficiency level. This is frightening to me. Iron, vitamin D, B vitamins related to homocysteine. 67% were low in one or more of these and not, not at the, again, the optimal level. Let's say vitamin D. What? You know, people had vitamin D under 30 or ferretin under 16, where it should be ferritin should be 45, or vitamin D should be 45. We need to think differently about our numbers. So know your numbers, get tested. If you want to jump the line, go to functionhealth.com mark because there's 300,000 people on the waitlist. It might take a while. So jump the list with that special code and check out your numbers. And then, of course, you need to supplement and retest and check the levels because you want to see if it's working. Now, we need really a certain number of nutrients to power our biological systems. For example, we need omega 3 fats for a healthy brain. Now, omega 3s are so important for brain health, and they've been shown to help prevent cognitive decline like dementia, depression, various mood issues. Why? Because most of our brain is fat. About 60% of our brain is fat and 30% is omega 3 fats. Right? And omega 3 fats are hard to get from our diet alone, especially for vegans, vegetarians, and those who do not consume fatty fish regularly. I'm talking about people who are not eating two or three servings a week of sardines, like that's probably most of America. And that's why we need supplements. What about other nutrients? Zinc, for example, is key for male fertility. It plays a key role in reproductive health, particularly improving sperm motility. In other words, how fast your sperm and how well your sperm can swim. And that enhances fertility. And it also leads to the higher probability of fertilizing the egg. Right? Because if it can't swim, it ain't getting there. It's also essential food for wound repair. Right. Zinc is really important for immune function, for your antioxidant defenses, for DNA synthesis, for removing heavy metals from your body. What other nutrients are important? Well, iodine, and I see a lot of iodine deficiency because people are, are stopping iodized salt, which is how people were getting their iodine, because iodine mostly comes from seaweed or fish. So if you're not eating that, you're probably not getting enough, Right? Unless you're eating sushi all the time, but then you're probably getting heavy metal poisoning. So that's another thing. So basically you can't win for losing. But anyway, iodine is really important for thyroid health. It's really key because it helps you produce thyroid hormone that regulates metabolism. When we say T3 or T4, we're talking about how many iodine molecules. T4 is four iodines, T3 is three iodines. And in thyroid hormone regulates metabolism, energy levels, overall growth of your body, everything. And people have trouble getting iodine through diet, especially if they avoid, as I mentioned, iodized salt and seafood. And so it's really important to make sure you have enough iodine to maintain healthy thyroid function and prevent thyroid related conditions like hypothyroidism. And you can actually eat seaweed. I like those seaweed snacks. Those nor snacks. That's gonna help you too. So selenium also really important for many things. It's important for thyroid function, for detoxification, for immune health. It's an antioxidant. It's a powerful antioxidant. It plays a key role in immune health. It powers a particular enzyme, Remember nutrients, enzymes. One of these enzymes is called glutathione peroxidase. Not so important to remember. But glutathione is the body's main antioxidant, its main detoxifier, and one of the most powerful anti inflammatories in your body. And it's made from the food we eat. But we need to have selenium to activate this enzyme called glutathione peroxidase, which is our most potent antioxidant enzyme, which protects our cells from oxidative stress and helps our immune system function. We need to have selenium to actually make that enzyme work. And there's a lot of selenium deficiency out there. And if you have adequate selenium, it supports your body's ability to fend off infections, maintains immune health also, and of course helps you detoxify. But it's hard to get enough from diet, making supplementation pretty important. Now let's sort of take a kind of 30,000 foot view and kind of look a little more in detail on what's essential for everybody, not just for specific populations. Now, certain supplements are recommended for specific populations, like pregnant women, but supplementation can benefit a much bigger group of people. Now, getting enough of these nutrients is universal. We need them. There's no option. They're called essential vitamins and minerals. Vitamin means vital amine, which means vital to life. Right? It's sort of what they, it's how they kind of came up with the name. Now, whether it's to support cognitive function, reproductive health, immune resilience, overall well being, we need them. So how do we close that nutrient gap? Well, even individuals with healthy diets require additional nutrients to achieve optimal health. And supplementation is going to help you close that gap and support lifelong health and vitality. And this goes for both essential nutrients and also non essential, or what I call conditionally essential nutrients. We still need them. They might, you might not get a deficiency disease, but I think they're, there are things that do optimize our health and are required for optimal health. So what are essential nutrients? Well, these are nutrients the body can't produce on its own. They gotta be obtained from your diet. Now because they're hard to get from diet. That's why you have to supplement. Okay? It's that simple. And now what are examples of these amino acids? So you, you have to eat protein and you need the right amount of protein. Protein is necessary for muscle repair, enzyme production, hormone synthesis, many, many critical body functions. It's, it's actually the only nutrient we need in extremely large amounts. Vitamins and minerals are small amounts, fatty acids, small amounts, carbohydrates, not essential at all. But protein is the only nutrient we need in large, large amounts. And we also need a lot of other nutrients like omega 3 fats, vitamin A, C, K, D, E. Minerals like calcium, potassium, zinc. I'm not going through the whole list, but basically we need all the essential vitamins and minerals. Not, not an option to not get them. Now what are non essential nutrients? Well, it's kind of misleading. You know, the name is not really right. We still need these for health. The fact that they're called non essential just means our bodies can make them usually. Now examples include non essential amino acids because they produce them on their own or derived from other amino acids. Cholesterol, for example, is something we need, but our body makes it. Creatine, again something you can supplement with but our body also needs. Now in certain situations, chronic illness, stress, poor diet, you might need to supplement with these other non essential nutrients to assure optimal levels and correct or reverse symptoms, right? For example, creatine is really important. I use it every day because it helps build muscle. Now the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to know about all this, right? They want you to have a dependency on drugs. Over the years, a lot of reports have shown that pharmaceutical companies manipulate scientific research to their benefit and they also undermine the efficacy of supplements and they use the media to help shape public perception in their favor. For example, there were commercials in 2020 that the pharmaceutical industry did, and those commercials cost $4.5 billion. Just to say it again, pharma spends $4.5 billion on TV advertising for drugs. And by the way, I think America and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on tv. Why? Because it works. This could be done away with or the stroke of the pen of the president. The reason they haven't done it is obviously the corporate capture of government by pharma, which we know exists. It's a problem because doctors will tend to prescribe at least half the time the drugs that their patients ask for that they've seen on tv. And the pharma company knows this, and they have the data. Also, the news coverage is super messy on this. And the media is not doing investigative journalism. They don't do good science reporting. They're. They're looking for clickbait and headlines and controversy, and they don't go into the depth of what the studies mean and how they're designed and whether they're right or not. And they often will portray supplements in a negative light and often ignore research that supports their benefits. And this create a system where people believe they need drugs, prescription drugs, to fix their symptoms. And that leads to his whole lifelong cycle of dependency on pharma. Good for pharma, good for bad for you. The pharma industry is corrupt. I mean, it's corrupted medical science. Far and away. Most of medical research is funded by pharma, and they influence the study outcomes. I mean, it's just true. And they are funded by pharmaceutical companies. And when you have a drug company sponsoring a study on their drug versus an independent science group studying it, there's a two to four times more likely chance that that study will show a result that's favorable to their product, their drug, compared to those studies that were independently studying the drug. Right. They also did something that's really terrible called ghost management. It's a form of corruption in which pharma companies fund, design, and publish research under the names of doctors and legitimate institutions to appear more credible. And they pay those doctors to literally sign their name to a propaganda piece. Okay? It's really corrupt. And I found out about this years ago when I was having dinner with my cousin and her husband, and I'm chatting to her husband about what he did, and he says, oh, yeah, I do contract research. I'm like, what's that? He says, well, pharma hires us to design studies, to do the study, to write out the study, and then to find the expert that will sign their name to the study and then to get it published under their names and institution, which is really corrupt. The other problem is, and why we're so confused is that medical education is corrupt as well. Pharma basically has a huge influence on medical education and the development of clinical practice guidelines. They have been shown to influence doctors prescribing habits, often leading to the increased prescription of certain drugs such as opioids. Now I'd tell you as a doctor, you know, you think you're independent, you think you have your own opinion, you think you evaluate the research critically, but often the truth is you're busy, you're in practice. So the drug rec show up. And I don't know if they do this anymore, but I was, you know, regular family practice. You show up with a, you know, they're all their, you know, shiny clothes and all their research studies and all the, all their sort of talking points and, and they would kind of come in hard on the benefit of their drug and why it's better than the other drug and you should prescribe it and they leave you samples and you're like, oh yeah, yeah, okay. But then, you know, it does influence you. This is subconscious influence. Even though you don't think you're being influenced, I can tell you that it does. And I've been a victim of that as well, and a perpetrator I would say as well, before I figured all this stuff out. Now, over half of the panel members involved in creating our psychiatric diagnostic guideline manual called Diagnostic and statistical manual, or DSM 5, the fifth version of it. Half of them had financial ties to pharma and that raised concerns about bias in diagnosing and treating mental health conditions. Right? Depression is not a Prozac deficiency, folks. Right? It could be a lot of other things like vitamin D deficiency, B12 deficiency, omega 3 deficiency, but it ain't a Prozac deficiency. Another big problem, supplement research is underfunded. Who's funding it? Nobody's making money from it. Right? Supplement research is underfunded, leading to a smaller evidence base than pharma. And that can be used to argue that supplements are less effective or less well understood. But I'm going to tell you, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. So understand that just because not all the studies have been done doesn't mean they don't work right now. This influences how healthcare providers view and prescribe Treatments sometimes leading to a preference for pharma over diet or lifestyle or supplements. It's not that drugs are all bad, right? Sometimes they're necessary and I have had benefit from them myself. But in many cases our current healthcare system focuses on pharma interventions instead of getting to the root cause. And that just has resulted in this massive over prescribing polypharmacy and which causes an estimated hundred thousand deaths per year, particularly elderly. Okay, I'm just going to say this again. This is I think the third or fourth leads in cause of death in America. These are drugs prescribed in hospitals at the right dose for the right patient, by a trained doctor, delivered by a trained nurse. Not a wrong dose or a mistake. But actually doing the right thing still causes 100,000 deaths a year. Okay, that's concerning to me. No, this was published in jama. I'm not making this stuff up. So let's discuss a few recent examples of pharma industry co opting the supplement market. For example, there's a study on botanicals, herbs and liver toxicity. And it was a recent study from the NHANES data. We talked about the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and they looked at the prevalence and characteristics of adults consuming six botanicals potentially linked to liver toxicity. Turmeric green tea, Ashwagandha which is great for adrenals, Garcinia cambogia which is essentially can be used for weight loss, red rice yeast which lowers cholesterol and black cowash which often is used for menopause. Now the study found that 4.7% of US adults, approximately 15.5 million people used at least one of these botanicals within the last 30 days. So not a lot of people are using it, but you know, not, not an insignificant number, about 5%. Now the usage rate is comparable to the consumption of certain hepatotoxic prescriptions that we know are very seriously damaging to liver, like Tylenol or the statin drugs which are liver toxic. The users of these botanicals in the studies were more likely to be older, they had higher education levels, they suffered from arthritis. Now their primary reasons for using turmeric and green tea were to maintain or improve their health. The study though was full of bias and had other concerns. Now the study emphasized concerns about potential liver toxicity that was associated with these widely used yet largely unregulated herbal products. It also highlights the need for doctors to monitor possible adverse effects, which is a good thing. So getting regular blood testing is good, particularly in people with pre existing liver conditions. But when you look at the study. I mean, it's good to have research, but you gotta follow the money. Show me the money. Conflict of interest. This is so important. When you're looking at any study, dig in to find out who funded it. If the American Beverage association, or what was formerly known as the American Soda Pop association, funds a study on the effect of soda on obesity, guess what the conclusion is going to be? There's no link, okay? But it's just ridiculous. The data from independent studies overwhelmingly shows this, so it's no wonder people are confused. I always think science was this pristine endeavor where it was just totally objective and all the data was true, but it just ain't like that. And why? Because of money. Right. In this particular study I just mentioned on botanicals, the research was funded by pharma. Why would they fund a study on herbs? Right? Meaning they're trying to get people scared about taking supplements and focus on drugs. For example, Dr. Chen, who is the study author, received grants from Kawa AstraZeneca, Ibsen, and Dr. Fontana, another study author, received grants from Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and Kser Life Sciences, all which are conflicts of interest. Now, given these conflicts of interest, it's not surprising that the study's findings emphasize the risks associated with the supplements. And they downplayed or ignored an enormous body of literature showing their benefits. They also was kind of screwed up because of the health status of the study participants, right? They. The subset of individuals that took supplements was not very healthy, right? So if you're really in bad health, you're gonna have other issues, right? You're gonna be on other medications. You might have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, thyroid issues, cancer, all the other living conditions. So all these people were taking other pills, too. And when you start to compound drugs over drugs over drugs, plus other botanicals, it can increase the complexity of things and may increase the risk of adverse interactions or effects, right? So you can see that. Now, what's the takeaway here? The study was poorly designed. The cohort probably already had liver disease. And this happens all the time in clinical trials. Now, why would they design a study so poorly? Well, they do it on purpose, right? Pharmaceutical companies use supplements as competition, especially when consumers are turning to these natural remedies instead of getting prescription drugs. And I may sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but I'm telling you, this is just how it works. And the data is there to support it. I'm not making this up. And they also fund these studies to just raise caution and concern about the potential for bad effects, right? And they know this is going to get headlines like study estimates. Millions in US at risk for limber damage from herbal remedies. And then of course, people are confused. What do I take, right? Do I stop taking it? Now the truth is that pharma drugs are often discovered because they're trying to mimic a natural compound that has a similar effect, right? The crazy thing is that many pharmaceutical drugs are actually designed to mimic natural substances or processes in the body. For example, turmeric works similarly to a class of drugs called NSAIDs like Advil or ibuprofen and its anti inflammatory effects, for example, red rice yeast, which is what they kind of get that red color on that barbecued pork and Chinese food. It targets the same exact pathway as statinsis enzyme called HMG CoA reductase, which are these drugs are prescribed to lower cholesterol. And red rice can do the same thing without potentially the side effects. Berberine, for example, another herb, has similar effects to metformin, which is a drug used for diabetes or to improve insulin resistance because it works on an something called ampk, another enzyme that is involved in regulating blood sugar. While drugs often come with side effects and risks, supplements, when used properly, and I say properly and correctly, they're generally pretty safe and they're effective in supporting health and filling nutrient gaps. We don't have drug deficiencies, we have nutrient deficiencies, right? The human body's perfectly designed. When it has what it needs, it stays in balance. And when it doesn't, it gets out of balance. But I'm going to tell you something. Nobody has a drug deficiency. Nobody has a statin deficiency, a Prozac deficiency, an Adderall deficiency or any drug deficiency, right? We're using these drugs to kind of interrupt or block or inhibit some natural process that we hope will improve some outcome. But we can be deficient in essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we need for optimal health. And this is really where supplementation is so important. Listen, we also have a lot of other deficiencies beside vitamin mineral deficiencies, right? We're nature deficiency, connection and community deficiency, sunshine deficiency, exercise deficiency. And those are all medicines, right? Those are not prescriptions you're going to get from your doctor's office. So let's talk about the difference between symptom management versus root cause, management or treatment. For example, pharmaceutical drugs tend to focus on managing symptoms, not addressing the underlying causes of health issues, right? Proper nutrition and supplementation do the opposite. They aim to restore balance and address the root cause of disease. So Pharma drugs are anti drugs, right? They're blockers, anti and inhibitor drugs, right? Antibiotics, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, they block or inhibit some natural process, whereas nutrients are pro drugs. They're like probiotics. They're supporting and optimizing and enhancing your body's natural function. This particular idea is bad for the pharmaceutical industry. Let's, let's look at another example of bad science that kind of confuses people. And this particularly was around heart disease and omega 3 fats. Researchers studied about 415,000 middle aged adults from the United Kingdom to see how taking fish oil supplements might affect the course of heart disease over 12 years. So they tracked people who stayed healthy, people who developed heart disease or who died. And then the study found that people who took fish oil had a 13% higher chance of developing a fiber or atrial fibrillation, which is a type of irregular heartbeat. But when you look at the findings closer, you'll see that this is relative risk, not the absolute risk. Right. And let's talk about what that means. Right? This is where, you know, I remember Mark Twain said, he said there's, there's liars, there's damn liars and there's statisticians, okay? This is what's going on here. So it's important to understand the difference between relative risk and absolute risk. The 13% increased risk sounds like a lot. It's relative risk, which compares the risk between fish oil users and non users. However, the actual increase in risk in the population, the absolute risk increase, was 0.6% more in fish oil users who were developing afib compared to those who didn't take it. Now that's not really that significant and it could be kind of insignificant when you look at other factors such as the health of the population and other sub factors. And you have to look at all these confounding factors because it's not just a single variable. Now, when you look at the fish oil users in this study, yeah, they had a higher chance of getting afib, but they also had an 8% lower chance of having major adverse cardiovascular events and a 9% lower risk of dying from them. So fish oil seem to protect against things like heart failure and heart attacks. But the media likes the juicy headlines, right? They hide the negative findings. Oh, you take fish oil, you're going to get afib, right? Rather than the other findings which contradict it. And even looking at the, the kind of design flaws in the study. Now another study with the same group of people found that regular fish oil users had a lower risk of dying from any cause, including heart disease. Okay, so same group of people in this, in the sort of study, different study analysis found the opposite. Oh my God. So confusing, right? Regular fish oil users had a lower risk of dying from any cause, like I said, including heart disease. And this backs up a lot of other research shows a higher blood level of omega 3s are linked to heart health and longevity. So you know, these studies are complicated. They might look at blood levels, they might look at pre existing deficiency or excess. It's complicated. But you kind of have to look at all the data and look at what it all means as a whole. Not just one study here or there. We call that cherry picking. Now even well done. Big studies have found that taking 2 to 4 grams of fish oil a day can protect you from dying or having major heart issues. This one study showed that fish oil might just slightly 0.6% increase your risk of afib. And again, this is a population study, so it doesn't prove cause and effect. Okay. The evidence still shows that fish oil is good for your heart. Right? And by the way, with these population studies, unless you see a 200% risk increase, not a 13%, it's probably just, just kind of noise, right? It's important to look at the big picture again, not just one study before you decide on what to do or whether to take fish oil supplements. Now this paper was funded by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. So you know, you gotta check for conflicts of interest. And how do you do that? How do you check for conflicts of interest and financial disclosures in scientific papers? Well, start with the headline. If you, if you, you know, see a bold headline, you might want to kind of double check it. Be a little skeptical. Who benefits from this story being told? Then go to the source. You know, find the paper. You can go to PubMed, you can, often it's free. Sometimes you can get the whole paper. You can see conflicts of interest, go online using the title or the key information. You can use websites like PubMed or Google Scholar. You can get usually what's going on. Look at the abstract first. The abstract is a summary of the study and it might briefly mention who funded it, might not. And if it doesn't, you have to look deeper. Then you go to the disclosure statement, which is at the end, and you find the funding information because we have to have these disclosure statements. Actually, you know how it, how it got started. Basically these two Harvard researchers who were nutrition scientists, got a ton of money from the food industry, from the sugar Industry in particular to basically say it was fat, not sugar, that caused heart disease. And this led to what I think is a global crisis in obesity and type 2 diabetes because it told us that sugar and carbs are fine when they're not. When you look at again, the funding or financial support, you got to look for conflicts of interest. There's a conflict of interest statement, disclosure statement. It says which author has which tie to which company, who funded them, who funded the study, who they're linked to in the past. Look for a mention of companies, grants, personal financial interests. That'll tell you a lot. Also, evaluate results with context, right? Consider the source. If the study was funded by a company with a vested interest, read the results with a critical eye. Look, for example, in nutrition. If you look at the nutrition studies, if a study was funded by a nutrition company like the Dairy Council, the study was 8 to 50 times more likely to show a positive outcome than if it was funded by an independent organization and, you know, nonprofit, for example. It doesn't mean the study was necessarily bad, but you definitely want to look at the evidence a little more carefully. So consider how the study fits into the larger body of evidence in the topic. One study doesn't make a story, right? Sometimes you can look at meta analyses. These are where they look at large studies or many, many studies all grouped together, and they kind of combine the research to see what the general trends are. And these are less likely to be binds by a single source or a single funding source. Also, ask questions you know. If you're unsure, ask if the disclosures or potential conflicts aren't clear. Don't hesitate to ask a healthcare provider or reach out to the authors for clarification. Often their emails are in the articles, right? Some journals also have comments sections where you can actually ask questions and see discussions about biases online. Now, with all this, you can kind of understand why this area of interpreting scientific research poses such challenges for consumers and the media. There's a lot of choices, a lot of misinformation makes it hard for the average consumer to make informed purchasing decisions. I mean, people basically are aware that they need supplements, but they're not sure which ones to get or what to buy or what to take or which dose. And this is why we need transparency and we need a way to determine the quality of what we're taking, some quality insurance. So let's talk about transparency. Consumers need access to reliable information about the contents and the sourcing of the supplements and the raw ingredients. They need clear labeling. They need third party Testing certifications. And I use companies, for example, they will test all the raw materials before they go into the pill, and they'll test it for purity and the potency. Then once they put it in the pill, they'll retest it to make sure it wasn't contaminated. And it exactly says what's on the label is in the bottle. Right. If it is 100 milligrams of vitamin C, it got a hundred milligrams of vitamin C and nothing else. And it doesn't have any contaminants. You, you want to look for quality assurance. You know, look for supplements that have been independently tested by third parties like the NSF International or USP Pharmacopoeia or Consumer Lab. These certifications really help ensure that products meet standards of safety, purity, and potency. Also, education is really important. It's essential for consumers to be educated about the importance of choosing quality supplements and be skeptical of products that may seem too good to be true. Right. Everybody out there is hawking something. And it's frustrating for me as a doctor because I use supplements scientifically. I've done my homework to look at what works, what doesn't work. I've looked at the literature, I've visited factories of the companies that I use and looked at their manufacturing processes, looked at the quality control. I understand what works, what doesn't. And it just kind of sad that it's such a messy place because they're so effective for so many people if you choose the right ones and you do the right things. Now, I receive a high volume of increase from my patients and my community about where to buy supplements and where to get quality supplements. And I understand there's a lot of confusion about what to take, why you should take it, where to get them. And there's a gap in the market for knowing where to find high quality, reliable supplements. Should you go to Costco? Should you go to your grocery store, the drugstore, should you go to, you know, some random supplement shop? I wanted my patients as a doctor, to be sure that they took the most effective supplements, the ones that had been tested, that manufactured properly, that have science behind them. And so I created something years ago, which is an online supplement store. I want to create a highly curated selection. It's not everything. It's not like 30,000 products. It's a few hundred of the best products in all categories that are highly curated, that are highly bioavailable, that are at the right doses and that are effective and that don't have a lot of additives. And fillers and preservatives and chemicals and dyes. And I really made sure that these companies follow third party testing and look for environmental toxins, for contaminants, for the bioavailability of the ingredients, for the forms of the ingredients. And so basically I created a trustworthy sort of vetted supplements that my patients and my community can, can use if they want. I'm like, not attached to it. You get your supplements where you want, but I want a place where people I know can go and feel confident. And each product is hand selected by our clinical team, not just by me. At the Ultra Wellness center, we have a very rigorous selection process. We have stringent standards for purity and effectiveness. We choose brands that are best in class. In terms of manufacturing, there's something called GMP which is good manufacturing practices or even pharmaceutical practices. We pick things that are backed by scientific data that have a proven history of efficacy and potency, bioavailability, safety. And all the products are third party tested for active ingredients and contaminants. And of course they're gonna be free of preservatives, fillers, binders, allergies, colors. I mean, we don't need like neon blue pills in there. Okay, and then how do you know what's right for you? So once you kind of figure out where to get it and you kind of understand the science, what do you need for you? Well, everybody's unique. Everybody requires a tailored supplement regimen. Now, there's basics for everybody for sure, but we can modify things based on testing and history and your medical needs. But there's some foundational supplements that everybody needs. And what are they? It's a multivitamin and mineral vitamin D. Vitamin D3 in particular, magnesium and omega 3 fats, probably probiotics for most of us. This is a set of foundations for health. I call it foundations for health. Right. And on my website, I actually have a symptom questionnaire that helps you get more personalized supplement recommendations based on your goals and your. Your health. Now, I have targeted supplement stacks which I've used in my practice, which help various health goals like blood sugar balance, thyroid health, brain health, heart health, and so forth. Okay, so what do you do when you want to start a new supplement regimen? Well, I recommend tracking how you're doing. Right. Just don't, just randomly do stuff, right. Track your symptoms, keep a sense of how you feel, keep a health journal, monitor any changes, overall sense of wellbeing after starting something new so you know what's working for. And for personalized diet, supplement and lifestyle protocols. You know, my team at the Ultra Wellness center is available like we have great Nutritionists, we have seven nutritionists, we have five physicians. This is what we've done for the last 25 years together. You can find the link to the show notes for the practice. It's ultrawellnesscenter.com it's easy to remember. Sometimes guidance and personalization is helpful. Check out your labs@functionhealth.com, you'll learn all your nutrient levels and so hopefully that was helpful. I mean, you know, and it's a long discussion, but in today's world, even with the best diet, you know, it's just, it's hard to get all the essential nutrients our bodies need. And supplementation is really essential for filling these gaps and ensuring our bodies function. Optimize now while pharma drugs, as I mentioned, often focus on managing symptoms, supplements aim to optimize function and achieve and maintain optimal health by addressing nutrient deficiencies and optimizing the body's natural processes. Right. Because the dose you need for a deficiency disease is different than you need for optimal health. Now, the supplement industry can be overwhelming. It for sure can be confusing. But by choosing high quality third party tested products, you can ensure you're getting what you need without the risks of contaminants or ineffective ingredients. Now, as we wrap up today's episode, I hope you've gained a much deeper understanding of why supplementation is so important. Today we've covered how widespread nutrient deficiencies can impact our health in subtle yet significant ways, and why even the best diets might fall short in providing all the essential nutrients our bodies need need. As I mentioned, with modern agricultural practices, environmental toxins and more depleting our nutrient quality of our food, unfortunately supplementation has become a really crucial tool for creating and maintaining optimal health. Now remember, addressing these nutrient gaps isn't just about preventing deficiency. It's about ensuring your body has everything it needs to function its best. Remember 37 billion billion chemical reactions and every one of those needs a co factor or coenzyme, which are nutrients. Okay? Whether it's supporting your immune system or improving cognitive function or preventing chronic disease, the right supplements can make a profound difference in your overall well being. I take a bunch every day. I hope you're going to start. Thanks for joining me today again and don't forget to rate, review and follow health Hacks wherever you get your podcast. Stay healthy, stay informed. I'll catch you next Tuesday on another episode of Health Hacks.