SPECIALTY SUPPLEMENTS (Helpful Therapies)

Welcome back to Medicine and Health with Dr. Paul Anderson. That's me, I'm Dr. Paul. And in this section, we're going to talk today about specialty supplements or special use supplements, et cetera. So we've done other sections on things like vitamins and minerals and some of the uniqueness of the fat-soluble vitamins, et cetera. And we've talked in previous sessions about, you know, other types of things. So this one is really more in our natural therapy series about nutrients and when you might be prescribed them or when you might use them, etc. Again, all of this is not medical advice, it's just for information. You should check with your healthcare provider before taking or doing anything rather than taking advice from the internet. But from a point of view of why do you see these things being used, you see them, you know, maybe in a supplement store, or your friend might be taking them or whatever. Some of the specialty things are used to either support or build up particular processes in your body. So the first little group is 3 different things. And they're all sulfur-containing. So not sulfa like the drug, but sulfur-containing molecules that are very important for your antioxidant status. And 2 of them will give rise to the 3rd one as precursors, and they also happen to do unique things anyway. So the main one in this category of thiols or sulfur-containing molecules is called glutathione, which is a tripeptide. It's got 3 amino acids together. The amino acid in the middle of glutathione that's the rate-limiting, meaning that without that you can't make any more glutathione, is the amino acid cysteine. So cysteine's in the middle. It's a sulfur-containing amino acid. And so some people will be given N-acetylcysteine to help produce more glutathione. Glutathione on its own is not well absorbed orally unless you have it in a form that is a little more highly absorbable, like liposomal glutathione is very commonly given orally now. Or there's a glutathione product called acetyl glutathione, which is stabilized and can help you with your absorption, et cetera. The other thing though is sometimes people will just give the precursors because the 2 precursors are also sulfur-containing molecules. We talked about N-acetylcysteine now. N-acetylcysteine is a relatively commonly used supplement. It also happens to be a drug. It's one of those unique things that kind of crosses over both sides. So in the United States, there is a drug, the trade name was Mucamist, but it's also just known as N-acetylcysteine. And there's also a supplement version of that. So why would there be a drug called N-acetylcysteine? We talked about that if you go back to the respiratory or the nebulizer therapies part of the show. We talked about how you can use that in respiratory therapy to help clear up mucus because it's a mucolytic, helps break down the mucus. So N-acetylcysteine is often given for respiratory things. It's been used in COVID patients. It is used to be a precursor for glutathione. And other than it can have kind of a sulfury smell to it and you maybe even taste if you actually taste it, it's quite useful. And then its cousin alpha-lipoic acid, also known as ALA, but alpha-lipoic acid is another thiol and it's a little different in that it can increase glutathione formation, but also alpha-lipoic acid does something that N-acetylcysteine does not do and glutathione don't do, and that is it has an affinity for the mitochondria in your cells And so that affinity for the mitochondria in your cells can be used as a help to help with the antioxidant status inside the mitochondria. It can help with the bigger picture production of energy and a number of other things. As a matter of fact, there are drugs and drug-like products that are in development or already available, and they're made on a skeleton of alpha-lipoic acid so that they go into the mitochondria. So alpha-lipoic acid, N-acetylcysteine, and glutathione are all related, but they all do slightly different things. And you might be given, you know, one as precursor to the other, or you might be given one as an addition. So you might have glutathione and you may also be given some alpha-lipoic acid for 2 different targets in the body. Another real common one is CoQ10 or ubiquinone. CoQ10 is a molecule that is made by the human body, but it can— its manufacture can be slowed down. And one of the things it's famous for is helping in the transport of electrons inside of your mitochondria where we make energy. So coenzyme Q10 is important for cell maintenance, cell energy, et cetera. There are some drugs that deplete CoQ10, for example, the statin drugs that are used for cholesterol. A lot of times if we have to prescribe that, we'll prescribe CoQ10 alongside of it. And CoQ10 is known kind of for not only its use in healing processes, maybe after an injury or after surgery or something like that, sometimes it's also used in people with fatiguing syndromes, etc. Of course, with fatigue, there's many things that have to be worked up and worked on in fatigue. But to keep in mind as we're looking at these unique supplements, these are all sort of what I would say parallel to your diet, of course, which should be first. And then global, say, water-soluble vitamins that you might be taking. These may be a parallel prescription or recommendation from a healthcare provider. to help a specific process, whether it's antioxidant status or, as we said, with NAC being a mucolytic, helping you kind of get rid of the thick mucus, or to prime glutathione function or help with energy, help with mitochondrial function, et cetera. So in many cases, these are not in like a multivitamin. They certainly generally are not within a B complex vitamin. There's a lot of things that these things do, but they kind of have to be added on, right? Another one is a group of fats that are not fat-soluble vitamins, but just fats that are used as supplements. You may have heard of fish oil or omega-3 or, you know, omega-3 and 6, et cetera. And those are essential fatty acids that are required by the body because our body can't make those particular fatty acids. And they're used in the cell membranes to help stabilize them, help keep them working and fluid and behaving properly. So the medical uses of fatty acids like omega-3 include things like high triglycerides and some types of cholesterol problems, et cetera. We also use it a lot with people, again, who are healing because your cells are going to need to be repairing, people who are very inflamed, et cetera. Now, beyond essential fatty acids like the famous omega-3, the other thing that you want to think about in the fat-soluble area are what we call phospholipids. So I said, well, you put the omega oils, especially omega-3, into your cell membranes. Well, those go into a bigger structure called a phospholipid sometimes. healthcare provider may actually give you a phospholipid as a prescribed agent or a recommended agent. And that could be something like, they all start with the word phosphatidyl. So that might be something like phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylinositol. In days gone by, which people still do, but it was very common for people to get their phospholipids from a mixture, something like lecithin. OK, so lecithin, which often came from soy— they call it soy lecithin— was full of these phospholipids. And they're very critical, as I said, for maintaining the membranes in your cells, for cell communication, and for healing. And in some cases, these things, because they have these fatty acid tails and a phosphate head on the top— so a phospholipid— become oxidized very easily. And that leads to some cell damage, et cetera. OK. The other thing that these fat-soluble items are often used for, whether it's coenzyme Q10 or phosphatidylcholine, omega-3s, etc., is nervous system tissue because the nervous system tissue is very fatty. Your brain and your peripheral nerves, very fatty. And so when you're having inflammation in those areas or recovery problems, Sometimes these things are used in that respect as well. Now, there's other things we've talked about, like in our post-COVID discussions about neuro repair and helping the brain and the sensory nerves and stuff with post-COVID, where they'll do a mixture of these things. So there's a supplement I mentioned before. I have no financial connection to any supplement I'm talking to you about. It's just one we use a lot with our post-COVID neurological repair called Cover 3. And it's a little gel and it's a mixture. So it's got some essential fatty acids, it's got some phospholipids, and then it's got something called resveratrol, which is the larger structure that you find like in red wine and grapes and things of that nature that can be very repair-oriented to the body, antioxidant, etc. It's got a few other things so that The person can take one thing and get a number of things in that one supplement. So that's another one that we use a lot. And those are a lot of fat solubles in that supplement called Cover-3. Another one that we use individually a lot that's not a vitamin or a mineral is the bioflavonoid family. And so that is things that Generally come from the fruiting bodies of plants. So you see them like in the peel, you know, orange, for example. There's the pulp or the white part. There's a lot of bioflavonoids in there. It's protecting and keeping oxidation away from, from the fruiting body. Now, bioflavonoids are often used to calm down mast cells and allergy-type activity, etc. And so they're very, very commonly used as well. Now we'll do a separate video on amino acids because those are not vitamins or minerals and they're not really like these others, but they're often supplemented separately. But we're going to have to stop our discussion of specialty supplements, take a little break, and come back with our next topic. So we'll be right back.