First, I truly believe we SHOULD be able to get all the nutrients we need from food. After all, that’s how God & Nature intended it.

But on a planet where we’ve lost most of our top soil due to poor farming practices and where many have difficulty getting safe organic food, getting all of our nutrition from food isn’t easy. 

Still, I firmly believe it’s what we should strive for.

Why do we need supplements?

Whole food contains thousands of micronutrients that work synergistically and you don’t get that when you take isolated nutrients.

That’s why when I do take supplements, they’re usually whole food-derived, such as Juice Plus+ which is made from 20 different fruits & veggies.

I choose Juice Plus because they lead the industry; having proven that their products are well absorbed and utilized by multiple systems in the body, including the immune system, the cardiovascular system, and more. 

Juice Plus+ is designed using a broad array of fruits and veggies to “bridge the gap” between what we get and what we should get. And using the theory that there is no upper limit on healthy nutrition, I take it regularly.

The second main-stay in my regime is one that is NOT food-derived. It is a Redox signaling supplement called Asea.

What is redox signaling and why is it important?

Redox substances are an integral part of ATP production (ATP is the basic energy source of our cells). However, as we age, we get less efficient at making and using these substances.

Asea is the ONLY company that has perfected, stabilized, and patented a proprietary process to make these molecules outside of the body.

Check out this animated video for a better understanding.

For me, Asea, allows me to have the stamina for bicycling distances that I had in my 30’s! And while, as a supplement, I can’t make health claims about it, I can say that I know many people whose health conditions have improved after taking it. (I have a library of video testimonials of specifics)

So, today I’ve covered 2 things I find critical.

In part 2, I’ll go on to address probiotics, Vitamin D, Omegas, and Vitamin B12; the rest of the essentials. 

If you’d like to talk 1:1 regarding any of this, contact me.

The post “Hey Doc: What Supplements Do You Take? Part 1 appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

Some people were upset, confused and maybe even a little bit frightened recently when an article suggested that multi-vitamins don’t have the power, for the most part to prevent chronic diseases. Today, I’ll take a closer look at that: The study was published in the Annuals of Internal Medicine late in 2013 and it added to a list of several other articles that drew similar conclusions.

As our knowledge of nutrition has increased throughout the years, we’ve come to realize that there are far more essential nutrients than the 13 vitamins that were discovered over 100 years ago. Why should we believe any group of things we discovered from 1902-1937 is or could be complete?

Yet, unfortunately the myth continues, perhaps in part because we haven’t adopted a single-letter recognition for most other essential nutrients . Further, it’s hard to qualify what is essential and what isn’t. It’s obvious if someone gets Beri-beri or Scurvy they are missing an essential nutrient, but other nutritional deficiencies may not yield as obvious of a response and may take much longer to become visible. Yet it doesn’t make the substance any less essential.

Another basic fact is that we now also understand that most diseases and conditions are multi-factorial so the lack of one or several nutrients alone is not likely to cause anything. Cardio-vascular disease, for example usually involves a combination of poor eating habits, lack of consistent exercise, increased stress, being over-weight or obese, having high blood pressure, genetics, high cholesterol, smoking and more; not any ONE of these is mandatory for the condition and a lack of several doesn’t necessarily absolve one from the danger either.

All this to say, the basic fact remains that our bodies require whole real food, with its thousands of nutrients,  even IF we don’t understand what each molecule in that food does. And maybe that’s the entire point: part of the fault lies in the Western Society’s desire to break things down into components (deductive reasoning) and pretend that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts as if we really had the capacity to analyze all of the parts. “The whole may be equal to the sum of its parts but it is never equal to just some of its parts,” a mentor of mine used to note.

We now know that there are literally thousands of nutrients in food and our bodies require ALL of them. For example, there are almost 10,000 nutrients that have been discovered in the apple. Here’s an analogy: let’s say that the apple was a 10,000 piece jig-saw puzzle and you were going to put it together (essentially what your body does) where would you start? If you’re like most people, you start with the known quantity; the corners and edges. Our known quantity in the nutrition world are the vitamins & minerals; easy to find, we know what they do, etc. But just like the puzzle is more than the edges, our nutritional requirements are more than just the vitamins. Now here’s another part ‘part of the puzzle’: What if I took away the last 500 pieces when you just about finished with the puzzle but gave you an extra 10,000 corners and edges to ‘try to make up the difference’? You can begin to see what a hard time your body has in utilizing these nutrients to produce optimal health.

This is why when I choose a supplement, I choose a whole food one, like Juice Plus+; a supplement made from fresh fruits & veggies without additional isolated nutrients. How do you know the difference? Check the label, does it have a “Supplement Facts” label like vitamins or does it have a “Nutrition Facts” label like food? Many/most green powders also have a nutrition label.

So in conclusion, it’s easy to see why the addition of 20-40 nutrients makes little or no difference and may actually make the body work harder to produce what it really needs to be healthy. The more we return to relying on basic whole food, the healthier we will be. If I can provide you with further guidance, please contact me.

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But first some background:

Anyone that knows anything about me knows these 3 things: (1) My perspectives of health are scientifically based; after all, my first career was as a Medical Laboratory Scientist. (2) I believe in the power of supplementation because virtually none of us, myself included, eat the way we should all the time. (3) I am adamantly opposed to any additional governmental regulation of the supplement & nutrition industry.

At the outset, to some, these positions may seem contradictory. Today, I will explain why they are not and more importantly for you, how to shop for supplements and read labels to be sure you are getting a safe  product. (I’ll devote future articles to effectiveness and understanding what types of supplements might be necessary.)

So, according to the headline & the article, there’s been a sharp rise in cases involving liver toxicity; the result of contamination in ‘unproven’ supplement formulas.

Now HOW, you ask, could a scientist NOT be in favor of FDA regulation of the supplement industry in light of this? The simple answer to that is because of the history of the FDA. It’s well-known and well-documented that much like most of our public agencies, the FDA is a revolving door where big mucky-mucks from Big Pharma come in and serve on the FDA, then go back into the private sector and return again. The FDA regulators are people with vested interests in the drug companies and often even when drugs are noted to be dangerous they are approved anyway. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine several years ago showed that properly used drugs kill an estimate 104,000 people every year. Yes, you read that right: Properly Prescribed and properly administered drugs (the right drug, for the right reason, in the right dose without mitigating circumstances) STILL caused over 100,000 deaths every year in this country. By contrast, through a Google search, I could not find a single case of ANYWHERE of death caused by a reputable supplement. Yes there have been occasional issues with contamination (and that is the reason for this article) but I could find NO case anywhere where even a single person died from a supplement unless it was a contamination issue and understanding who you’re buying from eliminates almost all  the possibility of that.

So how do you assure yourself that the supplements you’re taking aren’t contaminated?

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, it is rather easy. The supplement industry is actually doing a fairly good job of policing itself. First of all, I wouldn’t necessarily go with the opinion of companies like Consumer Reports or Reader’s Digest. They are subject to their own bias and often are very medically oriented and conservative.

There are at least 2 organizations in the supplement industry whose purpose is self-regulation. Both the Natural Products Association (NPA) and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) work with the FDA to be sure their members are adhering to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as defined by the FDA and are also avoiding unsubstantiated claims.  GMP dictates that testing must be done to be sure products are not contaminated. Therefore, one method to use to check about product safety would be to see if a particular company is a member of either of these groups. You can find CRN’s member companies here: http://www.crnusa.org/who_omc.html   and you can find NPA’s supporters here: http://www.naturalproductsfoundation.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=HonorRoll  .

In addition to companies being members of organization that support appropriate practices many use independent laboratories to test and certify their products. Often products carry the symbol of their certifying lab on the label of their products. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, others don’t. This puts a little more of the responsibility on the consumer to be sure the product is safe. NSF, the National Safety Foundation, is probably the best known of these labs. NSF is a non-profit and independent organization that certifies the safety of a huge number of products across many industries. Their supplement division is the company that is responsible for certifying supplements for the Olympic Games. Basically an NSF certification means there is no measurable contamination (including herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, bacteria, drugs, etc.) and that everything that is on the label is in the bottle in the said amount.

Because there is so much in the media about the ’dangers’ of the ‘unregulated’ supplement industry, the reputable players are anxious to belong to organizations that promote safety and efficacy and they are anxious to show the public they are safe by having the appropriate testing data available. Thus it’s a lot easier than the media would have you believe to ascertain that your product is safe. Here are the simple steps you can take: (I’m listing these in order of simplicity.)

1. Read the label: does it have a GMP or NSF label on it?
2.  If it’s not on the label (which it may not be due to space constraints) check their website and see what they say about quality control & their manufacturing process. Do they belong to one of the companies listed? Do they do testing?
3. Check the website of CRN or NPA (links above) to see if the company is listed as a member.
4. Check NSF’s website to see if the particular product is listed.
5. If at least ONE of these doesn’t net a positive result, don’t buy the product.
6. If you want a particular ingredient and the product/company doesn’t participate in voluntary regulation (eg. Many of the companies that advertise weight-loss supplements on TV, radio & the internet) get the product/ingredient from another (reputable) company. –I’m happy to provide you a list of the companies I use.

Using this stepwise process is not a guarantee that your product isn’t contaminated; just as buying from a well-known drug manufacturer is not. Most people reading this will remember recalls of drugs produced by Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and other big pharmaceutical companies. There are few true guarantees in life but using the cautions outlined above will greatly reduce the likelihood that you get a contaminated supplement.

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