My approach to supplements is simple: Supplements don’t replace eating your foods, but they can help optimize your health by providing your body with the nutrients it needs more of on a consistent basis. Especially, when you are healing a medical condition, low-grade inflammation from excess weight, or dealing with lack of energy, brain fog, sleep issues, supplements help to heal your gut, and reduce inflammation so that your body is in a better position to heal itself.

Before even thinking about supplementation, it is important to work on your nutrition with a whole foods diet first. Regardless of your preferred diet, keeping your ingredients free of pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, additives, and other chemicals is imperative for good health. Eating mostly organic or local produce, grass-fed beef, pasture-raised eggs and poultry, wild caught seafood, drinking clean filtered water or spring water, and eliminating as much processed foods as possible is the only sustainable way of providing your body with the nutrition it needs to thrive and managing the exposure of chemicals in our foods. 

The sad reality is that even if you nail your food intake, chances are that you are still dealing with some level of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The foods we are consuming nowadays contain far less nutrients than even a few decades ago. One of the main reasons for this is soil depletion. Modern agricultural methods (monoculture farming and the heavy use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides) have stripped nutrients from the soil in which the food we eat grows.  

It is therefore advisable to getting your bloodwork checked at least once a year and ask your doctor for additional mineral and vitamin tests to check on any deficiencies you might have despite a well-balanced diet. Looking at your bloodwork in combination with your symptoms you might experience will give you a good idea of which supplements you want to try. 

Some guidelines for supplement use: 

• Please do your research!
  • You need to know that the FDA only regulates supplements as foods, but not as drugs. That means that they don’t approve a dietary supplement for safety and effectiveness before they are put on the market! This was so surprising to me when I first learned about it, but it’s sadly the reality, so supplement brands do not have to disclose all the ingredients they put in their product. They also don’t have to provide proof that their product is effective. 
  • Don’t make the mistake of taking random supplements from the supermarket or using a product that someone recommended to you without doing your own research. Search for studies and third-party testing of the products you are interested in. You want to see clear clinical evidence supporting the benefits of the product and information about the most bio-available form of the ingredients, so you don’t just produce expensive urine!
  • Find out if the brand is certified by organizations that ensure that the product meets quality and purity standards and confirm that they contain what they claim. 
  • Look closely at all the ingredients used in the supplement (not just the list of active ingredients) and make sure they don’t contain any fillers and additives that could be harmful to your body. 

• Try one new supplement at a time and record how you feel. If you have any reactions to the product that are not wanted, then stop using it and move on to the next. If you use multiple supplements at the same time, you won’t know which ones are beneficial and which ones are are not. 

• Remember, what works for one person can be another person’s poison. We are all very different and have to find what works for us. Honor your bio-individuality. 

• Consistency with supplements is important in order to see the full benefits from the product you are taking. However, you might want to consider cycling in and out of supplements. Listen to your intuition and try it out. I find that I use some supplements only in certain seasons or I take one product for 3 months, then take a break for a few weeks and get back on. This is something everyone figures out for themselves over time.

• Don’t be disappointed if a product doesn’t give you the results you were looking for. It’s not your fault, but the supplement is just not the right fit. This can be hard, especially if a product has a high success rate with their clients. Get over it and keep digging deeper into what you require. 

• If you are using supplements that contain a blend of ingredients (such as a multi-vitamin), then look at ingredients that are contained in multiple supplements you might be taking to make sure you are not exceeding recommended dosages. 

• It is prudent to discuss any supplementation use with your medical doctor to make sure they don’t interfere with medications you are taking or are not suitable for any medical conditions you might have. 

Basic supplements: 

As mentioned above, it is important to determine any deficiencies via your bloodwork and symptoms before you dive into taking supplements. If you just guess, you might be wasting your money on expensive products or even take supplements in excess that might be harmful to your body. There are some basic supplements that a lot of people need: 

• Vitamin D3 + K2
• Magnesium 
• Omega-3 fatty acids
• Probiotic

Supplements are helpful at filling dietary nutritional gaps and targeting specific health needs, but they won’t compensate for unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits. Remember that food is medicine and supplements only supplement an otherwise healthy lifestyle!