SHOULD I TAKE A MULTIVITAMIN?
SHOULD I TAKE SUPPLEMENTS?
CAN I GET ALL MY NUTRIENTS FROM MY FOOD?
How can I tell if I need to take vitamins?
Jeff Bland is considered the father of functional medicine. Functional medicine is different from traditional medicine. Traditional medicine typically says “if you are free of disease, you are healthy.”
Most folks know that just because you don’t have a disease does not mean you are truly healthy. We can be disease-free and still be overweight, underweight, suffering from malnutrition, missing key vitamins, low in nutrients, and just not feel particularly well.
Most “normal” ranges categorized on bloodwork charts are wide and somewhat forgiving. Your marks could be in the normal range according to most practitioners but far from “optimal.”
Functional medicine goes much deeper. Functional medicine is concerned with the root cause of problems – not the problems themselves. Functional medicine takes a holistic approach, considering the level of the health of the entire body. Being disease-free is one thing – but being optimally healthy is another.
It is important that our bodies are healthy at the cellular level so that we DO NOT develop a disease. This means we need to tend to the needs of our guts, our joints, our organs, our energy levels, our sleep, our stress levels, and everything else that affects the performance of our bodies.
A body that is lacking in key nutrients is under stress.
Did you know that?
So, if you have joint pain, if you have food sensitivities, if you have IBS symptoms, if something is wonky inside you, and you are symptomatic – this is a sign that your body is lacking something.
- Low energy levels? B vitamins are key for energy and metabolism
- Joint pain? Pure fish oils provide the Omega 3’s to feed points and ligaments
- Intestinal symptoms/ gut issues (gassy, bloated, IBS, etc)? Probiotics can help keep a healthy microbiome in your intestines.
Did you know that 70% of the immune cells found in the human body are in the gut? If your gut isn’t healthy, your body can’t fight well.
When a body goes for prolonged periods of time without necessary nutrients it puts stress on our bodies. When that stress goes unaddressed for long periods of time, disease can develop.
DO I NEED SUPPLEMENTS?
How can we tell if we should take supplements?
Face it, throwing a few pills at a body that eats McDonald’s, and rarely exercises isn’t going to have too much effect.
IT STARTS WITH LIFESTYLE
Lifestyle is the first line of defense against disease.
Here are some lifestyle choices we can strive to prevent illness in the first place:
- Eat Organic
- Cover all the food groups
- Sleep 8 hours a night
- Avoid toxins in the environment
- Avoid toxins in food (colors, preservatives, additives)
- Exercise
- Avoid over the counter medicines
- Avoid Stress
- Maintain a healthy BMI
I don’t know about you, but I fall short in many of these areas.
In addition to the impossibility of eating organic 100% of the time, getting enough sleep and finding a perfect eutopia to live inside, there are some negative stressors that we simply can’t avoid-
- Hereditary diseases
- Outward and inward stress (mental, business, school, sports, social, family, pressures, responsibilities, etc)
- Environmental toxins (exhaust from machinery and vehicles, pollutants from crop dusters, pesticides, run-off, gasses from manufactured products, etc)
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
We are in a fallen world that has all sorts of things in it trying to make us sick. Have you heard the saying, “The two things we must do to live are the two things that are slowly killing us – Eating and Breathing.”
It is important that we fill our bodies with the key nutrients it needs to undo some of the damage the world is doing. Furthermore, when your bodies are attempting to run with constant deficiencies, it is in a state of stress.
This is why supplements are a good idea.
I have been growing food, raising meat, milling flour, and milking a cow for a long time. You may look at my lifestyle and diet and assume that there is no need to add vitamins or mineral supplements.
I would disagree.
In fact, I have been supplementing my diet with certain products for years.
THE FOUNDATIONAL FOUR
There are not many people who won’t benefit from adding these four supplements to their daily routine.
There are sports programs everywhere that begin with these four supplements for their players. Coaches know that if a body is nutritionally fed at the cellular level, athletes can perform at their best.
The same is true for those of us who aren’t professional athletes. We may just want to perform better at work, have more energy for our families, or get more done in the garden.
Supplements can give us added energy and help us to feel much better.
START WITH FOUR
There are very few people who would not benefit from adding the foundational four supplements into their daily routine.
- A multivitamin
- Probiotics
- Vitamin D
- Pure Fish Oil
MULTIVITAMIN
The four foundational supplements begin with a multivitamin. Even if you have a juicer and are pressing your own garden-grown veggies into juice, it is possible you may be missing something. It is recommended that we should consume 11 servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
As you may already know, the fruits and vegetables grown today are not as nutritious as the ones grown 50 years ago. In fact, you’d need to consume 5 apples today to get the same nutritional value as one apple from 1970.
Nice eh?
Our soil is recycled, reused, and over time has degraded. Additionally, consider the overuse of chemicals, pesticides, germicides, and pavement runoff.
The food we eat today simply is not what it used to be.
PROBIOTICS
If you do not have a dairy animal, you should probably be taking probiotics.
Did you know that the gut microbiome can change every 5 days?
Not sure what a gut microbiome is? Well, you have a community of bacteria living in your gut. They are good and we want them there. These good bacteria fight disease and keep us healthy.
Anyhow, experts once thought that the gut biome changed slowly, but now they know the flora changes very rapidly.
This means that (depending on diet) you can go from a super healthy gut to a very unhealthy one in a matter of days.
For example – when I am drinking raw milk my gut is flourishing with millions of beneficial bacteria, but when my cow is dry my gut can go from superior to deficient in a few days.
This means I need probiotics.
VITAMIN D
Vitamin D is a wonder vitamin. One consistent thread with the prevention of Covid-19 is the use of vitamin D. We have regularly taken D in our family for years. We take less in the summer and more in winter.
PURE FISH OIL
Good fish oil is gold. It is good for our joints, our immune systems, our skin, and is great for cardiovascular health because it is rich in Omega-3.
WHERE TO BUY?
The supplement industry is a big place where little regulations are happening. Unfortunately, it can be hard to know what is in a bottle, is the mineral/vitamin still in there (did it oxidize), how old it is, and if your body can even absorb it (did you know that some vitamins are only 20% absorbable in the human body?).
To be sure you are getting the supplement you are paying for and see results, I recommend getting them from a licensed practitioner. There are a few (excellent) supplement companies that only sell their products through physicians.
Ortho Molecular Products and Metagenics are probably the best out there.
I don’t know where you are on your road to health, but living right and eating clean food is just the beginning.
There are not many people who won’t benefit from these foundational four supplements.
Stay Healthy Guys!
XO,
Candi
