How To Avoid Supplement Pitfalls

Supplements are needed to support the best organic nutrient-dense diet you can get today because of the depletion of vitamins and minerals from our soil over the last hundred years. However, not all supplements are created equal. Some are valuable; some are a waste of money. Do you really know what you should be taking and when? This post highlights the common mistakes people make when choosing and taking supplements blind.

Dr. Google offers an abundance of information on vitamins and minerals. Some people go supplement mad, ending up with a shopping basket of items and cupboards full of supplements. However, taking too many supplements are counter productive as they compete with each other to gain entry into your cells. And the one-size-fits-all approach as promoted by advertising gurus and celebrities can lead to trouble.

If you want to know what supplements you should really be taking, you need to do the right lab tests that reveal your unique biochemistry and what your body actually needs. To do otherwise is guesswork or trial and error. 

Here are some common mistakes people make when taking supplements:

Vitamin D:  Driven by the Covid pandemic, a lot of people have started taking high dose Vitamin D (over 10,000 i.u. daily). That is fine if you really need this amount. However, Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin which means it can accumulate in the body and cause toxicity. Although you have to work really hard at becoming Vitamin D toxic, it can be done and I have started seeing much higher than optimum levels since Covid. Additionally, if you are not able to absorb and digest fats (lack of gallbladder, sludgy bile etc.) you won’t be able to absorb your Vitamin D pills. The message is don’t guess, but test. There are a number of ways to do this. An easy home pinprick test can be accessed online with the Vitamin D Blood Spot test at cityassays.org.uk. Taking some Vitamin K (another fat soluble vitamin) with your Vitamin D helps to ensure that calcium is not deposited in the wrong places, like the arteries.

B Vitamins: These are a group of vitamins that play a vital role in many body functions, including the nervous system.  As a group, they work synergistically. This means that if you take one B vitamin in isolation for a period of time, you can produce deficiencies in the other B vitamins.  If taking  an isolated B vitamin for any reason (and there are many good reasons), make sure you are taking the other B vitamins to complement it. Additionally, B6 in high doses can cause neuropathy (numbness/tingling in hands/feet). Once again, do the right tests to know your B vitamin status. Serum B 12 is not an accurate enough test as much of total blood B12 is inactive and therefore doesn’t reflect true B12 status.  A much better measure is B12 (Holo TC), methylamalonic acid or even homocysteine (one of the most useful inflammatory markers for arterial and heart health).

Vitamin C: This is one of my favourite tools in the First Aid box for the first sign of colds, flu or other infections. It has been proven safe to take orally in high doses as it is water soluble, meaning that we pee out what we don’t use. Vitamin C is a great multitasker as it is highly protective against both upper fermenting gut (bugs causing trouble in the stomach and small intestine), chronic infection and metabolic syndrome (precursor to diabetes type 2). There are, however, some extra things to know about Vitamin C if you want to use it daily and optimally.  Personally, I would choose natural sources of Vitamin C over synthetic Vitamin C for daily maintenance. This is because the natural form of whole food Vitamin C complex found throughout Nature has some key substances in its core that synthetic C does not. These substances are the enzyme tyrosinase, polyphenol rutin, flavone hesperidin (known as Vitamin P), Vitamin K and factor J (choline). All of these are essential co-factor nutrients that work synergistically with ascorbigen, the natural form of L-ascorbic acid that whole-food Vitamin C complex also contains. Without these co-factors, L-ascorbic cannot be absorbed, which is why 90% of synthetic Vitamin C is rapidly excreted by the body shortly after being consumed.  As leading iron/copper researcher Morley Robbins states, synthetic Vitamin C  is highly acidic which blocks the absorption of copper, alters the structure of caeruloplasmin (which transports copper round the body) and increases the absorption, but not mobilisation, of iron in body cells and tissues. As leading authority on plant stem cell research and embryonic phytochemistry, Professor Dominique Richard points out, the body needs whole food Vitamin C to form collagen in bones, cartilage and muscle, to maintain strength and flexibility of blood vessels and to keep the adrenal glands (the body’s energy reservoir) healthy.

Iron: We are bombarded with adverts telling us to take iron supplements if we feel fatigued.  Taking iron indiscriminately is a big mistake. According to leading mineral researcher Morley Robbins, too much dietary and supplemental iron is the single most toxic factor contributing to poor health and fatigue. This is because too much iron poisons the energy producing factories in our cells (mitochondria) and the available copper they rely on to make energy.  Once again, this is one of those areas where you must test your iron status to find out what you actually need. This includes iron, ferritin (stored iron), copper (which tells iron where to go), caeruloplasmin (which tells copper where to go) and transferrin saturation (to check for a condition known as hereditary haemochromatosis or iron overload, which is present in about 10% of the population). If lab tests find you are indeed iron deficient, always look for the causes, rather than just supplementing and hoping it’s going to get fixed. The causes might include internal bleeding, lack of iron in the diet or lack of stomach acid necessary to absorb dietary iron. Additionally, when you replete iron, you trigger something known as the Febton reaction which creates extra unwanted inflammation. To offset this increased oxidative stress, I generally prescribe liposomal (more easily absorbed) glutathione.

Calcium: Calcium is essential for optimal health, however calcium supplements are not. They are routinely prescribed for women with osteoporosis, yet studies show this approach is not working. There are a few factors to note here. While it is true that osteoporosis is about calcium loss, what is ignored is that bone loss is caused by eating too acidic a diet (from animal milks, excess meats and sugar and grains) and excess unbound iron. Excess iron has the ability to create calcium loss from bone while simultaneously causing calcium buildup in soft tissue, especially our arteries. For this reason, someone with osteoporosis should also check for indications of arterial problems. Additionally, human  metabolism developed in a low calcium. high magnesium dietary intake. There were at least two units of magnesium to one of calcium in such a diet, whereas with the standard western high intake of milk and dairy, it is significantly the other way round. When I have tested  patients with osteoporosis, I have routinely found no shortage of calcium in the body but there is a shortage of co-factors like Vitamin K2 needed to put calcium in the right places.

Multivitamins/minerals: Despite their popularity, this is something I rarely prescribe nowadays as they are not designed to optimise bioavailable copper (a key to beating chronic fatigue). I have stopped taking them myself for this reason and instead take a natural wholefood mitochondrial support. Many multi formulas contain undesirable ingredients like iron, calcium and synthetic Vitamin C that further disrupt a skewed iron metabolism. Finally, synthetic test tube nutrients don’t have the same energy, frequency, or biology as food based nutrients. They may be similar chemically but only nutrients that come from properly mineralised soil that enter our food are really able to be used inside our cells the way Mother Nature intended.

If you would like help with choosing the right targeted supplements to support your health, please contact the Good health Clinic to make an appointment. Please email the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com or ring on 07836 552936.