Supplement Pros and Cons

People ask me all the time what I think about supplements. It’s a huge topic and, unfortunately, a lot of people remain very confused about my views on this subject.

In this week’s blog/vlog, I’ll share how I feel about supplements after 36 years of experience as a therapist and coach who’s involved with people all walks of life, including some of the best athletes in the world, who have all sorts of health and performance issues.

All of this confusion isn’t surprising, given the supplement industry as a whole is one of the biggest in the world. At least 90 percent of the supplements are manufactured by drug companies, with Hoffman-La Roche being among the largest.

Did you know that? Most people don’t realize the typical supplements they’re buying in mass quantities are actually made by drug companies.

Many experts I’ve talked to about supplements have highlighted the fact that a lot of them probably aren’t worth the price of the empty bottle or the capsules themselves.

(David Getoff teaches a great online course on Price-Pottenger.org about optimal health that includes sections about supplements that blow the lid right off the industry, if you’re interested.)

I touch on five important issues in my blog/vlog that you need to think about strongly about your health and taking supplements.

Organic is STILL the best way to go!

Organic whole foods, free range meats and wild-caught fish are your best sources of nutrition, bar none.

I’m sure many of you will say there’s no such thing as organic any more and many parts of our oceans are very toxic.

That said, organically farmed foods remain far less toxic and we’re the ones putting our hard-earned dollars into commercial food manufacturers who are far more concerned about the financial bottom line than your health.

There’s no such thing as an isolate vitamin.

Imagine vitamin complexes as integrated systems inside a watch with all of its parts moving and working together in sync. There’s no such thing as an isolate vitamin anywhere in nature. It just doesn’t happen.

You have to take vitamin-rich foods and plants into laboratories and chop them down, which is classic reductionist science.

Yes, there can be some applications for isolate vitamins, but they have to be used very carefully because they act like drugs in the body.

Anytime you bring a vitamin level or any of the supplements, (mineral, enzyme, etc.) up to levels that are higher than the body needs for homeostasis, they still go through your detoxification system and can poison you just like any other toxins.

Most people are enzyme-deficient.

Enzymes are the catalysts in every biochemical reaction in your body for which there’s about 30 billion biochemical reactions a second.

If you’re enzyme-deficient, you can have all sorts of health problems and chase after all sorts of supplements and doctors seeking help for what could be fixed just by eating more organic raw foods to get more enzymes in your body and/or supplementing with high quality enzymes.

In my vlog, I share a simple test I learned from studying naturopathic medicine, using a lemon or lime that helps you determine right away if you’re enzyme-deficient.

Have you been tested for deficiencies?

If you’re deficient at any nutritional level, the list is long about how it happened. Do you have a fungal infection? Are you feeling overly stressed? Do you have mercury in your mouth?

Problems like these can cause toxic issues in your body, consume lots of nutrition and start to sap your nutritional health.

Learn what supplements to take or not, instead of reading the label on a bottle for guidance.

Near the end of my vlog, I share some recommendations — supplements, herbs, essential oils, enzymes and whole foods — I do take to support my body as I need them.

For example, I don’t take a whole food organic vitamin every day. Instead, I ask my body what to do using the very same techniques I share in my online Primal Pattern® Eating course.

The other moral of this vlog is a simple one: If you want to change the way the world treats health problems, you’ve got to do it with your pocketbooks. As you become conscious about the fact that the more we damage the earth, the more we damage our food, our water, our air and, finally, ourselves.

If you keep chasing after doctors and supplements instead of getting to the real issue, then you’re missing the point.

Love and chi,

Paul