Supplements are a huge 170+ billion-dollar industry that promises to help you do everything from lose weight and grow muscle, to enhancing your sexual performance and making you bullet proof to all manner of infections and diseases.  Even if that were all true, common sense should tell you that none of them should really be necessary; we were obviously never made – created or evolved; pay your money take your choice – to need them.  There is no such thing as a pill deficiency!

Too often people treat supplements as a “natural” alternative to pharmaceuticals.  When what we really should be doing is making our lifestyles more natural.  Interventionary medicine, whether allopathic or naturopathic – as valuable as it can be, should always be second choice to the wholistic prevention and reversal that comes from addressing the actual root causes of disease and disability.

For example, there is a dental supplement that has been shown to significantly help reduce the inflammation and gingival pocket depths associated with periodontal disease,  As you all should know by now, periodontal disease is a common silent infection of the tissues, gums and jaw bone, surrounding your teeth that is the major cause of tooth loss as well as a contributing factor to a whole host of systemic problems including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and Alzheimer’s.  But here’s the thing, we also know that adhering to a Mediterranean lifestyle, diet and exercise, reduces your risk of periodontal infection by 10-fold!1  Plus all the other health benefits it is known to promote.  Lifestyle wins over supplements hands down.

That being said, our environment is unfortunately growing increasingly toxic and deficient.  You now have to eat 8 typical oranges to get the same nutrition just 1 had as recently as 1980 (27% less calcium, 37% less iron, 21% less Vitamin A, 30% less Vitamin C).  So, we do have to recognize that even an ideal diet may have some deficiencies.  So what to do?

First of all, do your best to eat as much natural and original – organic, heirloom, non-GMO – food as you can.  This will give you the best chance possible of getting comprehensive nutrition.  Secondly, before buying that latest infomercial wonder, get tested.  Find out if you personally actually do have a deficiency.  Then you can intelligently address it – hopefully with more comprehensive food choices, but if not then with a specific targeted supplement.

One of the big reasons I keep saying whole foods first, is that there is so much about nutrition that we still don’t know or understand.  There is still not even a consensus as to how much Vitamin C is optimal!  This is why Harvard Health says that “supplements remain the Wild West of American health.”  We’ve already addressed most of the reasons for this in our science discussion – lack of unbiased research and funding, impossibility of truly controlled studies, as well as environmental and genetic variabilities.  In addition, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of micronutrients.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, that we know nothing about let alone their optimal amounts.  And the only way to have any  chance of getting what we need is to eat a wide variety of the most nutrient dense food sources – whole plants2 – first, and then supplement as best you know.

To begin with, given the depleted state of our food supply, it makes sense to take a top-tier whole-food daily multivitamin.  Not, I repeat, not to replace any daily servings of fruits or vegetables.  But rather to help compensate for the general deterioration in the nutritional quality of our food.  And by insisting that it be a whole-food formulation, you’ll also benefit from more of all the unlabeled mystery micronutrients as well.  In addition, there are a couple others specific ones that I can tell you you will more than likely need to take.

  1. Vitamin D – Most of us work and live too much inside, live too far from the equator, or are too solar phobic to get optimal amounts of year-round sun exposure, which is the best natural source of Vitamin D. 2-3,000 units per day should do it for most people.
  2. Vitamin B12 – B12 is a water-soluble vitamin made by environmental bacteria which have for the most part been sterilized out of the modern human supply chain and is now available primarily in animal products, in fortified foods, or as a supplement. Daily recommendations vary from 5mcg for infants to 1,000 mcg for older adults.  Because deficiency of B12 can lead to a wide range of disorders of the blood, gut, brain, and nervous system, it is essential that all vegetarians and anyone over 50 years old take supplements – preferably in isolated capsules as other ingredients in multi-vitamins can degrade B12 making it useless to the body.  Also, look for the cyanocobalamin form which is more stable and reliable than others.

Before leaving the subject of supplements, there is one more that needs to be mentioned.  Currently one of the hottest subjects of biologic research, we are just beginning to understand the crucial role that redox molecules play in health and wellbeing.  Very briefly summarizing, in many ways our bodies operate like highly sophisticated super computers.  And like computers, they communicate with a complex binary code.  Though instead of the 0’s and 1’s of computer language, the cells of our bodies communicate with positive and negative ions derived mostly from water (H2O → H+ and OH–) and salt (NaCl → Na+ and Cl‑) in reduction-oxidation (redox) pathways.  Literally every healthy thing we do and give to our bodies would be useless if not for these redox molecules helping our cells coordinate and put them to good use.

Under normal circumstances our cells are able to make all the redox molecules they need from the saltwater bathing each and every one of them.  However, due to the cumulative effects of aging and environmental toxicity, we generally lose 10% of our redox production capacity with every decade of life after our 20’s.  For this reason, the recently developed ability to supplement these molecules is extremely exciting.  Because redox pathways are so foundational to literally every function, cell, and organ of our bodies, listing all of the potential benefits can start to sound suspiciously like the proverbial snake oil!  The truth though is that this is serious science with some amazing benefits.  Here is a short list of people that are benefiting the most.

  • Those with unresolved medical conditions. If you’ve gone to multiple doctors, tried multiple therapies, and still have not achieved the resolution you are looking for, you are the type of person who often sees miracle like benefits from redox supplementation.  These are obviously some of the most appreciative of our patients!
  • Professional athletes and weekend warriors. As I keep saying, nutritional science is difficult.  One of the areas though where redox supplementation has been well documented is in the area of athletic performance where it has been shown to significantly enhance both endurance and recovery.  And since all of us should be endeavoring to move more and physically extend ourselves, even if just to better keep up with the grandkids, redox supplementation is something to seriously consider as an aid in achieving those goals.
  • Nutrition connoisseurs. People who are serious about nutrition and maximizing their health will do things, like take the multivitamins we talked about, just because they’ve studied the science and it makes sense – whether or not they actually feel a difference.  If this describes you and you’d like to take an in depth look at redox science, I encourage you to read Dr. Lee Ostler’s breakthrough book, Redox Matters.

So once again, there is no “one-size-fits-all”.  But if you follow these guidelines, you will be well on you way to health and longevity – both dental and physical.

  1. Adherence to Mediterranean diet, physical activity level, and severity of periodontitis: Results from a university-based cross-sectional study. J Periodontol 2022 Aug;93(8):1218-1232.
  2. To see why I say “whole plants”, google ANDI SCORE (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) and you’ll see how whole plants are head-and-shoulders above all other food sources.