Transcription
95% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient at the minimum level to prevent a deficiency disease. This is staggering, not how much do you need for optimal health, but how much you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets.
Welcome back to another episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy and Health Bites, where we take juicy little bites into current health topics. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and today we're going to be diving into a crucial topic: the importance of supplementation and addressing very common and prevalent nutrient deficiencies.
It's a staggering fact that 95% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient, and globally, over two billion people face simply correctable nutrient deficiencies. While macronutrient deficiencies are rare due to their availability in our diets, meaning protein, fat, and carbohydrates, micronutrient deficiencies, those involving vitamins and minerals, are far more common and can significantly impact our health.
I mean, I just got to say, vitamins and minerals are freaking remarkable. You know, at the turn of the century, there were diseases like beriberi, pellagra, rickets, scurvy, and these diseases were from vitamin A deficiency, B vitamin deficiencies, and they would create severe illness. I mean, just dementia, severe dermatitis, blindness, rickets, I mean, you name it. And these are corrected with literally infinitesimal small doses of a compound, literally within days. I mean, if you have scurvy and you don't have enough vitamin C, you're in bad shape, but a few little doses of vitamin C and you're back to normal. I mean, there is no more powerful miracle drug than vitamins and minerals at the level of deficiency.
And what we're seeing now is something called long-latency deficiency diseases, where we're not, like, fully, fully, fully always facing severe deficiency diseases, but we have these things called long-latency deficiency diseases that make, for example, if you have a lack of vitamin D in the short run, you're really low, you get rickets. But if you don't have it in the long run, you have a suppressed immune system, you get depression, you get muscle aches, you get, in fact, even osteoporosis. So these are very, very different kinds of manifestations, but they're really important.
Based on this, we're going to explore some of the most prevalent micronutrient deficiencies, including iron, vitamin D, magnesium, and omega-3s. These are the big ones, and there's obviously a lot more, like B vitamins and zinc and selenium and so forth, but these affect large portions of the population, and they can lead to a whole range of health issues, from a weak immune system to chronic diseases to even things like dementia and cognitive decline, and they can mess up our hormones. I mean, the list goes on and on.
Now, understanding these deficiencies is crucial because unlike overt severe deficiency diseases like scurvy or rickets, subclinical deficiencies often go unnoticed but still have these serious long-term consequences. Like I was saying, these long-latency deficiency diseases. In fact, there's an amazing scientific article by Robert Keeney. We'll put it in the show notes that describes the whole science behind this idea of long-latency deficiency diseases. He was a vitamin D researcher.
Now, even with a well-balanced diet, our modern agricultural practices, our declining soil quality, our fast-paced lifestyle, our exposure to toxins, our chronic stress, all make it challenging to obtain the necessary nutrients from food alone. And that's where supplementation comes in, and it becomes really not just an option but essential, not just to avoid deficiencies but to achieve optimal health.
And there's a big difference between how much vitamin D you need, for example, to prevent rickets, which is 30 units, versus how much vitamin D you might need to prevent all the other things we talked about, like osteoporosis and boosting your immune system and so on. You might need four to 5,000, more than 10 times that, or a hundred times that dose.
So, in this episode, we're going to discuss why supplements are necessary in the first place and why they're so important in today's world. How to navigate the supplement market, in other words, how do you make sense of what's good or bad out there? And how you can ensure you're getting the nutrients your body really needs to thrive.
Now, I want to talk about the importance of supplementation and why we need to use nutritional supplements to address nutrient deficiencies that are widespread. And as I mentioned before, 95% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient at the minimum level to prevent a deficiency disease. This is staggering, not how much do you need for optimal health, but how much you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets. And two billion people, as I mentioned, worldwide have at least one nutrient deficiency. It plays a huge role in infant mortality and chronic illnesses around the world.
Now, let's talk about the difference between macro and micronutrients. Now, macronutrients, you're familiar with carbs, proteins, fats. Now, it's very unusual in our modern society to have a deficiency in any of these nutrients. Protein is a common deficiency in the developing world, and you see kids with severe protein malnutrition. But it's really important to get protein. Uh, but although we might not have a deficiency, we still may not be optimal, and I've done podcasts on that, but that's another topic.
Now, micronutrient deficiencies, like vitamins and minerals, are far more common. And I want to explain just for a minute why nutrients are so important, just so you understand the context here. When you look at your DNA, one-third of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. Now, what are enzymes? Enzymes are catalysts. They're basically a catalyst that converts one compound or one molecule to another molecule in your body. They're basically the facilitators of all your biochemical reactions, and you've got 37 billion trillion chemical reactions happening every second in your body.
Just dig just that for a second, right? 37 billion trillion chemical reactions every second, and every single one of those reactions requires an enzyme, and those enzymes require a co-factor or co-enzyme. And guess what, folks? What are the co-factors and co-enzymes? They're vitamins and minerals.
Now, drugs, they affect a single pathway to create a single outcome. For example, if you have a blood pressure pill, it's a calcium channel blocker, it does that one thing. However, vitamins and minerals, they might have an effect on hundreds and hundreds of different enzymes. So magnesium or folate or other nutrients may have the ability to affect the function of literally hundreds and hundreds of different chemical reactions. That's why they create such widespread problems.
So, just to understand that, that this is a super important thing. And based on these genetic differences we have, you know, I said one-third of our DNA codes for, based on these genetic variations, different people may need different amounts of nutrients and may need different forms of nutrients. For example, if you have a gene that is called MTHFR, it means you can't convert the folate from your food very well into the folate that's active in your body, 5-methylfolate. So you need to take the pre-formed version as a supplement, for example. Or let's say you are somebody who has vitamin D receptor issues and can't absorb vitamin D well, you might need not a thousand units of vitamin D a day, you might need 10,000. And so there are a lot of variations in the population. That's why it's important to test, not guess. And again, that's why I created, uh, with my colleagues and friends, uh, and co-founders, functionhealth.com, to allow you to get all these nutrients we're talking about today tested and many more. Go to functionhealth.com/mark, and you can find out what's actually going on.
Okay, so let's get started. What are the most common micronutrient deficiencies? Well, iron. Iron is the most common nutrient deficiency globally, affecting about 25% of the global population. Now, the consequences include short-term problems like anemia, particularly in preschoolers, where nearly 50% are deficient if they're not getting iron-fortified foods. Right? So the at-risk groups, particularly, are vegans, almost all the vegans I know in tests are iron deficient, vegetarians, still menstruating and pregnant women because they use up a lot of blood in either menstruating or, you know, creating extra blood for the baby.
Vitamin D deficiency also extremely common. And it may, depending on how you look and define it, insufficiency or deficiency may affect between 80 to 95% of the population. And we're going to put all the references in here. I'm not making this stuff up. You just have to look at the show to get the scientific papers that are reflecting what I'm talking about here. Now, while frank deficiency symptoms like rickets are not common today, although they are sometimes in the developing world, suboptimum levels have significant health impacts. As I mentioned, suppressed immune system, muscle weakness, fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression, immune dysfunction, and even cardiovascular risk, cancer risk. I mean, all these things are related to low levels or insufficient levels of vitamin D.
The next big one is magnesium deficiency. Now, this affects about 20% of the population based on the minimum amount to prevent a deficiency disease. That's 20% who have overt magnesium deficiency. That's quite serious. Subclinical deficiency could affect up to 80% of the population, which is very important because why? Magnesium is crucial for over 600 enzyme reactions, affecting every single biological system, affecting overall health and risk of chronic disease. Literally everything, from your mental health to your immune health to metabolic health, diabetes control, muscle function, everything, pretty much everything.
Vitamin B12 deficiencies also really common. About 80 to 90% of vegans and vegetarians may be deficient in vitamin B12 because there's not any vegetable food, basically, that's how it is. Just back of life. Now, over 20% of adults may be deficient in, not the vegans, because they're only about 2% of the population vegan, but basically even the rest of the population can be deficient. And vitamin B12, part of it has to do with, you know, our drugs we're taking like acid blockers, part of it has to do with our digestive function and lack of absorption in some cases, or just lack of intake, right? Because people aren't eating B12-ish foods.
Now, what about calcium deficiency? Not not that common, uh, because the body regulates calcium pretty well from the bones. But what happens is basically, if you don't have enough calcium because your blood levels have to be controlled really tightly, it just sucks it all out of your bones and you get osteoporosis. So, but a survey in the United States found that about 15% of teenage girls, uh, and about 10% of women over 50, and about less than 22% of teenage boys and men over 50 meet the recommended calcium intake. So a lot of people don't meet it. Uh, and it depends on your age and your sex and so forth. But we need to make sure we have adequate calcium. But ideally, you want to get it from food. Calcium-rich foods are really common: greens, often seeds, sesame seeds are great, chia seeds are great. So there's a lot of ways to get calcium. You can get it from bones, from a can of sardines, which I like, but anyway, you probably don't like that, but I like to eat that. Can of salmon with the bones in. Again, that's how people lived on islands used to get calcium. Anyway, you can take a little calcium, but I don't think you want to overdo on calcium because of problems with calcium affecting the heart and creating other issues. So I'd be careful about that.
Anyway, omega-3 fats are the next one. This is a big one. We don't eat the foods we used to eat as hunter-gatherers, which are wild foods or a lot of sea-based foods. Uh, for coastal people, those are very rich in omega-3s. But our modern industrial diet and our lack of intake of wild fish has really dropped. And so 90% of Americans are not meeting the recommendations for omega-3 intake, which is one serving of fatty fish at least two times a week. And I think that's a bare minimum, right? And I'm talking about like sardines, herring, mackerel, maybe some wild salmon, anchovies, you know, small fatty fish.
Now, there's a lot of other deficiencies. And this is from a large national study. It's called the NHANES, or National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a big mumbo jumbo, but it's a government ongoing government study that's been going on for a long, long time that tracks people over decades, tracks their blood work, their health issues. And basically, they found that 45% of the population is deficient in vitamin A, 46% in vitamin C, 84% in vitamin E, why? Because it comes from whole grains, and nobody eats those. 15% are deficient in zinc.
And why this matters is that these subclinical deficiencies or just frank deficiencies can lead to really serious health consequences. And they may not have initially obvious symptoms, but they will ultimately.
So, what's the truth about supplements? Well, getting enough vitamins and minerals is not just about preventing deficiency diseases. Well, that's part of it. They're also essential nutrients that power every aspect of our biology. As I said, right? Vitamins and minerals and amino acids play key roles in a whole set of biochemical reactions in the body. As I mentioned, they act as co-factors. I'm just saying this again because it's so important to understand. They literally are the grease that lubricates the wheels of our massive metabolic and biochemical machinery, right? They power metabolism, our detox systems, our energy production, our antioxidant systems, which all are important for overall health. I mean, your antioxidants need nutrients to work. For example, you need zinc and copper and manganese to activate one of the most important intracellular antioxidants called superoxide dismutase. So nutrients are key for everything, right?
For example, you can't make ATP for energy for your cell without magnesium. If you want to turn tryptophan from your turkey into serotonin, which is good for your mood, you need B6 for that chemical reaction, and you need magnesium, and you need folate, right? So if you're low in those, and they're really common to be low in, of course, you're going to be depressed. You want to make thyroid hormones, right? To make thyroid hormone T4, you need iodine, and then to make T3, you need selenium and zinc and vitamin A and vitamin D to make the thyroid hormone work at the cellular level. So without optimal levels of these essential nutrients, our biochemistry just can't function properly. And that leads to these low-level functional imbalances, and they manifest as just feeling crappy, right? Now, you call it "feel like crap syndrome" or FLC, or worse, they can lead to these long-latency deficiency diseases, accelerated aging, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, depression, and and and worse. And also they lead to immune dysfunction. That's why the elderly often have higher risk of illness, infection, because they tend to, you know, have poor diets, they tend to have trouble absorbing nutrients in their stomach as they get older, and so they tend to have more deficiencies.
Now, a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrition studied blood levels of magnesium, really important, my favorite mineral, and homocysteine, which is a measure of B12, folate, and B6 function in the body. And they looked at these levels in about 172 healthy middle-aged people from Australia. And they found that low levels of magnesium and high homocysteine were linked to an increase in DNA damage.
Now, what is the minimum RDA for magnesium? It's about 400 milligrams, which is fine, it's a pretty good amount. But here's the deal: in order to get that much magnesium, you'd have to eat 115 almonds, seven avocados, and 12 and a half bananas to meet that amount of magnesium. And that's why supplementing is so important in today's modern world.
There's still some debate about this, uh, but I would say it's largely due to misinformation. So, what are the misconceptions? Again, the misinformation about supplements. Now, some doctors, uh, uh, from top medical institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, say that basically vitamins are not essential if you're eating a healthy diet. And other doctors say, oh, it just creates expensive urine. You know, that's nonsense, right? You say, oh, I'm not going to drink water because I'm going to pee what I don't need out. Well, your body uses what it needs, and then it gets rid of the rest. That's normal.
Now, they believe that a well-balanced diet should provide all the necessary nutrients without the need for supplementation, but it's just not true. Um, the reality of modern diets is that we're eating not such a good diet. We're not eating a healthy, unprocessed whole foods diet. We're just not. And the prevalence of processed foods, right? 60% of our diet as adults, 67% of kids' diets, that combined with our nutrient-depleted soil, other stressful lifestyle factors, a load of environmental toxins we have to deal with, the stress we have, means that even those who strive to eat well might still fall short of their nutrient needs. Even a diet rich in fruits and veggies, whole grains, good protein, just all the modern food production methods and environmental factors just result in nutrient deficiencies, even if we're eating a good diet.
Where are there examples that supplementation is acceptable for preventing deficiencies? Well, in the medical community, it's pretty widely acceptable that pregnant women should take, uh, folic acid or folate to prevent a terrible birth defect called neural tube defects or spina bifida and many other problems that can happen during pregnancy. So, you know, understand that, yeah, if you're, for example, a pregnant woman or breastfeeding woman, you need more nutrients. But why don't the rest of us? Right? Why is this just siloed to pregnant women? If folate is essential for pregnant women, why is it not the same for other nutrients for the general population?
The need for essential nutrients is not limited to pregnancy. That's ridiculous. Everyone can benefit from ensuring they have optimal levels of vitamins and minerals. Now, our age, our genetic uniqueness, our gender, physical activity levels, all affect our individual nutrient requirements and actually determine what we need to thrive. I don't you just want to survive, you want to thrive, right?
So, how do you know you're deficient in a nutrient? Well, you test, right? Test, don't guess. And this is part of why I co-founded Function Health, which helps you get a comprehensive look at over 110 biomarkers for $4.99 a year with twice a year testing. And we're talking about key nutrients like vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3s, ferritin, which is a measure of iron and other iron status, zinc, selenium. We do comprehensive hormone testing, lipid testing, immune markers, and lots more. And it's, it's quite amazing. You know, in our cohort, and this is, I think the, uh, first adopters, the early adopters of Function Health are probably a more healthy population, but even within that population, in the few nutrients we looked at, 67% were deficient in one or more nutrients, not at the optimal level, right, but at a true deficiency level. This is frightening to me. Iron, vitamin D, B vitamins related to homocysteine, 67% were low in one or more of these. And not, not at, again, the optimal level. Let's say vitamin D, what, you know, people had vitamin D under 30, or ferritin under 16, where it should be. Ferritin should be 45, or vitamin D should be 45. We need to think differently about our numbers.
So, know your numbers. Get tested. If you want to jump the line, go to functionhealth.com/mark, because there's 30,000 people on the waitlist, it might take a while. So jump the list with that special code and check out your numbers. And then, of course, you need to supplement and retest and check the levels because you want to see if it's working.
Now, we need really a certain number of nutrients to power our biological systems. For example, we need omega-3 fats for healthy brain. Now, omega-3s are so important for brain health, and they've been shown to help prevent cognitive decline, like dementia, depression, various mood issues. Why? Because most of our brain is fat, about 60% of our brain is fat, and 30% is omega-3 fats, right? And omega-3 fats are hard to get from our diet alone, especially for vegans, vegetarians, and those who do not consume fatty fish regularly. I'm talking about people who are not eating two or three servings a week of sardines. Like, that's probably most of America. And that's why we need supplements.
What about other nutrients? Zinc, for example, is key for male fertility. It plays a key role in reproductive health, particularly improving sperm motility. In other words, how fast your sperm and how well your sperm can swim, and that enhances fertility. And it also leads to a higher probability of fertilizing the egg, right? Because if it can't swim, it ain't getting there. It's also essential for wound repair, right? Zinc is really important for immune function, for your antioxidant defenses, for DNA synthesis, for removing heavy metals from your body.
What other nutrients are important? Well, iodine. And I see a lot of iodine deficiency because people are stopping iodized salt, which is how people were getting their iodine, because iodine mostly comes from seaweed or fish. So if you're not eating that, you're probably not getting enough, right? Unless you're eating sushi all the time, but then you're probably getting heavy metal poisoning. So that's another thing. So basically, you can't win for losing. H, but anyway, iodine is really important for thyroid health. Uh, it's really key because it helps you produce thyroid hormone that regulates metabolism. When we say T3 or T4, we're talking about how many iodine molecules. T4 is four iodines, T3 is three iodines. And thyroid hormone regulates metabolism, energy levels, overall growth of your body, everything. And people have trouble getting iodine, uh, through diet, especially, uh, if they avoid, as I mentioned, iodized salt and seafood. So it's really important to make sure you have enough iodine to maintain healthy thyroid function and prevent thyroid-related conditions like hypothyroidism. And you can actually eat seaweed. I like those seaweed snacks, those nori snacks, that's going to help you too.
Selenium, also really important for many things. It's important for thyroid function, for detoxification, uh, for immune health, as an antioxidant. It's a powerful antioxidant. Plays a key role in immune health. It powers a particular enzyme. Remember nutrients, enzymes? One of these enzymes is called glutathione peroxidase. Not so important to remember, but glutathione is the body's main antioxidant, its main detoxifier, and one of the most powerful anti-inflammatories in your body. And it's made from the food we eat, but we need to have selenium to activate this enzyme called glutathione peroxidase, which is our most potent antioxidant enzyme, which protects our cells from oxidative stress and helps our immune system function. We need to have selenium to actually make that enzyme work. And there's a lot of selenium deficiency out there. Uh, and if you have adequate selenium, it supports your body's ability to fend off infections, maintains immune health, also, and of course, helps you detoxify. But it's hard to get enough from diet, making supplementation pretty important.
Let's sort of take a kind of 30,000-foot view and, uh, kind of look a little more in detail what's essential for everybody, not just for specific populations. Now, certain supplements are recommended for specific populations, like pregnant women, but supplementation can benefit a much bigger group of people. Now, getting enough of these nutrients is universal. We need them. There's no option. They're called essential vitamins and minerals. Vitamin means vital amine, which means vital to life, right? So it's sort of what they, it's how they kind of came up with the name. Now, whether it's to support cognitive function, reproductive health, immune resilience, overall well-being, we need them.
So, how do we close that nutrient gap? Well, even individuals with healthy diets require additional nutrients to achieve optimal health, and supplementation is going to help you close that gap and support lifelong health and vitality. And this goes for both essential nutrients and also non-essential or what I call conditionally essential nutrients. We still need them. Uh, they might, you might not get a deficiency disease, but I think they're, they're things that do optimize our health and are required for optimal health.
So, what are essential nutrients? Well, these are nutrients the body can't produce on its own. They've got to be obtained from your diet. Now, because they're hard to get from diet, that's why you have to supplement, okay? It's that simple. And what are examples of these? Amino acids. So you have to eat protein, and you need the right amount of protein. Protein is necessary for muscle repair, enzyme production, hormone synthesis, many, many critical body functions. It's, it's actually the only nutrient we need in extremely large amounts. Vitamins and minerals are small amounts, fatty acids small amounts, carbohydrates not essential at all. But protein is the only nutrient we need in large, large amounts. And we also need a lot of other nutrients like omega-3 fats, vitamin A, C, K, D, E, minerals like calcium, potassium, zinc. I'm not going through the whole list, but basically, we need all the essential vitamins and minerals. Not, not an option to not get them.
Now, what are non-essential nutrients? Well, it's kind of misleading, you know, the name is not really right. We still need these for health. The fact that they're called non-essential just means our bodies can make them, usually. Now, examples include non-essential amino acids because they produce them on their own or derive from other amino acids. Cholesterol, for example, is something we need, but our body makes it. Creatine, again, something you can supplement with, but our body also needs. Now, in certain situations, chronic illness, stress, poor diet, you might need to supplement with these other non-essential nutrients to assure optimal levels and correct your reverse symptoms, right? For example, creatine's really important. I use it every day because it helps build muscle.
While drugs often come with side effects and risks, supplements, when used properly, and I say properly and correctly, they're generally pretty safe and they're effective in supporting health and filling nutrient gaps. We don't have drug deficiencies. We have nutrient deficiencies, right? The human body is perfectly designed. When it has what it needs, it stays in balance. And when it doesn't, it gets out of balance. But I'm going to tell you something: nobody has a drug deficiency. Nobody has a statin deficiency, a Prozac deficiency, an Advil deficiency, or any drug deficiency, right? We're using these drugs to kind of interrupt or block or inhibit some natural process that we hope will improve some outcome. But we can be deficient in essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that we need for optimal health. And this is really where supplementation is so important.
Listen, we also have a lot of other deficiencies besides vitamin and mineral deficiencies, right? We're nature deficiency, connection deficiency, community deficiency, sunshine deficiency, exercise deficiency. And those are all medicines, right? Those are not prescriptions you're going to get from your doctor's office.
There's a lot of choices, a lot of misinformation makes it hard for the average consumer to make informed purchasing decisions. I mean, people basically are aware that they need supplements, but they're not sure which ones to get, or what to buy, or what to take, or which dose. And this is why we need transparency and we need a way to determine the quality of what we're taking, some quality assurance.
So, let's talk about transparency. Consumers need access to reliable information about the contents and the sourcing of the supplements and the wrong ingredients. They need clear labeling. They need third-party testing certifications. And I use companies, for example, that will test all the raw materials before they go into the pill, and they'll test it for purity and the potency. Then, once they put it in the pill, they'll retest it to make sure it wasn't contaminated and it exactly says what's on the label is in the bottle, right? If it is 100 milligrams of Vitamin C, it got 100 milligrams of vitamin C and nothing else, uh, and it doesn't have any contaminants. You want to look for quality assurance. You know, look for supplements that have been independently tested by third parties like NSF International or USP Pharmacopeia or ConsumerLab. These certifications really help ensure the products meet standards of safety, purity, and potency.
Also, education is really important. It's essential for consumers to be educated about the importance of choosing quality supplements and be skeptical of products that may seem too good to be true, right? Everybody out there is hawking something. And it's frustrating for me as a doctor because I use supplements scientifically. I've done my homework to look at what works, what doesn't work. I've looked at literature. I've visited factories of the companies that I use and looked at their manufacturing processes, looked at the quality control. I understand what works, what doesn't. And, and I, it's just kind of sad that it's, it's such a messy place because they're so effective for so many people if you choose the right ones and you do the right things.
Now, I receive a high volume of inquiries from my patients and my community about where to buy supplements and where to get quality supplements. And I understand there's a lot of confusion about what to take, why you should take it, where to get them. And there's a gap in the market for knowing where to find high-quality, reliable supplements. Should you go to Costco? Should you go to your grocery store? The drugstore? Should you go to, you know, some random supplement shop? I wanted my patients, as a doctor, to be sure that they took the most effective supplements, the ones that had been tested, that manufactured properly, that have science behind them. And so I created something years ago, uh, which is an online supplement store. I want to create a highly curated selection. It's not everything. It's not like 30,000 products. It's a few hundred of the best products in all categories that are highly curated, uh, that are highly bioavailable, that are at the right doses, and that are effective, and that don't have a lot of additives and fillers and preservatives and chemicals and dyes. And I really made sure that these companies follow third-party testing and look for environmental toxins, for contaminants, for the bioavailability of the ingredients, for the forms of the ingredients. And so basically, I created a trustworthy source of vetted supplements that my patients and my community can use if they want. I'm like, not attached to it. You get your supplements where you want, but I want a place where people I know can go and feel confident. And each product is hand-selected by our clinical team, not just by me, at the Ultra Wellness Center. We have a very rigorous selection process. We have stringent standards for purity and effectiveness. We choose brands that are best in class in terms of manufacturing. There's something called GMP, which is Good Manufacturing Practices, or even pharmaceutical practices. We pick things that are backed by scientific data, that have a proven history of efficacy and potency, bioavailability, safety. And all the products are third-party tested for active ingredients and contaminants. And of course, they're going to be free of preservatives, fillers, binders, allergens, colors. I mean, we don't need like neon blue pills in there, okay?
And then, how do you know what's right for you? So once you've kind of figured out where to get it and you kind of understand the science, what do you need for you? Well, everybody's unique. Everybody requires a tailored supplement regimen. Now, there's basics for everybody, for sure. Um, but we can modify things based on testing and history and your medical needs. But there's some foundational supplements that everybody needs. And what are they? It's a multivitamin and mineral, vitamin D, vitamin D3 in particular, magnesium, and omega-3 fats, probably probiotics for most of us. These are sort of foundations for health. I call it foundations for health, right? And on my website, I actually have a symptom questionnaire that helps you get more personalized supplement recommendations based on your goals and your health. The link is in the show notes for sure.
Now, I have targeted supplement stacks, which I've used in my practice, which help various health goals like blood sugar balance, thyroid health, brain health, heart health, and so forth. And the link for that is also in the show notes.
Okay, so what do you do when you want to start a new supplement regimen? Well, I recommend tracking how you're doing, right? Just don't just randomly do stuff, right? Track your symptoms, keep a sense of how you feel, keep a health journal, monitor any changes in overall sense of well-being after starting something new, so you know what's working for you. And for personalized diet, supplement, and lifestyle protocols, uh, you know, my team at the Ultra Wellness Center is available. Like, we have great nutritionists, we have seven nutritionists, we have five physicians. This is what we've done for the last 25 years together. You can find the link to the show notes for the practice. It's ultrawellnesscenter.com. It's easy to remember. Sometimes guidance and personalization is helpful. Check out your labs at functionhealth.com/mark. You'll learn all your nutrient levels.
And so hopefully that was helpful. I mean, you know, and it's a long discussion, but in today's world, even with the best diet, you know, it's just, it's hard to get all the essential nutrients our bodies need. And supplementation is really essential for filling these gaps and ensuring our bodies function optimally. Now, while pharma drugs, as I mentioned, often focus on managing symptoms, supplements aim to optimize function and achieve and maintain optimal health by addressing nutrient deficiencies and optimizing the body's natural processes, right? Because the dose you need for a deficiency disease is different than you need for optimal health.
Now, the supplement industry can be overwhelming. It for sure can be confusing. But by choosing high-quality, third-party tested products, you can ensure you're getting what you need without the risks of contaminants or ineffective ingredients. Now, as we wrap up today's episode, I hope you've gained a much deeper understanding of why supplementation is so important. Today, we've covered how widespread nutrient deficiencies can impact our health in subtle yet significant ways, and why even the best diets might fall short in providing all the essential nutrients our bodies need. As I mentioned, with modern agricultural practices, environmental toxins, and more depleting our nutrient quality of our food, unfortunately, supplementation has become a really crucial tool for creating and maintaining optimal health.
Now, remember, addressing these nutrient gaps isn't just about preventing deficiency, it's about ensuring your body has everything it needs to function its best. Remember, 37 billion billion chemical reactions, and every one of those needs a co-factor or co-enzyme, which are nutrients, okay? Whether it's supporting your immune system or improving cognitive function or preventing chronic disease, the right supplements can make a profound difference in your overall well-being. I take a bunch every day. I hope you're going to start.
Thanks again for joining me today, and see you next Friday for another juicy episode of Health Bites. If you loved that last video, you're going to love the next one. Check it out here.