Telephone Consultations on Nutrition and Supplementation
In one of my recent nutritional consultations, the patient had been taking 34 different supplements. After my consultation, I cut him down to 6.
After you read this webpage, you will understand that I am a minimalist: Do what is needed and no more. Take only the supplements needed and no more.
Where I differ from most nutritionists (and I do not have my degree in nutrition, but I have been using nutrition clinically since 1976) is in how I approach helping you. I start by getting a diet-diary from you so I have a good idea of what you eat. What you eat and drink is the foundation of your nutritional health.
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Scroll down to skip Introduction
I was not one of those “vegetarians” who occasionally ate chicken or turkey. I did not eat any animals. Period. And I was one of those people who always asked their waiter to find out if the cook used any chicken or beef broth in cooking their rice, soups, etc. And I began doing this back in the 1970s, when this question was perceived as strange.
I became interested in diet and nutrition when I was 19 years old. I had moved to farm country in Missouri and was seeing these food-animals on a regular basis. My thinking was, if it was not in my heart to kill the animal to eat it, if I could not envision myself killing the animal to eat it, I would not eat it.
I was a vegetarian for almost 30 years before adding occasional fish to my diet a few years ago. And yes, I could/would now kill a fish once in a while, to eat it.
I just wanted to introduce myself a bit, but enough about me.. . .
End of Intro. . . . Begin . . . . Almost everyone who has an interest in eating nutritiously, is either taking supplements sometimes, or daily.
And if you are around people who take supplements, you sometimes will hear someone say, “I’m taking the very best supplements you can buy.”
I always find it mildly amusing that so many different brands can each be the very best.
So, just for the record, THERE IS NO BEST !
What there is are high quality products, often referred to as nutriceuticals (pharmaceutical grade supplements) and then there is a lot of cheap garbage that is mostly useless to your body. And remember, not all nutraceuticals are equal.
Supplements verses diet ?
I can not underline enough, the importance of getting your nutrients and micronutrients from a diet rich in unrefined whole foods. An unhealthy diet with supplements is still an unhealthy diet. I recommend against taking pills in the place of whole foods. Supplements (noun) are used to supplement (verb) specific nutrients that are required to help alter a person’s physiology due to a wide variety of causes, including diseases, injuries, deficiencies and various syndromes.
Cost
My attitude has been formed by learning from my wife’s shopping habits. She taught me it is better to have a lesser amount of good quality items, than a lot of inexpensive stuff.
The same with supplements: My experience has proven my wife right (yet again!). I find less quantity and more quality to be more effective with my patients. My experience has taught me to become a minimalist with regards to supplements.
The Best Supplements
So, what are the best supplements? Are they from the very few companies I use ? Are they the most expensive supplements you can buy at Whole Foods ?
The best supplements are those that have been thoughtfully selected, with a particular purpose in mind. They are selected to supplement the particular diet of a particular person. And they have a particular purpose that their high quality gives reason to expect that they will accomplish.
So there are no “best supplements”, but there are excellent supplements that, if properly selected, can accomplish something useful for you. The key is “if properly selected”.
When I discuss nutrition and diet with a patient, and they have already been to another doctor who has sold them supplements, I am often amazed that their previous doctor never asked them for a food diary.
How can a doctor (or anyone) select and determine exactly what to use to supplement your diet if they do not have a very realistic idea of what you are eating ??
In my practice, I can not begin to consider what you need for supplementation until I have a detailed health history and a thorough understanding of what foods you generally eat.
Supplements are just that – a supplement. A common mistake I see made by doctors and patients alike, is to focus on the supplements, with eating habits relegated to almost-insignificance. Sometimes more concnern is given to the brand of supplement than to the actual need for that particular nutrient.
A nutritional plan that minimizes or ignores what you eat is often doomed to failure. An inadequate comprehension of what a person actually eats generally makes it very difficult to know how to recommend the proper supplements. Here are a few examples:
One Saturday morning, I was listening to a nutrition talk show on the radio. Callers were quickly diagnosed with a few questions about their symptoms. The doctor not-once asked the callers what they ate; instead, he spent a lot of time explaining why the supplements he sold were the best ones to help them with their complaint. One woman called and was advised to take his mushrooms in capsule form. This doctor recommended 15 capsules, three times a day, for three months. He explained that it took so many capsules because the mushrooms were encapsulated “fluffly” to retain the potency of their therapeutic compounds. I wondered why he didn’t recommend eating whole mushrooms from the produce market. But then I remembered; he wasn’t selling whole mushrooms.
I recently had a consultation with a patient who had been to a nutritional specialist because she continued to gain weight in spite of her efforts at dieting. (By the way, I am not a nutritional specialist, although I do know more than the average bear .) She was sacrificing all day. She was intent on losing weight. She was failing.
In our discussion about her diet and supplements, she related to me that her nutritionist determined that, since she expelled a fair amount of gas, and often had “stomach upset”, her weight gain was due to poor digestion. He never asked her to write a food diary and only asked very general questions about her daily meals. So when she told him she had a salad for lunch six days a week, he said great, rather than finding out what was actually in the salad. Then, he recommended three different digestive enzyme products, totaling 12 pills a day. He told her that improving her digestion would cause the weight to melt off and proudly told her that he only sells the very best supplements.
This woman was very dissatisfied and frustrated that after months of taking these “best” enzymes, she still couldn’t lose weight. She was referred to me by an acquaintance of hers who had been a patient of mine. This woman was finally able to begin to lose weight when I uncovered several facts about her diet; one being the fact that the “healthy” salad she ate daily for lunch was packed with more than 800 calories. I had her eliminate the cheese & croutons, and we changed her dressing, which removed more than 400 calories. After further careful inspection of what she was eating, other aspects of her diet were similarly altered. I told her no more enzymes. Period. She began to lose weight at a satisfying rate.
There was nothing wrong with these enzymes. She just did not need them.
Last year, I saw a patient with multiple fatigue-related complaints. At our first consultation, she brought all 11 products she had been purchasing from her nutritionist. They were supposed to be improving her sleep, energy, blood sugar, and digestion. This woman had been seeing this nutritionist for over a year and was spending over $350 a month on what he told her were the “best supplements.”
I took a detailed history. One of the points I noted during our consultation was that, in addition to low energy and poor exercise tolerance, she suffered from very heavy menstrual periods. I sent her home to make a food diary over the next several days. Upon review of her diary I noticed that she had a decent high-fiber diet and seemed to eat very little meat. Only one of the 11 products she took contained iron, and only 5 mg. Two of the products her nutritionist recommended were fiber supplements. Clearly, her doctor never bothered to find out what she ate. I removed all 11 products from her nutritional program, gave her an iron supplement, and we scheduled her for 15 sessions in the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber.
By the end of the second week, I had one very excited patient. She could not believe the difference in her energy. She stated that she noticed she was no longer getting sleepy in the afternoon. She had less appetite for caffeine and sugar. Her ability to sleep at night had been greatly improved. The quality of her sleep also improved because her legs no longer twitched and woke her up. She reported her energy was amazing, even to her husband.
In a later conversation, she said, “And I thought I was taking the best supplements. Boy, was I wrong.” I explained to her the products themselves were, in fact, of a very good quality. They just weren’t what she needed.
My last example is a patient who had high cholesterol. His nutritionist recommended he take nine (3 with each meal) omega-3 fatty acid capsules daily for the purposes of reducing cholesterol. The patient told me the fish oil he was taking was the best on the market.
When I analyzed his diet, I discovered he commonly consumed 3 to 4 servings of fish per week, of which 2 or 3 were usually salmon. He ate a mixed green salad and 1or 2 Cliff bars daily. He was under the impression that these foods gave him a high-fiber diet when, in fact, the opposite was true. My recomendations were as follows: 1) Stop taking all fish oil. 2) Eat granola or another good quality high-fiber cereal for breakfast, one that is not very sweet. 3) Add beans and nuts to the mixed green salad. 4) Substitute 2 or 3 fruits per day for the Cliff bars. 5) Aerobic exercise for at least 20 minutes, 4 times per week.
He returned four months later. His cholesterol had dropped from 255 to 215. He said, “I guess that fish oil I was taking wasn’t very good after all.” I assured him there was nothing wrong with the quality of the fish oil supplements; it was just that his supplements were not addressing what his body needed.
In a nutshell, there is no such thing as “the best” supplements. There are good quality and poor quality supplements. My most important point is that a supplement cannot be “the best” if it is incorrect or unnecessary for you as an individual.
Without learning your food consumption habits, the odds of anyone selecting the best supplements, or determining if products are even necessary for you, are most unlikely.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Healing
Dr. Geoffrey H. Saft, D.C.
1100 Larkspur Landing Circle, Suite 299
Larkspur, CA 94939
(415) 785 8215
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