Best Supplements for Optimal Health & Longevity - Transcript
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy. 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 do you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets? Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale.
And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products. Today, we're gonna 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 2,000,000,000 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 gotta say, vitamins and minerals are freaking remarkable. You know, at the turn of the century, there is diseases like beriberi, pellagra, rickets, syruphthalmia. 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 infinitesly 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 dose 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. 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 none of vitamin d in the short run and 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 kind of manifestations, but they're really important.
Based on this, we're gonna explore some of the most prevalent micronutrient deficiencies including iron, vitamin d, magnesium, and omega threes. 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 weakened 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 over 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 Heaney, 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 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 4 to 5000, more than 10 times that or a 100 times that dose. So in this episode, we're gonna 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 wanna 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 do you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets?
And 2,000,000,000 people, as I mentioned, worldwide have at least one nutrient deficient. It plays a huge role in infant mortality and 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 deciding to have a deficiency in any of these nutrients.
Protein is a common deficiency in developing world, and you see kids with severe protein malnutrition, but it's really important to get a protein. But all although we might not have a deficiency, we still may not be optimal. And I've done podcasts on that, but we'll that's another topic. Now micronutrient deficiencies, like vitamins and minerals, are far more common. And I wanna explain this for a minute why nutrients are so important just to understand the context here.
When you look at your DNA, 1 third of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. Now what are enzymes? Enzymes are catalysts. They're basically a enzyme or a catalyst that converts 1 compound or one molecule to another molecule in your body. They're basically the facilitators of all your biochemical reactions, and you've got 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions happening every second in your body.
Now just digest that for a second. Right? 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions every second, and every single one of those reactions requires an enzyme, and those enzymes require a cofactor or coenzyme. And guess what, folks? What are the cofactors and coenzymes?
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 the effect on 100 and 100 of different enzymes.
So magnesium or folate or other 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 1 third of our DNA codes for enzymes. 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 preformed 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 1000 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 with my colleagues and friends 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.comforward/marc, 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 deficient globally, affecting about 25 percent of the global population. Now the consequences include short term problems like anemia, particularly in preschoolers, when 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 and test are iron deficient. Vegetarians sell menstruating and pregnant women because they use up a lot of blood in either menstruating or you know, putting extra blood for the baby. Vitamin d deficiency, also extremely common.
And it it it it may have depending on how you look and define it, insufficiency or deficiency may affect between 80 to 95% of population, and we're gonna put all the references in here. I'm not making this stuff up. You should have to look at the show notes 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 developing world. Suboptimal levels have significant health impacts.
As I mentioned, suppressed immune system, muscle weakness, fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression, immune dysfunction, and 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 deficiency is also really common. About 80 to 90 percent 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 to life. Now over 20% of adults may be deficient, in the vegans because only about 2% of the population is vegan.
But basically, even the rest of the population can be deficient in vitamin B12. Part of it has to do with 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 because people aren't eating B12 rich foods. Now what about calcium deficiency? Not not that common because the body regulates calcium pretty well from the bones.
But what happens is basically if you don't have 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 50% of teenage girls, 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, 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 from bones, from a can of sardines, which I like. But, anyway, you probably don't like that. I like to eat that. Can of salmon with the bones in. Again, that's how people live 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, 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 for coastal people.
Those are very rich in omega threes. 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 2 times a week. 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 a large national study. It's called the NHANES or National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a big mumbo jump, 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 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 to 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 cofactors. 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. They power metabolism, our detox systems, our energy production, our antioxidant systems, which all are important for our overall health. I mean, your antioxidants need nutrients to work.
For example, you need zinc and copper to activate, and manganese, one of the most important intracellular antioxidants called superoxide dismutase. So nutrients are key for everything. Right? For example, you can't make HEP for energy for your cells without magnesium. If you wanna turn tryptophan from your turkey into serotonin, which is good for your mood, you need b 6 for that chemic reaction.
And you need magnesium, and you need folate. Right? So if you have low in those and they're really common to be low in, of course, you're gonna be depressed. You wanna make thyroid hormones. Right?
To make thyroid hormone t 4, you need iodine. And then to make t 3, 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, like, we call it feel like crap syndrome or FLC. Or worse, they can lead to these long latency deficiencies, accelerated aging, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, depression, and worse. And also they lead to immune dysfunction. That's why the elderly often having higher risk of illness, infection, because they tend to 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 a 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. That's pretty good good amount.
But here's the deal. In order to get that much magnesium, you'd have to eat a 115 almonds, 7 avocados, and 12 and a half bananas to meet that amount, magnesium. And that's why supplementing is so important in today's modern world. There's still some debate about this, but I would say it's largely due to misinformation. So what are the misconceptions, again, the misinformation about supplements?
Now some doctors 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 gonna drink water because I'm gonna pee. What I don't need out? Well, your body use what it needs and then it gets rid of the rest. That's normal. Now they believe, that it's well balanced diet should provide all the necessary nutrients without the need for supplementation, but it's just not true.
The reality of our 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 folic acid or folate from a 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, we 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?
And 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? Now 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 don't 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 cofounded function, 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, Farren, 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 I think the 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 1 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 1 or more of these. And not not at the, 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 we need to think differently about our numbers. So know your numbers.
Get tested. If you wanna jump online, go to functionhealth.com forward slash mark, because there's 300,000 people on the wait list. 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 wanna 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 a healthy brain. Now omega threes 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 2 or 3 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 the higher probability of fertilizing the egg because if it can't swim, it ain't getting there.
It's also essential food for wound repair. 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. I see a lot of iodine deficiency because people are stopping iodized salt, which is how people are 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.
But anyway, iodine is really important for thyroid health. 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 4 iodines, T3 is 3 iodines. And thyroid hormone regulates metabolism, energy levels, overall growth of your body, everything.
And people have trouble getting iodine through diet, especially 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 Norwood snacks. That's going to help you too.
So selenium, also really important for many things. It's important for thyroid function, for detoxification, for immune health. It's an antioxidant. It's a powerful antioxidant. It has 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 ourselves 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 efficiency out there. And if you 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 it from diet, making supplementation pretty important. Now let's sort of take a kind of 30,000 foot view and, kind of look a little more in detail on what's essential for everybody, not just for specific populations. Now, certain supplements are recommended for specific populations like pregnant women, but 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? It's a it's sort of what they it's how they kinda 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 nonessential or what I call conditionally essential nutrients. We still need them. They might you might not get efficiency disease, but I think there are 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 gotta 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 then what are examples of these?
Amino acids. So you 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 nonessential nutrients? Well, it's kinda misleading. 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 they're right from other amino acids. Cholesterol, for example, is something we need, but our body makes it. Creatine, again, something you can supplement, 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 or reverse symptoms. Right?
For example, creatine is 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 the 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's 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 Adderall 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 beside vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Right? We're a nature deficiency, connection and community deficiency, sunshine deficiency, exercise deficiency. And those are all medicines.
Right? Those are not prescriptions you're gonna get from your doctor's office. There's a lot of choices. There's 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 insurance. So let's talk about transparency. Consumers need access to reliable information about the contents and the sourcing of the supplements and the raw ingredients. They need clear labeling.
They need third party testing certifications. And I use company, 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. Like, if it is a 100 milligrams of vitamin c, it got a 100 milligrams of vitamin c and nothing else, and it doesn't have any contaminants. You you wanna look for quality assurance.
You know, look for supplements that have been independently tested by third parties like the NSF, International, or USP Pharmacopeia, or ConsumerLab. These certifications really help ensure that 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 talking 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 it's just kind of sad that 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, they manufactured properly, that have science behind them. And so I created something years ago, 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 100 of the best products in all categories that are highly curated, 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 sort of embedded supplements that my patients and my community can can use if they want.
I'm not not attached to it. Get you something for what 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 3rd party tested for active ingredients and contaminants. And of course, they're going to be free of preservatives, fillers, binders, allergies, colors. I mean, we don't mean like neon blue pills in there.
Okay. And then how do you know what's right for you? So once you kind of figure out where to get it and you kind of understand the science, what do you need for you? Well, everybody is unique. Everybody requires a tailored supplement regimen.
Now there's basics for everybody, for sure, but we can modify things based on testing and your 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 E3 in particular, magnesium and omega 3 fats, and probably probiotics for most of us. And this is a set 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 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 wanna 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 and for personalized diet, supplement, and lifestyle protocols, you know, my team at Delta Wellness Center is available. Like, we have great nutritionists. We have 7 nutritionists. We have 5 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 ultra wellness center.com. It's easy to remember. Sometimes guidance and personalization is helpful.
Check out your labs at functionhealth.comforward/mark. You'll learn all your nutrient levels. And so hopefully that was helpful. I mean, you know, 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 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 assure 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, 37,000,000,000 chemical reactions, and every one of those needs a cofactor or coenzyme, 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 gonna start. Thanks again for joining me today, and see you next Friday for another juicy episode of Health Bites. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
And follow me on all social media channels at doctor Mark Hyman, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy. For more information on today's episode, please check out my new video and audio podcast, Health Hacks. It airs every Tuesday and includes a more detailed breakdown of these Friday Health Bites episodes. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. Now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at doctor hyman.comforward/markspicks.
I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's doctor hyman.comforward/marxpicks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at Delta Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I'm the chief medical officer.
This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Now, if you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultra wellness center.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifn.org. The search find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes especially when it comes to your health.
Keeping this podcast free is part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the general public.
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy. 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 do you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets? Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale.
And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products. Today, we're gonna 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 2,000,000,000 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 gotta say, vitamins and minerals are freaking remarkable. You know, at the turn of the century, there is diseases like beriberi, pellagra, rickets, syruphthalmia. 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 infinitesly 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 dose 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. 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 none of vitamin d in the short run and 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 kind of manifestations, but they're really important.
Based on this, we're gonna explore some of the most prevalent micronutrient deficiencies including iron, vitamin d, magnesium, and omega threes. 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 weakened 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 over 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 Heaney, 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 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 4 to 5000, more than 10 times that or a 100 times that dose. So in this episode, we're gonna 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 wanna 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 do you need just to prevent a deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets?
And 2,000,000,000 people, as I mentioned, worldwide have at least one nutrient deficient. It plays a huge role in infant mortality and 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 deciding to have a deficiency in any of these nutrients.
Protein is a common deficiency in developing world, and you see kids with severe protein malnutrition, but it's really important to get a protein. But all although we might not have a deficiency, we still may not be optimal. And I've done podcasts on that, but we'll that's another topic. Now micronutrient deficiencies, like vitamins and minerals, are far more common. And I wanna explain this for a minute why nutrients are so important just to understand the context here.
When you look at your DNA, 1 third of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. Now what are enzymes? Enzymes are catalysts. They're basically a enzyme or a catalyst that converts 1 compound or one molecule to another molecule in your body. They're basically the facilitators of all your biochemical reactions, and you've got 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions happening every second in your body.
Now just digest that for a second. Right? 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions every second, and every single one of those reactions requires an enzyme, and those enzymes require a cofactor or coenzyme. And guess what, folks? What are the cofactors and coenzymes?
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 the effect on 100 and 100 of different enzymes.
So magnesium or folate or other 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 1 third of our DNA codes for enzymes. 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 preformed 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 1000 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 with my colleagues and friends 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.comforward/marc, 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 deficient globally, affecting about 25 percent of the global population. Now the consequences include short term problems like anemia, particularly in preschoolers, when 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 and test are iron deficient. Vegetarians sell menstruating and pregnant women because they use up a lot of blood in either menstruating or you know, putting extra blood for the baby. Vitamin d deficiency, also extremely common.
And it it it it may have depending on how you look and define it, insufficiency or deficiency may affect between 80 to 95% of population, and we're gonna put all the references in here. I'm not making this stuff up. You should have to look at the show notes 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 developing world. Suboptimal levels have significant health impacts.
As I mentioned, suppressed immune system, muscle weakness, fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression, immune dysfunction, and 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 deficiency is also really common. About 80 to 90 percent 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 to life. Now over 20% of adults may be deficient, in the vegans because only about 2% of the population is vegan.
But basically, even the rest of the population can be deficient in vitamin B12. Part of it has to do with 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 because people aren't eating B12 rich foods. Now what about calcium deficiency? Not not that common because the body regulates calcium pretty well from the bones.
But what happens is basically if you don't have 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 50% of teenage girls, 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, 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 from bones, from a can of sardines, which I like. But, anyway, you probably don't like that. I like to eat that. Can of salmon with the bones in. Again, that's how people live 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, 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 for coastal people.
Those are very rich in omega threes. 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 2 times a week. 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 a large national study. It's called the NHANES or National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a big mumbo jump, 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 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 to 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 cofactors. 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. They power metabolism, our detox systems, our energy production, our antioxidant systems, which all are important for our overall health. I mean, your antioxidants need nutrients to work.
For example, you need zinc and copper to activate, and manganese, one of the most important intracellular antioxidants called superoxide dismutase. So nutrients are key for everything. Right? For example, you can't make HEP for energy for your cells without magnesium. If you wanna turn tryptophan from your turkey into serotonin, which is good for your mood, you need b 6 for that chemic reaction.
And you need magnesium, and you need folate. Right? So if you have low in those and they're really common to be low in, of course, you're gonna be depressed. You wanna make thyroid hormones. Right?
To make thyroid hormone t 4, you need iodine. And then to make t 3, 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, like, we call it feel like crap syndrome or FLC. Or worse, they can lead to these long latency deficiencies, accelerated aging, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, depression, and worse. And also they lead to immune dysfunction. That's why the elderly often having higher risk of illness, infection, because they tend to 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 a 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. That's pretty good good amount.
But here's the deal. In order to get that much magnesium, you'd have to eat a 115 almonds, 7 avocados, and 12 and a half bananas to meet that amount, magnesium. And that's why supplementing is so important in today's modern world. There's still some debate about this, but I would say it's largely due to misinformation. So what are the misconceptions, again, the misinformation about supplements?
Now some doctors 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 gonna drink water because I'm gonna pee. What I don't need out? Well, your body use what it needs and then it gets rid of the rest. That's normal. Now they believe, that it's well balanced diet should provide all the necessary nutrients without the need for supplementation, but it's just not true.
The reality of our 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 folic acid or folate from a 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, we 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?
And 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? Now 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 don't 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 cofounded function, 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, Farren, 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 I think the 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 1 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 1 or more of these. And not not at the, 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 we need to think differently about our numbers. So know your numbers.
Get tested. If you wanna jump online, go to functionhealth.com forward slash mark, because there's 300,000 people on the wait list. 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 wanna 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 a healthy brain. Now omega threes 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 2 or 3 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 the higher probability of fertilizing the egg because if it can't swim, it ain't getting there.
It's also essential food for wound repair. 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. I see a lot of iodine deficiency because people are stopping iodized salt, which is how people are 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.
But anyway, iodine is really important for thyroid health. 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 4 iodines, T3 is 3 iodines. And thyroid hormone regulates metabolism, energy levels, overall growth of your body, everything.
And people have trouble getting iodine through diet, especially 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 Norwood snacks. That's going to help you too.
So selenium, also really important for many things. It's important for thyroid function, for detoxification, for immune health. It's an antioxidant. It's a powerful antioxidant. It has 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 ourselves 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 efficiency out there. And if you 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 it from diet, making supplementation pretty important. Now let's sort of take a kind of 30,000 foot view and, kind of look a little more in detail on what's essential for everybody, not just for specific populations. Now, certain supplements are recommended for specific populations like pregnant women, but 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? It's a it's sort of what they it's how they kinda 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 nonessential or what I call conditionally essential nutrients. We still need them. They might you might not get efficiency disease, but I think there are 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 gotta 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 then what are examples of these?
Amino acids. So you 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 nonessential nutrients? Well, it's kinda misleading. 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 they're right from other amino acids. Cholesterol, for example, is something we need, but our body makes it. Creatine, again, something you can supplement, 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 or reverse symptoms. Right?
For example, creatine is 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 the 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's 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 Adderall 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 beside vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Right? We're a nature deficiency, connection and community deficiency, sunshine deficiency, exercise deficiency. And those are all medicines.
Right? Those are not prescriptions you're gonna get from your doctor's office. There's a lot of choices. There's 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 insurance. So let's talk about transparency. Consumers need access to reliable information about the contents and the sourcing of the supplements and the raw ingredients. They need clear labeling.
They need third party testing certifications. And I use company, 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. Like, if it is a 100 milligrams of vitamin c, it got a 100 milligrams of vitamin c and nothing else, and it doesn't have any contaminants. You you wanna look for quality assurance.
You know, look for supplements that have been independently tested by third parties like the NSF, International, or USP Pharmacopeia, or ConsumerLab. These certifications really help ensure that 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 talking 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 it's just kind of sad that 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, they manufactured properly, that have science behind them. And so I created something years ago, 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 100 of the best products in all categories that are highly curated, 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 sort of embedded supplements that my patients and my community can can use if they want.
I'm not not attached to it. Get you something for what 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 3rd party tested for active ingredients and contaminants. And of course, they're going to be free of preservatives, fillers, binders, allergies, colors. I mean, we don't mean like neon blue pills in there.
Okay. And then how do you know what's right for you? So once you kind of figure out where to get it and you kind of understand the science, what do you need for you? Well, everybody is unique. Everybody requires a tailored supplement regimen.
Now there's basics for everybody, for sure, but we can modify things based on testing and your 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 E3 in particular, magnesium and omega 3 fats, and probably probiotics for most of us. And this is a set 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 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 wanna 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 and for personalized diet, supplement, and lifestyle protocols, you know, my team at Delta Wellness Center is available. Like, we have great nutritionists. We have 7 nutritionists. We have 5 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 ultra wellness center.com. It's easy to remember. Sometimes guidance and personalization is helpful.
Check out your labs at functionhealth.comforward/mark. You'll learn all your nutrient levels. And so hopefully that was helpful. I mean, you know, 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 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 assure 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, 37,000,000,000 chemical reactions, and every one of those needs a cofactor or coenzyme, 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 gonna start. Thanks again for joining me today, and see you next Friday for another juicy episode of Health Bites. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
And follow me on all social media channels at doctor Mark Hyman, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy. For more information on today's episode, please check out my new video and audio podcast, Health Hacks. It airs every Tuesday and includes a more detailed breakdown of these Friday Health Bites episodes. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. Now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at doctor hyman.comforward/markspicks.
I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's doctor hyman.comforward/marxpicks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Farmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at Delta Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I'm the chief medical officer.
This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Now, if you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultra wellness center.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifn.org. The search find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes especially when it comes to your health.
Keeping this podcast free is part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the general public.
