Unless your doctor tells you otherwise, stop
wasting your money on these seven supplements. Number one calcium supplements. Huh? I'll bet you, your doctor is telling
you you need calcium for strong bones. I bet you all the milk advertisements you see on
TV, tells you you need calcium for strong bones. While it's true, calcium is a part
of the makeup of bone structure. There is no evidence that
a calcium supplement will actually have any benefit in actually
making the calcium go to your bones. In fact, there's some evidence
that calcium supplements will deposit calcium in your blood
vessels where you don't want it. So you get plenty of bioavailable calcium in the food you eat particularly in vegetables
in dark leafy greens and there's actually a not insignificant amount of
calcium in animal protein and fish. Interestingly enough, people who have
some of the longest life expectancy, the Accialori's in southern Italy are
small fish eaters, anchovy eaters. Sardine eaters. What are they eating? They're eating the calcium in
the little bones of these fish.
And so if you really want to spend
your money on a calcium supplement, buy some sardines, buy some anchovies
that's the way to get your calcium. Number two, multivitamins. So, multivitamins have been around forever. Unfortunately, multivitamins were developed based on examination of 20 college students
in New York City in the 1920s when the federal government was trying to
determine what would be the bare minimum amount of various vitamins and minerals
that somebody should have to avoid diseases. Diseases like beriberi, diseases like
pallegra, which you probably never heard of. And they wanted to find the bare
minimum that would be necessary. So they looked at the blood work of 20 college
students and said, well, this is what these kids are eating and this is what their blood work
looks like and they're healthy college students. So that's probably what we need. And that was actually the basis
for the recommendations of the minimal daily requirement
of vitamins and minerals.
Now, the minimum daily requirement
unfortunately has nothing to do with the amount you need for good health. That's totally different. I'll give you an example. The minimum daily requirement for vitamin
D is about 400 international units a day. And yet the University of California San
Diego research shows that the minimum daily requirement for the prevention of cancer is 9,600
international units of vitamin D3 daily. And that's nowhere near 400 international units. Recently, there's been a very good paper showing the
higher your vitamin D level is in your brain, the better your neurons work. Exactly the opposite
of what a minimum daily requirement of vitamin D would say. 80% of Americans are deficient
in vitamin D,. Regular vitamin C tablets. Now, vitamin C is essential,
let's make no mistake about it. We unfortunately, like most other animals,
do not manufacture our own vitamin C. So we have to acquire vitamin C from our diet. How do we do that? Well, long ago, it's conjectured that great
apes and us stopped making vitamin C because we were always eating vitamin C
living in tropical rain forests. Not only in the fruits, but also in the
leaves of the plants that we were eating.
Guinea pigs don't make
vitamin C for the same reason. They get it from their diet. Strangely enough, vitamin C is made from
glucose and there are five genes that control this five enzymatic steps that
take glucose and turn it into vitamin C. We lack the fifth gene. It's a ghost gene. Why is that important? Let's take rats. Let's genetically engineer them so
that they carry the human vitamin C producing pathway where the fifth gene is a ghost. Those rats live 50% shorter lives than
rats who manufacture their vitamin C. Woah, 50% shorter lives. Now, here's the exciting news. If you put vitamin C in the drinking
water of those vitamin C deficient rats, they will live exactly as long as the
rats who make their own vitamin C. So what does that tell you? We really have to
have a continuous source of vitamin C in our diet. How do you do that? Well, if you just swallow a vitamin
C tablet, that vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin and it will be gone
out of your system in about 2 to 4 hours. So the options are take timed release vitamin C.
I personally take 1000 mg twice a
day of time to release vitamin C. If that's too much to ask, get yourself
some chewable vitamin C tablets or carry around some 500 mg vitamin C tablets
and swallow them four times a day. But what you're looking for is a continuous exposure in your
body to the benefits of vitamin C. But just swallowing one once a day is
really not going to do you much good. Number four, ketone drinks. Okay. Ketone drinks are a hot item. You want to be able to swallow your ketones. Here's the problem. Ketone drinks quite frankly,
taste terrible and they're really expensive and there's so much
easier, cheaper ways to make ketones. And that is MCT oil. So if you're gonna have a ketone shot,
just have a tablespoon of MCT oil. The MCT oil will produce ketones automatically
and it's cheap and you can even buy it at Costco.
Don't waste your money on expensive ketone drinks. Number five, low quality probiotics. Here's the problem with probiotics. The vast majority of probiotics you're
gonna spend your hard-earned money on are probably not gonna make it past the acid in
your stomach to populate the gut that you need. So, if you're going to get probiotics, look
for either spore forming probiotics that will resist gastric digestion, or look for probiotics
that are enteric coated, that resist gastric acid and will dissolve once the probiotics
get to their destination in your intestines. So, gotta know the delivery device. Now, the other thing that's important to
realize about probiotics is that almost all of these probiotics are not native to
our gut and they will go on vacation in our gut if they can get to your gut, but
they'll leave after a couple of weeks.
So, probiotics are something that should be a part
of a continuous maintenance program for your gut. The vast majority though of probiotics don't have
these characteristics, don't waste your money. Number six, vitamin E. Vitamin E,
most vitamin E that you're going to buy either in a multiple vitamin or
separately is actually the wrong form. The wrong isomer of vitamin E. And you should realize that vitamin E is actually
two different classifications of vitamin E.
There are tocotrienols and tocopherols
and there are only certain ones of the tocopherol family and the tocotrienol
family that are any good. And if you take one with a
broad spectrum vitamin E, the benefits of some will cancel
out the benefits of the other. So don't waste your money
on vitamin E supplements. Number seven, iron. As many of you
know who have read and followed me, iron is one of those compounds that ages us. We rust from iron and studies show that people who donate blood actually live seven years
longer than people who don't donate blood. And women live seven years longer than men. Partially because as you know, you donate blood
once a month for a good half of your life, whereas men don't donate blood
every month for half of our lives.
Yes. Occasionally you can be iron deficient and you
should have your iron level checked periodically. Some women have very heavy periods and may
need supplementation temporarily with iron. Men, if you have an iron deficiency, or women,
after menopause, if you have an iron deficiency, that's cause for your doctor to go looking for
why that is. Because blood loss is the cause of iron deficiency as we get older and there's
nothing in you that you should have blood loss. So back to the subject,
that supplements don't help. Recently, you may have seen a big study in
GAMA that these sort of supplements don't help and that they're all a waste
of money. Which is what I started with. Remember, these are studies looking
at the USDA recommended dosages of supplements. And quite frankly, it's no wonder that they couldn't find that these supplements
help because the dose was much too small. So any time you see, these studies,
don't throw supplements under the bus.
Always look with a critical eye as to what the
dose of these supplements they were studying. And it's how much you take
of a particular supplement that's really the key.
Supplements are great for you. As long as you know what the dose
you really need to have an effective is. I think you're gonna love this one. Most of the blue zones, one of the things that I talk about, most of the blue zones eat only
about 10% of their calories as protein..