Do I Really Need Supplements?

This is a very common question I get asked by patients. In a perfect world, I would say you do not. However, the way we live now with increased stress, work demands, decreased sleep, and increased rates of disease places much greater demands on our bodies, and the foods we consume do not have the nutrients they once did. Depending on the specific nutrient, our crops can contain between 20 – 70% less minerals than they did 70 years ago. Now imagine our fruits and vegetables have fewer minerals and then we further process them along with all the lab engineered Frankenfoods we eat. Many of the micronutrients and other beneficial compounds get removed during the processing of food in an already mineral-depleted source. 

The other aspect to look at is how much stress and load the body endures while performing its daily functions. Take, for example, preparing for running a marathon. You most likely will try to increase your exercise, sleep, take supplements, and improve your diet to prepare for the race. In order for your body to perform the way it needs to for this event, you need extra care and nutrients. However, what a lot of people do not realize is that a lot of our bodies undergo daily stress and our diets do not replenish its needs.

Imagine if you do not sleep well or have constant anxiety, pain, or a disease state. You are most likely out of balance somewhere metabolically, and the increased demands on the body require increased vitamins and nutrition. An analogy I use with my patients is your nutrient status is like a tank of gas. These are totally arbitrary numbers and just used for illustrative purposes. But let’s say your body makes 100 MGs of vitamins and nutrients a day. However, you are stressed all the time, sleep poorly, have a disease, or are training like an athlete. Your body might require 200 MG daily. You may have some reserves of vitamins stored, but if you are constantly running at a deficit, you will start to notice your symptoms increase as you become deficient in vitamins, neurotransmitters, hormones, and other nutrients. Just like if you are driving all the time with your pedal to the metal, so to speak, you would run out of gas faster and need to replenish the gas more often.

The other side of the coin is if you do not have any stresses or increased demands on the body and require 100 MGs a day of nutrients, but your diet only brings in 50 MGs a day. Even though your body does not require increased nutrients due to increased demand, your diet is poor at supplying your needs and cannot keep up with the metabolic requirements for your body to function normally. There is a reason if you eat fast food, processed foods, and other lab engineered foods, you notice you do not feel great over time. The slow depletion of nutrients along with an increased amount of preservatives, which are bad for us, make us feel sluggish. Like I tell my patients, you do not get diabetes from one cookie or one soda, but rather multiple cookies and sodas a week that lead to thousands of interactions over the years.  

Now to answer the original question: Do you really need to be on supplements? I would say yes, but if you are using poor quality vitamins and supplements, then it might be doing more harm than good.

Most of us do not have the greatest diets, along with the fact that a lot of the foods we consume do not contain the same level of nutrients that they did 70 years ago. The other factors to consider relate to how your health, disease state, and the level of demand you are putting on your body through your daily living requirements like work, school, and exercise affect your nutritional needs.

I would also like to state this as well, though: Not all vitamins are created equal. There are a lot of vitamins full of cheap fillers, artificial flavors, and partial vitamins that do not function like a whole vitamin. An example of a partial vitamin is most vitamin Cs we buy. If you look at the bottle, it will say Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Ascorbic acid is not vitamin C, but rather part of the vitamin C complex. I look at ascorbic acid as like an eggshell and the entire vitamin C complex as the entire egg’s contents. Sure, when you buy vitamin C as ascorbic acid you are getting an eggshell, but you are missing the rest of the egg. If you see a lot of parentheses around the vitamins’ names, that could be an indication you are getting partial vitamins and not the whole vitamins.

There are many other signs on how to spot bad supplements. An example of this is probiotics. Most of them should be refrigerated because increased temperatures can kill the good bacteria in them. When I go to big chain stores that sell probiotics, I hardly ever see them refrigerated. Proper storage, like temperature, should be considered when purchasing supplements.

Although there can be many other signs of a cheap supplement, some of the things to be concerned about if you have low quality vitamins are if your urine changes color or you get nausea or heartburn. This can be because the vitamins in their current form are not bio-available for the body to use, or the concentration is way too high for the body to absorb. A lot of vitamins are acids, and acids typically change the color of your urine, or too much acid will give you heart burn or nausea. This is especially true with partial vitamins; since they are not the whole vitamin, they are missing the buffers and balances that make them work properly. To get a better understanding of these issues, I work with my patients through testing and other methods to see if their current nutritional and supplemental regiment could be impacting their health.   

Meet the Author

Dr. Derek Murphy is an experienced holistic Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. Wellness counseling, medical marijuana, and supplements are just a few of the many services he offers in his Orlando-area practice. To learn more about him and his services, contact Holistic Medicine Wellness Center at 407-319-7541.