Experiencing Supplement Overload

The supplement industry in the United States does about $58 BILLION per year in revenue. They are projecting $100 Billion by 2031. World wide supplement sales are between $200-$400 Billion.

People are taking lots of supplements.

I see it every day in my assisted living homes. We work with A Mind for All Seasons (AMFAS) to test our residents for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Correcting those deficiencies should help with cognitive decline.

Low on a vitamin? A mineral? Take a supplement for that.

Likewise the Bredesen Protocol for dementia calls for testing and a lot of supplements. Although we follow the AMFAS protocol, I hear from a lot of people on Bredesen. Their number one complaint is the amount of supplements they have to take.

Often I have people reach out to me full of good intentions. Or family members of my residents who want to try something on their parent. They have their favorite supplements. And they make pretty strong claims about them:

“X reversed dementia in my Mom”

“Y cured my friend’s Parkinsons”

We’ve tried a bunch of them over the years. I can tell you from my experience that I haven’t seen dramatic differences in our residents from the supplements.

I have seen dramatic changes when we’ve had our residents start eating and moving well.

There’s also quality control. I’ve heard from several sources that many supplements on Amazon are ‘less than pure’.

Supplements in many ways have the same aura as prescription meds. They’re easy. Just take this pill and your pain will go away.

When I express my frustration about there being too many supplements, I often hear something like this:

“The supplements you’re feeding to your residents now aren’t as good as this other supplement” or “this multivitamin supplement can take the place of all those supplements you’re currently using.”

Not “let’s stop the supplements and work more on lifestyle”.

And of course all the supplements have studies, marketing material and testimonials to back them up.

So what’s someone to do? How do you figure out which supplements to take?

Start out by trying not to take any.

Are you feeling good? Why take them? Because you had a lab test come up with a ‘bad’ number? Maybe. Or maybe there is a way to change your diet/exercise/sleep/stress etc. to correct that number.

Take a step back. Breathe. Now think about it. Your number may mean you’re at increased risk of something bad happening.

That doesn’t mean it WILL happen. You should assess the risk and decide if you want to take that chance. In a couple of years the conventional wisdom may determine that number your test showed is perfectly fine.

If you are feeling bad, look for a natural intervention before turning to supplements.

Low on Vitamin D? Get out in the sun more.

High in cholesterol? Change your diet. Or better yet ignore it because there is a lot of evidence that high cholesterol improves your longevity.

Low on testosterone? Lift heavy weights.

A lot of lifestyle changes can make a much larger change than supplements.

If the lifestyle changes are not working, and you still feel bad, then maybe turn to supplements. Take the supplement for a decent amount of time - maybe six months. If you still are not seeing improvement, maybe the supplement is not working and it’s time to try something new - whether supplement or lifestyle?

This is not meant to be medical advice. There are lots of people who are very deficient in some vitamin or mineral. It’s important they supplement. However, it seems to me there are an awful lot of people who take supplements and should be asking:

“Are these things doing anything for me at all?”