- Be Healthy. As depicted in this diagram, we can change our life for the good by taking care of ourselves. Eating properly, exercising, and dealing with stress alters the course of our life – especially our later years. Nutritional supplementation is an important part of improving our odds for a healthy and active life all the way into our 80s and 90s.
- An unhealthy life is expensive. The average American spends over $150,000 on health care expenses after age 65. If you take care of yourself you can expect to not only benefit from a happier life with less disability, you can have money to spend on enjoying life rather than medications, doctors and therapists.
- Science supports the use of supplements. Although Vitamin D is the latest nutrient to be well established as important to supplement, the routine use of fish oil and a multivitamin has been shown to have benefits in many people.
- A simple example: breaking a bone can be devastating to the elderly. Between 18 and 33% of the elderly will die in the year following this fracture. Exercise, Vitamin D and appropriate forms of calcium can prevent many, possibly most of these fractures. See our blog for more specifics.
Supplements for Wellness
- Everyone should be on some supplements. Research is persuasive that it is very difficult to get sufficient nutrients from diet alone. The reasons for this are complex. On one hand, the nutrient value of our fruits and vegetables has declined over the past 50 years with the loss of soil fertility due to modern agribusiness practices. On the other hand, we know that our routine and chronic exposure to stress and environmental toxins both increases our need for nutrients AND compromises our capacity to absorb and use them. For these reasons, I recommend a good multivitamin (MV) and fish oil for everyone. You should also know your Vitamin D level and if the MV doesn’t keep your blood level above 50 you need to add extra Vitamin D in the form of D3 (which is better absorbed than the more commonly available D2 form).
- What about others supplements? Even if you are well with no significant health problems it is possible that you need extra support in the form of antioxidants, supplements that support detoxification, extra minerals than those that are provided in your MV, and/or essential fatty acids other than those found in fish oil.
- How do I know if I need others? We offer a special service to help you customize your supplement regimen for optimal support of your health. We offer three levels of testing that help establish your individual supplement needs.
Supplements for Health Problems
- If you have a health problem. It is my medical opinion that except in exceptional circumstances everyone should try a supplement or botanical prior to using medication for a health problem. Supplements are virtually always safer. If they don’t help you can always try the medication later. Few health problems need to be treated acutely—those are the ones for which I support the use of prescription medications.
- How do I know what to use? There are a number of reliable internet resources (and many unreliable ones). We offer some in our resources section. We have access to and the capacity to interpret scientific literature that may help you make good choices.
Where do I get good Supplements?
- There are many unethical supplement companies. The industry is not adequately regulated and there are many supplement providers that skimp on active ingredients, do not test to assure that their product ingredients are what they think they are, or do not adequately test for contaminants or worse, heavy metals or other toxins.
- Many, possibly most companies, do not recommend adequate dosages. To protect themselves supplement manufacturers often recommend daily doses that are not effective.
- We recommend a limited number of providers because we know them. Thorne Research, Xymogen, Metagenics, Ecological Formulas, Metabolic Maintenance, NeuroScience, CHK Nutrition, Pure Encapsulations, Allergy Research Group and a few others. We have compared every product we offer in our store to similar or equivalent products among these companies and chosen the product that makes the most sense to us based on ingredients, doses and scientific evidence.
Customized Nutritional Supplement Counseling
We believe that judicious nutritional supplementation is an important component of optimizing our health and vigor over the long run. We also understand that making choices for a supplement regimen can be complicated and expensive. To help our clients make the wisest investment in supplements to support long-term well-being, we offer three levels of nutritional supplement recommendations.
Testing of individual nutrient need is complex. Our nutritional needs differ according to our baseline health, activity, weight, genetics, diet, and exposure to stress and toxins. Although the science is rapidly evolving there is no one best way to identify your unique needs for nutritional supplementation. We offer these three approaches:
- Level 1 $245 We take a family, medical and health history, do a physical examination and a Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis for body composition assessment, and review any recent lab tests done by
your primary care physician. You will receive a written report with recommendations for specific supplements and options for where to get them. - Level 2 $485 Everything in the Level 1 analysis plus:
- Blood levels of ferritin (a way to measure iron stores), magnesium, zinc and vitamins A & D
- Blood levels of HgbA1c and C-reactive protein as measures of inflammation and insulin sensitivity
- A urine organic acid analysis that reveals information about
- Oxidative stress
- Adequacy of sulfation reserves, essential for detoxification
- Markers for neurotransmitter balance and brain free-radical stres
- Markers for adequacy of B vitamins and specific amino acids
- Level 3 $980 Everything in Level 2 analysis plus:
- Amino Acid analysis that may reveal significant patterns related to detoxification, adequacy of the intake of certain co-factors and nitrogen balance and the precursors to all of the neurotransmitters.
- Markers for free-radical damage. Do you have enough anti-oxidants, the free-radical scavengers? Oxidative damage = aging and increases your risk for virtually all cancers and degenerative diseases.
- Levels of toxic and nutrient elements (heavy metals and minerals).
- CoQ10 level and levels of the other important anti-oxidants.
- Comprehensive review of all important essential fatty acids including the levels of the critical DHA and EPA.
How it works
If you are not already a patient of the practice, please register through our Patient Portal. From there you will be directed to fill out and submit your health history and two consent forms. Once we have these materials we will contact you to arrange for your testing and counseling appointment. You will be sent test requisitions and kits according to the level of analysis you have chosen. All blood testing is done fasting, so be sure you plan to do your blood draws first thing in the morning.
If you are not clear about which level is right for you, we are happy to talk with you to clarify risk factors in order to help you make an informed choice. Contact us at (919) 945-0300.
Our Store
Supplements are not regulated prior to sale by the Food and Drug Administration in the same way pharmaceuticals are, and hence can vary greatly in quality. We have conducted extensive research into specific manufacturers and offer for sale in our store those supplements we have found to be of highest quality. Please log-in or create an account and proceed to the Our Store to search our supplement offerings. All patients receive a 10% discount on supplements purchased through our store.
Please note: We respect the fact that you have many choices about where to purchase your supplements and are happy to advise you on products offered from other sources.