Do I Really Have to Take This?

My practice is based on one important fact.  Food is the best medicine.  This is why my patients walk out the door with a bag of things.  Those things are the food that you neglected to eat during your entire lifetime!  I'm not kidding about this.  Every single day that you didn't get enough greens, or passed up the protein, or snuck a bag of those sea salt and vinegar chips ... is a day that you missed out on nutrition.  Your body stockpiles nutrition, and when you finally develop symptoms, your reserves are in the red. So I want to clarify exactly what a supplement is and why you need it.

Supplements are exactly what they say they are.  They supplement what you are eating.  By the time you have uncomfortable symptoms, then simply relying on changing your diet is usually not enough.  You need a concentrated form for a while as therapy.  During that time, you are changing your diet, so that you will need less of the concentrate and get more from your food.  So a supplement is food.  This means it needs to be from food, contain food, have food listed on the label.  If you look at the label and there isn't a single food listed, then it's just a lab-created version of what some company thinks is in the food you eat.  Stick with food, because that's what your body recognizes.

Herbs are not food.  Herbs are also therapy, but in a more systemic, concentrated form.  Herbs are from plants and are concentrated extractions from those plants.  So if you are taking a multi-vitamin, it should have what exactly?  Food!  Herbs are not food-sources, so if herbs are added, then you are taking medicine, not food.  Homeopathics are highly diluted versions of herbs and other natural substances.  But once again, not food.

So the first step is to take food supplements to fill in the cracks in your diet and to restore your nutritional reserves quickly.  The second step is to add herbs for any necessary therapy that your body requires.  Therapy, either as herbs or homeopathics are designed for the short-term.  So if you've just left my office with a bag of things, remember ... it's just for a little while.

Once you're back on the straight and narrow path of health, then we reduce the therapy and move into maintaining the progress you have made.  Each of us carries our genetics through our future, and our choices in lifestyle including stress levels, toxin exposures, food choices, exercise routines, all determine exactly how much of each nutrient our body needs to be healthy.  If you cannot reasonably get all of these every day in your diet, then supplementing your diet over the long-term becomes the best option.  Don't eat kale every day, then take kale in a pill.  Don't get enough protein because you want to be vegetarian?  Then add protein in a supplemental form.

This is how you determine exactly what you need every day over the long-term.  So higher doses of things and higher frequencies of dosages are only needed for change to take place.  Once the change has happened, you need less to keep in step with your body's needs.

So stick with your recommended protocol!  Your body will thank you.