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Hello and welcome to The Own Your Health podcast, I'm Cyndi Lynne and I can't wait to help you step into your health power. Today we're going to talk getting started on supplements. And this is something that I've helped folks with over the years and occasionally it's someone who has never taken anything but has decided, okay, they want to try supplementation maybe for the first time, or folks who have slowly, over time, stopped and started taking supplements and would like to re baseline and start over.
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So if you fall in either of those camps, hopefully you will find this helpful. The first thing you're going to want to do is figure out why. Why do you want to take supplements? Are you not able to eat as much of the nutritious foods you like?
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Are you feeling a little bit off? Are you feeling like something is missing from your diet that you just can't really get a handle on? Or have you been reading about certain supplements and the benefits for you sound kind of intriguing.
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Whatever your reason is, you're going to want to take several things under consideration. So first of all, what is the purpose? What is it that you're looking for the supplement to do? Okay, then I want you to consider the form that it is going to best serve you through.
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So if you want, for example, a multivitamin, and this is a place where a lot of folks start, they feel like there's stuff missing in their diet. It's summer, they've been traveling, they're eating out a lot, they're just, just want to fill a gap potentially nutritionally.
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And so they start with, let's say, a multivitamin. So then consider your use of any pills in the past and what works best for you? Does the thought of a large dry tablet getting stuck in your throat for what seems like hours sound unappealing?
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Then maybe you want a capsule or maybe you want a liquid form. I hesitate on the gummies just because there's a lot of stuff we don't want in those typically. But you're going to investigate a form that's going to be easy for you to take.
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Because when it comes to supplementation, consistency is important and in order for you to be consistent, you want something that's easy for you to take. The next question you're going to ask yourself is, what is in it?
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What is there in this supplement that you want? If it's a multivitamin, does it have all of the things that you want in it? Is it missing some? Are some that you investigate and look at broader or are there some that have fewer nutrients but more of them, more larger, amounts of those, of each of those nutrients.
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Is this going to be, once a day, two tablets a day, one tablet twice a day? What is the dosing? Now you also want to look and see what's in it that you potentially don't want.
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So there's some multivitamins that everything, including the kitchen sink. And if you're not deficient in a kitchen sink at the moment, you don't necessarily want that. You don't want fillers or allergens. So wheat products are, a common one that people look to avoid or that, that, good quality manufacturers tend to avoid because that's an allergy.
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But there's other pot potential allergens. So look at what the capsules potentially made out of, what other ingredients are in it, if it's a gummy form, and see if there's any ingredients that you don't want. So again, we're looking at the form.
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We're looking to make sure that the product that you're researching or investigating has what you want in it and that it doesn't have things that you don't want. Now, you're going to do this research because you want to know, because you care about what you're putting into your body.
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You want to understand why you're taking supplements. You don't want this to be something that someone just hands you and says, well, I'm supposed to take this twice a day, so I do. Because you're going to pay attention to the results. So we want that mind-body connection, we want that understanding of why we're taking what we're taking and what we're expecting from it so that we can evaluate whether or not it's working.
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Nobody wants to waste a lot of money on something that doesn't work. And supplements can be expensive. I've joked before in previous podcasts that there are folks who consider them expensive urine because excess passes through you, and others that consider supplements to be very inexpensive insurance to fill gaps.
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So your philosophy, should you be looking for supplements is probably the second one, probably the one that says, you know what, I think there's some gaps. I think this is a good way to potentially fill it and keep me healthy, keep me owning my health.
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You want to look at where the products are sold. Are they sold, online? Are they sold by the companies themselves? Are they sold by representatives? Do you find them in better quality health food stores?
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Are they sold in your doctor's office, plus or minus. Sometimes doctors aren't real knowledgeable about nutritional supplements. They carry a line because it is a revenue producer. But even if you're going to get a line from your physician's office, you want to be sure and do your own research on it to make sure it has what you need, what you want and that it doesn't have what you don't want, and that you aren't paying a lot extra just because that's where it's distributed.
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So look where it's sold. And you know, a lot of these points are common sense for anything that we were going to buy as a consumer, but when it comes to our health, we tend to be less critical consumers than we are when it comes to shopping for a car or a new stove or bedding.
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We tend to do our research and look and compare prices. And sometimes when it comes to our health, we aren't quite as good. That doesn't come as naturally. So I'm encouraging you to pull out that inner sleuth, that inner consumer, and really be educated and smart about what you choose for your supplements.
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And you can do this. There are resources out there that help you learn so that you ask better questions, so that you can make better decisions for yourself. So you've picked one thing, let's say a multivitamin. For some of my clients, it's magnesium.
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We talked about that a couple of sessions ago. Or a vitamin D K2 supplement. Those are typically where people jump off and start. Those are the gateway supplements, if you will, that get people, well into the path of owning this portion of their health.
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Choose it, choose a form that's going to work for you. Make sure it has what you want, make sure it doesn't have what you don't want. And I encourage you to buy the best quality you can afford. So everybody has their limits.
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Everybody has really an amount they see that they place on the value of this as an intervention. And I want you to get the best quality for that price. And then I want you to commit to trying it for three months.
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Now, if you take something for two days and you get sick, obviously stop. But in terms of seeing the health, the positive health change results that you're typically looking for when you get a supplement, you're probably looking at about three months.
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You can move the needle on vitamin D in three months. But basically, if you are deficient in these nutrients, you have to slowly build them back up through supplementation and your body has to be able to adjust to that.
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So I would say try for three months. The other thing I would recommend is that by far, most supplements are better handled by the body, better absorbed and incorporated when they're taken with food. And that's because ideally, your body would be getting the nutrients from the food you're taking in.
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So those processes are all going on. But you want some. And some supplements can really be irritating to the stomach or really make you feel not very well. If you take, vitamins, even really good, multivitamin on an empty stomach, you can be left feeling kind of nauseous.
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So you want to, typically take supplements with food. You want to take enough fluid so that you can swallow them comfortably. But if we go back to our overall dining recommendations, we don't want to drink massive amounts of liquid with our, with our, with our meals.
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We want to drink liquid in between our meals. We want just small amounts of liquid. We want chewing and saliva to provide the liquid, for our meals. So when taking supplements with your meal, do it with just a minimal amount of water.
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And then at the end of the three months, I want you to evaluate. Now, if you think this is going to be difficult, or if you think over the course of three months, you kind of forget this is where that trusty journal comes in. Write the date. Write what you've started to take.
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Write what you're hoping that the supplement will do or what you're feeling that you're needing. What, what was it that you, that started you on this journey in the first place, and record that. And then put a tickler in your calendar for three months from now to go back to that date and see if you notice any difference.
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Now, you may notice what you've written down, or you may notice other things. You may notice more general health changes, be it in your skin, in your nails, in your hair. Three months is a good amount of time to do that. So I hope this has been helpful.
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It's a good way to look at your supplements. Whether you're on supplements you've been taking for a while and you're reevaluating, what do I want to continue? Is there something I want to upgrade? Or if you're starting from scratch, pick the one. And then after that three months, if there's other areas that you wish to continue to improve on or think that you have needs, or blood tests have shown that you have needs, then, by all means, start up the next supplement.
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Go through the same process. We want to be consistent, so we want it easy to take. We want to be able to afford it on the best quality we can have. Go through the same process with each and every supplement, adding them, one at a time.
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If you'd like help with this, absolutely reach out. And until next week, let's go out and own it.
