Of the top 10 most popular supplements, 4 are a complete waste of your money, and a couple are downright harmful.
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Here are the links to the research papers referenced in the video
https://www.consumerlab.com/news/consumers-returned-to-pre-pandemic-supplement-uses/02-24-2022/
B12
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessional/
Turmeric/Curcumin
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/turmeric
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9353077/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31121255/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30847942/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3598361/
Zinc
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31161192/
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/
Probiotics
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Probiotics-HealthProfessional/
https://www.uptodate.com/contents/probiotics-for-gastrointestinal-diseases
Vitamin C
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminC-HealthProfessional/
https://www.cochrane.org/CD000980/ARI_vitamin-c-for-preventing-and-treating-the-common-cold
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2034519/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15557412
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4135500/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2615459/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2200644
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/ExerciseAndAthleticPerformance-HealthProfessional/#antioxidants
Multivitamin/mineral
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.12767
CoQ10
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9443948/
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/coenzyme-q10
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30580575/
Omega-3
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(20)30985-X/fulltext
Magnesium
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn9257
Vitamin D3
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532266/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2748796
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32219282/
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#Supplements #Health
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Out of the 10 most popular supplements four are a complete waste of your money and a couple are downright harmful but there are some worth taking let’s start our journey with the 10th most popular supplement vitamin B12 and there’s a couple of crucial conclusions here vitamin B12 is required for the
Development myelination and function of the central nervous system it’s needed for healthy red blood cell formation and DNA synthesis when referring to intakes of vitamins and minerals we’ve got adequate intake which is the minimum required to make sure you don’t develop side effects which is not what we’re
Really interested in we want the best which is the recommended daily intake and for vitamin B12 that’s 2.4 micrograms every day that’s the first important Point there’s a significant difference between adequate intake and the recommended daily intake B12 is present in foods of animal origin including fish meat poultry eggs and
Dairy products and there are some people who suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency for example they might not eat foods with vitamin B12 of or they have a problem with absorbing that B12 from the food they may have had surgery on their gastrointestinal tract and certain medications such as metformin or proton
Pump inhibitors can affect b12’s absorption so for older adults who struggle to absorb vitamin B12 or for people who don’t eat meat they might benefit from vitamin B12 to reach the recommended daily intakes particularly because even at large doses vitamin B12 is generally considered to be safe because the body doesn’t store excess
Amounts so while most people don’t need Vitamin B12 supplements there are a group of people who would benefit and that’s the second important Point reaching your recommended daily intake of micronutrients is important and for some people depending on their health and their diet they may need specific
Supplements to do that number nine on the list is curcumin which is also important to personalize turmeric or curcumin is promoted as a dietary supplement for a variety of conditions including arthritis digestive disorders respiratory infection options allergies liver disease depression and many others they’ve got a variety of interesting
Biological properties but it can be often difficult to study these compounds because they’re unstable meaning that it changes into other substances and it’s got a low bioavailability meaning not much of it reaches our bloodstream however a massive study in July of last year looked at patients with arthritis
And it tested curcumin and it found good evidence that curcumin improved pain levels for patients that suffer from arthritis so for patients that I see at the clinic who are struggling with osteoarthritis and they want to explore supplements we do talk about curcumin particularly when it’s paired with another compound called piperin that
Improves the bioavailability but outside of that indication we’ve got good human research showing that there’s no other benefits for example a massive 2019 meta-analysis combining 19 separate randomized controlled trials looking at overall inflammation levels and it found that compared to a placebo two turmeric or curcumin it did not improve
Inflammation there’s also no evidence for improvements in Alzheimer’s disease heart disease or diabetes and when we have a look at the mice lifespan studies from the interventions testing program there was no benefit seen from curcumin supplements so outside of using it for osteoarthritis patients the current research suggests that curcumin is a
Waste now it’s your health your decision you’re free to buy whatever supplement you want I’m just here to deliver the research to you so that you can make up your own decision but in my view that’s the first out of the four wasteful supplements in this top 10 list for
Otherwise healthy people and we haven’t even reached the harmful supplements yet so the next supplement on the list is zinc zinc is an essential mineral it’s involved in many aspects of cellular metabolism and is required for hundreds of enzyme reactions it plays roles in enhancing immune function protein and
DNA synthesis wound healing cell signaling and Division and because of its many functions and the body zinc deficiency can affect the skin bones and our digestive and central nervous systems the recommended daily intake is 11 milligrams and the richest food sources of zinc include meat fish and
Seafood most people in the United States consume enough zinc but for older adults it is a bit marginal particularly in vegetarians and vegans because they often eat large amounts of legumes and whole grains which contain phytates that bind zinc and inhibit the absorption furthermore we know from a 2019 emitter
Analysis that having enough zinc can help improve blood sugar level controls so just like vitamin B12 it’s important to reach your recommended daily intakes however unlike vitamin B12 there are risks from mega dosing zinc it can cause nausea dizziness headaches gastric distress vomiting and the loss of appetite it also interferes with copper
Absorption it’s okay to use a low-dose zinc supplement to reach your recommended daily intakes so for example micro vitamin the multivitamin and mineral that I designed has 5.5 milligrams of zinc in it but make a dosing zinc can at best be wasteful and at worst be harmful number seven is
Probiotics probiotics are a collection of live microorganisms primarily bacteria and yeast that are encapsulated and taken as a supplement the theory goes that our digestive tract is colonized with millions of bacteria and yeast all having complex interactions with our immune system and there might be certain strains of bacteria and yeast
That are associated with health the trouble is many commercial products containing probiotics have not been examined in research studies and the probiotics that have been studied have yielded mixed results for example a Cochrane review of 39 separate randomized controlled trials looking at eczema showed that there were no clinically meaningful differences from
Probiotic supplements it’s the same with antibiotic Associated diarrhea and inflammatory bowel disease in 2020 a system review from the American gastroenterology Association included 12 trials and overall the results provided no evidence that probiotic supplements can help with crohn’s disease it’s a similar story for irritable bowel syndrome we lack high quality randomized
Controlled trials the clinical guidelines conclude that evidence remains unconvincing for the benefits of probiotics for treating irritable bowel syndrome and a number of controlled Trials of probiotics have been published many of which can be criticized for issues in their methodologies overall we don’t yet know the ideal bacteria and
Yeast that should be included in these probiotic supplements plus most of the probiotics that you can buy over the counter the yeast or bacteria have already died because they’re not properly stored most of them should be stored in a fridge or they aren’t properly encapsulated so they are broken
Down in the stomach acid until we have more research figuring out exactly which bacteria and yeast strains are beneficial and for what patients at the moment the research suggests that probiotics are the second out of the four wasteful supplements we simply don’t know enough and it’s highly likely
That if this area of research is successful we need to personalize the therapy once again it’s your health your decision I’m just here to deliver you the research number six on the list is Vitamin C it’s required for the synthesis of collagen L-Carnitine and certain neurotransmitters it’s also
Crucial for protein metabolism and it’s an important antioxidant the recommended daily intake is 90 milligrams and it’s highly unusual to have low Vitamin C levels particularly because at Daily intakes of 100 milligrams or higher our cells are saturated they don’t need any more vitamin C and they get rid of the
Rest so mega dosing vitamin C is not expected to offer any further benefits because the cells will simply get rid of that excess vitamin C but there are potential harms of mega dosing vitamin C which we’ll come to shortly a Cochrane review showed that vitamin currency supplement do not reduce the chance of
Developing the common cold multiple Studies have shown no benefits for cardiovascular disease cancer or mortality rates and intravenous vitamin C worsened the health of intensive care patients but one of the biggest problems with vitamin C supplements is that it blunts the positive effects of exercise so when we exercise we release all sorts
Of oxidants and that’s a good thing it signals to our body that it needs to become more efficient so if we take antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C we blunt that oxidative stress we blunt that signal to our cells and we can see from randomized controlled trials that vitamin C supplements
Diminish the training-induced adaptations within skeletal muscle so that’s the third out of the four wasteful supplements and it’s got a significant risk of harm number five is multivitamin and mineral supplements like I’ve mentioned it’s important to reach your recommended daily intakes without mega dosing and we can see
Benefits of this from a three-year randomized controlled trial involving over 2 000 patients where daily multivitamin supplementation resulted in a statistically significant benefit on global cognition when compared to a placebo but I do want to emphasize this mega dosing is not a good idea so think
Back to the Vitamin C section that’s why I designed microvitamin as a low-dose multivitamin and mineral to help support a healthy diet and make sure that every day you can reach your recommended daily intakes of the different vitamins and minerals the fourth most popular supplement is CoQ10 and it’s known for
Its antioxidant properties particularly within the mitochondria but equally we know that our cells can produce their own CoQ10 so a truckload of Studies have been done looking to see if there are any benefits from supplementing with CoQ10 and the bottom line is that no benefit has been seen in treating cancer
It doesn’t appear to prevent heart disease or have a clinically meaningful effect on blood pressure and regarding brain health studies looking at early Parkinson’s disease have shown no benefits from CoQ10 supplements the final popular proposed benefit of CoQ10 is for patients who take Statin medications but from the research that
We have so far there is no benefit seen and taking all of that research together it suggests that CoQ10 is the fourth out of the four wasteful supplements but the next three are worthwhile starting with omega-3 we’ve talked a lot about omega-3 on this channel but just to give a very
Brief summary a massive study called the vital trial showed an unexpectedly High 28 reduction in the risk of heart attacks in the group who took omega-3 and a Mayo Clinic meta-analysis showed a statistically significant reduction in the risk of heart attacks with a high grade certainty the second most popular
Supplement is magnesium magnesium is crucial for over 300 reactions in the body including protein synthesis muscle and nerve function blood glucose control and blood pressure regulation the recommended daily intake is 420 milligrams and dietary surveys of people in the United States consistently show that many people consume less than the
Recommended daily amounts of magnesium so supplementing with magnesium alongside a great diet can be a great choice to help reach your recommended daily intakes and there are many different forms of magnesium supplements the form I prefer is magnesium torate it’s well absorbed and it provides the amino acid taurine which in a recent
Mice study was shown to extend lifespan by between 10 and 12 percent and the most popular supplement today is vitamin D so we’re going to spend a bit more time on this because it is a bit controversial vitamin D is primarily obtained from sun exposure it promotes
Calcium absorption in the gut and it helps to maintain adequate blood calcium and phosphate levels without sufficient vitamin D bones can become thin and brittle it’s also crucial for other processes such as neuromuscular and immune function as well as glucose metabolism but here’s the scary thing
It’s estimated that a whopping 50 of the population has vitamin D insufficiency because we’re working indoors and we’re not seeing enough Sun the recommended daily intake for vitamin D is 600 international units and this recommendation is based on the assumption that a person doesn’t see enough sunlight so taking an
Appropriately dosed vitamin D supplement to reach your recommended daily intakes appears to be a good idea it’s a vitamin after all however mega dosing vitamin D which is what most of the Vitamin D supplements out there do provides no added benefit and is associated with harm in a meta-analysis of 11 randomized
Controlled trials vitamin D offered no benefits in terms of preventing fractures there’s also good evidence that it doesn’t reduce the numbers of Falls or injuries and doesn’t improve muscle function there’s very good evidence showing that Vitamin D supplements do not reduce the rates of cardiovascular disease cancer depression
Or type 2 diabetes instead there are significant risks from mega dosing Vitamin D it raises blood calcium levels which in turn can lead to nausea vomiting muscle weakness pain a loss of appetite excessive thirst and kidney stones there’s also good evidence that mega dosing vitamin D reduces bone
Mineral density it likely weakens our bones now the counter argument is that you need to take vitamin D with vitamin K2 and magnesium but my overall point is that there’s a lot of noise on social media encouraging people to make a dose vitamin D but from the current research
That we’ve got there’s no evidence of benefit however we do have evidence of harm and this includes the idea of pairing vitamin D with vitamin K2 and magnesium we lack the human research showing benefit instead if you use an appropriately dosed vitamin D supplement around 1000 international units your
Vitamin D levels will be absolutely fine and that’s why no medical guideline recommends vitamin D tests as a screening tool for the general population because there’s no added benefit Beyond supplementing with a thousand International units of vitamin D and I do want to emphasize this again because it always comes up in the
Comments section you’re absolutely free to pay for any test you want and supplement with anything you choose it’s completely up to you your health your decision I’m only here to present the human clinical research and guidelines instead here’s a video on the blood tests that the preventative care
Guidelines suggest and a massive thank you to all of the patrons supporting the channel