The truth about supplements, from a doctor

I get asked a lot about supplements, and it's a really big and sometimes even confusing topic

And in addition, there are so many ads that come to us all the time on social media, either clear ads where someone's pushing a vitamin or soft ads where an influencer is just talking about it off the cuff and you don't actually know if it was paid for or not

Like if you want to optimize your health, yeah, supplements are very beneficial. beneficial, but I think for you and me, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a

but I think. So the truth is there are very few supplements that have good evidence-based

medicine to support them. And the term supplement is really meant to be a dietary supplement

meaning something that is supplementing a dietary shortfall. The greatest example is probably

prenatal vitamins. There is good evidence-based medicine to support using prenatal vitamins because the average person doesn't get enough folate and other micronutrients in their

diet to support a real healthy pregnancy Another common one is if you have iron deficiency anemia it really hard to get enough iron from your diet to treat that and so we might recommend an iron supplement So those are what we would consider sort of the kind of evidence examples and that is

not an inclusive list, but that's how to think about it. Then there's this other class of supplements, meaning a reported medical benefit, although

in the United States, supplement companies can't actually say their product does anything

They all have these little FDA disclaimers. but that might be some things that are grounded in pretty good science or good science even

so magnesium to treat constipation. But there's also things that aren't grounded in good science

like black cohosh for hot flashes. Another common one that we see all the time is biotin for hair

growth, but there's no data to support that. So there's a wide range of things that are potentially

have good science behind them and things that have no science behind them and things that might be

kind of in between. And then there are another category of supplements where there's a whole

bunch of vitamins and minerals and herbals and botanicals all lumped together in a product where

there is an insinuation that there some kind of benefit for your organ or for your health like ovary support or adrenal support or thyroid support or metabolism booster or fat burner

And none of these are studied in any meaningful way. And many of them are actually adulterated

And that is one big concern with supplements is you do not know what you are getting

So how do you decide? Three ways to think about supplements. One, is this something you really need to take

is there good evidence to support it? Well, you want to ask your doctor

if the supplement you want to take falls in a good recommendation or places to look would be the CDC

Centers for Disease Control. If it's for a reproductive health issue, it might be the American College

of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. And also in the U.S., the U.S. government has the Office of Dietary Supplements

Number two, who is recommending this to you? Is it someone who's selling a product

or is this someone saying, These are the recommendations of multiple medical societies

So look at the source of the recommendation. And number three you want to take a product that has been tested by a third party For example a USP verified label means that there been third party checking That really the best that we can do because in the United States we don have

the ability of the government to require testing for purity and be very wary about Ayurvedic products

because they are actually very likely to be contaminated with lead, about 20% of them are

especially with products that are for libido, for metabolism, for sport enhancement

those products have a much higher risk of contamination. This is a huge problem, and it's important because, one, you want to make sure that the product

you're taking isn't contaminated with heavy metals or mold or fungi or things like that

but you also want to make sure it contains what it claims

And that's actually why pharmaceuticals have a standard, so none of these things happen

and they get tested and that doesn't happen with supplements