I take exactly zero supplements. No magnesium, no omega-3s, no vitamin B12, no vitamin D, no vitamin K2, no zinc, no creatine, no protein powder. In fact, I have never used dietary supplements, with the exception of herbs, of course, which I see not as supplements but as sustenance. Herbs are simply nutrient-dense foods that possess various therapeutic properties and applications.
Even when I first began actively studying health and the human body around 2007, I never subscribed to the supplement paradigm. To me, the notion that my body needed a man-made, inorganic substance to function properly was always illogical and inane. How could the health and harmonious functioning of an organic organism depend upon something inherently inorganic? How could an isolated, inorganic compound be recognized and properly digested, absorbed, assimilated, utilized, and eliminated by the organic human body? These are the questions upon which I cogitated often, yet never found a sensible answer to (because they did not, and still do, not exist).
I know that everything the body requires can be obtained through food, more specifically, through plants. Plants, unlike laboratory and/or industrially manufactured isolated compounds, contain an entire spectrum of bioactive constituents that operate synergistically in concert to exert their particular nutritive and therapeutic effects. In other words, nature does not produce individual nutrients. Have you ever seen a tree growing vitamin C? Or magnesium? How about omega-3 fatty acids? You have not, because the nutrients nature makes are prepackaged within a synergistic matrix of phytochemicals that facilitate their digestion, absorption, utilization, and ultimately, elimination. For example, the vitamin C in a plant aids in the absorption of the iron within that same plant. It is impossible to overdose on iron from dandelion greens or calcium from spinach. The same cannot be said of isolated supplemental iron (ferrous sulfate, ferrous fumarate, etc.), or isolated supplemental calcium (e.g., calcium carbonate, calcium citrate), both of which can be very toxic. So can be the highly popularized curcumin capsules, softgels, powders, and tablets. Curcumin does not grow independently in nature. By isolating curcumin from the whole turmeric root, man not only end up with a substance that is difficult to absorb (hence the practice of adding black pepper and a fat source), but one that is also harmful to the liver, the kidneys, and the gastrointestinal tract.
The human body is amazingly adept at storing and retaining nutrients. Whenever a nutritional deficiency manifests, there are usually underlying imbalances and causative complexities contributing to its emergence. For instance, when a person comes to me with an iron deficiency, my initial response is not to simply increase iron intake (iron levels can be effectively elevated with herbs such as yellow dock root, burdock root, dandelion root, sarsaparilla root, goldenseal root, chickweed, nettle leaf, raspberry leaf, and many others), but rather to identify the root cause of the deficiency, which often stems from malabsorption, excessive blood loss, chronic systemic inflammation, or even parasitic infection.
Ingesting supplements that contain isolated vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, or other phytochemicals or compounds on a regular or habitual basis is imprudent and dangerous (although the deleterious effects can take years to manifest). Because these substances have been separated from the complex biochemical matrix within which they naturally function, they lack the intricate molecular synergy present in whole foods, in effect rendering them molecularly incomplete and thus inherently imbalanced.
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