Your Health Matters!

With apologies to Karl Marx, this page is offered as an aid in weeding through all the VERY many choices of vitamins and supplements available.  It is not meant as the Answer-All, but merely as some perspective and guiding principles.

First, a story.

As a young, naive Family Practitioner my desire was (and still remains, stronger than ever!) to help people get truly well.  I soon discovered that pills and the prescription pad weren’t really helpful and only covered up problems plus put financial burdens on people.

I was pointed toward nutritional solutions but had no formal training.  So I began to look and learn on my own.  People who were interested and/or selling their own favorite brands of nutrients (read:  Multi-level Marketers!) also showed up and tried to “educate” me (read: sign up for my product, I’ll use your “clout” to grow my business). 

But I had some problems with that:

1) Now I know I wasn’t/am not a marketer; I have this aversion to making money (my deeper problem).
2) There was very little or no real science to back up the claims being made by the marketers, though lots of testimonials.  At the time, as a “scientist” I thought there should be good evidence before pushing products as a professional.
3) There was very little to document quality and consistency of the product/s.
4) Yeah, I’ll admit it.  I was scared to go out on a limb with a product when I didn’t know much nutrition to start with.

Second, why care about vitamins and supplements in the first place?

It had become apparent, just from listening to patients, from asking questions, from using my brain, and from seeing the same problems over and over in the same people, that something was missing that needed to be present to generate real health. 

After a quick look around it was soon discovered that the soil in this country has not been adequately nutriented since at least the 1930′s according to USDA  reports.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if food doesn’t have the right nutrients, neither does the food eater. 

Then add in all the processing and chemicalizing of “food” and it becomes obvious there is a serious lack.

Learning more about supplements.

Having figured out that the body had to have the right nutrients to work properly, and knowing the answer had to start with taking supplements because it wasn’t in the food, I then found myself in a huge maze of possibilities and confusing information as to what and how much.

I began a “training” program from experts such as Jonathan Wright, Alan Gaby and Jeffrey Bland, to the point that I was soon able to tell people WHAT nutrients they needed, but not knowing which BRAND to use. 

I let patients  pick their own brands, some using the cheap drugstore brands, other using their more expensive brands.  I then sat back and sort of kept score.

I noticed that:

Some people, who were so deficient in everything, could get help from cheap, drug store varient multivitamins.

Other people found those brands worthless and purchased expensive multi-level products in order to get results.

Time to try to figure out what was really going on.  Over the years, here is what I have discovered.

First, although some people did get results with the cheap store brands, by and large these brands are not particularly effective.

Second, if your vitamin is in a pill form it has a lot of so-called “excipients” and fillers to make the pill remain in a pill form.  Magnesium stearate is an example.  These are chemicals that when placed in the body have to be handled, broken down and detoxified by the liver, putting further strain on the system that you are trying to build up by using the supplement in the first place.

Third, most vitamins are made by only a few manufacturers and then labeled for the various marketing companies or brand names.

Fourth, most mass-produced vitamins are made synthetically from raw chemicals in a laboratory.  That this occurs is based on the belief that chemicals are just atoms and work very predictably.  It denies the concept that synergy and “teamwork” affect the working of chemicals.  Put another way, it denies that chemicals/vitamins/nutrients/plants have intelligence.

Fifth, the “vitamin world” is a HUGE industry with lots of dollars but not the political clout of Big Pharma.  It also, like Big Pharma, is motivated by the desire for profit and is based on on similar less than adequate paradigms (the excipient problem is one example).

Sixth, the vitamin world uses all the marketing methods available, though different companies use different methods.  Some sell through retail outlets such as drug stores or health food stores.  Some brands will preferentially only sell in health food stores.  Some companies, like Big Pharma, sell only through doctor’s offices, though “doctor” could be medical doctor or chiropractor.  Others, and probably most, sell via the network marketing model, using average people (non-marketers – sorry for the bias!) and lots of hype to do their advertising.  Some have changed from doctor’s office only to go to the network model.

Seventh, vitamin production has improved over the years and can now be found not only in pill form but also in capsules/powdered form and in liquid form.  Capsules are powders packaged in a quickly dissolved case.

So, with that background, and without getting more critical and cynical, can we weed through the mess and find some basic principles that will work?

“Is this your final answer?”

Here are my guiding lights for supplements:

1. They must be effective – bioactive, bioavailable, and nontoxic.
2. They must not break the bank.
3. IF you also want to be a business person/marketer that is up to you but IF you want to use a vitamin product to do that, use principles 1) and 2) and consider the levels I have outlined below but NOT hype and promises of wealth to pick a product to sell.

Down to Business

I rank vitamins in several levels based on my principles:

Level 1: “Rock“ – Cheap, questionably effective.
     Less expensive pill form vitamins, purchased either at drug stores or health food stores, fall into this category.  Generally I avoid them.  Most cannot prove or have not documented how bioavailable or bioactive they are, hence the efficacy is in question.

Level 2: “Zirconium” - cheap yet absorbable and thus effective to some degree.
    In more recent years some marketers have figured out that effectiveness is important so have changed to the powder or liquid form.  By combining availability with cheap they have produced a viable, effective product, though the question of toxicity and synthetic source may have not been addressed.  Some are doing a better job of adding food product sourced components as well.  Some of these can be found in health food stores or via a marketing program.

(Warning – my not-so-good marketing hat is going on here.  GBG fits this category.  Inexpensive, liquid, palatable, effective as a good foundational multivitamin.  I take this myself on a daily basis and the link takes you to my affiliate page.)

Level 3: “Precious Stones“ – More expensive, probably effective, some even with  research behind them.
    These supplements are the ones usually seen sold only through doctor’s offices or via the network marketing model.  There are lots of them.  Some of them are quite good, actually.  They often have some research behind them and some very innovative and thinking doctors or scientists who have formulated the product.  They can be multivitamins or single fruit drinks.  Usually they have incorporated large doses of anitoxidants, a good thing for all of us to be taking.  By and large, you can’t go wrong to take these supplements or products, however, as one friend says, you will be paying a high price for fruit juice and it would likely be better just to eat the fruit or vegetable or drink the juice.  Often the most benefit is to the company owner and less to the product user, though that is OK from a business standpoint.  There is still more health benefit that taking nothing or the ineffective supplement.

Level 4: “Diamond“ – expensive, effective, personalized, documented.
    At the top of my list are those supplements that pass all the tests:

• Whole food based
• Organic
• Powdered or liquid
• AND are attached to a program or system that  

1. documents and individualizes your specific need for a supplement,
2. includes an inital program for detoxifying the body so supplements will work more effectively
3. is based on good science that is reproducible
4. is based on your individual pattern of body type and metabolism.

To date I have found only one program and supplement line that meets all those qualifications, though there is movement in the industry in that direction.

That program was put together by Dr. Jack O. Taylor, DC, who did the research and formulated the supplements based on a personal family need. 

When I first had the privelege of meeting Dr. Taylor and heard what he had done I was pretty skeptical (as you can tell by my previous “levels” above).  My first question to him was: “How good is your program and supplements?”

His response was the  very gentle, quiet, self-assured but not bragging, “I have patients that with this approach have been living healthfully for 20 years after a diagnosis of cancer.”

He had my attention!

I began to use his program, basically giving it away, just to test it and it constantly proved itself and brought answers that were missed by the standard medical analysis.  The program is a combination of questions concerning your body functions and a standard metabolic blood test. 

Those who followed up with Dr. Taylor’s vitamins are all doing better, for sure.  Those who continued to use their own supplement had variable results.  Either way, a repeat of the analysis a year later documents the degree of positive or negative improvement.

Note that I have classified the supplements associated with the program as “expensive”.  However, the individual supplements are not particularly expensive, but the average person is so deficient they need a lot of supplements to start to improve their health and the initial cost can be quite significant (though less than medical tests and treatments for illnesses resulting from nutrient deficiencies — but that is another story!). 

Over time the goal of the program and supplementation is to eliminate most supplements as health improves.  No other product I know of wants you to buy less as you go along!

Another thing I love about this program is the underlying concept of detoxification. Not only are you told to detoxify, but an effective means and product to do so is provided and should be done first, before spending a lot of time and money on supplements alone.  Again, this is unique in the industry and is a sound medical approach.

Lastly, the process has been “automated” to the point that all the communication and information gathering, except for the actual gathering of and processing of blood for testing, is done via the internet.  As a result, any person in the continental 48 states can participate and benefit.

Final thoughts.

• All of us need to supplement unless we eat little but organic, raw food and lots of it.
• We need to pay attention to the financial aspects of supplementation.
• Most supplements high in antioxidants, with some research to back their claims likely have benefit though can be very expensive though often come with the “baggage” of marketing hype and “business” aspects.
• One health analysis program that includes supplements is top notch because it provides first an analysis, a roadmap for what supplements are actually needed, a means to detoxify so supplements will work better, and supplements that are actually proven bioavailable and bioactive.  Regardless of what supplements you prefer to use, with this analysis program you can determine your state of health and whether your supplements are actually helping you.

What do I do?

I currently take a “Zirconium” level supplement, GBG 10-in-1 Liquid Vitamin, as noted earlier.  The reason is financial; needed to keep the cost under control for now.  I have also taken the health analysis and was not way out of line.  I watch my diet and work on my emotional state (see my other blogs and Facebook page for more on that!), avoiding as much toxic input as possible.  It is time for me to repeat the analysis to see where I am currently and when the finances improve I will be taking the specific supplements it will recommend so that I can get even more healthy.

If you have more questions or want more information, don’t hesitate to contact me via

email (put “Personal” or “vitamins” in the subject line),

fax (636-447-4771) or

telephone (314-750-6916).

At your request I can set you up to do the analysis and get the supplements.  We run specials periodically.