"Cut through the clutter! Discover the 7 overhyped supplements wasting your money, and learn evidence-based alternatives for optimal health and wellness, debunking myths and marketing hype."
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00:00Unless your doctor tells you otherwise, stop wasting your money on these seven supplements.
00:12Number one, calcium supplements.
00:16Huh?
00:17I'll bet you your doctor is telling you you need calcium for strong bones.
00:22I bet you all the milk advertisements you see on TV tells you you need calcium for strong
00:28bones.
00:30While it's true calcium is a part of the makeup of bone structure, there is no evidence that
00:38a calcium supplement will actually have any benefit in actually making the calcium go
00:46to your bones.
00:48In fact, there's some evidence that calcium supplements will deposit calcium in your blood
00:54vessels where you don't want it.
00:58So you get plenty of bioavailable calcium in the foods you eat, particularly in vegetables,
01:08in dark leafy greens, and there's actually a not insignificant amount of calcium in animal
01:16protein and fish.
01:18Interestingly enough, people who have some of the longest life expectancy, the Acciaroli's
01:25in southern Italy, are small fish eaters, anchovy eaters, sardine eaters.
01:33What are they eating?
01:34They're eating the calcium in the little bones of these fish.
01:39And so if you really want to spend your money on a calcium supplement, buy some sardines,
01:46buy some anchovies.
01:48That's the way to get your calcium.
01:51Number two, multivitamins.
01:55So multivitamins have been around forever.
01:59Unfortunately, multivitamins were developed based on examination of 20 college students
02:08in New York City in the 1920s when the federal government was trying to determine what would
02:14be the bare minimum amount of various vitamins and minerals that somebody should have to
02:23avoid diseases, diseases like beriberi, diseases like pellagra, which you've probably never
02:32heard of.
02:33And they wanted to find the bare minimum that would be necessary.
02:37So they looked at the blood work of 20 college students and said, well, this is what these
02:43kids are eating, and this is what their blood work looks like, and they're healthy college
02:48students so that's probably what we need.
02:51And that was actually the basis for the recommendations of the minimal daily requirement of vitamins
02:58and minerals.
03:00Now the minimum daily requirement unfortunately has nothing to do with the amount you need
03:10for good health.
03:14That's totally different.
03:15I'll give you an example.
03:17The minimum daily requirement for vitamin D is about 400 international units a day.
03:27And yet, the University of California San Diego research shows that the minimum daily
03:34requirement for prevention of cancer is 9,600 international units of vitamin D3 daily.
03:47And that's nowhere near 400 international units.
03:51Recently there's been a very good paper showing the higher your vitamin D level is in your
03:57brain, the better your neurons work.
04:02Exactly the opposite of what a minimum daily requirement of vitamin D would say.
04:08Eighty percent of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. Regular vitamin C tablets.
04:16Now vitamin C is essential.
04:18Let's make no mistake about it.
04:20We unfortunately, like most other animals, do not manufacture our own vitamin C.
04:26So we have to acquire vitamin C from our diet.
04:31How do we do that?
04:32Well, long ago it's conjectured that great apes and us stopped making vitamin C because
04:43we were always eating vitamin C, living in tropical rainforests.
04:49Not only in the fruits, but also in the leaves of the plants that we were eating.
04:54Guinea pigs don't make vitamin C for the same reason.
04:57They get it from their diet.
04:59Strangely enough, vitamin C is made from glucose.
05:04And there are five genes that control this, five enzymatic steps that take glucose and
05:10turn it into vitamin C.
05:12We lack the fifth gene.
05:14It's a ghost gene.
05:16Why is that important?
05:19Let's take rats.
05:20Let's genetically engineer them so that they carry the human vitamin C producing pathway
05:28where the fifth gene is a ghost.
05:32Those rats live 50% shorter lives than rats who manufacture their vitamin C.
05:40Well, 50% shorter lives.
05:44Now here's the exciting news.
05:46If you put vitamin C in the drinking water of those vitamin C deficient rats, they will
05:52live exactly as long as the rats who make their own vitamin C.
05:57So what does that tell you?
05:58We really have to have a continuous source of vitamin C in our diet.
06:04How do you do that?
06:05Well, if you just swallow a vitamin C tablet, that vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin
06:11and it will be gone out of your system in about two to four hours.
06:16So the options are take timed release vitamin C.
06:22I personally take 1,000 milligrams twice a day of timed release vitamin C.
06:28If that's too much to ask, get yourself some chewable vitamin C tablets or carry around
06:36some 500 milligram vitamin C tablets and swallow them four times a day.
06:44But what you're looking for is a continuous exposure in your body to the benefits of vitamin
06:52C.
06:53If you're just swallowing one once a day, it's really not going to do you much good.
06:59Number four, ketone drinks.
07:04Ketone drinks are a hot item.
07:06You want to be able to swallow your ketones.
07:10Here's the problem.
07:12Ketone drinks, quite frankly, taste terrible and they're really expensive and there's so
07:20much easier, cheaper ways to make ketones and that is MCT oil.
07:26So if you're going to have a ketone shot, just have a tablespoon of MCT oil.
07:34The MCT oil will produce ketones automatically and it's cheap and you can even buy it at
07:41Costco.
07:42Don't waste your money on expensive ketone drinks.
07:46Number five, low quality probiotics.
07:51Here's the problem with probiotics.
07:54The vast majority of probiotics you're going to spend your hard-earned money on are probably
08:00not going to make it past the acid in your stomach to populate the gut that you need.
08:10So if you're going to get probiotics, look for either spore-forming probiotics that will
08:20resist gastric digestion or look for probiotics that are enteric coated, that resist gastric
08:31acid and will dissolve once the probiotics get to their destination in your intestines.
08:39So you've got to know the delivery device.
08:43Now the other thing that's important to realize about probiotics is that almost all of these
08:48probiotics are not native to our gut and they will go on vacation in our gut if they can
08:58get to your gut, but they'll leave after a couple of weeks.
09:02So probiotics are something that should be a part of a continuous maintenance program
09:09for your gut.
09:10The vast majority though of probiotics don't have these characteristics.
09:15Don't waste your money.
09:17Number six, vitamin E. Most vitamin E that you're going to buy, either in a multiple
09:23vitamin or separately, is actually the wrong form, the wrong isomer of vitamin E. And you
09:32should realize that vitamin E is actually two different classifications of vitamin E.
09:38There are tocotrienols and tocopherols and there are only certain ones of the tocopherol
09:46family and the tocotrienol family that are any good and if you take one with a broad
09:53spectrum vitamin E, the benefits of some will cancel out the benefits of the other.
09:59So don't waste your money on vitamin E supplements.
10:04Number seven, iron.
10:06As many of you know who have read and followed me, iron is one of those compounds that ages
10:13us.
10:14We rust from iron and studies show that people who donate blood actually live seven years
10:24longer than people who don't donate blood.
10:28And women live seven years longer than men partially because, as you know, you donate
10:37blood once a month for a good half of your life, whereas men don't donate blood every
10:44month for half of our lives.
10:47Yes, occasionally you can be iron deficient and you should have your iron level checked
10:54periodically.
10:57Some women have very heavy periods and may need supplementation temporarily with iron.
11:03Men, if you have an iron deficiency or women after menopause, if you have an iron deficiency,
11:11that's cause for your doctor to go looking for why that is because blood loss is the
11:18cause of iron deficiency as we get older and there's nothing in you that you should have
11:24blood loss.
11:25So back to the subject that supplements don't help.
11:30Recently you may have seen a big study in JAMA that these sorts of supplements don't
11:36help and that they're all a waste of money.
11:39With what I started with, remember, these are studies looking at the USDA recommended
11:46dosages of supplements and quite frankly, it's no wonder that they couldn't find that
11:52these supplements help because the dose was much too small.
11:58So anytime you see these studies, don't throw supplements under the bus.
12:04Always look with a critical eye as to what the dose of these supplements they were studying
12:10and it's how much you take of a particular supplement that's really the key.
12:17Supplements are great for you as long as you know what the dose you really need to
12:24have an effect in.
12:26I think you're going to love this one.