Welcome back to uplift for her, where we dive into integrative approaches for women's health. Today we're tackling a topic that so many of my patients and listeners ask about, supplements with 1000s of options on the market. It can feel overwhelming to know what's actually worth your time and money. In this episode, I'm going to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of how I actually use supplements to help women at my clinic uplift for her. And then I'm going to break it down into a framework that should really help you understand how you might be able to approach supplements in your own health. We're going to talk about what categories of supplements can be most beneficial and what roles they play, things like replacing nutrients, supporting the body's natural processes, managing symptoms and even promoting longevity. And then I'm going to share with you some of my top recommended supplements that have really quite good data behind them that help us understand what supplements are actually going to make a difference. This is going to be a really great episode, and by the end, I hope you'll have a clear roadmap for thinking about supplements in a strategic way that's going to help you make the most of your investments and your time and safety and really get you feeling better instead of just collecting bottles on your shelf. So let's dive in.
Supplements are a really big deal, and I know many, many of us are spending a lot of money on supplements. And what we really want to all know is which ones are going to actually do something for me, and which ones are just a waste of my money. So that's what we're going to go through today. And I want to give a framework, first of all, for how do we even think about this? I experienced this myself, and I know this is how a lot of you are experiencing this is you might go on to social media or a friend and someone says, oh my gosh, I started this great supplement. I've never felt so good. You should try this, right? And so we think, like, well, I want to feel good, or maybe they have a specific issue, like I had the worst PMS, and I took this supplement and now it's way better. I had terrible cramping and now I feel better, or I had terrible perimenopausal symptoms, and now I feel better. And so of course, then we say, well, I have that symptom, and I want to feel better. So then we try this expensive supplement, and we may or may not feel better. I think that even trickier supplements are the ones that you may not feel a difference with. So we read somewhere or hear somewhere that something's really good for us. And we think, Okay, well, I guess I'll take that. And then a couple months into it, you think, Is this even doing anything? Was that accurate? Like, is there really good information here to continue the supplement? So how do we know what supplements we need? When would we need different supplements? And then I'll share with you some of my favorites. I also want to talk about, are there tests that we can do that help us understand what supplements we may need instead of constant guesswork about different types of supplements? Is there some way to actually know what we need? So let's dive in. The first thing I want to talk about is I want to break down different types of supplements. And it's really important if you're ever going to start a supplement that you think about why you're starting that supplement? Oftentimes we're just thinking about symptom control, but really, there's other reasons why we would take it. So number one, nutrients. Are you deficient on nutrients? This is something I talk a lot about with my patients, and a lot about here is, if you want your body to function, then it needs what it needs to function. So I've said this before, but I think of it like a recipe. If you're going to make cookies and you don't have butter, then you're not making cookies. You have to have the ingredients that go into that recipe to get the outcome that you want. And the body is the same way. If you want the body to function as well as it can, you want it to feel good, you want it to have good outcomes, then you have to follow a recipe, and the body has pretty clear recipes for things. We know that there are nutrients that the body needs, and frankly, most of us want all the nutrients, right? We don't want any nutrient deficiencies. We don't want to have a vitamin D deficiency, we don't want a magnesium deficiency, we don't want a zinc or protein deficiency. We want all the nutrients. And that's true, because that's what the recipe is for the body to function. It needs all of its stuff. And so the very first thing that I think about with patients is, are you missing something? Sometimes we start with just a dietary overview, and we can get a pretty good idea there. If someone says, For breakfast, I eat a bowl of Cheerios, and then for lunch, I eat, you know, a salad with no meat on it. And then for dinner, I might have some chicken noodle soup. I can tell instantly that their protein levels are low. Why do I care about that? Because protein is broken down into amino acids. Amino acids is what fuels the body and fuels the brain and fuels the hormones. So that's an example of just talking to someone. Sometimes you can see where those nutrient deficiencies are. I think if someone says, I never go outside, and I live in Seattle, where I'm from, chances are your vitamin D is low. So you can kind of get an idea there. But the very first thing I'm thinking of is nutrient deficiency. And if we can get that from just a dietary or lifestyle intake, then that's a really great place to start. Art. The second place in evaluating nutrients is doing some lab testing. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to test for these nutrients. People will come in and say, can you test all my nutrients? Like I want to know where all of them are, and we can, but not super accurately and not for it's a little bit expensive to do that. So the first thing we would do is test for the nutrients that we know that we can test somewhat accurately, and I'll go through those at the end of the conversation here, but we want to test what we can see the nutrients are. If someone has every nutrient I can test is low, then I can assume that most of the other nutrients are low too. And then we're going to dive into first key supplements to support those nutrients. But also, can we get more nutrients in can we heal the gut so you absorb your food better? Can we get more food into you? Can we get a bigger array of foods? Can we eat more of the rainbow when it comes to vegetables and fruits? So overall, that first category is nutrients. If your blood test shows that your vitamin D is low, if your blood test shows that your B vitamins or iron levels are low, that's a really easy supplement to take to say, Oh, well, I should get more of that. Now, we can always look at lifestyle to improve it by food and other things. But when we're thinking just about supplements, the first supplements that I think about are nutrient repletion. The second category of supplements that I think about are symptom relief. If someone comes to me and they have really severe symptoms that are really taking over their lives, and there's an obvious supplement to help with that, then I might start there, even though that's not very root cause and it's not very specific to their test results, if I know there's a supplement that has a good chance of helping them, then I'm going to be more likely to recommend that supplement. One of the examples of this is chronic migraines. Magnesium supplementation has reasonable data to show decrease in migraines. And I also have a fair bit of clinical experience. I've seen it work a lot of the time. Does it work all the time? No. But does it work some of the time? Yes. So adding magnesium, like a magnesium glycinate daily, or at nighttime, adding electrolyte repletion, those are things that I have gained from clinical experience of seeing this has a good chance to help with your symptoms. Another example of that is actually with electrolytes, is that afternoon crash. A lot of women will do so much better with adding electrolytes in the afternoon, even just a half of a serving, or even just that pinch of salt in your water, maybe a squeeze of lemon to go with it. And some people will notice definite increases in their energy just by adding those supplements. So if you tell me you have a symptom, and I have a clear answer for it, then that is the second category of supplements, I would be mindful doing this on your own, because so many supplement companies will say that theirs is always going to help those symptoms, and then they will post these amazing client testimonials that show everyone benefiting from it. And the way that I would think about that is a little bit from what makes the most sense. So do your due diligence and turn the label over. Look at what the ingredients are. If you don't know what the ingredients are, spend five minutes on chat, GPT or on Google looking up what those ingredients are and what they're really intended to do. Sometimes they make no sense, and sometimes they make some sense. I hesitate to to recommend this too much, but I also want to empower you. You can do a PubMed search, just like I can do a PubMed search. And if you look at the supplement that says it's supposed to help with brain fog, and you can put each of those ingredients into PubMed and say, Does this help? You'll find the data just like I can find the data. And if there's zero data, and the supplement is super expensive, then you might want to hold off and do something that makes a little more sense. So the first category is nutrient repletion. The second one is symptom management, and just know your supplement a little bit. If the ingredients make sense, it may be worthwhile to take that for a little while, but if it makes no sense, then you might spend your money on seeing a specialist and understanding what's really going on in your body before you take three different supplements that are each 40 or $50 a month. It doesn't take very many months before you've just paid for a visit with a functional or integrative specialist. So really think about that before you add supplements. But if there are ones that make sense for decreasing symptoms, it's sure nice to be able to do that and just to start feeling better. The third reason that I'll think about adding a supplement is for a targeted issue that that patient is having. So if they have metabolic problems, they're having trouble with blood sugar regulation, they're having trouble with weight loss, they're having trouble with gut health issues, then I'm going to use those specifically for repairing that mechanism. And that takes a little more skill and expertise to understand. What are we doing, what's the order of operations, and how long are we doing this for? Is this just a supplement we now take forever, or is this a supplement that we can add on fix some other things? Things feel better and then eventually remove. Certainly, working with the practitioner is my preference, because there's actually a lot that goes into it, and a lot of tweaking and a lot of adjusting, and I have a lot of patients that just come in on on many, many supplements with the idea of, like, I guess I'm just on these now, I have a love hate relationship with supplements, because I'm so glad they exist, and I've had lots of really good outcomes with patients and myself using key supplements. Also, they can be a huge waste of money, and even if not a waste of money, they're definitely a huge investment in our health. So you really want to understand what's the big picture here. How am I doing supplements long term? What can I do for my body long term, that's not a supplement. So the third category would be to repair a targeted issue. So for gut health or metabolic health, brain health, joint pain, those are all things that sometimes, by talking to the patient, I can understand. Okay, I think there might be a root cause here that we're going to address with these supplements.
You know, we're all about choosing products that will work with our bodies without causing harm to our bodies. That is why I want to share with you one of my favorite brands. This is a brand I use regularly and consistently in my own life and in my family, and it is just ingredients from their electrolytes and probiotics to their protein and bone broth powders, every product is made with clean, simple ingredients you can actually pronounce and trust, without artificial sweeteners, no fillers, no junk, just real functional nutrition to support your energy, your gut, your hormones and more. Our team uses these daily and recommends them often in clinic, if you're looking for products that align with your wellness goals, just ingredients is a great place to start. One of my favorite things about them is that I don't have to work very hard because they've already done the work. So I don't have to spend time looking at the labels and trying to find the ingredients that trying to remember what I was supposed to avoid. They just do that all for me. So I know anything that I buy from them is already screened and is something that I can trust. Use code uplift for her for 10% off at just ingredients.us. Now, back to the show. And then there's the fourth category of supplements. Are we just supporting natural processes in the body and longevity? These would be supplements that have been shown to improve outcomes generally across the board. Long term, we're starting to see this a little more with creatine. We see some of it with fish oil. We see some of it with one called lithium orotate, that I'll talk about in a minute, definitely with protein, whether you're getting that from food or as a supplement. But these are things that just make sense to support the body in that we may not be necessarily targeting a problem yet, but we're preventing a problem. And then there's the fifth category of supplements that's sort of along those lines, but a little bit more in the biohacking sphere, which would be these supplements that are really for longevity and are really trying to do more than just support the body's natural processes, but really kind of excel at the body's natural processes. And those would be the ones that I would use last. Those would be the ones that I would reserve for. If you have some discretionary income and you you know you're willing to try something and just see how you feel, then those can be a nice bonus. But I would start with the other ones first. So these are the things that I would think about when I'm first coming up to a supplement is what am I actually trying to do? And think about how it fits into these categories. If you're super nutrient deficient, is it worth it to go over here and do these other supplements? Fix the nutrients first, let your body have what it needs and see if the body can help itself. And even before you do a supplement for that, do that with diet, of course, right? Some other tips about using supplements. We want to make sure that the quality of the supplement is as good as it can be, and this can be difficult to tell. I always think about the shipping practices of supplements. If supplements are sent in a crate and they sit in the sun all day, some supplements can go rancid for for example, fish oil. So buying fish oil from a place that you're like, was it sitting in the sun all day? Was it not I don't know. It's just going to be more likely to lose its benefit, and it's then just a waste of money. So know where you're getting your supplements from. With my patients, I use a company called fullscript that allows me to refer them directly to them, and they have specific shipping practices and storage practices, so I don't have to worry about that as much as, say, Amazon or Costco. I think those are okay, but you just want to do a little bit of due diligence, of understanding if they're sitting out in the sun or you don't know what the processes are. You don't know exactly where it's coming from. It may just be a waste of money, even if the supplement itself is good, so understanding where you're getting your supplements from. The second thing would be understanding the actual quality of the supplement. There are various different labels that you can see that say third party testing, and there are different labels that show what kind of organization has tested that third party testing is the most basic. That means that when the company created the supplement, they. Sent samples of that supplement to a party not related to them. As a business, they paid someone to test it and say is, what's in my supplement, what I say is in the supplement. You should always want that with our supplements, because if a company just says, I want to have this in my supplement, and they just say it's in the supplement, but no one's actually looked to fact check them, then that can totally be a waste of money, and in extreme situations, can be quite risky. There was, there have been some issues with melatonin in the past, where there was all sorts of various amounts of melatonin in the supplements, contrary to what the company was saying was in them. So you really want to know that there's at least third party testing, and then there's various different labels that you can see that say, this body or organization tested this product separate from the person actually making money from the product. And then the third idea when looking for a supplement is, do pay attention to price? I think this is tricky, because there are some really lovely supplements that cost a little bit more, and they can have really great benefits for our body. The more expensive does not necessarily mean it's better. So you just kind of want to give that a split second thought. What am I doing here? And the next step that I would add to that is, what's the goal? Is this a supplement that's going to be time limited, meaning I need to take this for three months and then I'm done, because that may be worthwhile to pay a little bit more for a supplement if you know, okay, this is really going to repair something, and then I'm going to stop it. But if this is just your new norm, you want to think about like, can I sustain this? Can I keep this going? And if I do keep it going, what is the result I'm actually looking for? One thing I see a lot with patients is they'll say, I tried it for a month. Well, is that long enough? So if you just try it for a month, but you really needed to try it for three months, then that month was a complete waste of money. So instead of just saying, like, I'm going to buy this supplement, I'm miserable. So and so said it was amazing. I'm on it. I bought it. It's in my cart. Instead, pause and think through and say, Okay, how long am I going to try this and what exactly am I going to be watching for? You've got to make it your own science experiment. Otherwise, it's just a waste of money. If you try it, then try it for real. Take it every day. Keep track on a piece of paper or some sort of journal or something that says, Is this doing what I think it's going to do? For example, there's lots of supplements out there that are brain support, right general brain support, they help with cognitive function, or maybe ADHD or brain fog, and the internet told us it was a really great supplement. Well, instead of just saying, like, Okay, I'm going to try it, I'm desperate. Instead think about like, How long am I going to try this? How am I going to evaluate if it's working, if I'm using it for brain fog? Let me first write down and say, How often is brain fog bugging me. Is it bugging me every day? Is it bugging me 30 times a day? Is it once a week? And then set an alarm on your phone and say, in three months, I'm going to do a little self questionnaire again and say, how is my brain fog been? Do you know what I'm not doing? That thing that I used to do, I used to walk into the kitchen and wonder why I walked into the kitchen. I haven't done that in a little while. Then you can actually know if it's helping or not. So often we just do it, and people say, I don't really think it's helping or I think it's helping. And if we can be a little more objective about it, then you can be empowered to make a better decision of, is this worth it to continue or not? The same thing with, for example, thyroid support supplements. There are a lot of those, and some of them can have some utility. Some of them have some data even, and some of them don't. But if you're going to try that, then, from my perspective as a clinician, I want to know what your thyroid levels are. I want to see your blood tests, and then I want you to continue it, and then I want to see your blood tests again, and then I also want you to keep a journal before What are you hoping might improve? Is it weight loss? Is it brain fog? Is it puffiness? Is it fatigue? Is it? Gut stuff? If you're looking and hoping that it's going to improve something, rate it first, take a second and just kind of think to yourself, how severe is this? How often am I feeling it? How is it getting in the way of my life? What is the specific way that I'm experiencing this? This is what I do as a practitioner. Is I will interview the patient and say, Tell me more. Tell me more about how this is showing up, and then I will write it down. And then at their follow up appointment, I go back and I say, these are your words. This is what you told me that was happening. And oftentimes patients can then say, Oh, this is way better than that. I totally forgot that I was experiencing that. So if we're going to use a supplement, really look at the before and the after. Understand what metric you're using to grade this supplement before you just spend 30 or 40 or 60 or $80 on a bottle. Understand how long you're going to try it, what you're going to watch for, and what would be your cue to keep investing in that supplement or not. So in terms of looking at, am I going to start a supplement or not? Understand the why we talked about those reasons, understand the quality, the shipping practices, understanding what it's actually trying to help, and how you're going to decide if that's worth it for you. And then the last part I mentioned earlier would be familiarize yourself with those ingredients. You don't have to be a chemist. You don't have to be a functional medicine expert, but can you have some idea of what's in it? So this can be where supplements can get a little risky is a lot of patients don't look at the label. They just say, Oh, this one's for my thyroid and this one's for my skin, and this one's for my hair and this one's for my heart. They really have no idea what they're taking. There are ingredients that can be too much. So vitamin b6 is one of the best examples of that. Companies are so sneaky with b6 because b6 can boost your energy and you can feel a little bit better. So you'll find it in a lot of energy drinks. You'll find it in a lot of adrenal support supplements, and you can max out on b6 one of the symptoms that we see with b6 is numbness and tingling in the fingers, or sometimes tongue symptoms, numbness and tingling in the tongue, and some of it's irreversible. So before we just keep taking a bunch of supplements, be the expert on you and take the time value yourself enough to look at these supplements and say, I know what's in this, and I feel good about taking this. If you're not sure, then you need to get educated on that in whatever way you choose, to educate yourself, hopefully with a practitioner that's going to be the safest way to do it, but at least doing your own research to say, Why am I actually taking this? And am I doubling up on any ingredients and then understanding what those maxes would be and how long I should be on this? There are some supplements that really should be monitored for timing that maybe you don't take all the time. There's some glandulars, for example, for adrenal health, that really are not intended to be forever. In my opinion, we shouldn't just be taking glandulars that support our adrenals forever and saying, fix it. They can be a really nice bridge to support the adrenals if they're flailing. But then you got to get off and you got to fix what else is on there. So having some guide of how much of each ingredient is in your supplements, which ingredients are in there and which ones should be time limited, is a really important step when you're looking at spending money on supplements and doing what's best for you.
One of the questions I get asked all the time is, what supplements do you recommend Now, whether this is for daily essentials, sleep support, gut health, what to take during pregnancy. I know how overwhelming it can feel to choose the right products. I have spent hours myself combing through these brands and ingredients, trying to make sure that I can find things that I'm comfortable taking myself and that I'm comfortable recommending to my family and to my patients. I'm then able to get feedback from my patients and family to see, did these supplements actually accomplish what we were hoping that they would accomplish, and this is why I created a curated, fullscript storefront with the brands and supplements I trust most. These are the same ones I use in my clinic and in my own home. When patients say, what do you recommend for magnesium, or what do you recommend for fish oil or what do you recommend as a fiber supplement? All of these supplements are listed in this storefront. If you're curious, just visit the link in the show notes. There's also a link on our website and through our Instagram account to explore all of my favorites in one place. When you purchase through the link, you get 15% off. Now, back to the show the next step to consider when you're choosing a supplement is, if possible, if there is data, obviously that's that's my job more than your job, but we should have an idea of if there's any sort of proof that these supplements work, or if this is just like someone said it would work. A lot of supplement companies will make these pretty fancy supplement combos, and what happens is they say, well, there was a study in mice that showed if we add this ingredient like tyrosine or magnesium or you name it. There was a one study in mice that showed this ingredient helps with this symptom, and then there was another study that showed this ingredient, ingredient B, helped with the same symptom. And then there was a study that showed ingredient C helped with the same symptom. And so what these supplement companies will do oftentimes is say, Well, if one of those things is good, then maybe putting them all together is going to be even better. And then they charge quite a bit of money for it, because now they've just put all of these fancy ingredients into it. But the key is, was there ever a study done on that combo of ingredients that showed benefit very usually, no. Now I'm not poo pooing all of those, because I do use some of those combo supplements and have seen really good outcomes, but I get the benefit of using it over and over and over and getting the feedback of patients. If I'm using one of those combo supplements and no one is coming back telling me how much it helped, then I get to bail on that supplement and not recommend it anymore. But you might just waste your money saying, Well, I'll try it, and then I'll try this, and then I'll try something different. So if you can look and spend just a couple minutes saying, Is there any data at all? Some of the good supplement companies, if you scroll, if you're looking at a supplement, if you scroll down, they will show the data that they have. And sometimes you can see if it's like this ingredient has been shown to help with the symptom, but sometimes you have to dig a little deeper, because sometimes it's one tiny, crappy study in animals that wasn't shown in humans to be beneficial, and then you're just putting your money into something that that probably is not going to be beneficial. So that's probably the cherry on top, like, if you could. Do a little bit of digging yourself to understand what you're taking. I think that's going to be better, but otherwise, working with a practitioner who can really help guide you is one of the best things to do. The last thing I'll say about kind of choosing these supplements is, in my mind, there's got to be a max. Now, I do definitely have some patients who are on more than I would want them to be on but they've got a whole bunch of things going on with them, and some of the difficulty comes if we do nutrient testing and they've got several nutrient deficiencies, you would think like, Well, what about a multivitamin? Multivitamins are tricky because most of them don't have enough of any one thing that they're actually enough to replete those deficient nutrients. So you might be deficient in zinc and B vitamins and iron and vitamin D, but most multivitamins are not going to be enough to to really replete a deficiency. Most multivitamins are just the recommended daily allowance. They're just sort of we all should be getting about this much. So in those cases, sometimes we have to use individual nutrients, which ends up being two or three or four supplements, and then maybe their gut is going through a lot of issues, so we use a couple more supplements to to support their gut, and then maybe they also have severe fatigue. So we're saying, Gosh, I don't want to use more supplements, but also you're having a hard time functioning. So can we prop you up a little bit? Can we use scaffolding to kind of build around you while you're repairing your own systems. Sometimes we will end up with people on a lot of supplements, but in the long run, I hope you understand why you're using which supplement, what the intended duration of time is for that supplement, and what you do at the end of it, do you transition off to a different supplement? Are you transitioning off to dietary changes? For example, one of the supplements we use a lot is probiotics. Probiotics can be really beneficial. I don't believe that we should all need to be on a probiotic the rest of our lives. I think we should eat food. I think we should eat fermented food that supports our our microbiome. I think we should eat enough fiber that supports our microbiome, prebiotic fibers. If we do that, then that's one of the things I'll talk about with my patients. Is coming off of the probiotic and prebiotic supplements. What are you going to do with your diet to take the place of that supplement? We might use that supplement when they're more extreme, when they're they're not making the dietary changes, they're just not ready for it, or they feel terrible, they've got a bunch of symptoms. Can we use those supplements to kind of prop up the body and say, Okay, I'm feeling a little bit better. But then how do you graduate from that? What lifestyle changes can you make? So hopefully you don't need that supplement, or maybe you need it once a week or with less frequency. So hopefully that gives you a good grasp of at least how to approach supplements. Now I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about some of my favorite supplements and the ones that I think have the best data behind them.
Number one, going back to nutrient deficiencies, there was one study that showed a third of women worldwide have some significant micronutrient deficiency. That's incredible. That's a third of us walking around. And honestly, I'd kind of be surprised if it wasn't higher based on just the testing that I do in my clinic, but that's a third of us walking around with a pretty significant nutrient deficiency. Always I'm going to recommend food. We should eat more food. We should eat really good food. But aside from that, the the supplements that have some of the best data are nutrients and micronutrients. Magnesium is probably top of that list that magnesium is involved in many, many hundreds of different processes throughout the body. It's often called a cofactor, which Think of it like if you're baking. I was use recipes if you're baking and you leave out the baking soda of an of a recipe that needs baking soda, you can have all the other perfect ingredients and it will not work at all. And that's kind of what magnesium is. You might have everything else happening and everything else going well, but if you don't have that last little piece that's necessary to make the chemical reaction happen, then it will happen inefficiently or not at all. And so magnesium is one of the main things that has data behind it, and one of the main things that I use to support the body. The thing I love about magnesium is there's different formulations of magnesium, and they can be beneficial in different ways. Magnesium citrate can be really helpful for constipation, but it also gives you a magnesium boost to help with these other bodily processes. Magnesium glycinate can be really helpful for stress, the nervous system, hormone balance, brain health, mental health. It's very helpful in a lot of different ways. So magnesium glycinate is one of the first things that I'll use when we're looking at nutrient deficiencies and just sort of helping the body have what it needs. That has actual data behind it. I mentioned migraines earlier. There's reasonable data for migraine prevention and treatment with magnesium. Painful periods. Has some data with magnesium as well. So magnesium can be a really beneficial supplement, and that's probably I put it up my number one supplement that I recommend to people, but not to everyone, only if you need it. So you want to understand if that's something that you may need. In terms of other supplements that I frequently recommend, another one that I frequently recommend is called Myo inositol, or. Acetal and inositol is another supplement that has actually very good data at this point showing its benefit. So this isn't just a hippie supplement that you know might help somewhere along the way. It's actually really beneficial. And there have been head to head trials with Myo inositol and metformin. Metformin is a prescription medication used for blood sugar regulation and in women, especially in polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. And there's been good data looking at Myo inositol versus Metformin. Metformin is nice because it's cheap, but a lot of people can have gi side effects with it, and it can cause mineral depletion, it can cause vitamin depletion, like B 12 and so with inositol, it's a little bit more expensive because it's not prescription and your insurance isn't covering it, but it can stabilize blood sugars and it can help with fertility as well. One point that I meant to make earlier, that I'll come back to here, is we have to understand the dose that we're taking. So this is another really big issue that comes up is, I might mention Myo inositol in PCOS. And so a patient will go and they'll find some PCOS formula, and they'll look at the back and they'll say, Hey, Dr craigrough told me Myo inositol was so good. And I look at the ingredients, and this supplement has Myo inositol. But we want to understand the dosage, because there have been some studies linking inositol to benefits with thyroid. That's about 600 milligrams in that study. So that might be okay, but the studies looking at Myo inositol in PCOS were 2000 to 4000 milligrams, even up to 5000 milligrams. So that little supplement that has 100 milligrams or 400 milligrams of inositol is not probably going to help you as much as taking the set Myo inositol that was in the studies that was 2000 4000 milligrams. So you want to understand the dosing. And this is where, again, working with a practitioner can be really beneficial, although not a lot of I still think that a lot of practitioners may not understand this as well. So understanding the dosing can be helpful. But I do like inositol. I think it can help with PCOS. It can help with insulin resistance. There are some smaller studies looking at inositol for anxiety and for sleep. Help too. So that can be a supplement that if we're using for metabolic health, but they also have some trouble sleeping that we might choose inositol to do at nighttime instead of in the daytime, along the lines of metabolic health and insulin resistance. Another supplement that has reasonably good data is Berberine. Berberine is a plant extract that can be really beneficial for blood sugar regulation, and there has been data showing it supports blood sugar regulation. It can have an effect on lowering cholesterol and triglycerides and some head to head analyzes, looking at it even compared to Metformin. So that's one that I like to use. But again, the dosing matters. A lot of Berberine supplements have 250 to maybe 500 milligrams, but the data is done on 1500 milligrams, so that's 500 milligrams three times a day. Berberine can also really upset the stomach, so you want to take it with the biggest meal of the day, so it really has a chance to be absorbed with food, instead of on an empty stomach. So that can be really beneficial. There are limitations to Berberine, perhaps how long you should take it. You can't use it in pregnancy. And some other things that we need to know about. I have a couple more for you. One of them is N acetylcysteine. N acetylcysteine is a precursor to glutathione. You might have heard of that before. There is data looking at N acetylcysteine in women's health, specifically with painful periods and or endometriosis. Not amazing data, but some data, and we know that there's enough safety data on N acetylcysteine that it is reasonable to try that in the case of painful periods or endometriosis doesn't work all the time, but it works some of the time. We also know that it can help with fertility some of the time, sometimes it can help with male fertility as well, and improving semen parameters. So that's something that I like to use a fair bit of the time, that also has some data to go along with it. There's new data, maybe matching it to psychiatric outcomes or mental health outcomes as well. So that can be really beneficial. It can also help with liver detox, although that one's a little less evidence based in terms of how much do we do and what are the metrics that we're looking for, how do we know if it's helping? And then the last one that I want to bring up is not the one that I'd use the most, but it's one that I'm most excited about, and that's called lithium orotate. A lot of us have heard of lithium, prescription lithium, like used in bipolar disorder as a prescription lithium orotate is more of a mineral. It's a mineral that is in the ground, like zinc and lithium. Orotate has been around for a long time, and has been used by some for a long time, but it's starting to get its name in the news a little bit more. Most recently, it was in the news with a study from Harvard showing a good potential of decreasing the risk of cognitive decline like Alzheimer's or dementia. That's really exciting to have an inexpensive, safe nutrient that could be used long term to decrease the risk of. A really serious disease that none of us want to have. So I'm excited about that. There's also some good data showing lithium orotate can be helpful in suicide prevention and improvements of mental health, especially depression, maybe ADHD as well. So so some data on that, lots of safety, some emerging data, and that's something that I'm really excited about, because we all want supports for mental health and brain health. So those are some of my favorite supplements. Certainly, there are lots of others that I use. I use some fish oil, I use anti inflammatory supplements like curcumin, when appropriate. But I see a lot of patients who come in on supplements and they don't quite know why they're taking it. They don't know what their end point what their end point is. They don't really know if it's helping them, and that's fine, like that's okay, but it can be expensive and it can be not helpful, and in worst case scenario, it can have some risk to it and some danger to it. So that is what I would say about supplements in the last two minutes. I just want to talk about testing, the way that I approach testing when I'm thinking about supplements is not all supplements are going to have a test that goes along with them, but if we have a test, I'd sure like to use it. I usually start with a basic lab panel that's going to look at nutrient deficiencies, metabolic health markers, inflammatory markers, cholesterol, blood sugar thyroid. So then we can see, based on what you're feeling, what's the lowest hanging fruit, what is your body telling me about what's going on in your with your symptoms. Then I can target that directly with supplements, and I can also say, Okay, your vitamin D is very, very, very low. So we're going to use a higher dose of a supplement a lot of people who will self medicate, so to speak, with supplements, will say, Oh, I already take vitamin D. Well, how much vitamin D Do you take? Do you take 1000 IUs a day? Do you take 10,000 IUs a day? Is that too much? Is it too little? So we where we can, we really like to test, start the supplement, retest, and then understand what your body actually needs. And that's where we really see the great outcomes coming is when we know exactly what we're doing with your body. So that's the number one thing I'll do, is just do basic lab work that's through lab core, your hospital system or quest or anywhere that you get labs done.
The second test that I do like to use a fair bit would be a stool test. And stool tests are complicated because they're often not fully reproducible, meaning, if you do a stool test and then you did one the next day, is it going to be exactly the same? Because it should be right, and it's not perfect, but it does give us a starting point to say what's going on in that gut. The gut can be connected to so many other symptoms that we like to make sure that the gut is doing great. Sometimes I will skip the stool test and just guess with supplements. But in a data driven world, of course, I like to see the test, use the test to guide the supplements, and then understand when to come off the supplements. Those are the really, the two main tests that I use. If I have someone who's very sick or very affected by their symptoms and really struggling, then I might do things to look further at nutrients, like some other blood test or urine testing. That's through functional testing. I might look at organic acid testing. I might look for other chronic infections or stealth infections. So there's certainly lots of other tests that we can do, but a lot of this can be done in a really basic setting, in a really inexpensive setting, just to see where is your body starting off from. So that's what we have to say about supplements. I hope this was helpful. If this was helpful, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments or send me a message. Help me understand what kind of episodes are going to be most helpful for you. I do this 100% for you, and so if this is helpful, I'd love to hear back from you. Also, if you wouldn't mind sharing with a friend or giving us a like or a comment that helps us to continue to offer this education for free, and I hope we can continue to add it to your arsenal of tools that you can use to empower yourself to live your healthiest life, to feel better, to live better and to to be happy. So I hope this was helpful for you and have a great day. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her calm YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
