Are You Getting These 5 Nutrients in Your Diet? (Part 1)
When I started studying nutritional therapy, I remember thinking ‘I will probably never use supplements regularly for my clients.’ I remember saying this to a friend who was already qualified, and much more experienced. There was a brief silence and she said ‘You might change your mind soon.’ I was so adamant that we could get everything we needed from food, and all people needed to do was just to cook more at home.
To be honest, what I was really saying to myself was ‘I’m confused by all the different supplements and surely all people need to do is cook more at home.’
And to be honest, that is still true. Not the confused part (although there are still many more supplements out there that I’ve never even heard about let alone know what they’re for!) but the part about cooking. I still believe that what most people need to do is just cook good quality, locally sourced food at home.
But what I’ve also come to understand is that real life isn’t as simple as that. Even when my diet is absolutely spot on, there’s usually something not quite perfect or missing or I’m still not quite sleeping as well as I should, having as much energy as I should, feeling as sparky as I should. And often that’s because there are nutrients that are only available in such specific foods — food we evolved with but for one reason or another rarely eat now. Organ meats, fermented food, and oily fish are three foods I don’t get in my diets anywhere near as regularly enough, and these contain absolutely essential nutrients that are harder to come by other food, or are tied up in a form our body doesn’t use quite so readily.
In addition, we are all so individual and some people are simply not able to deal with certain nutrients in the way our body would best like, or their body needs extra support of certain nutrients to make sure they can deal with things well. For example, my liver enzymes don’t work optimally to detoxify my oestrogen, so I need to be sure to eat food or supplement with certain nutrients to support the liver. Likewise, my intestine doesn’t absorb folate very well so I need to be careful to ensure an adequate supply of folate from food and in some circumstances, from supplements.
Food First
Having said that, when I start working with a client I almost never insist they take supplements. Because almost always they need to asses their diet and get that on top form first. There is no way of supplementing your way out of a bad diet. So I always start by getting clients to work on getting a good default diet in place for a good month before we introduce supplements. This is because food contains the full spectrum of nutrients which all work in mysterious ways together. This in turn ensures the body absorbs nutrients well and uses them appropriately. If you’re not eating properly but taking supplements, then you really are just investing in expensive piss.
These are the basic things to get in place before starting supplements:
Choose local, seasonal food as often as possible. In other words, always choose fruit and vegetables grown in or as close to your country as possible. Bonus points if they’re grown close to where you live.
Emphasise vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables. Have some form of vegetables at every meal, including breakfast.
Choose to eat as many different coloured foods as possible.
Ensure adequate protein at each meal.
Vary all forms of food at each meal. For example, if you have bread at breakfast, avoid having it again at lunch or dinner. Rotate your grains and carbohydrates, protein, and vegetables throughout the day.
Drink enough water every day.
Reduce caffeine and alcohol intake.
Begin to introduce regular oily fish, organ meat, fermented food and bone broths daily.
There is no magic juju when it comes to nutrients — there is no single nutrient that we can’t get from a good, well balanced omnivorous diet. Unfortunately, environmental, lifestyle and genetic factors are all factors that can affect whether or not we can use these nutrients well.
Choosing Supplements
Whatever you do, don’t buy supplements from the high street. That includes health food shops, pharmacies and supermarkets. If they seem cheap, they are. Unlike drugs, supplement manufacturers are not subject to quality control and so there can be a huge variation in what you’re actually getting. Honestly, supplements should be expensive due to dosage levels and quality of ingredients — almost too expensive to be taken regularly — because (in my opinion) they rarely should be taken forever. For the most part, I suggest clients take supplements for a couple of months and assess their use using a scoring system based on symptom improvement.
Cheap supplements are full of binders and fillers and the quantity of nutrient in them is so small as to be completely useless. You’re likely taking in more chalk than anything else. Sometimes I can’t believe they can be allowed to be sold — for example, vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble, so if they don’t come suspended in oil or in an oil capsule, your body is are almost definitely not able to actually use them. In addition, some nutrients need other nutrients to be taken with them. For example, iron is better absorbed with vitamin C, vitamin D needs to be balanced with K2, zinc with copper. Get this wrong and you could end up with an overload of one nutrient at the expense of another, and this could cause a whole host of problems.
When I recommend supplements I assess the dosage available, the number of capsules needed to get a benefit, whether the client prefers powders, liquids or tablets, how likely they are to actually take them (full disclosure — I’m TERRIBLE at remembering to take my supplements). I only use supplement companies that have been assessed as having Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), a voluntary external assessment of quality. This provides a form of guarantee of the quality of the supplements.
In the next blog post I will uncover my top 5 nutrients…
This post originally appeared on medium.com