155 billion dollars that's roughly the market size of dietary supplements in the united states and almost 80 of americans take a dietary supplement that's a lot of people taking a lot of pills should everybody really be taking

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Supplements for most people who are following a relatively healthy diet full of whole foods and mostly a cleanish diet you don't really need supplements and unless you have a nutritional deficiency or you're following a diet that cuts out a specific food group for example a keto or a vegan diet while they do focus on whole foods you're going to miss out on the food groups that those avoid that might be the time when you start to consider having a supplement or perhaps

you have a disorder that reduces your body's ability to absorb certain nutrients aside from those whole foods can provide you all the nutrients you need and more and that more is what's really important here so most of us hear on a daily basis about those essential nutrients that we need they're not the only compounds that are important in those whole foods that we're eating they contain phytochemicals and other organic compounds and all of those aid in our body performing optimally and this is really why you can't really skip those daily veggies and fruits and think that you can just make up for it by taking a pill all right and you know i don't like

Making claims without backing it up by science so let's dive in and see what the science says about all this beetroot has been shown to have positive effects for a healthy lifestyle diet and exercise and that's attributed to its high nitrate content but studies comparing nitrate equivalent beetroot juice and a sodium nitrate drink have shown that beetroot juice is more effective possibly due to the presence of vital nutrients that are inside the beetroot juice similarly


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We All know that vegetables are good for us and especially cruciferous vegetables in fact they're loaded with phytonutrients flavonoids carotenoids and other organic compounds and while those aren't in the nutrition label they still have a ton of benefits for your body and that same thing applies to all fruits and vegetables a common supplement is vitamin c so if you need more vitamin c

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IN your diet citrus fruits will get you a lot of that and then you're also getting this other essential vitamins and minerals along with all of those phytonutrients plus you'll get added fiber when you eat them which in itself is awesome more importantly a lot of these phytonutrients are actually found in those fibrous parts of the fruit which is actually why having the whole food rather than just the juice of a food is even more valuable for you but if you love having fruit juice just throw it all in the blender and mix it

All together and if you don't like citrus fruits there's tons of other ways to get vitamin c naturally it's really prevalent in mangoes and pineapple, kiwis, guavas ,berries and more and an important thing to note here is that you don't get more in a pill and that is because it has a lot of synthetic vitamins in it


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Now i'm not saying synthetic vitamins are bad just because they're synthetic really high level high quality synthetic vitamins can definitely have a place in a healthy lifestyle especially if one has a nutrient deficiency but what i do caution against is to fall victim of marketing claims on bottles and just think you're getting extra of what you need and especially there are some safety concerns when we're talking about supplements that we should consider one well a lot of those dietary supplements are not created under strict fda regulations so the fda isn't really checking any of these as they're getting manufactured you really don't know what you're getting in them they could be contaminated or they could have not even the right amount of ingredients so that definitely raises several safety concerns and then if you start opening that up to potential international sourcing for ingredients you're essentially just trusting that manufacturer without much oversight that you're getting what they're saying you're getting and that that manufacturer is being ethical and not cutting costs at your expense and the other concern i have for dietary supplements is taking too much of that specific mineral or vitamin and that can be harmful for your body for example studies even show that taking too much

Vitamin c from supplements can be harmful but when taking that exact same amount in the form of whole foods it's not harmful for your body our bodies work in a way that we take in these foods and then we pull apart all the nutrients in there the problem with supplements is that you're getting a huge stream of a specific type of nutrient it's not wrapped up in a bunch of other nutrients along with vitamin c zinc is often sold as a remedy for the common cold but research is actually showing that the effects for a common cold and helping that from zinc are actually very minor and that consuming too much zinc on a regular basis can actually have a negative effect on your body's ability to absorb copper similarly having too much iron can hurt your body's ability to absorb zinc too much potassium all at once can cause hyperkalemia and taking too many of any of these could have negative interactions with any other medication you're taking given all of that my stance is until you find from a doctor that you are deficient in a certain type of mineral or vitamin supplementation in this way should likely be avoided or reduced significantly so no to all supplements is that 

What i'm saying well the thing here is the term supplement that term is so broad it's hard to say yes or no to all supplements supplements also include protein and that actually can be a good addition to even a whole food eating cleanish lifestyle living diet and i even launched a protein powder supplement myself called cleanish because i felt like there was a shortage of clean eating delicious and actual nutrient-dense proteins out there for people to use amino acids are another supplement to talk about l-theanine for example is an amino acid that's also found in green tea and it can reduce anxiety plus when paired with caffeine it can help increase your attention and your reaction time if you are someone who works out a lot you might hear about those vcaas branch chain amino acids and you might be tempted to use specific amino acids to aid in your recovery again not a necessity if you're already hitting your protein targets then there's a ton of other organic compounds some have benefits some don't some have great marketing some we haven't even heard of and those all fall into the supplements bucket 


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For example creatine is a supplement that is helpful especially for those who are doing heavy weight lifting workouts and it can even have some cognitive improvement benefits omega-3 fatty acids are in general are a good supplement melatonin the sleep regulating hormone is also categorized in the us as a supplement but it turns out that a lot of people are taking more melatonin than they actually need because of these supplements and as we've discussed before more isn't always better then there's all those plant and herb formulations and extracts and that's basically taking those healthy spices and herbs that we know have benefit and reducing them down to what is actually causing the benefit and we take those and we put them into formulations like curcumin inside of turmeric or apogenin from chamomile or ginsenosides from ginseng all those are phytonutrients by the way again some of these might be beneficial in certain cases but marketing claims are not always if ever accurate 100

And so given that you really want to ensure that you're purchasing these supplements from companies and manufacturers you trust that you feel are creating a solid product they're not cutting corners they're making sure they have your health in mind you also want to make sure they're not going to interfere with any drugs you're already taking that are prescribed from a doctor personally protein is the only supplement i take 100 of the time most of us aren't professional athletes we don't need specific tweaks in our nutrient levels in order to get the best performance

If we're eating clean and we're having a well-rounded diet we're getting what we need so if you haven't already start eating whole foods focusing on healthy mindset fitness and nutrition