Supplements: 3 Myths
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Hello, and welcome back to True Root Health. I'm Dr. Kimberly LeHew, and today I'm talking about supplements Are the supplements or vitamins actually helping you? I want to talk about three myths. Now, I know this can be kind of a dry topic. It's exciting for me, so I'll try and get through it as quickly as possible.
I really want you to hear me on this, because, I think people are wasting a lot of money on supplements there's so much, illusion and just overstretched marketing, and some women really wanting to do the right thing, but not having enough, clarity I was just talking somebody just yesterday she was telling me, she goes into the kitchen, she sees her omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium, adrenal support, mitochondria, collagen, all the buzzwords, what people are talking about taking. And they have these wonderful stories, and there's great [00:01:00] marketing around them to make you think you really need them, and that they'll really help you.
And I think that's where the illusion is. It's disheartening. And it's not that supplements are bad, because I love supplements. I take them. But it's with discretion and knowing what's going on. It's knowing the background this is how I work , with my clients, is to know their background and their history.
Because not everyone is good for every supplement, and I think that's probably the big misconception. And then you get this buzz topic like colostrum or collagen or peptides, or buzzwords like mitochondria, feeding your bacteria, and they say all the right things, but the supplement is not capable.
It's not doing it, or your body's not taking it in. It's not being resourced out to where it needs to go to the body, all of these different [00:02:00] things. So let's get into the three myths, because this industry, this $150 billion industry, has just, doubled would be accurate since 2019, since truth has come out and people are starting to question the route they're taking to get healthy.
They're, questioning the medical industry. And so with that, they rebounded by saying, "Hey, wait a minute. People want natural. Let's go the natural route. Let's start making our own supplements." And if you know anything about supplements, especially when it comes to vitamins, man will never be able to produce a vitamin in a lab, ever,
They've jumped on that bandwagon because people want it, and , people are turning away from pharmaceuticals for even more serious chronic conditions, because they're starting to understand that God gave us the answers for these conditions. He supplied [00:03:00] us with so many, nutritional value herbs, plants, and botanicals, and ways that can support our bodies that are not harming our bodies, but actually helping.
And a pharmaceutical, yes, it may say it's doing one thing to help you, but it's doing about 15 other things that they say really quickly at the end of an ad that are against your health. Before I go further, what I'm talking about here are the three biggest myths I'm seeing, and then I'll tell you the truth about how you can navigate yourself through the supplement world.
So, okay, let's dive in. Number one is supplements can make up for what food should be doing. A lot of people will think that their energy is low or their digestion's off, and they're going to take a supplement to fix a problem. What I will tell you is that a supplement cannot fix your foundational body [00:04:00] needs.
It can help in a transition stage. Maybe you're going through a season of stress. Maybe your immune, is weak because things are going on in your life, and you want to support that way. Maybe you're supporting yourself after a surgery. Maybe, you've had issues with the pancreas, and you're taking things to help, bile, for the gallbladder.
There's all these different reasons, right? And it's not that the supplement can't help. But it, is there to help you fill a gap, and once you get your foundation right, then that's when you start assessing, how can I use supplements? Because that's what it is. It supplements a naturally healthy body and lifestyle that is performing optimally.
Well, wait a minute, I'm taking the supplement to help me perform optimally. Well, are you? Because some supplements will actually come in and take away the job that the body is supposed to be doing, [00:05:00] therefore weakening that process. And so you have to be careful what you're taking. And w- we see this a lot with hydrochloric acid in the stomach.
People aren't digesting their foods well, so they'll start taking hydrochloric acid And then your body loses that ability to have the, the signaling take in effect so it can release hydrochloric acid into the stomach or possibly the pancreas. It's receiving digestive enzymes from outside of the body, and therefore it loses that demand to produce it and then it starts performing, , very low compared to if you would've supported your body in a different way.
So we don't want to outsource a function God designed our bodies to perform. And from my point of view is Let's look at what [00:06:00] you're eating, how you're supporting the body, and what the body is doing, and then we adjust it from there. It's they're eating live foods, they're eating whole foods, the body recognizes the food that carries enzymatic activity, it has bio photons, it has life force.
These are things you're not going to find in a capsule or a supplement. And these are the things that the early pioneers taught me early on, like Shelton and Jennings, and this is where Dr. Royal Lee focused on and what he saw in nutritionals and what was missing when people had deficiencies.
He knew he could not replicate what God had made, and so he started working with whole food supplements. That's how Standard Process was created. This isn't a commercial for them, but it is really... Like, it's, it's a l- it's a standard for me to look at other supplements to realize that, wait a minute, is this an isolate?
Is this a th- a synthetic? [00:07:00] And is it coming from the whole food? Because let's just say you have lycopene. Oh, all the beautiful things that come from lycopene. Well, that's in a tomato, so they extract the lycopene out and wanna put it in a supplement to give to you, and your body is not going to take that lycopene and treat it as if you ate a tomato.
Why? Because all the synergistic pieces aren't there. Man does not even know how lycopene serves the body to the extent that it does. And so when man tries to reproduce synthetics and isolates in vi- in vitamins and supplements that people are taking, it is not doing the job unless it's coming from the food.
This is probably one of the biggest myths out there. You cannot take an isolate or a synthetic and get the results that you're getting from a whole food. So scripture says, [00:08:00] Genesis 1:29, um, this is Genesis 1 verse 29, "God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with a seed in it.
They will be yours for food.'" The seed is reproducing what only God can produce. So God's first prescription was food, and that is how supplements really need to set the standard for how they come to you as a consumer. Not as a little isolate, not as something with, , th- these synthetics that are put into- a nutritional.
, It's not going to deliver the same quality to your body. Your body's not going to be able to use it. Your body's gonna have a hard time recognizing it. And here's the other piece. Let's just say you have a [00:09:00] supplement, and you're looking at it. It says it has vitamin C in there, and next to it in parentheses it says ascorbic acid.
It's not the whole vitamin. So you're not getting all the synergists of a vitamin C. You're not getting the immune boost that you should from vitamin C. That's a fake. That's an imposter. Ascorbic acid isn't even the most powerful part of vitamin C.
You're not getting the other eight components, and when it runs that pathway in your body has to make up for all the pieces that aren't there. And so it starts robbing you in other places to try and give a complete nutritional vitamin C so going back to what is the point of this?
Supplements cannot make up for your food. Yes, they supplement your diet and your lifestyle and your health, but don't let it [00:10:00] replace a strong foundation of health. Let it be there to assist and make sure that it is coming from food, a whole food. Now, when I say whole food, I'm not talking about the grocery store whole food.
I'm talking about whole food supplements, like the tomato is there, and it's g- ground down in its natural form without being harmed and put into a capsule. It's not made in a lab. There's not synthetics they're not trying to isolate it and pull out a piece of the tomato like lycopene to give it to you and you're gonna get the benefits.
Does not work that way. So just make sure when you're looking at your supplements, they're coming from whole foods, okay, that was a long explanation I can really get into this, and I could spend all day talking about it, so I apologize. I'll get quicker on this next myth, which is the quality.
Okay, so [00:11:00] I know women that are so into their health that they want the best, and they, they read the labels, and they're like, "Wait a minute. I checked the ingredient list. This, product has third-party testing. I see the testimonials. They avoided the fillers. They avoided the artificial colors and the cheap binders."
And she's really done her homework, yet the label is only the beginning of the conversation. So a label tells you what is in the product at the point of, of testing the first time. What it does not tell you, and what most companies do not voluntarily disclose, is that- the ingredient, when it actually gets to you in the form that you're taking, is the body able to break it down?
Is it functional? Is it even what the label says at that point? And in America, the boundaries [00:12:00] around supplement labeling are very broad and vast, and it's not closely monitored. It's left up to the manufacturer. And they're going to obviously put on there their best presentation, but I don't believe it's the full truth.
And here is what you s- have to start to look for and do your investigation around is, number one, the quantity, the dose on the label. It may be clinically meaningful, or it may be a very teeny, tiny amount so they can put that ingredient on the label. Because when you're looking, let's say, at herbs, like ashwagandha and they'll put it on the label, that's a very expensive herb, and you need, gosh, I, I believe it's somewhere b- like 150 to 300 milligrams
and they'll have .5 milligrams. It's not even going to give you a- any type of result because it's called fairy dusting, and [00:13:00] that's when they put in just a tiny amount, and you think, "I got this. I got this great ingredient in here.
I got this great herb." But yet the quantity alone is not enough. And even a meaningful, a dose means nothing if what's in the bottle comes from a compromised source. So that leads me to the next point, that what's the quality of the source? Where did this herb, this plant, this, this tomato come from?
What are the growing conditions? What's the soil? That's huge, and I know that became a big buzzword. Well, is the soil mineral rich, or is it depleted? Is there a way to find out? And that's where you have to go back to a company that you know is spending the time and showing you the proof that they have mineral-rich soil And then you have to look at when was the plant harvested and what part of the plant was used.
These questions are rarely answered, and that's where you have to start doing a lot of, of digging, or you really understand a company and its integrity, a trust developed there that you [00:14:00] can start to rely on them because you know that they care enough to display what's going on behind the scenes,
they take honor in knowing that what they're doing is for you, even though it's very expensive to do it. And then that leads me to manufacturing. How is the ingredient processed after the harvest? Heat destroys enzymatic activity. That's the one of the most important pieces of nutritionals, and it denatures the co-factors, so they're not helping.
They're not helping your body put all of this together to come up with a viable source of, of nutrition for you And here's what most people don't know is that a supplement, it can be tested for nutrient content at the very beginning of the manufacturing process, and it can stand true. But then after the heat or the time or the pressure or the packaging or the, the storage unit or whatever is happening to it, that's when it can start to degrade [00:15:00] what is in the bottle, and actually by the time you get it, it is of no value to you or very little value.
And that's another thing, what I loved about Standard Process is that they do show you the process of it. That was one of the biggest selling points to me in the beginning was they were really transparent about how they take a plant from a, a beautiful acres and acres of gardens that they have, and how they rotate their crops and how they really pour into their soil, because their product is only as good as their soil can be.
And then the manufacturing, the processing, and all of it is, is documented and shown, and they know what, what field that particular bottle came from. That's how I think companies nowadays have to operate because if, you're in America, you have no idea what you're getting.
So you have to know [00:16:00] what the company is about how they process manufacture label and store and all of these different parts of making a supplement. It sounds like a lot, that's why you have to find the companies that really take you behind the scenes and they are going to be more expensive because it takes a lot of money to do that.
This brings me to a point, there's physicians and even people like chiropractors and clinics, health clinics that the doctor will put their name on a bottle because they think it looks prestigious and they know what they're doing.
And I... It's not to say something bad. I don't wanna sound like that, but the quality, I can tell by the label to me, would be a junk supplement. I would never put that in my body. And so you have to look at the labels with very investigative eyes and do your research on the companies that you're buying from.
And [00:17:00] scripture says, Proverbs 14:15, "The naive believers believe everything, but the sensible man considers his steps." So discernment is very, very important here. It is wisdom, and when it comes to what you put in your body that God designed, He knew what He was doing. He knew that it had to come from The whole food.
And the people handling the whole food had to be very meticulous in how they hand it over to you as a consumer. Okay, let's get into myth number three, which is the marketing says it works, so it must work for me. My friends are taking it. They're talking about their skin looking better. Well, this is where real danger starts to happen because
And I say danger with full intention because this myth is just ... It's not just costing you money, it's, it could very well be disturbing your health. We see pictures on marketing photos of before and [00:18:00] afters, or we see an influencer who drinks, let's just say collagen every morning, and she's "Look at my skin now."
You have to realize what's going on in this whole picture. Now, I'm not saying all influencers are bad and don't believe them. I'm not saying that, 'cause I'm sure there's some good ones that truly have experienced positive results from what they're taking. But marketing is about selling. It's very compelling.
And testimonials can be very convincing. But are they receiving money from their sales? Is this really a good before and after? And do you trust this person? So these are the parts that you have to really look at because let's just say collagen for something or colostrum or peptides even, the question nobody is talking about is whether these things are actually working for them.
When it comes to collagen, y- [00:19:00] you can't take collagen and just tell your body where you want your collagen to go. You want it to go on your face. You just, you can't do that.
Collagen has to be broken down into amino acids. These are little parts of ... Being broken down, and your body will say, "I know where I need this," and it will distribute it where the body needs it most. You don't get to decide where amino acids go. Your body decides, operating with its own intelligence, its own priorities, and it may not be your skin or your joints Which is almost certainly not where the advertisement tells you that it's going,
That's the same for peptides. The gastrointestinal system, that is designed to break down proteins and peptides down into amino acids. And the very same thing. The, if [00:20:00] the peptide survives digestion, it has to cross through the intestinal membrane, and it has to have a good transporter, so your stomach microbiome has to be functioning well, not an overabundance of bad bacteria lack of hydrochloric acid, lack of enzymes being released.
So even if a peptide survives it, is it actually getting out and to the place that it's supposed to? Because the marketing will show you that it's going to that destination, but it's often not there. We have to understand that the body has its own agenda. Your body is different than your best friend who may be the exact same age and exact same weight, but her baseline, her genetic weaknesses, her history, her hormonal landscape, her elimination pathways, her healing process,
All of these things go into what the body is doing once you ingest [00:21:00] something. So what I'm saying with all of this is, yes, the marketing is compelling, and I'm not saying it's all not true. I'm just saying you have to read it with the lens of what you want, what is it actually doing, and what is your body doing?
What is your baseline? And scripture says, Hosea 4:6, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." So this is not just spiritual truth. It applies to health truth as much. So the women I see struggling, they're not struggling because they don't have the effort and they haven't put the time and money in.
They're struggling because they don't have the right knowledge about the products they're taking or what their body is actually doing. What, what is the landscape of their health and all of those components that when you consume a vitamin or a supplement, what's going on after the fact? After you take it, where is it going?
What's it doing? So just as a recap real quick here, because I, [00:22:00] I feel like sometimes when I do these podcasts, my head goes in a lot of different directions, so I'm getting better at bringing it in. Even if I have my points written down, I can start to add lib, and then I can go off track here.
So, okay, so I'm coming back to recap. So let's bring this all together. Supplements are not the enemy. Not saying don't take them. I take them and I use them in very meaningful ways, and they can help you and assist you, and they can supplement your already healthy lifestyle. So myth number one is supplements can't make up for what food should be doing.
We need the whole food. And they're good quality. Which leads me to number two. Quality is not always on the label.
We have to really do our due diligence in looking at the manufacturer and what and how they're processing their, their nutritional supplements. We're looking at the quantity of what is on the label, the source, the growing conditions, the manufacturing process. We want to know that. [00:23:00] Just as if we are buying a fruit or vegetable at the farmers market, we wanna know our farmer.
What is he using for pesticides? What is going on with how he's growing his food? Same thing. So we want to hold companies to a standard of integrity. That's why I use Standard Process and MediHerb. Myth number three is that the marketing be diligent about what and why are you buying it, and what's going on with your particular body.
Is it healthy for you or is it needed for you, and is your body is it gonna serve the role that it says it's doing for your body? I know that's a lot, and it's wow. I that's like being an investigator and unfortunately, it's gotten to the point where there's just so much deception that it does take time.
But our bodies are worth it. Your health is worth it. Be diligent about what you're putting in your body and do your research on supplements.
And I just want you to know I love you.
And if you like this podcast, if it was helpful, please leave a review. It's the only way I can get the message out [00:24:00] there and so come over to the community. And I wanna say again, thank you for being here, bye for now.
