Announcing “supplement advice”
 
Many people have asked me to give advice on the supplements they are taking. All too often, I’m told that “I’m taking a bunch of supplements and I don’t want to add any.” I find that many supplements were suggested without an understanding of the disease mechanism(s) that are impacting your health. I’d firmly believe that my team understands fundamental root-cause mechanisms and our supplement advice is based on these.
 
One of my clients is the CEO of a company. She hired my team to improve the health of all the beneficiaries on her corporate health insurance plan. She asked me to review her supplements, most of which were recommended by a functional MD colleague of mine. She was on 80+ supplements! Reviewing all these, and their interactions was a daunting task. I also told her that I really couldn’t understand her true health while on so many different supplements. We gradually got her down to about 20 key supplements. She suffers from chronic Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
 
Also, I have a rather unique perspective on supplements compared to most practitioners in the functional realm. Simply put, if you are in balance and healthy, you probably don’t need too many supplements because your internal “environment” is strong and is keeping “dis ease” at bay. People of this status do NOT have a burden of repair and recovery. On the other hand, if you do have chronic complaints and health problems, you probably DO NEED supplements to assist your own body in the fight for optimal health.
 
The program I’m offering is simple:
 
Fill out a spreadsheet of your existing supplements. Use this format:
 
Put information on each supplement of individual rows.
Enter the following information in columns of the spreadsheet (or a wordprocessing table)
 
Column 1: Name of the supplement
Column 2: Brand of the supplement (manufacturer)
Column 3: Supplement active ingredients (you can take a picture of the label as an alternative to jotting down all the ingredients, however I still want the other columns filled out.
Column 4: Supplement inactive ingredients
Column 5: Cost (approximate if necessary)
Column 6: Who recommended the supplement, if known
Column 7: Why you are taking the supplement. What problem is it supposed to address or potential problem is it supposed to prevent.
 
I will then review your list with you and will take into consideration: Your health goals, problems, complaints and, most importantly, what your labs are saying about your health. If you don’t have labs, we will use the information that we do have.
 
I suspect this supplement consult will take about 1/2h assuming you provided most of the information I suggest, with focus on active and inactive ingredients.