Pretty much everyone is taking some type of supplement. Whether it’s a multivitamin, minerals, or fish oil, almost everyone is taking something.

But, are your supplements helping you, or harming you?

People start on supplements because they have some symptoms and they tell a friend or relative who says, yeah I know someone who had that symptom and they took X, Y, & Z, and they got better. That’s great, but you aren’t that other person. Your symptoms may be the same, but that doesn’t mean the underlying cause is the same. I’ve done that before, when I didn’t know better.

Marketing says that if you have these issues, take this or these supplements, and you’ll feel better. And, you might, for a while. Most likely, the symptoms will return and likely be worse. Or other symptoms may show up. However, most supplements are junk. The ones advertised are typically the lowest quality, which keeps costs down.

If you start taking supplements to treat symptoms, you are doing what standard medical practice does: they prescribe something to treat your specific complaint without determining the cause.

But what if the supplements you are taking are actually making your health worse? Often, the side effects are subtle, and you never realize you are feeling worse. How can that be? There can be several reasons. Low-price, low-quality supplements may not contain what the label says. Supplements aren’t regulated, and the FDA generally doesn’t monitor manufacturers unless many people have complained about a product. Supplements from China are notorious for not having ingredients that match the label, and many times they contain toxic/poisonous substances.

Another reason is that many supplements contain ingredients to which you could be sensitive. This could be gluten, the binders they use to hold the pill together, the active ingredient, or something like polysorbate 80, which is used in food and cosmetics. It could even be an interaction between that particular supplement and any others you are taking or with a prescription medication.

How do you determine if the supplements you are taking are helping or harming you? You could do trial and error. Stop taking everything for a week to let it clear from your system, then add one back and pay attention to how you feel over several days. If you feel worse, stop taking it. If you feel the same, you may not need it. If you feel better, keep taking it. Then add in another one and repeat the process.

Or you can follow the FDN process: complete intake forms, run labs, and correlate results. This process is used to find the underlying cause(s) of your symptoms, which is why you started on the supplements in the first place. Rather than guess, we assess. This gives us a plan of attack to heal your body rather than just treat symptoms.

I do think that everyone needs a high-quality multi-vitamin and mineral complex. That is not Centrum or similar store brands. Those are made as cheaply as possible with low-quality ingredients, which are mostly not absorbable by the body, with low-quality binders and additional ingredients that are unnecessary. Some quality brands for vitamins and minerals are Pure Encapsulations, Source of Life, and Vital Nutrients. There are many more, but those are a few I’ve found to be top quality.

Most people should also take a high-quality fish oil supplement. Brands like Nordic Naturals, Carlson’s, or Vital Nutrients are some of the higher-quality oils out there. If you are taking a plant-based “fish oil” supplement, you are wasting your money.

The third supplment is usually recommend for most people is Vitamin D with K2. Okay, that’s actually two, but you can get them together. Everyone is Vitamin D deficient unless you live near the equator and get total body exposure for 30 minutes every day. The K2 is needed to make sure the Vitamin D doesn’t pull calcium from the bones. I like the Buried Treasure Vitamin D with K2 but there are other brands that are just as good, maybe better. Vital Nutrients is a good choice.

I recommend these because almost everyone is deficient, and taking these three supplements can go a long way toward improving your health. It’s tough to get all the micronutrients you need from food these days, especially if you eat a lot of highly processed foods, including all restaurant foods, chips, crackers, etc., instead of eating fresh whole foods, meat, fish, and veggies.

Even if you do eat high-quality foods, you probably aren’t getting what you need. Poor farming practices have led to a decline in soil minerals, so they aren’t available for the vegetables to absorb. The same with vitamins and minerals you get from animal products. Eating pastured-raised beef and poultry will get you closer to the vitamins and minerals you need, but the animals are ingesting them as well (soil depletion affects their food as well). If you are eating conventionally raised meat and poultry, you aren’t getting anywhere near what you need each day. And, if you aren’t eating fresh, wild-caught fish, you aren’t getting any EPA or DHA, both of which are healthy fats.

Part of the FDN DRESS program is a supplementation protocol. However, every supplement I recommend is intended to help your body heal, and you will only use them for 30, 60, or maybe 90 days. Once your body has healed itself, you won’t need them anymore. In some instances, I will recommend specific supplements to address what we uncovered in the lab results, for example, a parasitic infection. Once the parasites are gone, you can stop the supplements.

The bottom line is: don’t randomly take supplements; determine the cause of your symptoms and treat your body. Randomly trying supplements MIGHT help, but it could make things worse.