Introduction to Supplements for Healthy Aging

Dr. Bren Boston, MD, opens the discussion by addressing the overwhelming number of supplements available and how to prioritize them effectively. She emphasizes the importance of tailoring supplement choices to individual needs, dietary habits, and regular blood work to avoid unnecessary supplementation while ensuring optimal health.

The Essential Role of Vitamin D

Dr. Boston identifies vitamin D as a nearly universal supplement that most people require due to widespread deficiency. She explains its critical role in supporting bone health, immune function, and overall vitality. For higher doses (5,000 IU or more), she recommends combining vitamin D with vitamin K to maintain proper calcium balance and prevent bone-related issues. Akasha’s D5000 supplement is highlighted as a convenient option that includes both nutrients.

The Importance of Iron

Iron is discussed as a vital nutrient, particularly for women who are menstruating and individuals following a plant-based diet. Dr. Boston explains that iron supports oxygen transport in red blood cells, which is essential for energy and brain function. She offers practical advice for improving iron absorption, such as pairing iron-rich foods with vitamin C, and recommends regular blood work to determine whether supplementation is needed.

Vitamin B12 and Folate for Energy and Nervous System Health

Dr. Boston highlights the importance of vitamin B12, especially for those on vegetarian or vegan diets, as it is primarily found in animal products. She underscores the need for the active form, methylcobalamin, particularly for individuals with the MTHFR genetic variant, which can affect B12 metabolism. Folate, or vitamin B9, is discussed as a complementary nutrient that pairs well with B12 to support energy production and overall health. She recommends choosing supplements with methylated forms of B12 and folate for optimal absorption and efficacy.

Video Transcript

This segment lays the foundation for understanding the critical supplements that can support healthy aging and how to incorporate them into a balanced wellness routine.

00:00:00 um nice to see everyone who’s here um so today I just wanted to talk about supplements for healthy aging and I love this topic because when you go to the supplement aisle you start reading the labels and you see you know this supplement for energy oh I need that this supplement for calming oh but I do I need that and this one for bones I need that for skin probably that too for for this for that you know it’s hard to know well do I just need to take 200 things a day day like what do I need to take uh I just like to kind of talk

00:00:34 about supplements and maybe how I prioritize which supplements I like to choose for myself to take and then how I kind of talk about it with my patients about how do we choose which supplements you’re going to take out of all the Myriad of supplements that could do you know possibly good things to support your health you know how do we make sure we’re not taking too many supplements but making sure we’re we’re taking supplements that could help us feel better and more vibrant as we’re aging the first thing I think about for

00:01:05 supplements is is is there possibly a supplement that that everybody should take and there’s really only one that I really feel like pretty much everybody needs I’ve only had one patient in the whole time I’ve been practicing and I graduated from med school in 2000 um and I’ve only had one patient who wasn’t deficient in vitamin D without taking it like pretty much everybody has to take vitamin D or they’re deficient I I don’t know why but that’s that is what I have found in my practice so that’s a

00:01:35 universal I really feel like everybody is going to need to take vitamin D how much you take that was very specific to individuals as a person so if someone needs to take a higher dose of vitamin D which would be like 5,000 international units it does need to be mixed with vitamin K uh otherwise there can be kind of an exchange in the bones where the vitamin D is going in but the vitamin is coming out if you’re doing a lower dose like 1,000 units or 2,000 units it’s not as necessary especially if you eat a lot

00:02:08 of dark leafy greens which have a lot of vitamin K in them um but at the 5,000 or more level of of vitamin D then than I like it with K that’s why um aasha like makes their little their d5000 they they put K in it just so you don’t have to think about that so that’s kind of the only Universal then let’s talk about some other like very very common supplements that I I feel can be really important for people who eat a a very vegetable forward diet either a vegetarian or a vegan um it can be hard to get enough iron in your diet of

00:02:45 course there are many vegetarian and vegan foods that have iron but it can be difficult to get enough um it’s harder to absorb the heem or the iron from vegetables um especially if you’re not having vitamin C at the same time like in the form of say lemon juice in order to absorb the heem out of dark leafy greens there needs to be vitamin C as a co-actor so when they’re prepared with with lemon juice like in the salad dressing or you know squeezed over the sauteed vegetables you’ll get more iron

00:03:19 out of them um so iron can be really especially for women when they’re still menstruating when you’re menstruating every time you bleed you’re losing iron um so it’s really important to make sure you’re you’re repleting your iron even more so during your period um and even after you stop having periods it’s really important to have enough iron for your red blood cells to carry oxygen so the only way a red blood cell can carry oxygen to your brain and to your muscles and to all of the rest of your body is

00:03:50 by having a molecule of iron attached to it so iron is is an important supplement for some people other people get plenty in their diet uh and the only way to really check that is with blood work so that would be part of an annual blood panel where you’d always want to just see where your iron’s at because your your diet kind of may change from year to year so it’s it’s good to just check in on that and see you know do I need iron or am I getting enough in my food another supplement that a lot of people

00:04:18 will need a lot many many people um is vitamin B12 so especially if you have a very vegetable forward diet you know vegetarian or vegan um it’s hard to get get enough B12 without a supplement this is because B12 is for the most part in animal foods and even people who are omnivores like myself I eat a little bit of everything it’s still hard to get enough B12 especially if you’re the type of person like myself I do have a a genetic variant in in a gene called MTHFR which just has to do with whether

00:04:54 the B12 that I’m getting from my Foods is being turned into the active form that my body can use which is methyl B12 or methyl cobalamin I do take a vitamin that has methyl cobalamin in it and that way I don’t have to worry about it going along with that is also methyl folate I do find at least in blood work it’s very rare for me to find someone who’s deficient in folate because I do have a pretty healthy practice uh people eat a lot of vegetables and dark leafy greens and that’s where you’re going to get a

00:05:25 lot of your folate but it is often um good to supplement it you know at the same time you’re doing the B12 so the methyl fola and the methyl B12 often go together it’s in most multivitamins but you do kind of want to check so if you’re going to choose a multivitamin I would recommend finding one with methyl B12 and methyl folate R rather than the other types of B12 like cyano B12 also called cyano cobalamin or the other forms of folate just in case you’re one of those people who have a variant in

00:05:59 your Mt HFR Gene and you’re not putting all the methyl groups on you can just take it already methylated and not worry about it um you can always check that Gene with your doctor if you’re curious about it or you can just take a vitamin that has it that way the aasha multi uh vitamin it’s already it’s the there’s methyl B12 methyl folate in there you know and all the you know kind of a catch all so a multivitamin is useful as a catchall of kind of getting a lot of the top recommended vitamins and

00:06:29 minerals that you might not be getting in your diet that day another important supplement that we need to talk about is calcium there’s a lot of kind of controversy about calcium trying to balance keeping bone strong with also not contributing to atherosclerosis or calcium plaques in the coronary arteries one thing we need to know is that for women osteoporosis or bones getting fragile and being prone to fracture it’s a huge aspect of morbidity and mortality it can really affect someone’s quality of life and

00:07:06 their Longevity if you don’t address osteoporosis that being said half of Americans die of you know cardiovascular disease so you also don’t want to be contributing to atherosclerosis in my opinion it’s really ideal if you can get a th000 milligrams of calcium in your food a day so 1,00 to 1200 milligrams of calcium in your food a day but a lot of us myself included we just don’t and the way I know that I don’t is that the international osteoporosis Foundation has this free calcium calculator on the computer you can just

00:07:44 Google it it’s iof something calcium calculator.com and you put in it it has like a checklist of like a 100 foods and you you put in what you typically eat in a week and it does a whole bunch of math and it tells you about how many milligrams you get in a day and your goal is like a th000 milligrams say if it says anywhere kind of close to that then you know you’re probably getting 1,000 milligrams and you’re good and you don’t need a supplement because you don’t want to take too much calcium so

00:08:13 that there’s extra unused unneeded calcium floating around in your bloodstream um but you also don’t want your bones which are undergoing constant osteoclastic breakdown and hopefully osteoblastic building up you don’t want them to not have that building block when they’re trying to build up so if it says you have nowhere near a thousand milligrams you do need to supplement calcium you’ve got to have the building block available for your bones to stay strong so really important for preventing osteoporosis along with

00:08:44 weightbearing exercise three times a week let’s see let’s talk about a few other supplements that are pretty common that people might find very useful one would be fiber so ideally you’re getting enough fiber in your diet so fiber is in vegetables fruits beans um whole grains like quinoa many people do get enough fiber in their diet and I do I get enough fiber in my diet I don’t have to take a fiber supplement but a lot of people don’t and typically you’ll know that because you won’t have a regular

00:09:20 easytop pass well-formed stool you know every day so if you’re prone to a lot of constipation or you’re prone to a lot of diarrhea for either one of those you might need more fiber so fiber has two types there’s soluble and insoluble and the soluble fiber it draws water in and helps keep the food mass in the intestines from getting hard and then insoluble it helps the peristalsis or it helps the movement of food through your intestines so those are two really important types of fiber that that you

00:10:00 can get in your diet but if you’re having gut problems you might need to supplement that there’s also um a phenomenon that some people have who have kind of chronic gut issues called leaky gut and if you have leaky gut then on a microscopic level the intestinal lining can have some little gaps in it and so to help smooth that over ideally you’re doing most of that with food and you can talk to your doctor nutritious about what foods you should be eating but there’s also a supplement that helps to kind of heal that intestinal lining

00:10:38 um that’s based on Botanicals it’s called GI align and Akasha has it it’s a it’s a little powder and you only need a little tiny bit because it’s pretty impactful so you just put a little tiny bit like I’m talking a teaspoon in um a glass of water and drink it away from food um so that can be helpful for some people some people also need probiotics so what is a probiotic a probiotic is healthy bacteria that’s living and encapsulated and the idea would be to get some healthy bacteria into your large intestinal microbiome so our

00:11:20 microbiome in our large intestine controls a lot of aspects about our health it helps our immune system and you know our our brain health and all sorts of kind of body processes depend on a healthy gut microbiome so you may not need to take a probiotic I don’t like I’m like totally bragging on my like gut health but like I have a stellar gut health um but many people do need a probiotic and it’s a it’s a nice easy thing to take to help promote your gut health in regards to fiber you mentioned the two different types of

00:11:55 fiber insoluble and soluble do you have to take both should we have that those two types daily you’ll get both types daily with a healthy diet so like SLE Fiers is any sort of fruit or vegetable where like if you put it in water it would get slightly flatness so like you know like apple if you can think of like kind of cooking an apple it kind of gets like kind of gelatinous and then like insoluble fiber is like the hull of a bean say or the hull of a of a nut let’s see okay so cholesterol is a really

00:12:30 common issue for people because so many of us myself included we have a genetic predisposition to having elevated cholesterol um it’s super common um so even you know you eat a low cholesterol diet you avoid trans fats and saturated fats you could still have elevated cholesterol if it’s just a little bit elevated like you don’t yet need to take a Statin or medication to lower your LDL cholesterol but it’s not it’s not perfect and you want it you you want to kind of protect yourself one thing that

00:13:05 I do recommend is something called co-enzyme Q10 so CoQ10 just is an antioxidant so it prevents the oxidation of LDL and it also increases intracellular energy um if you do need a Statin at some point um if your LDL raises to a certain level and you and your profile is such that your HDL isn’t counter balancing it if you’re on a Statin you definitely want to also take coq1 so statins um kind of deplete your intra cellular space of cotin and you so you can help support that by taking extra cotin in fact some statins are

00:13:45 already packaged with CQ tin like combined with them but it’s I think a lot more common just take them separately then there’s also fish oil so fish oil is somewhat controversial just because some Studies have shown that it helps and other Studies have shown it doesn’t help as far as preventing cardiovascular disease and other Studies have said oh well you can just get it by eating your fatty fish you so um salmon sardines those are super healthy High Omega three fatty acid fish but if you’re like me and you don’t eat those

00:14:17 things enough um then it can be really useful just to supplement um we do know that fish oil is anti-inflammatory it can help with um cardiovascular Wellness it can help with joint Wellness it’s just a a really healthy omega-3 fatty acid um that lots of us don’t get enough of in our diet um let’s talk about inflammation so there’s a lot you can do with your diet to lower your inflammation like not eating a lot of sugar not eating refined carbohydrates avoiding super processed foods but there are also supplements that you can take

00:14:52 that can help so if you’re having especially um focal inflammation so for example you’re having knee pain when you play tennis um you could take an anti-inflammatory herb called curcumin which is the active phytosome of turmeric and there’s been studies that show that it’s as effective as ibuprofen for o for like osteoarthritic knee pain so it’s a good thing you can take you don’t have to take it every day you can take it as needed it’s a great thing to have on hand we also have at aasha a whole bunch of anti-inflammatory herbs

00:15:27 that are packaged together so if you really want to get a good push of anti-inflammatory effect you can use this infl regulator but um what you do need to know about it um the infl regulator it’s got a several anti-inflammatory herbs so it’s got the curcumin but it’s also got other anti-inflamm herbs and one of them is called white willow bark and it’s so similar to a an insid like an ibuprofen or an aspirin that if you’re not able to take ASP for and ibuprofen you don’t want to take it either like it’s it has a lot of

00:16:03 the same qualities but so it that’s can be very very useful so if you’re if you like to participate in sports but you sometimes have feel a little creaky a little sore um it can really help another thing that a lot of us can use when we’re aging just to help support joints and skin and just amino acid intake is collagen powder so I definitely poop poed the idea of collagen powder when it first became a fad um thinking well if you’re I get it if you’re a vegan or vegetarian you know you probably need extra collagen but if

00:16:41 you’re eating animal products on a daily you’re getting collagen like in your diet right but then I decided to try collagen powder um in my coffee every morning just to add amino acids so that um I would be getting some protein in the form of collagen powder along with my coffee because I don’t like to eat until later I don’t like to eat when I’m not hungry and I’m not hungry in the morning but I do like to exercise in the morning so I thought well let me just try and see if I notice any difference

00:17:12 and after a month I noticed that my knees felt less creaky like exercising so I definitely noticed a difference in my joints um I don’t think it’s something that every single person needs it’s I’d say it’s worth a try why don’t you try it see if you like it um I’ve tried the Bine or cow-based collagen I’ve tried the the seafood based collagen I find that the the cow-based one um disappears better in my coffee so that one works for me um I’ve actually switched to one that also has nicotinamide riboside in it also called

00:17:48 NR that way I just get both things all at once in one scoop and it’s just easy for me so what nicotinamide riboside is is it helps support healthy mitochondria so as we age our mitochondria which is a little organel inside all of our cells um that is the energy producer for the cell and as we age our mitochondria become a little bit less I I want to say active but they’re just not as good at creating energy for us as when we’re younger so one thing you can do to help support your mitochondrial function is

00:18:25 by giving yourself the precursor to NAD Plus or of course you can get an NAD plus you know IV infusion U but if you just want to do it orally you want to do a precursor to that and then your body has the building blocks to make more NAD plus to support the mitochondrial energy um production so nicotinamide riboside or NR um can be useful I think for in just increasing energy especially you know athletic related energy okay let’s talk about hormone support So hormone support is definitely 100% individualized for each person there’s

00:19:06 really not an across theboard recommendation that I can make so everybody’s different it’s something you should talk to your doctor about hormones do act on pretty much every cell in our body and so it’s an important thing to talk to your doctor about um one of our products at aasha is called f balance it has a lot of uses it’s something you may want to you know consider talking to your doctor about but it also does have a lot of ingredients and each of the individual ingredients can be useful on their own

00:19:34 as well hormone support can be done at a supplemental level especially if someone’s not ready to take actual hormones um but that’s something you should talk to your doctor about um let’s talk about mood so supporting our mood so sometimes we go through phases where our mood feels a little down or our mood might feel a little uptight or feeling super stressed there are some supplements that can be really useful for mood and these are supplements that um you don’t have to take every day U so they can be really useful um one is

00:20:05 called eleanine and it is calming so if you’re going through a stressful time in life from something going on in your life eleanine can be really useful and it’s not sedating so you can take it during the day you can take it in the morning and it’s very safe so there’s doses for kids there’s doses for dogs aling is a really safe way to help support your stress management for um kind of a a down mood or a little bit a hint of anxiety Then supporting your production of Serotonin can be done with like five

00:20:40 HTP um but that’s something you’d want to talk to your your doctor about um just because it does it does kind of probably increase your your neurotransmitter production so it’s something you want to instead of maybe steering that ship on your own talk to your doctor about it there’s another mood Support called riola which is just kind of like a pepper uper is supposed to support like a happy mood of course there is no such thing as like a happy pill but um it’s it’s not a super strong supplement but that it can be you know

00:21:10 useful as an adjunct here and there I also just wanted to touch on real quick healthy blood sugar um control so we really want to keep our blood sugar under good control as we age because sugar is super inflammatory for us when our sugar stays too high too long it can hurt our little tiny blood vessels and you know different parts of our our health one thing that you can do that’s free and everybody should do this at some point in their life do a three- week Sugar Detox and it’s just just take three weeks and eliminate all the sugar

00:21:43 from your diet for that little period of time and it’s super hard but uh it’s only three weeks you know you can do anything for three weeks and it’ll change the way you eat it’ll change your taste buds on your tongue you’ll actually sense sweetness better afterwards after you do that you may stop drinking um sweetened beverages like I used to add organic sugar to my coffee and then after I did that 3-we Sugar Detox I no longer like sugar in my coffee like that already tastes exactly the way I want it

00:22:13 and I do not like adding sugar um so not drinking sugar is a great way to lower your sugar intake getting to know what the glycemic index is really helpful so glycemic index is just what impact on your blood sugar will each food make and so you can look that up online you can just Google the glycemic index of any food you’re interested in and you want to try to stay at the lower glycemic index Foods uh walking for 10 minutes after a meal so that will significantly reduce the blood sugar impact of the

00:22:41 meal um and then insulin is a hormone that comes from your pancreas that helps put the sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells and you can help support that with a few different things one is by with a meal take a pill filled with cinnamon so it’s pretty a natural way to do things so we actually have it made you know for us too um so cinnamon just helps support insulin’s action on the blood sugar level it helps push the blood sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells and then there’s also um

00:23:16 a supplement called chromium prolinate that can also help with a little bit of insulin resistance so sometimes the cells have a hard time accepting the sugar inside them because they’re resistant to the action of insulin and it can help support that so that’s kind of like my overview does anybody have any questions yes I do yeah um I’m wondering if I know about the sugar does honey fall into that same category or you know like especially a raw honey which I like to use in in drinks not very much but is that as

00:23:59 yeah no I I honestly feel like the benefits you’ll get from honey outweigh the blood sugar impact of it unless you’re pre-diabetic so because honey is it’s antibacterial it’s anti fungal it’s antiviral like honey has all of those abilities it also can promote your immune system you know especially if you’re you know certain types of Honey um so if you like a little teaspoon of honey in your tea or your coffee and like it better that way and you don’t have pre-diabetes then I wouldn’t have you stop following on kind of something

00:24:36 similar to that question U because I also need to keep an eye on my blood sugar because I have diabetes in my family a lot um I’ve been told that if you eat protein or something that is not sugar first it actually prevents the the glyos spike and then it’s maybe if I eat something for example before getting my coffee with a spoon of Honey is that does that make it better it it can make a difference so if you have fat or protein at the same time you have um carbohydrates it can decrease the blood sugar impact of that

00:25:17 carbohydrate also when you look if you’re going to eat a food that actually has a little like nutrition label you can look and see how much fibers in it because you can subtract you know for every gram of fiber you can subtract a gram of sugar as far as fiber balances out or cancels out sugar in an equal amount so if it says say it’s got 20 grams of sugar and but 10 of them 10 grams of fiber then you’re really only getting 10 grams of sugar even if you had the full serving typically like one uh carb serving is 15 grams so if for

00:25:54 example I have a few nuts before I have something sugary it it minimizes the effect it I mean it can help for sure or like let’s just say you have this amazing crusty French bread you really want to have a thin slice well instead of just putting jam on it you know put peanut butter because then you’re getting fat you’re getting protein it’s going to have a little bit different impact and then go walk around the block and then and then you’re you know doing a good job of kind of balancing everything out oh okay uh now I forgot

00:26:27 what I was going to ask oh iron um I’m now 87 and it’s like uh I I’ve had heard different stories about uh not needing as much iron as we age things like that what’s your take on iron with with older women it all depends on what your blood uh panel shows so your your blood panel will like you could check an iron level and then you check a fertin level which is stored iron and then a a c BC which is like your red blood cells your hemoglobin and hematocrit and then the size and shapes of those red blood cells so if

00:27:08 everything is looking great then you don’t supplement iron thank you Dr Boston let me just quickly read a message from Dr Dello for those with mty hrf Akasha has a well researched methylated B12 complex called methylation support take two to three depending on your levels I think that’s followup from your previous discussion on the mulation B I have a question from Tom um he’s asking uh what are some of the most research supplements for extending lifespan I mean honestly the most important thing for extending your

00:27:45 lifespan is to be fit and trim so this is coming from a very well-respected cardiologist Dr Elan kadan um and so the Studies have shown that as far as preventing the top two causes of death in the United States which are cardiovascular disease which is heart attacks and strokes and the number two is cancer so the top two things for this is to be cardiovascularly fit like not carrying a lot of extra weight and and that doesn’t mean being crazy thin you don’t need to be crazy thin you just need to be strong and have you know good

00:28:24 muscle mass and then uh you do want to be lean to the to where your your lean muscle mass is you know more than your your lipid Mass uh just because that’s how your bone stay strong that’s how you’re you’re able to kind of not tax your vascular system um so those are more important than any supplement and there’s really no magic anti-aging pill and taking too many supplements is not a good idea and you know this because when you’ve ever had a surgery your surge says you got to stop all your supplements two weeks or one week before

00:29:03 your surgery so you’d be thinking well if I’m if I’m trying to heal properly from surgery shouldn’t I be taking all these supplements like wait a second like if I’m not supposed to take these supplements before surgery uh to in order to you know heal properly from this kind of stressful surgical event let’s try to figure this out also taking too many supplements is is really hard on your your liver and your kidneys so the great thing is to try to just support the areas of your health that need supporting without

00:29:37 overs supplementing because if there’s any you know chemicals or compounds or supplements or you know healthy herbs but if if you’re taking more than what your body can use you’re going to need to excrete it and that’s going to be either your liver helping you excrete it in your stool or your kidneys helping you excrete it in your urine um so it’s you don’t it’s kind of a balance it’s a it’s a it’s a dance trying to make sure your bone stays strong and your joints stay well oiled and you know your brain

00:30:08 stays bright and you but you don’t want to overs supplement thank you Dr boson we have a question from Rachel what are wayss to lower iron if blood work shows elevated that is something you should talk to your doctor about because if you’re um if your iron is elevated and it’s not coming from a supplement and it’s not coming from food you may have like a little biochemical difference you know that has to do with your liver where your body um holds on to iron longer um hemat chromatosis um there’s other iron

00:30:45 storage kind of differences that some people can have so there’s not really a supplement that keates iron out that that I would use unless it was like under the guidance of a hematologist um you can easily though if maybe you’re eating too much iron you can change your diet you know eat a more plant-based diet that has less iron in it um a lot of plants have iron but like we talked about it’s it’s less bioavailable than animal iron um and if you’re taking a supplement and your iron’s too high then obviously you want

00:31:18 to stop the supplement Dr Boston I have a question from Isabella she says how important is it to consult with your health care provider before starting any new supplements you know supplements are sold over the counter you can go to CVS and pick up a supplement um I do think it’s important at your annual visit to tell your doctor every single supplement you’re taking even if you don’t take them every day and the best thing is just like write them all down in a list something that your doctor can just scan into your

00:31:56 chart um and or take a picture of them you know that they can scan into your chart it’s always a good idea to to check in but obviously you can just go and buy it over the counter um that being said there’s lots of things that that if you take too much of them even though they’re sold over the counter it could still kill you like Tylenol um uh but I’d say if it’s like a multivitamin or a just a a vit C supplement that you just want to take you know just to boost your immune system because you’re about

00:32:33 to get on an airplane or something like that your doctor doesn’t really need to have a whole full appointment with you about that but at your annual you should say if you’re taking a multivitamin and which one because they’re all different preparations they have different um ingredients so they need to know which one um and and then any other supplements it’s good to know what they are and and also what the milligram amount is if if you’re unsure about a supplement air on the side of safety and ask your

00:33:12 doctor I have a really good one um hold on how can someone uh determine the right dosage for the supplements that they need so you can be guided by your doctor or your nutritionist um or dietitian um they can help you kind of figure out what would be a good dose for you um there’s also you know for something like say vitamin D or B12 where we actually measure it you know through your blood work we can recheck it and make sure it’s being repeted so we would want to give you if you were deficient say and

00:33:52 you and you were the type of person who didn’t want to wait until your next annual appointment to see whether you repleted your vitamin D deficiency you wanted to check and see if you repleted it you’d want to wait like three months before you recheck it like and get give your body a chance to like fully replete it and then if you’re if you’re a little bit more nervous about you know your levels of course you can check it you know as much as you and your doctor want to um but generally unnecessary um there’s also a way to

00:34:24 check a whole panel of vitamins and minerals um we do it not that infrequently at aasha it’s a vitamin and mineral uh blood panel so even though every year we check some of the major ones like vitamin D and b12 folate magnesium uh there are some lesser uh checked ones through blood work that can be checked with um like a specialized panel for vitamins sorry I had one more question um also the purity of supplements of buying things off the internet versus buying things from the store what’s the benefits of that so

00:35:05 that’s a really good question so because supplements aren’t regulated to the same level as prescription medications it’s really important to know the quality of your supplement so you want to only buy supplements from companies that undergo third-party checks so that means a third party not owned by the supplement company will randomly check the capsules to make sure what’s in it is what is what they say it is so if it says it’s 100 milligrams of Vitamin C they’re going to make sure that that’s what’s in

00:35:44 there so a lot of supplement companies do have this kind of higher level checking and they may be a a tiny bit more expensive than maybe some of the massade ones but it’s definitely worth it because you want to know what you’re getting what you’re putting in your body um a capsule is like a concentrated way to get some sort of nutrient um so you just want to make sure you know what you’re getting and you’re not getting anything you don’t want to get thank you Dr Boston um I think you may have mentioned

00:36:16 also something about vitamin C and vitamin E do they contribute to longevity as well vitamin C and vitamin E what are what are their contributions again vitamin C is is really important it’s you get it in a lot of foods so it’s not hard to get um but it’s also a good vitamin to boost because it’s a co-actor for collagen synthesis so as we might get little microt tears in say our rotator cuff tnd in or in our knees um our body is just going to heal that up like we’re kind of always undergoing a little bit of kind

00:36:53 of micro strain and then healing on our human bodies are so good at at doing that but a co-actor for collagen synthesis is Vitamin C so you want to make sure you have enough vitamin C um a lot of people get enough in their diet but it also is a pretty safe vitamin to supplement um if you take too much you’re going to get diarrhea so you don’t want to do that um but another thing that it’s a co-actor for like I mentioned earlier is just making it so that you can absorb plant-based heem um so it’s a good idea to have some sort of

00:37:25 uh vitamin C whether it’s lemon juice or whether whether you just like take a vitamin C gummy right before you eat your dark leafy greams whatever form of vitamin C you like um I always keep I’m a I’m a gummy bear person I love gummy bears and so I do on my counter I do keep a few um healthy organic gummy vitamins that I can like pop at night as like a treat for myself um where I’m also getting vitamins so I have the little um organic vitamin C little orange slices and I also have this one that’s a combination of vitamin D and

00:38:01 b12 which is on top of what I’m getting like I do take those in a in a you know more proper dose but I just feel like I can always use just a little bit more of those uh so and and it’s also a delicious gummy it’s this Mery Ruth Organics uh gummies so there’s no artificial colors there’s no artificial flavors there is sugar but you know I’m Fort that that I can I’m okay with sugar especially if it’s like my dessert it’s a pretty benign one can I ask uh what’s what I I hear a lot about uh raw apple

00:38:33 cider vinegar what you think about that I am not convinced I guess I’ll just say that I am not convinced we need raw eple cider cider vinegar don’t think like it’s going to hurt you if you really like doing that and you have a morning ritual where you like to have some but I don’t I’m not convinced you need it I have another question from Daniel he would like for us for for you to explain the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids for longevity so I think like I mentioned omega-3 fatty acids they’ve been studied

00:39:08 extensively um and there was like a fervor about them because one big study found that they improved cardiovascular risk so your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke but then some follow-up studies show that they didn’t that it didn’t make a difference and then you know they can be kind of expensive um and also there’s a worry of like are they being sourced from Mercury Laden fish there kind of has been a little bit of back and forth about it one thing we do know is that omega-3 fatty acids are really good for us

00:39:44 really good for our blood vessel health and our joint health and probably ideally we could get it all in our diet you know if we had a super Mediterranean diet and we were eating fresh cut salmon all the time and we loved sardines you know out of the can um I wish I did flax seeds they’re really high in omega-3 fatty acids it’d be probably ideal to get it in your diet it it helps with like the the health of your blood vessels so they’re not getting too stiff it’s decreases inflammation you know

00:40:20 pregnant women have to take it you know to make sure their their newborns have a have a healthy neurological system um so there’s there’s definitely health benefits from it um even though I think some of the research has been controversial as far as like how necessary it is as far as you know preventing cardiovascular disease but I think it’s a good idea especially if you you know aren’t getting a lot of that in your diet yeah I’ve no noticed with the Omega-3s and or fatty acids uh I was I was read I I read that there actually

00:40:57 two separate things and if you get something that says fatty acids it doesn’t necessarily mean Omega-3s and vice versa could you straighten me out on it yeah so that’s a good question so there’s a lot of different um fatty acids and the most healthy ones are omega-3 fatty acids the EPA and DHA Okay so there’s also omega-6 fatty acids which you do need in your diet but they’re not as healthy like you want a ratio of your Omega-3s and Omega sixes to be high with the Omega-3s so the best thing is like when you’re looking at the

00:41:31 supplement just look at the LA label just for the EPA and DHA and don’t worry about the others like just go for that what are some of the most emerging Trends right now that you’re seeing for supplements I’d say one of the hot new things is supporting mitochondrial health so that NR that I talked about the nicotinamide riboside that is a hot ticket right now um there’s a lot of you know influencers and you know anti-aging athletes and a lot of people talking about it a lot of people really excited

00:42:03 about it and a lot of people offer the IVs and you know we do there’s enough research on it that we feel comfortable uh doing that at the aasha center I think that the research is newish and so it’s it’s hard to say like I wouldn’t say across the board we all need to be taking INR to boost our NAD plus but I don’t think it can hurt you like at the normal levels that you would take as a supple so I do think it’s like it’s a good idea to try like I I just have it in my coffee every day so I I think it’s

00:42:35 probably worthwhile especially if you’re you know exercising on a regular basis you know just to support that intracellular energy some of the other Trends well I say collagen powders look huge Trend like now you go to the grocery and there’s like a whole section of collagen powders like that’s that’s kind of new compared to 10 years ago and I do actually you know like I said I totally poo pooed it and now I actually think there’s a use for it cuz I saw it myself I do think a protein powder is really helpful as we age because it’s

00:43:04 really important to get enough protein in our diet and it’s just so hard so hard to get enough protein in our diet so that’s just a really easy way to support protein is with a protein powder you want to make sure it’s organic and you know hopefully it’s like pea plant protein based um it doesn’t have to be P plant protein but it’s like should be plant-based I’d say I think the one at the acash center is p plant protein based so I love legumes and beans as like our healthiest foods that we can eat and if I think about it I’m like

00:43:34 well if you plant a pee or a bean like it becomes a whole new plant you know like of course those are the healthy [Laughter] foods um I’m trying to think what are some of the other fads that are that are really hot right now um fidil Coline Dr Boston hi Dr Boston hi Dro so I don’t know as much about it Dr M wrote a whole thing for us about it um it does sound amazing but I I actually don’t know enough about it to like speak on it do you want to just say a little bit about it yeah if you don’t mind um so Coline

00:44:13 is one of those very important elements for our cognition it’s part of our brain health fos of duoline is is a supplement an IB supplement that we started using after after uh the co pandemic was really causing a lot of cognitive effects or side effects on a lot of our patients and many patients with long covid really couldn’t remember a lot about what uh what they needed to remember their cognition was really decreased they felt very tired they felt that they couldn’t connect the dots and we know that the the brain is affected

00:44:55 by Co especially long Co so we started doing this research on fidal choline also referred it as PC and the research out there was astounding it’s actually Coline is part of uh uh uh the medications that people use for Alzheimer’s and for other cognitive deficits so this is the pure form it’s not something that it’s created in a pill form or that it’s very high in its delivery system but what we know is that by giving a small amount of it to our patients especially combined with glutathion that we really helping their

00:45:41 brain health become optimal we are increasing what we refer to in neurology as the firing of your synapsis and this is what we need what the brain does in order to connect the dots in other of for to go from one thinking pattern from one thought to another we need to fire those neurons and PC or fosad choline has really been shown to increase the firing by uh promoting better brain um what we refer to as brain metabolism the met the Met metabolism of what the chemistry that the brain needs in order

00:46:20 to operate optimally so there’s an article in our website if you go to aasa center.com there’s an area that’s called blog and if you hit on that you’ll see a battery of tests that we’ve Run for the last 20 years and the most recent ones are the ones on NAD on PC and other Innovative uh products that we see or supplements that we see are making a difference out there so I would say if you want to know more about it um I know that our incredible Luana who also helps us posting all those articles is online

00:47:01 she can post a link to this two articles that uh that we are talking about the one is on the NAD the Dr Boston was referring to and the second one on foser Deal Coline or PC so that you can you can benefit from the writings there we’ve done thank you da deelo if if no one has a question I’ll I’ll mention one thing I didn’t mention yet really common kind of supplement recommendation that I make has to do with when someone has an upper respiratory tract infection so if they have covid or they have a cold or they

00:47:38 have the flu you know how can they support their immune system temporarily while they’re having that upper respiratory tract infection so I typically have like a list that I go through and I just keep these in my medicine cabinet for in case I get a cold um so vitamin C like at least 1,000 milligrams a day can be in any form that you prefer like it can be that emergency packet it’s there’s a th000 milligrams in that it can be gummies it can be capsules it can be what you know however you want to do it then uh zinc so you

00:48:08 want it to be 10 to 20 milligrams of zinc vitamin B12 and folate or a B complex and then if you’re having pulmonary symptoms so either a cough or congestion you want to take an acetal cysteine it’ll say on the bottle capital n capital a Capital C and then it’s it’s just one 600 milligram capsule you take a day and that helps decrease um mucous production in the lungs I like Dr Boston I I I’m really in love with turmeric because of the um the incredible research on it as an an as an anti-inflammatory and so as as winter is

00:48:50 around the corner the cold season one of the things that we’ve seen is that turmeric it’s which is present in the Indian diet has incredible metabolic properties and most of them being anti-inflammatory so if you can tolerate turmeric that would be one of the recommendations that I would add to Dr Boston’s list at Akasha we have a product that we’ve done we’ve really formulated for a number of years called infla regulator meaning how do we regulate inflammation and turmeric is one of the the top Pro uh products that I think

00:49:30 should be on most people’s regimen for upper respiratory or any other kind of inflammatory condition that that’s a really good point and there’s also a supplement called line which has pretty strong antiviral action so I always like if if I think what I have if the cold that I have is viral based I always add in L lysine like one to 2,000 milligrams a day just to help you know kick that virus out do we have more questions from I have a question yes hi Dr Boston um hi mentioned like pill forms of supplements

00:50:07 um gummies and I know there’s like liquid form is there one best way that you think is um the most absorbent way to get these supplements you know it kind of depends on the supplement so so a lot of people have trouble absorbing vitam B12 from their stomach lining and so for those people I’d rather them do it under their tongue like through a they called a lozen even though it really just says chewable on the bottle but you let it dissolve like under your tongue and it absorbs through the blood

00:50:34 vessels under your tongue um and then so if you’re not and of course you’ll be swallowing The Remnant so you will get some in your stomach but if you have a problem absorbing it from your stomach like let’s just say you’re taking it on a regular basis but your blood panel shows your B12 is still low then you know you’re not absorbing it from your stomach and it’s better to maybe do it under the tongue in general I prefer capsules it’s just easy you know there’s no added sugar most liquid vitamins

00:51:04 don’t taste great so i’ say capsules as my go-to unless I need them to absorb it under their tongue in which case it would be a chewable Laing um or if if someone’s having canker sores in their mouth I have them take a chewable probiotic because at that point you really need the acidophilus like on the mucose of the mouth like not a capsule vast majority I’d say it’s capsule very good question Dr Boston um Can berberine help with diabetes and blood sugar levels it can it can be supportive in that aspect

00:51:37 burine can help um with that some Studies have even showed it helps with weight loss so berberine is a supplement that can be tried to see if it can help support you know a healthy blood sugar it’s not going to reverse eating a bunch of donuts but it if if you’re having an issue with insulin resistance Bine can be another supportive supplement I don’t have any questions only to say Dr Basta in your presentation is incredibly helpful Ando you hit all the topics and you you delivered so palpably easy to understand

00:52:15 so I wanted to say thank you um and just to add another piece to the question about inflammation because again Winter is right around the corner we wrote A booklet called uh called what’s the big deal about Co supplements at the beginning of the pandemic and even though Co is not a big deal anymore thank goodness um it’s still out there that particular booklet applies to every inflammatory condition that you may be experiencing certainly discuss it with your doctor Dr Boston said to make sure that you’re not going

00:52:54 into pneumonia or any other you know more serious inflammatory conditions but if you’re dealing with a common Cod or the flu and you’ve already been uh to your physician or or uh any uh practitioner and you want to know a little bit more about how to supplement your anti-inflammatory cabinet so to speak that booklet is uh has a lot of the explanation of every product including the amazing of vitamin C that Dr Boston um is such a fan of and so am I so um again Lana can put that on uh the link to that booklet on the notes but it’s

00:53:39 something that I find myself sending to my patients when they’re dealing with upper respiratory or any other kind of inflammation thank you Dr Melo any final words Dr Boston there’s so many different supplements that can help support your health so it’s really important just to you know talk to your doctor there’s so many things I didn’t cover like like I I take little iodine drops because my thyroid is kind of borderline and and it used to be our salt Supply had iodine in it and now it’s hard to find salt that has iodine

00:54:11 in it and um so I I take these little drops to make sure I’m getting iodine for my thyroid I mean there’s all sorts of like there’s so many supplements out there you definitely don’t want to be taking everything if you’re taking 20 or more supplements a day that you are taking too many most likely um you want to talk to someone about what what do you really need and when do you need it uh and what are the good brands it’s been very nice talking to everyone I’m so happy to be part of the aasia center

00:54:38 team and we’re so happy to be here to support everyone’s Health um everything I’ve said today is not meant to be taken as uh medical advice for your own Medical Care um I’d be happy to see you as a patient in a real medical visit if you want like actual medical advice thank you Dr Boston and if you have any other questions please feel free to reach out to Anna Rey our office manager you may also email us at info aasia center.com or you may call us at 31451 18880 thank you so much for participating tonight uh we look forward

00:55:13 to seeing you and welcoming you at aasha bye