Supplements - User Manual For Humans S1 E11 - Dr Ekberg

good evening and very welcome again especially those of you have been here

before or getting in the habit of this we're at part number 11 of user manual

for humans and today we will talk about supplements we won't just talk about

which supplements it might be a good idea to take we will talk more about

what nutrition is and what how the body works and why we might need supplements

at all and how most of the time the way the supplements are sold is just

completely crazy because it's just like the medical model to take a pill for

something so what we'll get into that a lot of the things I'll talk about today

will be very it'll seem very very basic and it will seem like I'm repeating

myself so give yourself give me the benefit of the doubt and sort of see if

look at it with fresh eyes and even if it's really really basic just realize

that I'm doing it this way because in society as a whole we were clueless so

it bears some repetition and embarrassment verification so first of

all we'll go through a few things and we'll talk about the purpose of food

we'll talk about where food comes from we'll talk about what optimal adequate

and deficient nutrition is and we'll talk about is it really possible to

boost function or energy you see everywhere you go there are energy

drinks they say we'll give you five hours we'll give you six hours and how

does that really work are you getting energy I throw these cartoons in and

because to me a lot of the a lot of the news that you hear a lot of the health

advice that you hear is every bit a cilia

this cartoon yes the guy says if you swallow potato chips without chewing

they act like little snowplows and clear all the cholesterol out of your arteries

and a lot of a lot of the debate and a lot of the advice that they're really

sort of at that level they're really a couple of hundred years behind the times

so what's the purpose of food this may seem real real basic but bear

with me the purpose of food is number one to provide building blocks whatever

your body is whatever the tissues are they came from food so the food has to

contain those building blocks and they are amino acids to make protein they are

fatty acids to provide energy but also fatty acids are primarily the building

blocks for your nervous system and your cell membranes and there are also

precursors for a lot of hormones and you need minerals to also to become body

tissues minerals like calcium for bone and and so forth number two food needs

to provide fuel for energy so any movement any activity every heartbeat

every little cell transmission requires energy your immune system requires

energy all of this energy has to come from food food energy for movement

signaling transportation within the body and anabolism which means building

things up when you build the tissue it doesn't just happen these things these

molecules have to be put together and that requires energy

- sort of like Lego blocks they don't go together by themselves takes energy

number three food also needs to provide vitamins and phytochemicals

and these are things that act as catalysts in chemical reactions so if

you burn wood then you're converting the carbon into energy the carbon molecules

in the wood and you have to add a lot of heat several hundred degrees in the body

we burn things the same way but we don't have the heat so instead of the heat we

need to have some little catalysts some little helpers along the way that

participate and bring the the reactions to to make the reactions happen without

all that heat and these these catalysts are crucial in energy production

movement signaling transport and abolition so all of the things that we

need energy for we need little catalysts to participate and make that happen

so sometimes people who are don't have energy people who feel the market they

may actually not it's not that they're missing calories they may be missing

some of these nutrients another cartoon here this is a great illustration also

the doctor says to to the lady I want you to follow a healthy lifestyle whatever the

experts say is this you thought about that oh well I want I'm going to start a

new life but I want something new and exciting I want a new diet plan I want a

new program well I've got news for you there is nothing new your DNA is 40,000

years old and nothing has changed since then okay you still need to eat well

move well think well you need to eat whoo that the nature that nature

provided okay but the the cartoon just illustrates how far off track we are

when there's a new thing every week a new thing every month nothing is

changing okay it takes tens of thousands of years for these things to change so

if you think that there's something new this week then you're just barking up

the wrong tree so what is food and again it seems really basic but bear with me

food is like we said above food is that which provides building blocks energy

vitamins and phytochemicals so if it doesn't contain those things it's not

food just because we call it a meal and put it in our mouth does not make it

food all right most of what people eat is not food so

whole food you can check off all three of these if if nature made it if it came

from nature then it has all three of these it has building blocks it has fuel

for energy it has vitamins and phytochemicals but processed food which

is what most people eat most of the time do not meet these criteria therefore it

is not food it contains some of the building blocks it typically has a good

amount of protein and a good amount of energy it has a good amount of fat as

far as burning fuel and it has carbohydrates but what it misses is it

misses essential fatty acids for building blocks and it is virtually

devoid of vitamins and phytochemicals and enzymes and things that help you

digest the food and produce the energy where does food come from nature makes

whole and real food we are part of nature the food that is part of nature

makes a good match when we eat things from nature and we're from nature then

everything works when we try to mess with it

it doesn't work anymore so nature makes things to eat such as nuts vegetables

animals fish etc and nature provides the perfect packages the proper ratios and

the ideal content so when you eat fruits and berries and nuts and meat and fish

the way that nature produced it it's always in a good proportion okay however

when we put it in a box and stamp it with Kraft Nabisco Kellogg Campbell

General Mills ConAgra Heinz etc it's just not food these companies they start

with the raw materials which are real food and then they change them they take

away pieces they process it they nuke it they chocolate they pulverize it and now

it's altered fraction incomplete and here's one of my favorite things that

makes absolutely no sense they say proudly yeah but it's made from

blank real fruit juice made from blueberries well who cares what it's

made from it's not that thing anymore right

hmm tequila is made from cactus there's not much similarity who cares what it's

made from it's not what it used to be and if we change it it doesn't do what

it's supposed to do okay so whenever you hear made from then just don't get it

you want not made from you want the thing that it is all right and then of

course they have to make it sit on the shelf for a year and not soil so they

have to strip all the nutrients out and add toxins and poisons so if we eat a

packaged food once in a while a little bit will win survive but if we make it

most of our food then you're in trouble in an ideal situation to be 100% organic

biodynamically grown food like all the other animals on earth do you know any

other animals that doesn't eat food from nature except that once we domesticate

right they all eat plants and fruits and nuts and each other that's how nature

works and if you eat like that and you have few stresses you have plenty of air

sunshine physical activity you live in peace you live in harmony with nature

and your surroundings now you do not need supplements you're getting

everything that you need from nature but hands up how many people live like that

okay I don't think there may be three people left on earth but the animal that

we call human we have changed our environment so we don't forage like the

other animals anymore we eat mass-produced food and this food does

not have the same kind of nutrients that it used to if you buy a tomato today it

doesn't taste like tomato used to if you buy fruits and vegetables and everything

they look fantastic they look like picture perfect something

but it doesn't taste the same and it's not the same because the criteria is how

it looks and how well it keeps nutrients and tastes have very little to do with

it so what do you do to make something blow up and grow and look real pretty

you add synthetic fertilizers so that way you can make something grow really

quick but it doesn't have all of the minerals and the vitamins and the

sunshine and everything that used to make good tasting tomato so it's still

better than no tomato but it's not the complete dense nutrients that that we

used to get first off the food has decreased nutrient density secondly when

we process the foods we destroy the nutrients they give the vitamins and the

minerals and the enzymes and everything that we need from the food they just

don't survive the processing and how many people here have something called

stress right and and six billion other people what stress does it reduces your

uptake of nutrients it decreases your ability to absorb nutrients but it makes

you need more so it's a double whammy you get less and you need more because

of stress then we eat processed food and we have depleted soils and the waiting

room so it's not a perfectly ideal situation so therefore because of these

reasons there are some things that that make sense to add to your diet to

supplement a little bit essential nutrients essential means literally that

you have to have it to live you cannot live without it and those are things the

essential nutrients are amino acids that we get from high quality proteins

omega-3 fatty acids primarily EPA and DHA there are several sources and we

won't go into detail here but you can ask afterwards if you like omega-3s come

from flax oil theoretically and when meaning we can make epa and DHA

but we don't convert it very well we can get it from fatty fish like salmon and

mackerel and so forth and that probably would be the best source except if you

eat enough fish to get enough omega threes you're also getting semi lethal

levels of heavy metals unfortunately so that that's just a tragic situation

that's what we've done and the best source is to get these from fish oil

supplements fish would be the best place to get them but because of the

contaminants it's not so good when you get it from official they're very very

pure and you can just take a capsule or a teaspoon and you can get enough and

then you also want to try to look into getting some minerals and biomass the

primary source is to get them still from Whole Foods but then you just get

because of depletion and stress you want to boost that just a little bit probably

so what is optimal well optimal nutrition means that you have enough of

all these essential nutrients to sustain and maintain all physiological and

biochemical processes at ideal levels that doesn't mean that we that we wait

to get symptoms it means that everything is working close to a hundred percent

adequate nutrition means that we get enough not to get symptoms means we

don't have a hundred percent vitality we don't have all the energy and joy and

function and long life that we could have but we're not really getting

symptoms for for right now and that's the traditional mode that's how they

judge how much of of everything that we should get they just look how much does

it take to prevent and then deficiency this is when we have

so little of a critical nutrient that the body just doesn't work we're getting

some kind of symptom we're getting anemia or rickets or scurvy or something

like that so that's a disease estate and we just have to add something real quick

biggest thing that we have to overcome with nutrition and supplements though is

have you noticed how there's you go into a health food store there's a million

things and all of them are good for something so you get one of everything

right and you spend a million dollars a month on supplements and you don't need

anything else the biggest problem that we have is that the medical model has so

ingrained this way of thinking that you take something for something that if you

have a symptom then you got to take something for it and that's not how it

works so when they sell supplements when they

sell when they sell nutrition and vitamins like that to say oh well you

need to take this to feel better you need to take this to get over this

symptom oh you have a headache try this they're just buying into the medical

model again they have just replaced that blood-pressure pill for another natural

pill and they're not really helping you get much healthier it's a little bit

better because it's a natural appeal rather than a synthetic drug but it's

still the same way of thinking you're not addressing health you're not

addressing the source when they say take this because it works for this best a

long way of thinking we want to start changing this thinking and know that

supplements are not supposed to do anything it they don't do anything they

don't work there the simple way of looking at it is if you

said you gotta have it that's it does that make sense does that is that

difference clear and asked me afterwards to if I need to clarify that but if

you're balling it your body is designed for healing and if you give it

everything that it needs to heal then it's going to be healthy the function

and the energy and everything that works in the body is a function of the body

and if you're not getting what you need then the body can't function but that's

different than that saying take this because it will help you do that okay

well we'll do a few more examples here and hopefully it'll clear up a little

bit so energy where does it come from people talk about all the time oh oh I

have low energy I have high energy you'll take this you'll get more energy

or get this energy drink and so forth well energy doesn't come from a pill

energy comes from biochemical processes when you have certain substrates when

you have certain raw materials such as glucose and fat and oxygen and certain

catalysts like vitamin B and Co Q 10 then your body has all the ingredients

needed to make energy and then if you provide the proper conditions you

stimulate the body appropriately you give it the proper rest then the body

will take these substrate and make energy and and this energy is

what we call ATP we talked about that it's a previous sessions that any energy

in the body is ATP when you give on the body these raw materials it will make

ATP and you have energy but you can't add if you run out of energy

if you're feeling flat one day you can add more energy you ran out okay a pill

is not going to give it back to you you need to get more rest so I know you're

probably still going to go for that cup of coffee if it's critical a test or if

you need to stay away but realize what's happening that the energy drinks or the

energy pills or the energy supplements or coffee or Red Bull and all of those

they are stimulants they are drugs and they give you the illusion of energy by

stressing you they are actually firing off your sympathetic nervous system

which is the equivalent of you having a grizzly bear next to you so yeah the

body is going to dig a little bit deeper for some more resources but it's not

going to remain balanced doing so so another analogy is that when you take

when you take coffee or you take caffeine or red Bowl or one of these

stimulants to get to get more energy to get more await your borrowing energy

somewhere and it's kind of like a credit card when you buy things you can't

really afford it's gonna catch up with you all right so if you know what you're

doing use the caffeine once in a while but don't think that it actually gives

you energy and don't think that that energy drink out there is going to do

anything good for you it's a stimulant it's a drug and you're stressing your

water taking it all right they did some actual brain tests with the neuro

infinity with a guy who just had a Red Bull and his responses were off the

chart he was he wasn't a normal person anymore

it dramatically sees changes let's just restate some of these common-sense

points you cannot add function to or improve function of the body through a

pill or a food whatever function the most that you can get is a hundred

percent of what you're supposed to have when you give the body everything that

it needs it will make a hundred percent of the function that you're

and that's the most that you can get you can't get any more of that with the

stimulant unless you're borrowing like we said and

you get 100% by providing the body what it needs it needs proper food eat well

it needs proper rest sleep and freedom from thoughts which we talked about last

week for those of you are curious why you would want to freedom from thoughts

you go back and check that out and proper stimulation which is exercise and

a sense of purpose where do we get most of our energy how is the energy derived

in the body yes it is from the raw materials that we talked about but most

of the energy also comes from excitement if we wake up in the morning with a

purpose or if we're going to Barbados we are going to get it's easier to get out

of bed okay so the the sense of purpose that joy in life is also very very

important to get energy and thoughts the hint of that thoughts are generally

involved with trying to solve a problem or worry that's most of the time what we

think about is watery and that uses energy and it depletes energy so when we

can meditate and get some freedom from thought we actually raise our energy

levels now what about all these miracle supplements

you hear about there's thousands and thousands of them out there and every

one of them have miracle stories they say to cure you from cancer and they

cure you from diabetes and they cure you from this and that and every everything

out there has a miracle story so let's just say that one person is really

really deficient in vitamin C and then there's not working to have no energy

they have bleeding gums for that person vitamin C is a miracle cure so if you

give that person vitamin C they're gonna have a miracle and they're going to run

around and tell everybody else over vitamin C it's C my life you should take

it that does not mean that you're gonna feel better taking vitamin C if they

miss it if they're lacking and they add it they will come back to health it

doesn't mean it will do anything for you okay and most of what they're what

they're doing with these these supplements of these testimonials is

actually a placebo and placebo is not to be underestimated because placebo is the

true healing force in the body that comes from you believing in something so

if you believe that you can get healthy that's the first step to getting healthy

so if they don't do anything else but but provide placebo effect and they can

get people better well it's not such a bad thing

and most of these are sold by multi-level marketing companies with a

financial incentive so you have to be a little bit critical and know that these

people are half of their excitement is about how rich they're going to get what

everybody takes it so there's some good there's some good supplements still

there's still some good products being sold but just just know that that this

is sort of the thing to find it so with all of that said what are some of the

supplements that we would maybe want to take we want to take the things that not

to do anything but the ones that we are most likely to be deficient in the ones

that are lacking in our lifestyle and the ones that get destroyed the most by

processing of foods and the number one that everyone should be on because

there's no question everyone in the Western world is deficient is omega-3

essential fatty acids we just don't get enough of it if you as stressed as we

are you need to eat fish every day to come up to the levels of omega-3s that

you need and you can't eat that much fish without glowing in the dark so that

is a good idea to supplement with with omega-3 fish oils next basic vitamins

multi mineral I'll go through this real quick vitamin D there's more and more

evidence showing that people are very deficient in vitamin D probiotics are a

good idea Co Q 10 be good for some people especially it

wants to be in a few years antioxidants and maybe some glandular

support so let's go through some of those most chronic conditions like

diabetes cancer arthritis cardiovascular disease they are inflammatory conditions

they are marked by inflammation so it's not so much the reasons that we hear

about too much cholesterol and too much fat and not enough of this and too much

of that it's really an inflammatory condition and yes lifestyle is important

stress is important but the thing that can reverse the inflammation is going to

do that have the greatest impact on all of those conditions so what Oh Meghan

threes actually do is they are a precursor for the body's natural

anti-inflammatory so if you have inflammation you add fish oil you reduce

that inflammation and you get better

they did a study and they had people eating a diet rich in alpha linolenic

acid ala which is omega-3 and they reduced inflammation by 75% then they

did another study which was one of these gigantic thanks with 40,000 people over

a couple of decades and they gave them one gram of ala per day and they reduced

heart disease by 47% and if nothing else they gave them one pill of omega-3

fishel reduce heart disease by 47% and there's still cardiologists that don't

tell people to take official that's pretty amazing

they tale they tell them to take statin drugs blood pressure medication but yeah

so other than that omega-3s they are the basic building block for the cell

membrane the cell membrane is maybe the single most important structure in the

body it is the actual true information processor it is the true brain of the

body of the cell and the integrity of that cell membrane depends on the

quality of fatty acids that we eat and like I said it's a precursor for

anti-inflammatory so there's really no reason for anybody

not to take official because we all need a lot of it and we're not getting enough

if you just take one thing make official then if if you everything organic if you

have if you get everything from your garden don't worry about vitamins but if

you're getting some of your food from the store then get a multi-mineral get a

multivitamin we have some good basic ones vitamin D has been linked now the

deficiencies rather if you don't have it they found that people with cancer

people with arthritis people for your vascular disease multiple sclerosis

autoimmune diseases they are low in vitamin D and the levels that they

previously thought were adequate meaning you didn't get symptoms they up those

levels significantly but they still need to up them more because my vitamin D is

a very crucial nutrients so that's also a good idea to take especially if you

have dark skin and you don't get much sunlight and during the winter months

because we make most of our might Mindy from sunshine and if you're fair-skinned

that means your body is better at soaking up the race so you'll make more

vitamin D per minute than a dark-skinned person and during the winter months

obviously we don't get that much of it we'll take some now probiotics

what does probiotic mean bio means life and pro means four so a probiotic is for

life antibiotic means against life did you

know that think about that next time they try to give you one okay

so if you have a life-threatening bacterial infection please take an

antibiotic because it will save your life if you have meningitis you have

something really severe or pneumonia whatever it will save your life but if

you don't have a bacterial infection it's not very serious then don't take

antibiotics because they don't do anything to help with the disease but

what they do is they kill off everything in your intestinal tract and what is

going on in your intestinal tract your GI tract has more life forms has more

cells than the rest of your body put together you have about a hundred

trillion cells in your body that make up all your tissues there's more than that

in your gut that live there and because of that you have as much as 80% of your

immune system of your cell based immune system of the cells that defend you they

also live there in the gut if there's a lot of activity a lot of your health a

lot of the absorption of nutrients depend on what goes on in that in that

gut and there are there's not really a good and bad but there's some that when

they when they take over they become really bad so what's good is to have a

balance and what they call is there's some that are pent potentially pathogen

and some some bacteria that we always have in our God is staph aureus

Enterococcus faecalis and e-coli we always always always have a couple of

dozens of trillions of those in our gut and if they were left by themselves if

they were left unchecked then that could become very very unhealthy for you but

if we have enough of the lactobacillus of the Bifidobacterium and the

lactobacillus then those keep things in check they keep things in balance so

that's what we're talking about with the probiotics that we want to take it

normally if you're perfectly healthy then this balance will maintain itself

but what happens when you take an antibiotic you kill off virtually all of

it or you kill off a huge huge number of

your of the flora in your GI tract and then you go back on the standard

American diet of coca-cola and donuts and what happens the sugar the sugar

selectively feeds the pathogens they love sugar so much you feed them and and

they grow exponentially they grow so much faster than any of the

lactobacillus so before you know it you have a huge huge imbalance and this

happens to virtually everyone as antibiotic and it happens every time

someone gets on another course of antibiotics so what we want to do is we

want to watch our sugars and we want to take an ant a a probiotic thanks for

catching that a probiotic so this balance again is one of the most

important things to maintain health and absorption and you can have malnutrition

simply you can eat the perfect food and you can be malnourished Center because

you don't have the intestinal health okay so keep that in mind it's more than

the other stuff you put in Co Q 10 this is an enzyme it's a cofactor it is

normally produced inside cells it is part of the mitochondria and it's

involved in the very very crucial step of making energy so making ATP requires

Co Q 10 and now this is something that declines with age

so a lot of elderly people will have will experience lesser levels of energy

because they don't make enough Co Q 10 this doesn't automatically mean that you

need to start eating it because in a healthy body the Co Q 10 is still

maintained but what it does mean is if you have reached that level of low

energy it may be a good idea to add a little bit and they have found that

supplementation will improve energy levels and really high levels of coq10

has been remarkable in reversing parking system

thank you antioxidants they are something that neutralizes free radicals

so as part of what the cells do in their normal way of going about business is

they burn energy they make ATP in that process they make something called free

radicals and if you are exposed to pollution radiation cigarette smoke

pesticides herbicides or any other of those sites that kill things you will

make a lot more of the free radicals so when you have what a free radical is

it's a it's a molecule it's an atom with an unpaired electron and that means it's

very very unstable and it's going to try to grab electrons from your body tissues

and it basically goes around like like some crazy roto Ruter if you will it

creates it wreaks havoc and creates damage and what an antioxidant does it

can basically contain this free radical and pair up that that free electron the

natural sources of antioxidants is a member of the moment called ASIS which

is vitamin A vitamin C vitamin E and selenium so when you eat foods that are

rich in those that's the best source and if you don't get enough then you may

want to take a little bit more fruits and vegetables have the most and there's

also something called chlorella and spirulina which are excellent sources of

antioxidant and the reason I list those two is that they are

I don't promote miracle foods because there's really no such thing we need a

good variety but that's about as close as you get because they are jam-packed

they're inexpensive and they're jam activate nutrients they're full of

protein and antioxidants and all sorts of good stuff but one more glutathione

that's the most powerful antioxidant in the body and that you can't really add

it because it's made in the body so the body does have ways of balancing out for

itself and make this there's some suggestions that you can take certain

amino acids and increase the levels of glutathione but I haven't seen any

conclusive evidence on that so now all the people who say yeah well well I hear

what you're saying and we don't need all this my boys supposed to take care of it

but I'm in menopause or I have a low thyroid or I have this and that and I

found that I feel so much better my hot flashes go away with with this

pill in this bill does that mean I shouldn't take it no this is what we

call angular support so if you have a certain organ stress then there's

nothing wrong at all with providing some support providing some nutrients that

can strengthen those glands while you do everything else that you can do to get

healthy and specifically the ones that you want to look at potentially the

adrenals because the numbers the number one organ land to get struck out by

stress it gets fatigued and exhausted by stress hypothalamus pituitary thyroid

they're all involved with hormonal levels in the body and the liver is the

main metabolic Factory in the body all of those glands tend to be tend to get a

little bit tired and at times it can be very beneficial to

to help them out a little bit so

conclusions don't buy any supplements that say they do something it gets

something if you're missing something that you have to have understand that

the body works when it gets what it needs supplement a handful of things

that you're likely to be missing and then eat well move well think well if

your parasympathetic nervous system if you don't understand exactly what that

is go back and look at previous videos if your parasympathetic nervous system

is not engaging enough you cannot absorb much of anything

anyway meaning stress will turn off your

digestion and your absorption so it doesn't matter how good you eat research

learn and use some common sense and then of course attend all future lectures

here and read up on on on past watch sports past videos to basically get some

common sense because there's not I'm not really saying anything new here I'm just

trying to put it in a context that can help you think about it and when you're

looking at supplements also do a little research or or check

with with us here because 98 I don't know

vast majority of everything sold out there are synthetic supplements so

everything they have virtually at Kroger and Publix and Walmart and GNC and so

forth there's some things that they'll do some good but for the most part

they're synthetic and they're a far cry from from the food source nutrition that

you're looking for we'll end up with a wonderful cartoon here the wise man

sitting on the top of the mountain as a sign that says ignorance cheerfully

returned if not completely enlightened and that holds true here as well I'm

sure there won't be any takers no no refunds here so thank you so much

for tonight we're excited to have you and if you get something out of this

please tell someone please bring someone next time we're trying to make this into

a continuing series and we want as many as possible to know as much as possible

thank you