Are supplements helpful?

I did my Functional Blood Chemistry labs (something I do for patients all the time).

It's similar to what you'd get with a physical, but a little beefier. Medical doctors usually don't include a full thyroid or lipid panel with their set of labs. My feeling is that the labs I run cost next to nothing, and there's no reason not to look at them at least once a year.

Here's the thing: GPs aren't trained to read through a preventative lens. They're trained to intervene when labs show disease. This means many patients with labs that look "normal" to a GP, still feel unwell.

Western MDs are complication managers or disease managers. They're good at that, and it's vital to the survival of humans, but there's a largely unfilled need for preventative care (which is my focus as a function medicine doctor).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not attacking MDs; they are part of the system that gives them maybe 15 minutes with patients, so they have to focus on the most pressing concerns and don't have time to dive deep.

When we analyze labs from the munctional Medicine lens, we're looking to see what is optimal and learn how the body and digestive system is managing and using nutrients at the root level.

Anyway, I did my labs and found that I wasn't absorbing much of my micronutrients and even some macronutrients.

While I don't generally experience digestive issues, my body felt off and I was so run down. My takeaway from my lab work was that my body had lost some of its ability to really deeply nourish me.

All of my pill supplements were essentially just creating expensive pee (I was urinating away most of what I was taking).

So, I stopped taking everything and worked at supporting my gut.

Here's what I'm doing:

Digestive bitters either in a tincture or as a side dish with every meal

Probiotic foods with my breakfast (sauerkraut or kimchi, probiotic pickles)

Warm teas with immune-supporting herbs and mushroom complexes

I also started really focusing on my meal time (no social media, email, or phone when while eating).

I’m still struggling with this one (especially getting my day going at breakfast time), but taking the phone away from myself during lunch and dinner has made a huge impact.

I'll share here how my labs changed when I run them again in a few months.

The moral of the story is this:

Get your labs done by a functional medicine doctor if you want to learn how your body is processing all the good stuff that you are trying to give it.