Most supermarkets have a range of supplements and you’ll find some kind of supplement on the shelves of many small shops. Supplements have become part of everyday life for many, but I want to explore whether supplements allow the body to make use of the nutrients or whether you just can end up flushing away some very expensive poos and pees!

There is a vast difference in price between supplements. This is because the body uses different forms of vitamins and minerals in separate ways. Some forms are easier to absorb, some absorb quickly and some take more energy to break down. In addition, some forms are more taxing on the liver, the organ that has to do all the hard work.

Many forms of vitamin and mineral supplements are made entirely in a lab and have no connection with food. When we eat unprocessed and natural food, our body instantly recognises the food and knows what to do with the vitamins and minerals they contain. If we digest a chemical form of the nutrients, this often forces the liver to take on the job of breaking them down and converting them into what we need. That is assuming that it even reaches the liver in the first place, with many supplements just simply going in one end and out of the other with very little absorption in the middle. So when any of my clients say they have tried vitamins or mineral supplements and they didn’t work, I always ask them what quality they used, as well as the strength and for how long, as this all plays a role.

Some cheaper forms of vitamins and minerals have various kinds of bulking agents, as well as containing cheap forms of the vitamins and minerals. One popular supplement is Vitamin C. At the first sign of a cold, many of us reach for effervescent vitamin C, thinking we don’t have time to be ill (which is a whole other conversation for a different blog post!). The trouble is, many brands fill out those fizzy Vitamin C tablets with artificial flavourings and sweeteners the body will not recognise. And if the body doesn’t recognise something, it takes one of two options – it tries to get it out (hence the expensive poos and pees) or stores it as toxicity.

So, if vitamins and minerals are cheap, it’s generally for a good reason. On my own personal healing journey, every time I tried taking a multivitamin in the morning I felt really nauseous. It wasn’t a cheap brand, but it also wasn’t made from food. The nausea was being caused by my liver struggling to break it down. I then moved over to a food state multivitamin and mineral supplement – bingo! The nausea went away and I could take the supplement at any time of day with no negative symptoms. This is one of the reasons I now highly recommend food-state supplements, as the body knows what to do with it, as it recognises the nutrients as food, because they are food!

One of the brands I recommend is Cytoplan, which I discovered during my own healing journey. They have a vast range of food-state supplements and I also like their process of creation. Many of their food-state supplements are brassicas grown hydroponically and fed all the organic nutrients we need. The brassica is then harvested and dehydrated at raw status (i.e. without the use of high heat) and then simply ground down and placed in a capsule. This enables the body to see it as food and so use it as food.

I highly recommend exploring their amazing range of food-state supplements and I’ve found a great place to start is with their range of multi-vitamin and mineral supplements.

https://www.cytoplan.co.uk/multi-vitamins-minerals

If you are interested in the effective use of supplements, I shall be focussing some of my future blogs on a range of specific supplements, including weighing up which forms are best, and for what reasons.

This week I invite you to explore the supplements you have in your cupboard and see whether they are in a food state. How many of them are?

Follow