When I started my healing and cleansing protocol which I had to become an expert on my own, I wasn’t a supplement person. I had never taken pills (common cold pills, birth control pills, nor any medications!) before. I wasn’t feeling very convinced to take any until I started getting flare ups from my very first detox program.
I bought probiotic and fish oil (high in EPA). Those bottles cost more than $100 together. And the more I learnt about supplements in school, the more I become obsessed with new supplements I thought I should try to help heal.
I bought so many kinds of supplement I thought they would help me including homeopathic remedies. I was lucky or not, worked in the health food store where I had opportunities to take educational courses from supplement companies then. So wherever I hear about products that could help heal the skin then I had to try.
The truth is… I still have so many bottles, whether they are already open or not, in my drawer from years ago (2013~). Some of them looked very stale I had to get rid of them after a couple of years.
I have done many trials and errors along the way. It cost me a fortune to buy all those supplements. But I was 100% committed to get better. I economized on clothes and entertainments. I had rather spend all of my earnings on organic groceries and supplements. So I did.
While I was working in the health food store, almost 90% of the people needed help to find the supplements for their health conditions, they never asked me how to eat, what foods are nutritious. This is very tricky because people nowadays are more into “natural” healing instead of medications. But still, they want a “quick fix” which they refer to supplements, the pills. And that won’t give them what they want.
I wanted to become a nutritionist because I believe in nutritions that help heal us. Our health goes downhill when our diet doesn’t feed our body and/or too much toxicity the our body can’t get out of our system because of malnutrition. Our body needs vitamins, minerals, and fat (cholesterol) for enzymatic activities and regeneration.
The GAPs diet recommends minimal of supplements. And I strongly agree with it. It is super time consuming and hard to find the best quality supplements. When I talk about supplements, I’m not talking about supplements you get from Costco or dollar stores. They won’t do any good rather do harm to your body.
Because it was my responsibility to recommend the best quality supplements to customers in the store, I did a lot of research on supplement companies and talked to rep which I was very careful that I wouldn’t be biased by their information. I spent a lot of my own time to research the additives and such. And this helped me to pick supplements for myself too.
If you were to decide to take supplements, please do your own research. Call the company to know how they manufacture their products, the source of the products (a lot of vitamins are made out of corn. Ask them where it’s coming from), and safety (heavy metal contamination, etc). Companies want to show you the studies and researches done, either by their own company or general information from studies done by pharmaceuticals, that their products are effective to certain health conditions. And that’s very appealing. But what’s important is your body assimilates the nutrients from the supplement without any harm.
While I don’t completely disagree to take supplements, there are risks of what you may be getting into your body unless you know how and where they are coming from.
It is like going out for food. You don’t know what could be in the food you were about to eat unless you make it yourself.
I have become a practitioner educates my clients how to get nutrients from real foods. I still suggest some supplements such as probiotic, fish/cod liver oil, chlorella, and some liver herbs. But nutrients are more bioavailable for our body when they are coming from the right source. Supplements are nutrients that are isolated mostly from corn. Those isolated forms won’t be recognized by the body as easy as food in order to be assimilated. If nutrients from supplements weren’t absorbed by the body, it will be excreted as urine.
I think spending your precious money on organic local foods makes more sense than wasting it to make expensive urine.