West, What supplements do you take?

There are VERY few coaches who actually practice what they preach, trust me.  Other than taking female hormones, there is nothing that I advise my clients to do that I don’t do or that I haven’t done.  Many financial coaches are broke (none that I use) and many marriage coaches are on their third marriage (not the one we use).  I even paid to listen to an “expert” teach me about medication and supplements for fat loss, and the guy was FAT!  So when I coach someone on the importance of supplementing their diet with specific vitamins and nutrients, it’s because I use them myself.

You’ll notice that we don’t sell two hundred different kinds of supplements.  I just don’t feel it is necessary to take 25 different pills every morning for optimal health.  I take six supplements: a multi-vitamin, omega-3 fish oil, DHEA, vitamin D, probiotics, and whey protein.

A quality multi-vitamin is your foundation for covering the gaps that will develop in our nutrition.  If you were to write down everything you eat over the course of a month, you’ll notice that the same 15-20 food make up over 90% of your diet.  Without a multiple vitamin, you will eventually become deficient in several vitamin and/or minerals.  You are just not getting what you need from food.  If fact, the fruits and vegetables today have about 1/3 the amount of nutrients from 50 years ago.  The soil is depleted and the farming methods reward quick growing, heavy produce.

Many prescription medication also decreases our vitamin levels.  This is especially true for acid blocking drugs like Prilosec and Prevacid.  Many disease today are linked to vitamin deficiencies.  When the vitamin is returned to the diet, the patient’s symptoms diminish.  The multi-vitamin product I take is SPECTRA MAN. 

Do you know that our brain is made up of 60% fat?  Not just any fat, DHA.  DHA is found in omega-3 fish oil and is the substance we are trying to get when taking this supplement.  Let’s just say it will keep the dementia away.  Omega-3 fish oil also lowers triglycerides, reduces inflammation, thins our blood by making platelets less sticky, and a host of other benefits.  It has also been shown to increase testosterone levels in men, further studies are ongoing.  There is a prescription omega-3 called Lovaza that sells for over $200 a month.  The product I use is simply called Omega-3 HP-D and it contains almost the same amount of DHA as the prescription for 50 cents a day.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that over 1 billion people worldwide are deficient in vitamin D.  In all my years of checking vitamin D levels, only a few have come back acceptable.  Thousands of years ago, we lived outside, worked outside, and stayed outside…in the sun.  Our bodies make vitamin D from cholesterol when sunlight hits our skin.  Unfortunately, we are not outside in the sun enough for this to happen with any significance.  When given adequate sunlight, the human body will produce about 15,000 IU of vitamin D a day.  Once your body has all you need, it will not make any more.  Vitamin D protects against cancer, heart disease, fractures, diabetes, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and many other conditions.  When people with those conditions are given vitamin D, their symptoms are greatly reduced.  I take 5,000 IU of Vitamin D every morning.

As we age, the levels of DHEA decline in a predictable pattern.  As the levels fall off, this signals the body to age.  DHEA is also the precursor to our sex hormones, meaning the body cannot produce the proper amount without the starting hormone.  The adrenal glands produce some of the DHEA in our body and supplementing with DHEA can help ease “adrenal fatigue.”  A new study out of England shows that people who live the longest and are wealthy have high levels of DHEA.  Since I plan on living a long, healthy, and hopefully wealthy life, I take 25mg on DHEA every morning.

“It all starts in the gut” is a popular saying among the health food crowd.  This is because you need to properly absorb the nutrition you are taking in.  It is healthier to eat a fast food hamburger and fries, take digestive enzymes and have what little nutrition there is be absorbed than eat grilled chicken and broccoli with little absorption.  Of course, you should eat the chicken and broccoli and take your digestive enzymes!  Let’s be honest, the burger and fries taste a lot better.  If I’m going to eat healthy, I want to get the most nutrition out of that food as possible.  To do that, you need both proboitics and digestive enzymes.  I chew one Mega ProBiotic HD with Digestive Enzymes at the beginning of every meal or snack.

I like to lift weights.  It is something I’ve been doing since I was twelve years old.  Like eating healthy food, I want to get the most out of my time in the gym.  Lifting weights causes the muscles to break down.  When our body repairs the tissue, it is stronger and bigger than before.  The body uses protein, in the form of amino acids, to build the muscle bigger and stronger.  Just to be sure my body has all the construction material at the job site, I drink at least one whey protein shake a day.  I’ll either use it as a snack or as a post workout drink to get the repair process started as soon as possible.

If you do not weight train(you should), you do not have to use the whey protein like I do.  It is simply supplying the body with what is needs for repair.

That’s it for my daily supplements.  Just this basic routine will put you in the top 90% of the population with your health.  You might think that this is expensive, especially since the supplements I use are top quality.  Excluding the whey protein, this costs about $2.50 a day.  Heck, that’s a large order of fries at McDonald’s.