Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
What is functional medicine?
Functional medicine means restoring normal function in your body in every living cell,
tissue, organ, and system.
The practice of regular medicine, while important and necessary, of course, doesn't work for
everybody.
Maybe you don't want to wait until your disease is bad enough that your insurance will pay
for it because the only things that your insurance company will typically pay for are pharmaceuticals
and surgery.
If you're looking for something that gives your body a fighting chance to deal with a
situation on its own, using your own immune system, your own physiology, your own inner
resources, to heal yourself, that's what functional medicine is for.
It usually involves doing more tests than you get when you go in for a standard medical
office visit.
It's much easier to diagnose obvious kidney disease or obvious liver disease or obvious
heart condition than it is to get a full picture of your overall health.
It requires more tests to really see how your entire system is functioning and because everything
affects everything else, you want to know that.
So when somebody comes to me, I'm going to typically do a 55-point blood panel, 80% of
the time at least, sometimes additional tests, tests for hormones or neurotransmitters or
chemical toxins or heavy metals.
Sometimes a stool test is necessary for a severe or inflammatory gut condition.
You know what the most important test is?
A case history, a good case history.
I take the time to do a good case history, to answer all your questions and then to truly
understand what's going on with you.
That's the best way to identify what other tests might be necessary to identify whatever
is ailing you.
Sometimes I have to order scans, MRIs or CTs or x-rays or ultrasounds.
But whatever it is, we get to the bottom of the condition of your body, figure out what's
necessary for your body to better heal itself.
And then we do that, we do the healing and repairing with better food, exercise and supplements.
So some people are already eating an excellent diet and they've got that covered.
Sometimes their diet needs a whole overhaul.
Oftentimes it's something in between, maybe you just need to stop eating a few things
and add in a little bit more of this or that.
A lot of people are aware that that might be a good idea for them already.
And exercise is different for everyone.
Some people can't do certain exercises or any exercise sometimes because of pain.
And so I can often help people get out of pain that is preventing them from doing proper
exercise by identifying what's causing their physical ailments and using non-force chiropractic
and stretching, some other techniques to get rid of your pain.
So that's important.
But mainly with exercise, the most important exercise is the one that you'll do and enjoy.
Because if you really hate it, you're probably not going to do it for very long.
So you have to find something that you'll enjoy.
And the easiest exercise for anyone, almost anyone to do, is just simply walking.
So better food, exercise and supplements.
Most people, when I do the tests and do the case history, identify what's going on with
you.
I always find nutrient deficiencies.
I'm just going to say always.
I've never seen anyone who's getting all, very rarely see anyone who's getting all the
nutrients they need.
That doesn't mean no one is, but people who are getting all the nutrients they need to
heal and repair themselves and exercising and eating good food usually don't come see
me because they're not having any problems that they need any help with.
So yeah, almost every time someone comes in, I'm going to be recommending some supplements.
And so I'm going to talk, the subject of today's talk is going to be why you shouldn't buy
cheap supplements from Costco.
And how to identify quality supplements that actually work, that'll do the job, that'll
do what you expect them to do.
How do you tell the difference?
That's what we're going to talk about today.
But before we do, for those of you who don't know, if you like what you hear on the show
and you want to hear more, or maybe you've only just heard a tiny portion, maybe you've
heard the whole show several times, but I just want you to remind everyone that either
way you can always listen to all of the past episodes anytime you like.
On demand, just click and play on my website, binkleyhealingcenter.com, as well as on Apple
podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
So you can go and listen to them.
I think there's some 60 episodes I've done now, a little over 60.
I think this is number 63.
So yeah, check those out and you're welcome to contact me at any time.
Email is best.
Sometimes people need to send documents, so drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
So I guess before we dive into the difference between good supplements and bad supplements,
maybe I'll talk a little bit about who can I help?
What are the conditions that I treat?
What is functional medicine for?
So technically, I don't treat anything.
I'm not here to cure any medical condition.
I identify conditions that other doctors miss by doing more detailed testing, but then recommend
better fit exercise and supplement to maximize your body's ability to heal itself.
And then your body does the healing.
So conditions I've helped, I routinely help people with osteoporosis, arthritis, the effects
of mold toxins and heavy metals and chemical toxins, hormone imbalances, hypothyroidism,
anemia.
Anemia is something that I see all the time.
People don't even know they have it.
Most people never know when they have anemia.
It's identified on routine blood testing.
Anybody who has fatigue, for example, most people who have fatigue, I find often have
a slight anemia that they don't know about.
So they can go to their MD and get a CBC, a complete blood count as part of their blood
work up.
And they'll say, your blood work's fine.
If your hemoglobin is above a certain level, if your hermitocrite, your blood cell count
is within the broad medical range, then your, insert air quotes, fine.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're healthy and that you're getting enough iron
as, but that your bone marrow is getting the nutrients it needs to make adequate new red
blood cells.
And the most common causes of a deficiency are iron, iron deficiency anemia, and B vitamins,
especially folate, B12, and sometimes vitamin B6.
And those are all identifiable on a complete blood count, a very inexpensive test.
The entire complete blood count with all of the different versions of testing the red
blood cells and white blood cells is like $15.
So in my experience, when people bring in their blood work, a lot of times that's not
done as part of a routine blood work up.
They'll do it if they suspect an infection or anything else that requires doing a complete
blood count.
But it's often not included on just a quote, routine panel for say an annual physical,
which just mystifies me because I find so many things that otherwise get overlooked
without a CBC.
Fatigue is one of the most common things that people come for, helped many, many people,
thousands of people with fatigue, unexplained fatigue especially, which almost never has
one cause.
It's usually several little things that are adding up and really to get a good result,
you need to identify all of them and address all of them to have the energy that you deserve
to have and be able to maintain it.
Chronic infections, I see that a lot again on the CBC.
People don't know that their body has a bacteria or a virus or some other kind of bug that
your immune system just never completely fought off.
How do we identify that?
Your white blood cell count goes low when you have a chronic infection.
Most of the time, most doctors are just looking to see if you have an acute infection.
Everyone has experienced an acute infection.
That's when you have a cold or the flu and you get a fever and a runny nose or cough.
You know when you have an acute infection because you can feel it.
When you have a chronic infection, chronic like chronology, chronos means it's just been
there for a long time.
It doesn't say anything about how good or how bad it is.
Obviously, it wouldn't be good.
Chronic doesn't necessarily mean bad or severe.
Chronic just means has been there for a long time.
When you have a bug that your immune system is never able to completely fight off for
months or even years, then your white blood cell count goes down, you have a low white
blood cell count.
And not off the charts though, like if you have a really severe condition, which would
be caught by any standard medical exam.
But just slightly low white cell count for no apparent reason.
The reason is your immune system is still struggling to fight something off and it's
never been able to completely finish the job.
And so you need support.
Oftentimes just getting your vitamin D level up to the proper healthy range, which is between
50 and 90.
The blood level of everyone's vitamin D should be between 50 and 90.
Most doctors will tell you it's fine if it's above 30.
It really needs to be between 50 and 90.
To achieve that, most adults need to take 5,000 IU of vitamin D per day.
Some of this is review, but it's important to go over some of this stuff.
The most important things that people can sometimes forget, even people that know that
they should be taking that much vitamin D, forget sometimes or drop off and need to,
maybe they think they're fine because they've taken it for a long time, but you don't know
for sure unless you test.
That's the best way to know if you're getting adequate vitamin D and insufficient vitamin
D is probably the most common overlooked cause of a slightly weak immune system that would
cause a chronic infection that would result in you having a chronic infection or your
white cell count to go down.
So the things that show up, protein deficiency shows up very frequently.
People don't realize that they're not, they may be eating plenty of protein, but they're
not getting enough to maintain a healthy level in their bloodstream, which is so, so important
for healing and repairing every single part of your body.
Every cell in your body is made mostly of protein and fat.
So if you lack sufficient protein, you're going to lack, it's going to be difficult
for your body to heal and repair almost anything that needs it.
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies show up all the time.
I test for dysbiosis in the gut if necessary.
Sometimes it's obvious just based on your case history, if you're having indigestion,
gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, all of the above, or cycling between different
symptoms like that.
That is often the result of dysbiosis, which means too many bad bacteria and not enough
good bacteria in your gut microbiome.
So test for that, a lot, really important if necessary.
Sometimes it requires doing a stool test to fully identify all the bad bugs and the good
bugs and see if you have not too many of the bad ones and enough of the good ones.
Both are equally important.
I'm Dr. Todd Benkley.
We're listening to safe, effective, natural solutions to almost any health challenge.
Today's topic is why you shouldn't buy cheap supplements from Costco and how to identify
quality supplements that will do the job, that will do what you want.
So how do you tell which supplements are best?
Well, there are good companies that you can develop a certain amount of experience with.
I'm going to list some of those here in a minute.
If you've got a good company that's made several products that you've taken, then it's a pretty
good chance that almost anything you buy from a really good company is going to work out
well.
But there's many companies that make good products, I guess is what I was trying to
say.
There are unfortunately many more.
The vast majority of supplements in stores especially are not so great.
Some of them are completely useless and even some of them can even be harmful, especially
energy boosters or some of these cleanses that people take, liver cleanses, gut cleanses.
I really encourage people to get seen by a professional before they do those things because
they can cause a lot of problems with your liver and can make you sick, can stir up toxins
that your body can't flush out fast enough.
Muscle building products, these things, they're just designed to load you up with protein
and inferior other things along with that.
The protein isn't necessarily the problem but some of the other stuff they put in, their
stimulants and lousy crappy vitamins and herbs.
Imported herbal remedies, Chinese herbal products with strange labels.
If they're cheap, anything that's, you get what you pay for.
Buying cheap supplements is usually a bad idea.
There are some exceptions.
Vitamin C is a major exception.
Vitamin C is very inexpensive.
Ascorbic acid is the same wherever you get it.
There are some other forms that are important for certain conditions but if you tolerate
regular old vitamin C, buy it at Costco, Trader Joe's, any store, it doesn't really matter.
I stock other forms of vitamin C for people who need special forms.
For example, buffered vitamin C. If you can't take the acidity of ascorbic acid of vitamin
C, then you can get buffered vitamin C so that it doesn't have any problem, doesn't
cause any exacerbation of maybe gastroesophageal reflux, heartburn, ulcers.
People that have sensitive stomach for any reason sometimes can't take regular vitamin
C. For people with severe conditions, people with cancer, people with advanced or severe
autoimmune conditions often benefit from very high dose vitamin C therapy.
If they can't take high doses of regular ascorbic acid, then taking liposomal or powdered
forms of vitamin C make that easier to get large amounts.
That's one example.
Yeah, most things you get with cheap.
Some things that you should never buy cheap, fish oil.
Cheap fish oil, it costs money to buy the proper equipment to filter fish oil properly
so no one should buy cheap fish oil.
I only recommend getting fish oil from companies that I've seen the testing data on because
the equipment to test to make sure that any pollutants that might end up in the fish oil
is properly filtered out without heat to maintain the integrity of the nutrients in the fish
oil.
Most good fish oil is caught off the Arctic waters, the cold waters of Northern and Southern,
Norway, the one end of the other of the earth.
Small and little tiny anchovies and sardines and fish that haven't been in the ocean enough
to accumulate many toxins because they haven't been alive that long.
The ocean's full of toxins.
The bigger the fish, the more toxins it's going to have in it, which is why the most
toxic fish, the fish highest in mercury, for example, are large fish like tuna and swordfish
and shark.
What's the best way to tell if a supplement is good?
Give it to a hundred thousand people and test them before and after they take it to see
what effect it has.
Obviously, I can't do that, but in conjunction with colleagues that I speak to at conferences
around the country every year, that is how I get my impressions of many of the supplements
that I recommend.
Various companies do testing on their products and cite references in their educational materials.
The conferences themselves that functional medicine practitioners go to don't mention
products by name, but the ingredients and the research behind them that shows certain
nutrients effects on various organs and systems and conditions.
From that, practitioners share knowledge and information, experience with various patients,
and collectively, the thousands of functional medicine practitioners around the country
are using similar protocols of nutrients on common conditions, and we share that information.
That's one of the main ways we find out how products work by just clinical experience.
Every time I give a list of products to you, if I test your blood beforehand, give some
products to you, test your blood after, there's a case study of one person.
People say, oh, well, how do you know if you're giving me six supplements or four supplements
or nine supplements or whatever, how do you know which one did the job?
Well, it's not medicine.
Supplements are nutrients, are not drugs.
Drugs, that's one of the biggest, kind of sad, really.
I used to be frustrating.
It's not, it's just, this is what it is, but medical, pharmaceutical companies test drugs
singly, right?
If you test a single drug to see what effect it has, then you're going to know the effect
of that drug.
It makes perfect sense because drugs have a very specific effect on cell receptors,
on physiological processes, enzyme pathways.
Nutrients don't work like that.
Nutrients work in combination.
So taking a collection of nutrients to give your body everything it needs to heal and
repair itself works better than trying to take one thing.
So I might recommend that you take vitamin D and a multivitamin and some fish oil.
I will, I recommend those three things for everybody.
And maybe something for high cholesterol and something for low thyroid.
Test you before and after.
I'm going to see if your, I didn't test one thing at a time to see which one works, but
I'm going to see if your thyroid improved and your cholesterol went down.
And you're going to tell me if you feel better overall.
And I can also measure your vitamin D levels.
So there are some things we can measure directly on blood tests.
There are some things that we can measure indirectly, some things that we have to use
the tests in combination with how you feel.
That's the reason we do follow up case history.
So you know, it's not as simple as just testing one drug for one effect, but you know, that's
an oversimplification as well too, because human physiology doesn't really work the way
some pharmaceutical companies want you to think it does.
My favorite metaphor is think of your bloodstream as a river of life.
So your bloodstream is a river of life with construction crews waiting on both river banks
for all the materials needed to heal and repair.
They're waiting, they've got a list of projects that need, that need, that have been put off
for a while, maybe on hold for a long time because you didn't have the nutrients you
needed to heal and repair.
Something's waiting and those construction crews require the necessary materials to do
the job.
So if they don't get what they need when they need it, then that project gets put on hold
for weeks, months, sometimes even years, and that's how chronic diseases develop.
So you want to test yourself and then flood your river of life with all the nutrients
every part of your body needs so that it can heal and repair itself.
And then you take things away one or two at a time.
You start out with everything you need, identify everything that you might need to get you,
give your body a fighting chance, get you as healthy as you can be, and then you slowly
remove things from the list and just get back to a core of only taking the supplements that
you need because you're not getting enough of them from your food.
And typically those three things are a good multivitamin or mineral for the minerals,
fish oil for omega-3 fatty acids if you're not eating salmon every day, and vitamin D.
Most no one gets enough vitamin D from food or from the sun.
So drugs are essential when you need to intervene and get a quick, specific, controlled, reliable,
predictable response.
And they alter and manipulate cell receptors and biochemical pathways.
But they're also all toxic to the body because precisely because they interfere with normal
physiology.
The normal control mechanisms in your body are overridden.
And consuming too much or too many drugs can easily kill you.
Over 100,000 people in America die every year from properly, correctly prescribed medications,
not medical errors.
Normally, properly prescribed medicine kills 100,000 people a year.
So nutrients versus drugs.
Nutrients unlike drugs are foods that our bodies have evolved the ability to assimilate
and utilize for sustaining life.
I'm going to say that again.
Nutrients are foods that our bodies have evolved the ability to assimilate and utilize for
sustaining life.
Nutrients provide the raw materials for building and maintaining living cells.
So they're non-toxic precisely because they support normal physiology.
The innate control mechanisms in your body remain intact.
Your body's still in control.
If you take too much of a nutrient, your body will just excrete it.
It will be flushed out through the kidneys and the colon and end up in the sewer.
It's possible, obviously.
It's possible to take too much of some vitamins.
It's possible to take too much vitamin D. It almost never happens.
It's very rare, actually.
It's possible to take too much iron.
That's why men, that's why they make separate men and women's multivitamins because if you're
not bleeding, you usually don't need to supplement iron at all.
That's why women always, menstruating women always need it and men who don't have hemorrhoids
or an ulcer usually don't.
There are exceptions.
That's why we got to test.
There's some things.
It's possible to drink too much water.
You can get hyponatremia from drinking too much water too fast.
Hyponatremia just means low sodium.
You can screw up your electrolytes so bad that you can die.
Your heart and your brain will shut down after consuming too much water too fast.
It very rarely happens, but Google hyponatremia.
It's a thing.
You can literally drink too much water.
You can get too much of anything, but it is rare to get too much of commonly utilized supplement
products that functional medicine practitioners use because we're buying quality products.
It's another reason to not use cheap inferior products because sometimes they might have
things in there that are harmful.
More importantly, the easiest way to tell, the main reasons to not buy cheap supplements
are they often have inferior source materials that are just stale or inert, have no effect
at all.
The poor processing that cheaper supplements undergo can deplete the potency of them.
The cheap capsule fillers and tablet binding agents very commonly prevent proper absorption.
So what's on the label is tested.
The government requires proper testing of these things to print it on a bottle.
It has to be in the tablet or the capsule.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to end up in your bloodstream.
And the amounts of many important ingredients are insufficient to achieve the desired effect.
So what's on the label and what enters your bloodstream are not necessarily the same thing.
High quality products, some of the brands that I trust are Orthomolecular Products,
Designs for Health.
Orthomolecular Products and Designs for Health are actually my two favorite brands.
You'll hear me talk about some of their products on some of the past episodes if you listen
to those.
But there are some other, many other great companies, Doctors Research, Standard Process,
Douglas Labs, Pure Encapsulations, Thorn Research, Gaia Pro.
There are lots of good products.
There's just so many, many more that aren't so great.
It looks like we're about ready to run out of time, so I will continue talking about
how to identify good supplements and what the difference that they make for various
conditions.
Have a very Merry Christmas.
You've been listening to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
Dr. Binkley at BinkleyHealingCenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 2pm for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions here on 98.3 FM, The Word.