Radically Resilient Health Podcast

Supplements | Why We Need Them & How To Choose Wisely

Transcript:

Connie Wray: (00:00)
In this episode of radically resilient health with Dr. Carolyn Dolan, we’ll be discussing supplements, why supplements are needed and the safety of supplements. Dr. Dolan. It’s great to talk with you again today, and I’m excited to dive into this topic because you have created a supplement – VitaKinetics and the importance of supplements for your body and not only helping with injury, but wellness overall.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (00:25)
Yeah, absolutely. Nice to talk to you again today. When we talk about why supplements are needed, it’s fascinating how I’ve taken a complete turnaround on that. When I first started my health and wellness journey and then ended up going back to school to get my degree in nutrition, I worked on my thesis, Connie to disprove the need for supplements. I truly believed in my heart of hearts at that time, that eating well moving well, sleeping long, connecting well was, was all that was needed. That alone was enough to promote healing and decrease your pain. And I realized those are critical foundational components to health, resiliency, and healing. But as I was doing the research, I found that there are certain times in our lives where injury, life circumstances, stressful life events, make it difficult to do something in an ideal manner. Okay. So let’s use motherhood as an example, becoming a new mother because that was one of the things that happen to be in my life. One of my most stressful life events that I can’t escape right there. I’ve got three children. Parenting is incredibly stressful. And particularly if you’re trying to be conscious, conscientious and do a good job,

Connie Wray: (02:03)
Parenting in a pandemic –

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (02:06)
Absolutely and parenting in a pandemic, right? So I looked at that moment and I said, well, I can eat perfectly, even though I don’t eat perfectly, but say I did eat perfectly only fruits, vegetables, and adequate animal proteins and fresh water, like three meals a day, all of this. And let’s also then say that I exercise adequately and appropriately every single day. And then let’s say I go to sleep perfectly every single day. And then let’s say, I’m consistent about say meditating or connection or stress management. I could do those, all those four things perfectly and still be in a place where I am feeling overtly stress over parental circumstances, particularly during pandemic times, right? Like, so here I am trying to do, and I really well, most of the time I’m eating really well and that created certain habits, but I fall off periodically and let’s say my sleep is off one night because the kid was sick or a kid was having difficulty sleeping.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (03:13)
So then my sleep was off at night. So you can see how all of a sudden, when I, when I was working with my clients and patients, I talked about the analogy of baseball where each one of those life components eat well, move up. We all connect well and supplement, well, it’s like the game of baseball, right? You do one, that’s good. You do two at the double doubly. Good. You do three, you know, they build upon each other. But how often are you able to get the grand slam where you’re doing everything perfectly well, that’s, that’s like an unrealistic expectation, right? And then throw, say an injury, my ankle injury, where now suddenly you’re not able to exercise the way you normally would. You’re in a little bit more pain. You’re not moving. You know, like all of a sudden the balance is thrown off.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (04:00)
And that’s where I said, well, of course there’s a place for supplements, both to get the most out of all those good things that you’re doing, but also to make up for when you really can’t do those things for whatever that reason is. And so when then I started particularly around healing and orthopedic injury and pain reduction, as it means avoiding certain pharmaceuticals and dangerous pain medication, I looked into different supplements. And what I found was really fascinating. I was like, Oh my goodness, there really is data to support the use of certain things in certain circumstances. And as I continued to research that, and I was really focusing in on that gut brain connection and how that promotes the healing pain reduction health and all of that, I started to find more and more data. Now, is it a hundred percent conclusive as far as what you would expect with a double-blind randomized controlled? No, but was there enough evidence to support? Like I thought there would be no evidence to support such you. And what I found was like, you know, it seems like this might be a safe, alternative to be supportive or complimentary to all those other things that I was doing to help not only myself, but my patients through some more difficult, challenging times.

Connie Wray: (05:25)
I know just in my experience with Vita kinetics and my work with you was finding something that could help me. When I first started working with you. Obviously I was heading into surgery. My, my main focus was I want to get through this surgery. I want to heal fast and I want to get off opioids as quickly as possible. So I had a motivation and the Vita kinetics was a tool for me to reach those goals. But then after surgery as I went back to my workout routine. I’m 47 years old and that fatigue that I was feeling after my workouts, I wanted something that could help me heal faster. I didn’t know if that was a possibility, but I know that when I was taking Vita kinetics prior to surgery during and after my surgery, and then continuing on that, I just felt like I could recover better because of that Vita kinetic supplement that I was taking. And I, now it’s a religious, I use it every day after my workouts. I mean, I’ve been telling you this week that my husband and I it’s the new year we’re back. We’ve been trying some different things at the gym and we’re tired and we both commented, Oh my gosh. You know, just imagine if we weren’t taking our Vita kinetics

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (06:50)
And I will add too with that, there’s there. I have to be really careful with our verbiage, the word choice, right? That a kinetic may help facilitate healing faster in the term by a few days. But what it really does is it supports that healing process. So you get that full recovery. And so in the physical activities or fitness, it helps maybe reduce that delayed onset muscle soreness. So you can continue to be functional the next day and not be in so much discomfort as the begins to happen as we age right after doing those things. But in the longterm, it starts to facilitate supporting the recovery because you aren’t doing a stress, you know, anytime you’re going to lift weight, the whole point is to stimulate a response, a stressful mechanically stressful or inflammatory response, because the goal is to build more muscle and strength, right.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (07:51)
And it supports that it supports that process. And in relation to overall like that pain and pain reduction and healing from injury and such as you use it specifically for your, your surgical procedure, when I was doing my research, say, for example, I’m going to focus on vitamin C just for the moment. Not because it’s the most important, but it demonstrates my point and suggesting that there is a place for supplements in our life. Vitamin C has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of chronic pain state development, following say surgery or risk fracture, ankles, foot problems. The vitamin C the therapeutic dosing for vitamin C to achieve that therapeutic benefit is like a thousand milligrams. And so, yes, you can get vitamin C from an orange, right? So you can go ahead and eat a whole orange, but you would have to eat 10 oranges to reach that therapeutic levels of vitamin C for that particular benefit of reduced risk of chronic pain development, following an injury.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (09:08)
Not many people are going to sit down and eat 10 oranges and, and for absolutely sure. There’s more that you’re getting from a complex nutritional profile from eating a whole orange with the fiber, the other vitamins and minerals – the hydration and oxidants and such from that. And you should, you should be eating more whole nutrient dense foods over just taking a supplement. The supplement is not to substitute good nutrition, right? It’s it’s to be supplemental to also eating that warrants, but practically speaking, we’re not people aren’t eating 10 oranges at a time to get that type of dosing. So that was the other thing for me is that realization that I do always promote nutritionally focused food choices, but it’s sometimes not possible to get to the dosing for therapeutic benefit. And, uh, one of the other components in our natural ingredients, in our Vida kinetics, like we mentioned, last podcast was vitamin B3.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (10:19)
Vitamin D three is not something you can get, but plant sources of vitamin D 2, but not D3. D3 is specifically what you would produce naturally in the exposed sun, your skin exposed to sun, but you can’t actually consume it without supplementing it. If that makes sense. And then we have curcumin, which is an active ingredient of the spice tumeric, which is mostly in Indian food. And again, most people don’t necessarily in America, aren’t cooking with tumeric and again, are they even getting to the relative therapeutic dosing? So a lot of our components are whole foods base and they’re naturally occurring, but you aren’t going to be able to consume them. What’s important to tie in with this is that is clearly where I, in my trying to prove or disprove the need for supplements. I proved the exact opposite that there absolutely is a place for that.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (11:27)
What’s really important. And where I think, uh, supplements get a bad rap is because there’s a lot of poor quality supplements out there. The journal of American medical association network online put an article up where they talked about the problems with supplements, and we’ll put a link of this on, on our website, but that oftentimes supplements can contain ingredients that are toxic and can cause harmful reactions with medications and other supplements. That is, that is absolutely true. Supplements are also weekly regulated and under bill little or no government testing or effects for effectiveness, um, which is also again true. And I’m going to address that point. And then a balanced diet provides all vitamins and nutrients needed for good health. I, based on what I said before, I kind of argue this with the way our food is processed these days and grown our foods tend to be more nutrient deficient than they used to be. And so I’d argued, well, you can get to maybe adequate health potentially, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually good or resilient health. And that often requires certain nutritional additions

Connie Wray: (12:43)
Gotten away from supplements prior to Vida kinetics. Uh, because I was frustrated that I was feeling like I was purchasing a supplement and then especially like a vitamin for my daughter and it’s coated in sugar. And I thought, how is that even like out, is that a benefit?

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (13:02)
So it’s absolutely quality is of paramount importance. And one of the things we take very seriously by the kinetics, first of all, you do need to always read the ingredient list. And like you mentioned, with your daughter’s multivitamins, I mean, the addition of sugar is largely unnecessary and based on where were her stages, you’re still buy more. It’s more important to eat a healthy, nutritious spilled diet over supplementing with a, with a multivitamin, but those other added ingredients can create lots of problems. And so that added sugar creates a disruption of your daughter’s gut microbiome and potentially affect her ability to actually absorb the natural vitamins and minerals. And like I mentioned before with the orange whole foods really are more complex than a single vitamin or mineral or nutrient. And so if you’re just going to solely take a vitamin C versus eating orange and orange, you’re still going to get more from an orange and a certain situation than you were from a simple supplement, particularly if it’s combined with something that is detrimental, like sugar, other chemicals.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (14:15)
The other thing that the journal of American, the JAMA network mentioned was the quality control. And it’s true supplements over the counter. Natural supplements are not FDA regulated, like a pharmaceutical medication is FDA regulated. And so because of that, while that is true, you always have to look for additional quality control measures. And so if you look at our bottle, you’ll notice there’s a GMP stamp on it. And what that means is that that’s still the up, which we are producing uses good manufacturing, good manufacturing practices. And so if you’re looking for any other supplement, you always want to look for those extra stamps or statements that indicate that they know, okay, I’m not FDA regulated, but I know that it’s important to have quality. What I say is in here is in here. And so while it’s not a perfect system, neither is the FDA I might add, but because those additional regulations aren’t in place for over the counter supplements, it’s always important for you to continue to look and read your labels.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (15:27)
So I strongly encourage you to read your labels and see what are the other ingredients listed? Why are they in there? Are they going to create problems with other medications? And additionally, with that, while not all traditional healthcare providers understand or support the use of supplements, I do always encourage if you’re on any other pharmaceuticals, it is important that you let your doctor know what you are taking in what’s in it. There are some combinations that can be problematic. One of the reasons we selected all the ingredients we selected in our particular line of, by the kinetics was because of their effectiveness, the safety profile in that, you know, the negative effects of any single ingredient or component of our, of our supplement is low, low interactions with other pharmaceuticals. So that we’re providing you with something that has hopefully high effectiveness. And even if I say high effectiveness, I don’t necessarily mean that everything is faster.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (16:36)
In fact, it usually means the more consistent as you’ve noticed personally, the more consistency of use the better off the, the effects are. But also that there’s a really good safety profile as far as a normal, otherwise healthy adults can consume without having any adverse reactions. Unlike most pharmaceutical medications can be really tricky because that’s a lot of unnatural combined ingredients and that it’s important. Pharmaceuticals are very important and I’m not downplaying their importance. All I’m suggesting is that if you are going to consume supplements, and I do believe there’s a place for that, that you pay attention to reading your labels. So that you’re you feel confident in the safety profile?

Connie Wray: (17:29)
I was impressed because after my surgery, I had been told that my taking of ibuprofen for as long as I did for the many years had affected my kidneys. We’ve mentioned this before. I was wondering then, well, okay, well now I’ve got my new hip and what well happens if I get injured again, or I have a sprained ankle and I’m not allowed to take ibuprofen. I felt so confident that I was still able to control my inflammation through Vita kinetics and still get that benefit of if I had a tough workout, I wasn’t reaching for the ibuprofen, which was now being told to me by my doctor, you can’t do this anymore. It’s affected your kidneys. I still had something that I could take that could help me through a situation like that. If I did have a sprained ankle or I’m, I’m very sore after the workout, it just kind of gives me what I thought ibuprofen was giving me, but yet it has so many more health benefits, quite honestly, my husband and I joke that when we take our Vita kinetics, we just ate 10 oranges.

Dr. Carolyn Dolan: (18:37)
Right. But you’re still eating the orange when I think what’s most important about your story. And when people hear that promoting and selling a natural supplement that this isn’t, it’s so important that you’ve had this communication with your doctor, this open line of communication, and really that’s what the doctors really want. And that’s what you should expect from your care provider. You know, whether it’s an MB osteopath, naturalpath is an open line of communication. So that everyone’s in the know of what’s happening. And that if you are taking a supplement that if it is having a therapeutic benefit, that they know what it is that you’re taking and how it might affect just like the same with you having the blood work done. And seeing that you’re, you know, with the anti-inflammatories has been, has been a problem. It’s really a supplement. I look at as a compliment, or kind of like supercharged to while you’re doing the best you can at all the other healthy lifestyle components. It’s just that little thing that just, it brings it up a notch and it, and it helps when certain things can’t be done in the way that you would like to be an injury or increased stress or injury.

Connie Wray: (20:02)
I think this is a perfect lead in, because in our next podcast episode, we’ve talked a lot about reducing stress, managing inflammation, but what happens when you aren’t seeing those changes and what happens when you are still injured or still dealing with chronic pain. And in our next episode of Radically Resilient Health, Dr. Dolan, you’re going to talk a little bit more with us about when it’s time to seek help.