Supplements
If someone is getting a lot of cramps, they may do well to supplement with calcium. Can you talk a little bit more about this? For most of my life, I was told that cramps were a salt issue and you should eat more salt if you got cramps a lot. Then for a few years I was under the impression that it’s actually a magnesium deficiency, that sodium and calcium help muscles to contract and magnesium and potassium help muscles to relax, so hearing that frequent cramps are related to calcium is very new to me. Can you explain the physiology?
Laura Schoenfeld: As far as cramps are concerned, there are a lot of different things that can affect cramping, and...
Just wondering what you feel about prenatal multivitamins. I understand the shortcomings of multivitamins and that it’s better to get nutrition from food, but just so you are not missing out on something that you couldn’t even imagine that you’re missing, which prenatal vitamin do you recommend, and what other supplements do you recommend for prenatal care or specific food quantities, including things like liver, how many time a week?
Laura Schoenfeld: let me look this up for you because I have a prenatal that I personally really like. My...
If someone can’t or won’t do nutrient testing, do you recommend any supplements as a baseline, and if so, what dosages? How often should you test nutrients and make adjustments based on results?
Kelsey Marksteiner: I actually don’t do a whole lot of nutrient testing in my practice unless someone really wants it....
A client of mine has had bad reactions to HCl supplementation. The largest dose to date has been 400 mg at a time. She suffered bad headaches from the pure 400 mg supplement and noticed a feeling of heat in her head, as well as tiredness after taking 200 mg of NOW Super Enzymes throughout a trial week. While she welcomes sleeping longer and more deeply during this time, she woke up feeling fatigued and noticed an overall decline in energy. Could this have really been a reaction to the HCl?
Dr. Amy Nett: Good question. I don’t know. It’s not a reaction that I’ve seen to taking HCl. Taking HCl...
Datis Kharrazian raves on and on about glutathione and superoxide dismutase liposomal cream. What do you think of it?
Dr. Amy Nett: Okay so glutathione, I think there’s some uncertainty in terms of the best form of glutathione from...
I am a night shift worker, 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, working a schedule of roughly seven nights on and 14 nights off. During my off time, I switch to a daytime schedule. Needless to say, I have some difficulty sleeping. I recently conducted the DUTCH Complete Test at about five nights out from my work schedule. While my cortisol level demonstrated some large swings, spiking to top end of normal at the second morning point and bottoming out to the low end of normal at the evening point and coming up to the high end of normal at the before bed point, it remained diurnal. Unfortunately, melatonin was well below normal at 1.2. My question is whether it’s better to supplement with melatonin or try to provide melatonin support through food. I currently only supplement with melatonin during my work weeks.
Chris Kresser: Yeah, it’s a really tough situation. I think I mentioned that having a more consistent shift schedule, where...
I have a follow-up question on melatonin about why I recommended it for people over 35.
Chris Kresser: It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but melatonin production declines as we age, and so I think that melatonin...
Do you have a favorite brand of D-lactate-free probiotics?
Chris Kresser: Yeah, any of the soil-based organisms, like Prescript-Assist, for example, or MegaSporeBiotic. There’s a new kid on the...
Is it okay to take extra virgin cod liver oil if you’re also taking a blood thinner?
Dr. Amy Nett: Yeah, I think it is okay to take cod liver oil in addition to taking a blood...
Why isn’t curcumin included as a supplement recommendation on the handout Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations for Autoimmune Disease? Curcumin and boswellia were recommended as part of the treatment plan for a patient with rheumatoid arthritis in one of the case studies. What are the dosing recommendations for boswellia and curcumin?
Dr. Amy Nett: Okay. So on that handout we did more general recommendations in terms of diet, lifestyle, and we...
