To me, there are five main supplements that, that I kind of call my foundational five that almost everybody would benefit from taking. Now I say almost everybody, so understand real quick disclaimer, I'm not giving you medical advice. I don't know your specific situation, so take notes on what I'm gonna say and know that these are generally good for everybody, but there may be some special circumstances for you. So discuss that with your functional medicine doctor or your clinician practitioner who's knowledgeable about nutrition and supplementation. Your regular family practice doctor might not know much of anything about supplementation and they're not always the best, um, resource for whether or not you should or can be taking something, find someone knowledgeable about supplementation. So that being said, the foundational five for me, uh, it's gonna consist of number one, a multivitamin of some sort, fish oil, probiotics, vitamin D, and magnesium.

(01:09)
Those are supplements that almost everybody needs. And, and I'm gonna go into some information on why I'm gonna do a series of videos on this. So this one's gonna cover multivitamin. Um, so as far as multivitamins go, you have a couple of options in what I would call classes of multivitamins. We have everything from your grocery store, one a day, multi. Um, then we have what I would consider a modern traditional multivitamin, which is gonna be higher dose, higher concentration, um, partly if not all synthetic, not really derived from food or containing whole food all the way to your whole food multivitamin, which is not gonna have the amounts that you're used to seeing of individual vitamins and minerals listed on the label. But it's going to be foods that are nutrient dense that you're probably not eating much of on your own. So those are kind of the three classes, and they do overlap a fair amount.

(02:14)
So I don't know that you can draw hard distinct lines between those. But in general, you'll, you get what I'm saying Quickly, let me say something about the one a days. I'm not generally a big fan of a one a day multivitamin, and it's not so much that it's only one dose that's you can't fit a whole day's nutrition into one single dose. Now granted, these are supplements. They are not supposed to be providing all of your nutrients. They are supposed to supplement your diet. So, so first let me say, I'm taking the macronutrients out of this discussion. The carbohydrates, proteins, fats, that's out of this discussion. When I talk about nutrients, I'm talking about, um, more of micronutrients, uh, compared to carbs, protein, and fat. Um, so your minerals, your vitamins, your antioxidants, those kinds of things. So understand that if you were to take all of your necessary supplemental nutrients in one single dose for the day, you're likely going to waste a fair amount of that.

(03:25)
The analogy I use with patients regularly is, let's say you go to the gas station at the beginning of the month and I tell you you've got one time to pump all your gas for the month. Like I've got a 36 gallon gas tank in my truck. I probably fill it twice a month. All right, so 70 ish gallons of gas. So let's say I go at the beginning of the month and I pump all 70 gallons. Well, the first 30 something are gonna fill the tank, and then the next 35 are just gonna spill all over the ground. And then I'm gonna leave and drive around and my tank's full. But a couple weeks into the month, I'm gonna run out of fuel and I'm gonna wish I had the 30 something gallons that overflowed onto the ground. It's just not an efficient way to get it done.

(04:08)
If someone told me, you can pump less than it takes to fill your tank, but you can do it four times a month, I'm not gonna run outta gas. Like I'll be able to go all month, no problem. I'm not wasting any on the ground, right? So understand conceptually that trying to get everything in one pill one time a day is like pumping all of your monthly gas in one visit to the gas tank or to the gas station. It's ju it's not efficient. You're gonna overflow and then you're gonna be lacking later on. So the one a day concept just doesn't hold water. Now, if you're taking a moderate dose of nutrients and you have a really good quality diet, which is debatable, we'll get to that. You could make the argument that taking a third of a daily dose of supplements would give you a little bit of extra nutrition without taking the full amount, and that would be a one capsule a day kind of thing.

(05:04)
And that's fine that I get that. But you're not trying to cram an entire day's worth of supplementation into one capsule. That's where you run into trouble. So the traditional one a day multivitamins, I I think they're largely a waste of money. They use very inexpensive ingredients. Many of those ingredients are difficult for you to absorb and assimilate into your body. Um, minerals, for example, the way we're generally supposed to get minerals is the water hits the ground, it filters through the rocks as it does that, it picks up certain minerals from the rocks and dissolves some of that into the topsoil. Plants bring that up from the topsoil and they kind of build that into a biologic matrix like a living matrix kind of like we would have. And then either we eat the plants or something, eats the plants, and turns that into muscle and bone and cartilage, and then we eat that animal one way or the other.

(06:01)
It's supposed to go through a couple steps like that. So if you put calcium carbonate for example, which is basically limestone or chalk, if you put that into a nutritional supplement, and I take that, I'm basically swallowing rocks. I mean it's dust, but essentially it's the same thing. And I may absorb some of it, but I'm not gonna make good use of it. If you derived that calcium from a plant and it's already bound to an acid or a protein, or you get it in a collagen form where it's extracted from bone or cartilage, that's, that's gonna be easier for me to absorb and use because it's already built into a form that my body recognizes. Okay? So when I talk about sometimes they use cheap ingredients, they skip all of those steps that build it into a biologic matrix that I can use, and they go back to giving me limestone.

(06:54)
Yes, it's calcium, but it's, it's just not that effective, right? And then they gimme a whole day's worth in one pill. So anyway, you get my point. Now, back to multivitamins that I recommend cause that's why you're watching this, um, three classes. I'm gonna skip the one a day grocery store class. That's not what we do. So I'm gonna start with what I consider the modern traditional multivitamin in my office. It's almost a hybrid between modern, traditional and Whole Foods. So I use one called Primal Multi. I always feel silly holding these up. I feel like it's an old cheesy commercial from the 1950s that's from a company called Designs for Health. Um, it is a, a fairly traditional multivitamin. I'm not gonna show you the back cuz you couldn't read it anyway, but you can look it up on my website. It's gonna have a lot of the nutritional ingredients you expect to see the B vitamins, the minerals, some antioxidants, things like that.

(07:51)
Um, so, so you'll see that stuff in there like you normally see it. But they did include some things like broccoli, seed powder and broccoli seed extract, um, citrus bioflavonoids. They did include some food and material to kind of round out the, I don't wanna call 'em chemical, but kind of the synthetic vitamins that are in there. They've made an attempt to provide some whole food material in there to round those out and make them more usable, provide a little bit of synergy with those nutrients. And then they include some antioxidants that aren't normally seen. Um, well, I guess I shouldn't just say antioxidants. Some nutritional compounds that aren't always seen in a regular over the counter multivitamin. So I consider this one kind of a hybrid. Now, let's talk dosage for a minute cuz three a day, three capsules a day is a standard dose on this supplement.

(08:47)
That's for about 150 pound person. So if you weigh 200 pounds, maybe four capsules a day would be your dose. If you're barely over a hundred pounds, maybe two capsules a day would be your dose. It's variable. If you come in here in a, in a significantly deficient state, let's say you've just finished chemotherapy, um, or something like that, or you've had a really bad stomach bug or, uh, had a patient a few weeks back who had the majority of her intestines removed because of autoimmune disease. And so she has a lot of trouble absorbing nutrients. So she's been largely devoid of nutrition for quite some time. So in those cases, we may actually bump the dose up a little bit, um, but spreading it out throughout the day. So the dosage becomes kind of variable, but you get the point. That's an example of what I would call a modern traditional multivitamin.

(09:41)
Okay? Now then you can get to more of a whole food multivitamin. Now technically, if you're taking the modern traditional, you should probably take the whole food along with it. Nobody really does that because it's too expensive. It's too cumbersome, I get it. And, and again, when we use the Primal Multi, they've accounted for that somewhat, like not as much as I'd like, but they have, they've made an attempt. Um, but with a whole food multivitamin, the one we use is gluten-free Catlin. There was also a plain Catlin. This is obviously, you can tell it's from Standard Process. Catlin was, I, it was the original formula that they started with all the way back in the late 1920s. They were starting to deal with processed foods working their way into the marketplace. And they knew from research that was done through, um, doctors Price and Pottinger, uh, a couple of dentists that traveled around the world.

(10:35)
And there were several other people doing similar research that processed foods were gonna be the end of us. And they weren't wrong. I think it took a little bit longer than they thought, but they predicted that if we transitioned to a largely processed food diet, that we would eventually succumb to infertility, weakness, frailty, cancer, um, metabolic disabilities like diabetes and stuff, inability to, to burn off our own body fat, our brains wouldn't function as well. Our hormone levels would drop like testosterones dropping. Like they knew all this was gonna happen. Um, and they preached about it and they, they beat the drum un until eventually the pharmaceutical companies kind of forced them to shut up, like they were doing censorship. Uh, and although they didn't call it misinformation, they were going after it as such, even back in the, uh, I'd say early to mid 19 hundreds.

(11:27)
So anyway, they created Catlin as a way to combat some of the problems with processed foods. They were wanting to include those vital factors, um, that were in living food. Um, that was, that was being stripped out of the processed food. So it has things in it like organ extracts, um, p vine juice, carrot powder, beet powder, alfalfa powder, um, nutritional yeast, wheat germ, uh, wheat germ oil. And then I think it's got some oat flour and stuff in it. So they're, they're bringing in properly raised heirloom style foods in their whole living form. Like they're not cooking these. They juice them, they vacuum extract the moisture out of 'em. They create a powder and then they formulate it and pack it into this pill. So the Catlin and the GF is gluten free. They do make a non-gluten free. I don't know if I said that a minute ago.

(12:24)
That is, is truly a whole food supplement. Um, you can see why it would round out something like this. Like if you were to take a lower dose of the primal multi and then you were to throw in a handful of the cattle in, now you've got the, the punch, the nutritional density of the modern traditional, but you've got all the little tiny unknown co-factors and, and living food that's in the whole Food multi. So if I'm trying to really re-feed somebody who's in a desperate situation, I'm using both, right? They compliment each other very well. Um, so anyway, that's the whole food. Now the third offshoot, this is a kind of a side offshoot of the whole food and it doesn't involve, you notice I listed several plants in the whole Food Multi in the Catalent. This one doesn't have any plants. Well, not directly.

(13:24)
This is an organ supplement. It's called Organ Synergy, and it's got beef, heart, spleen, pancreas, and liver. Um, heart, yes. Um, organs where the plants come in is the cows eat the plants, incorporate those nutritions in the, those nutrients into their biologic matrix. And then you take the most nutrient dense components of that animal. You desiccate them, dry them out, turn 'em into a powder and put 'em in a capsule. It is a, a whole food supplement that in incorporates plants, but, but allows the animal to bring those nutrients into a biologic matrix more like ours. And then you take the most nutrient dense components of that and put it into a pill. Now, could you put the organ synergy along with the primal mal to round it out? Absolutely. You could, could you put organ synergy along with the catalent? Absolutely, you could, right?

(14:30)
Um, I don't know that I would do all three. I think you're just, you're gonna overload yourself and just have to pee out a whole lot of nutrients. Um, I would probably either do the organ synergy in the Catlin or I would do maybe the Catalent and the Primal, or maybe the organ in the Primal. I would not do all three. Um, so, so that's an overview of multivitamins, at least as they exist in my office. Now, every office is gonna have a different multivitamin. I do have a liquid multivitamin that I use from time to time. I have some patients that just mechanically can't swallow a pill or we've got children that have, haven't learned to swallow a pill yet. So we do, um, some liquid multivitamins with them. I'm not a big fan of gummies. Uh, they're def they definitely fall into the synthetic category.

(15:17)
Finding a whole food gummy is pretty difficult just because you can't put the volume you need in there. And then you've got everything it takes to make the gummy. Yes, it can be done with a good quality collagen. Um, certain vegetable juices for the color. You can put natural flavors in it, but then it becomes very expensive and nobody seems to take the time and expense to produce them that way. Um, but I'm sure if you looked around out there, you could probably find something. Um, some parents even make their own, and I, I don't have a big issue with that. But anyway, those are kind of special situations. But these are the multivitamins that I recommend here on a regular basis. Now to get them, if you're a patient of mine, call the office, we'll hook you up. Um, if you're not a patient of mine, you can still call the office and we can hook you up with a multivitamin.

(16:05)
Um, or you can go to my website, uh, dr krupka.com, D r k R U P K a, and in the upper right corner, you can click on the link that says store and you will see a link to get to Designs for Health for these two. And there's a link to get the standard process for the cat. So help yourself get what you need. Um, dosing on these, like I said on this one, probably one capsule for every 50 pounds of body weight and spread 'em out throughout the day. Uh, on this one, six capsules makes about an ounce of organ meat. And that's divided between five organs. So three and 3, 2, 2 and two, something like that. On this one for an average size adult. And then for Catlin, I normally recommend six to eight a day. These are small pills. They're about the size of an aspirin.

(16:55)
Um, so I normally recommend six or eight a day. What would happen if you took 20 of them? Nothing. I mean, maybe you're wasting some of it. Uh, but I think that depends on your situation. I mean, if you're fasting and you want to take, you know, 12 or 16 or 18 a day to give yourself nutrients while you're fasting, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If you're eating a good, well-rounded diet, do you need 16 or 18 a day? Probably not. Okay. Could you dose this down for kids? Absolutely. You could, right? If, if six or eight or 10 a day is an adult dose, 150 pound male, do the math. Give your kid one or two a day, maybe three depending on their size. Crush it up in a little bit of applesauce. Your kid's getting whole food nutrition. I guarantee you they're not eating pea vine juice and carrot powder at all, right? Not willingly. So anyway, those are multivitamins. I've gone on way too long. I'll do, uh, a whole series of videos where I go,

Um, a video on fish oil, video on probiotics, video on vitamin D and magnesium. I'll go through all that. So wherever you're finding this video, poke around a little bit and you'll find the other ones that round out the foundational five. If you have any questions, let me know. Um, but like I said, feel free to visit the website. Feel free to call the office. We'll get you hooked up with what you need. Have a great one.