iThei mdcdaelcinfd o c elllllrllll ethhsbmbkce“In order to change, we must be sick and tired of
being sick and tired.”
—Unknown19: Supplements
In addition to diet, supplements may aid in your healing journey, es-
pecially if your digestion is severely impaired, which prevents you from
extracting sufficient nutrients from food. You may be able to discontinue
most supplements once your digestion is fixed and you have adopted a
well-balanced diet.
“Start Low and Go Slow”
Supplements should be started at a low dose, one at a time. Vitamins and
herbs are certainly not without risks, even if they are “naturally derived.”
(Remember, arsenic is also a natural substance!)
You want to make sure to start a low dose of one supplement one at a
time, rather than starting the full dose of six different supplements at
once. For example, you may add selenium at 200 mcg and see how you
tolerate it for a few days before you decide to increase it to 400 mcg.
Once you’ve found that you tolerate the 400 mcg dose for a few days, you
can add a second supplement.
This approach increases the likelihood of catching adverse events before
they get too far, and it will help you pinpoint the substance causing the
adverse event without having to stop all of your other supplements and
delay progress.
As a clinical pharmacist, one tool I like is the Naranjo Causality Scale.
This tool helps determine whether a particular substance caused an ad-
verse event. See the modified Causality Scale on the next page.