The Supplemental Science

There is too much debate on supplements and I am writing this today to clear up the confusion that too much debate creates in our minds. Let’s look at the hard, undebatable facts first. 

1. Our body needs nutrients to survive and sustain all its necessary functions

2. The amounts of nutrients that we take could vary based on our lifestyle. This variation will have a direct impact on the ability of those nutrients to do benefit in our body

3. The best way to take nutrients is the natural way - despite all our technological advances, we do not make things as good as nature makes them. 

Lets also look at some of the key debate questions - 

1. Do I need to supplement my diet with anything other than “good food” that I eat regularly?

2. What kind of supplementation should I do?

3. Will supplementation have any side effects?

OK. Now that we are aligned on some “truths”, let’s advance to the next level. Let’s start with the history of supplements. 

Supplements came into existence in the early 20th century because of the compulsions of WWI and WWII. During the war, the governments of the west had tremendous challenge in getting adequate food/nutrition supplies to the troops fighting battles in far away lands. They had to come up with the least amount of food supplies needed for the troops to maintain a certain “minimum” standard of health. In those days, this minimum was defined primarily as the avoidance of malnutrition based debilitating diseases like scurvy, yellow fever etc.

Lo and behold, the intelligent minds in the government created the RDA - Recommended (or Required) Dietary Allowance - the minimum requirement of each nutrient to keep the soldiers up and fighting - not for their long-term optimal health, but just to keep them alive and fighting for next few months. After the war, same RDA was extended to many more nutrients and it became a mainstream measurement metric. But it still did what it did during the war - just maintain the survival of peoples’ health in the very short term. So that was RDA.

Now let’s look at the next level - I like to call it the ADA - Available Dietary Allowance. Its the amount of nutrients that most of us usually get everyday based on our eating patterns, lifestyle, preferences etc. Although it might vary significantly between different cultures, within a certain cultural diet (like Indian diet)- the variances are not much. Its the level of nutrients that we GET, not what we NEED.

Next comes the ODA - Optimal Dietary Allowance. Thats more sophisticated science. Infact more than science, its an art, because it comes only from the experience of seeing and comparing multiple generations and cultures of people. Who was healthier, what diet contributed to their extraordinary health, what form and frequency did they consume such diet etc. While there are no official, government statistics for ODA (the government doesn’t really care if you live till 99 or past that), such measures are common-place amongst the health focused. We all know that our grandfather had a certain level of excellent health because he followed a certain lifestyle - lived a certain way and ate a certain way. Many health experts have come up with their own versions of this ODA level. They are not wildly different for the most common nutrients. 

Last, comes the TDA - Toxic Dietary Allowance. Its that level of daily intake at which your body starts to consider the nutrient as toxic and does its best to get rid of the excess. It will create discomfort like nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headache etc. because the body is trying desperately to use all measures to rid itself of what it considers as toxic/excess. These levels are also well documented by the scientific community.

Now, let’s take an example. For simplicity, let’s take Vitamin C - the most common nutrient in almost all fruits and most vegetables that we eat (I am also mentioning the number of medium size oranges that we need to get that particular allowance everyday). 

1. RDA = 40 mg daily = 1 orange

2. ADA = 100 - 200 mg daily = 3-5 oranges

3. ODA = 500 - 1000 mg daily = 12-25 oranges

4. TDA = >2000mg daily = 50 oranges or more

So, how many of us get to eat enough oranges to get our Optimal Dietary Allowance (ODA)? If you answered yes, you need to re-read the question. Or maybe you somehow still live on a self-sustaining farm in a quaint village and you eat the diet of our great grandparents - fresh, enough, timely, natural, pure. Most of us don’t. That settles the first controversy in the debate - Do we need to supplement our diet? Yes. IF you want to live well and live long with an optimal level of nutrition in your body. 

Now, let’s look at the second controversy. What kind of supplementation should you take? There is no concept of an ALL NATURAL supplementation - because that’s your food. If your food was giving you optimal nutrition, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. The next best option is to take something that intelligently blends man-made, processed sources of nutrition and natural sources of nutrition. Man-made source to give enough quantity of the nutrient and nature-made to give enough quality of the nutrient. While man-made source would take our Vitamin C intake to the optimal level, the nature-made source would help us get the benefits of all the associated phytonutrients - those invisible things that give the color to a fruit or a vegetable (there are several hundreds of them) and act synergistically with the main ingredient - Vitamin C. So the only supplementation you should take is one that incorporates high quality, nature-made, organically grown sources into its manufacturing process. Preferably, by a company that does not have any associated pharmaceutical or drug-making business, and hence has no inherent conflict of interest and would not market something “non-natural” as “natural”

Now the last question in the controversy. Will taking supplements have any side effects? Well, most supplements, by FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Agency of India) directive, can only put RDA levels in their supplements. So taking a supplement alone will not help you reach optimal nutrition levels. It will help and make the process more convenient, but most of us will still need to drastically alter our dietary habits. We will need to change our source of fresh produce - from the cheapest, to the best. We will need to consciously eat more nutrient rich food instead of junk food. But unless, you pop the whole box of Vitamin C supplement (instead of 1-2-3 tablets), you cannot reach the toxic levels. Even if you do; just like, if you love mangoes, and you eat too many of them, you do get a stomach-ache because your body tries to get rid of the excess. Nothing more is liable to happen. 

So, to sum it all up, supplementation is fine - in fact for most of us it is necessary. Just make sure you take a really good quality one - something that is natural and comes from a non-pharmaceutical brand. And make sure you understand its a “supplement” - its not supposed to replace the necessary changes and improvements you still need to make to your diet, the kind of food that you source and your circadian meal rhythms.