Hi Rily! My Mom has been taking a ton of supplements for as long as I can remember. Her health's not particularly great, so I'm not sure if it's working, but she won't hear otherwise. What should I tell her?

One thing I will highlight is that taking a lot of supplements often reveals a kind of insecurity. Does the body really need that much extra support? Can food itself not be trusted to give the body what it needs? It may be worth diving into the motivation for why a mountain of supplements is seen as necessary.

Also, we should bear in mind that our central processing hub, the liver, must process everything we swallow. Apart from this total load on our primary sorting-and-detoxifying organ, micronutrient toxicity is very much a thing: more is not always better, and you can get too much.

When we take a ton of different supplements, it's hard to keep track of the effects of each one. If we feel better or worse, which supplement can we thank? Or blame? This can lead to the dreaded "supplement graveyard."

When we have no sense of why we are taking something without noticing much of an effect, we often develop a mounting collection of half-used supplement bottles. In many cases, proper testing done with a holistic health practitioner can help us avoid shooting in the dark and tell us what supplements we might actually benefit from.

Sometimes, people like to go on elimination diets, where food intake is simplified to essentials. Then, more and more different foods are reincorporated so that it can clearly be seen which are tolerated and how each makes you feel. The same can be a good idea for supplements: when in doubt, it might be a good idea just to start over and introduce supplements one by one, adding a new one back in every few days.

Practically speaking, what I've noticed from working with a high volume of clients is that getting what we need from food tends to get the best results. People who really dial in their diet tend not to need a million supplements, and people who rely on a million supplements without attending fully to their food don't seem to get where they want to go. To put it bluntly, you can't out-supplement a lousy diet.

In some cases there is a fear that due to soil depletion and other agricultural changes, food is altogether less nutritious than it used to be. This isn't without some truth. But it remains the case that nutrient-dense food is widely available, and is still, by far, the best way to get vitamins, minerals, and everything else.

For example, it's worth remembering that an orange provides us with much more than vitamin C. Orange is a highly sophisticated ensemble of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and B vitamins, as well as key minerals like potassium and calcium, but it also features flavonoids like quercetin, hesperidin, and rutin, carotenoids like beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, powerful pectin fibre, and more. The synergy of these natural compounds working together is something a synthetic vitamin C tablet could simply never replace.

My recommendation would be to encourage your Mom to book an appointment with a naturopath or functional medicine practitioner to explore her options and make sure she has a plan for her health that's effective and manageable.

I hope this helps!

-Damien Z. Certified Nutritionist and Functional Medicine Practitioner