I've been wondering about supplements - do you mind saying what you're taking?
Glad too.
I should say first that there are people who maintain excellent health with a healthy diet only, and those people irritate me, though I'd like to be one of them.
I have had to supplement with a multi-vitamin and a B-complex my entire adult life, likely because I have Inflammatory Bowel Disease, though have only had three flares in 25 years thanks to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and four years ago I was formally diagnosed with non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Perhaps one or both of these conditions explain why I don't absorb some nutrients well from food alone. Don't know.
And thank goodness I took those B vitamins. With my out of control blood glucose levels for too many years, I think I would have had peripheral neuropathy by now. At this time, I have no PN symptoms, and I am so grateful.
I should also say that I believe I have calcification of the arteries due to a bout of chest pain I had a month or two ago, likely due to taking calcium supplements for years and years without vitamin A (from cod liver oil), and vitamin K2 (from natto, fermented soybean), so nutritional supplements, like anything else, can do harm.
I took what I believed to be a good quality brand of nutritional supplements for 20 years, but I recently discovered they're having quality control problems, also that they don't include vitamin K2 in their calcium formulation, so I had to start all over again on finding a company I felt I could trust.
In the end, I decided to take nutritional supplements that are made from organic, whole-foods. Here's what I take:
Multi-vitamin and mineral supplement that includes all B vitamins, 2,000 IU vitamin D3, and all forms of vitamin E, 1/2 at breakfast and 1/2 at dinner
Cod liver oil (for vitamin A), breakfast
240 mg
Vitamin C (sourced from berries and other plants) 1/2 at breakfast and 1/2 at dinner
180 mcg
Vitamin K2 (MK-7 as menaquinone-7, sourced from Natto, fermented soybean), breakfast
2,000 mg
Fish oil, 1/2 at breakfast and 1/2 at dinner
An
eye health formulation - (I don't have retinopathy but I do have grade II atherosclerosis of the arteries in my eyes; hoping the K2 with cod liver oil, D3, and magnesium will reverse or stop the calcification)
100 CoQ10 mg, breakfast
450 mg
Magnesium Citrate, 1/3 at breakfast, 1/3 at lunch, 1/3 at dinner (reduced blood pressure, reduced muscle cramping, and improved sleep)
99 mg
Potassium Citrate, breakfast (I and others have found that the LCHF diet sometimes causes problems with electrolytes; I feel better taking a small amount of potassium with magnesium daily)
After reading the COMB study - (Combination of Micronutrients for Bone (COMB) Study: Bone Density after Micronutrient Intervention (2012);
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2012/354151/ ) - I plan to add 680 mg
Strontium citrate. Refer to Table 1: Combination of micronutrients (COMB) Protocol for Bone Health for list of supplements used in this study.
1,000 mg
Meriva, 1/2 at breakfast, 1/2 at dinner - (An antioxidant, sourced in part from the spice turmeric but made more absorbable; it's essentially an anti-inflammatory; I can provide links to information (based on research) on Meriva, if requested. Hoping it will reduce inflammation in my heart, brain, and neck arteries, but it also helps those of us with diabetes in other ways too.)
I haven't decided yet if I'm going to add additional supplements for peripheral neuropathy because any symptoms I had have remitted, and I'm already taking some of the supplements known to help this condition.
I think that's all I'm taking, though I plan to take
probiotics on a temporary basis when I finish the Brain Maker book.