Supplements?
chrisjthomas721
Posts: 9 Member
I have been reading a lot about supplements recently and I am considering a probiotic or magnesium citrate supplement. Any thoughts? Recommendations?
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My daily capsules are Men's One a Day, 3 Vitamin D3 because it's the dark time of the year, and a B12. I do 1 canister of Zipfizz, as it gives me nearly 1g of Potassium, and some other things, and a muscle milk usually gives me another 600mg of Potassium, taking me to nearly half my daily goal of Potassium. If I don't have seafood in my diet, I do a fishoil supplement that week.
Throughout the week I do a Magnesium Citrate/Calcium/Zinc mix, around 2-3 times. I do an Iron Supplement if I see my last week was low over a number of days.
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I take Magnesium Ultra from Vitacost - it's a blend of various types of magnesium...usually I do one a day, but if I have a particularly challenging lifting session then I will take 2...I also have a topical magnesium for immediate relief from muscle cramps or when I have a hard time falling asleep (Asutra Magnesium Oil - your body cannot uptake melatonin without sufficient magnesium).
I didn't add the Mag Ultra until I started having issues with muscle cramps, and those didn't really start to happen regularly until I began calorie cutting in Nov. Nuts are very calorie dense, so probably I was getting enough magnesium when I included almonds and cashews and such in my diet, but cutting those out helps me stay within my calorie goal. Plus, it's fall heading into winter so the greens are not as plentiful in my diet right now either, it's more soup season here than salad season.
If I wasn't having issues then I wouldn't bother to supplement, but since the magnesium takes care of the muscle cramps, I keep taking the magnesium.
As for probiotics, I will have yogurt or kefir or sauerkraut or kombucha and I love those things, so I don't feel like I need a supplement since fermented foods are a part of my diet.0 -
Magnesium is considered to be the number one nutrient deficiency in the US, because it's been thoroughly depleted in our food sources. Potassium is naturally high in chicken and such, and it's dangerous to take too much. It's rarely tracked on labels, so we generally get more than we know.
However, if your magnesium levels are decent, making sure to get enough sodium since Keto is naturally sodium dumping will help maintain what you do have. However, most people benefit from a decent magnesium supp. I had a high quality chelated magnesium citrate that I took and loved (Thorne Research, I think), but I couldn't take the standard types. I switched to a Chelated Magnesium Glycinate (Dr's Best Brand), and have been great ever since! It took double doses for about a year before I got my chronic depletion handled.
Another very common nutrient deficiency that is just coming into the spotlight is boron. I had radiating bone pain for years. I learned that boron (and zinc) are what strengthen cellular walls to keep the nutrients in our bones and muscles. Since adding boron, my pain has ceased. If I miss a day or two, I can feel it.
They say that if you're eating a varied diet of whole foods, including greens and meats, etc., you're likely consuming enough calcium, but most folks need to take D3 (or get sunlight) to absorb it (buddy), K2 to tell it where to go (bus driver), magnesium and potassium to get it there/into the cells (passport), and boron and zinc to keep it there (bouncer)...
If you do have to supplement calcium, it's recommended to take it 12 hours offset from vitamin D3 so that you don't OVER absorb it - and taking D3 without K2 leaves all this absorbed calcium sitting around, potentially causing hardening, blockages, etc. K2 is present in grassfed meats and dairy, but most of us aren't able to afford enough of those foods to get it in the quantity we need. Kudos if you get enough that way! Taking Vitamin A offset from the D3 by 12 hours is another way to help prevent any accidental toxicity. It took me a while of tweaking these numbers to get my D3 and other levels just up into the normal range. (I don't have a gallbladder, so I'd been dealing with over a decade of poor nutrient absorption before this that created a horrible situation for me healthwise.)
Only you can determine what is right for you. Others can make recommendations, but I firmly recommend you do supplemental research on anything that's told to you. Some of my favorites are Maria Emmerich, Dr. Chris Masterjohn PhD, Dr. Eric Berg, and those are the names I remember off hand...4 -
I do a Women's One-a-Day in the morning, and magnesium citrate before bed.0
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This is a good brand
www.purevitaminclub.com1 -
chrisjthomas721 wrote: »I have been reading a lot about supplements recently and I am considering a probiotic or magnesium citrate supplement. Any thoughts? Recommendations?
I supplement a variety of things for various reasons. Most significant for me are magnesium because if I don't "manual removal" of stools becomes a painful issue and pottasium citrate to offset the crystals in my urine to prevent kidney stones.
Probiotics are also something I consume daily but I don't take a $5 pill. I make my own lacto-fermented saurkraut for the probiotics. All it requires is a glass container, cabbage, mineral salt and a spot on your counter to work it's majic. A few weeks later and whala... Cheap, nutricious, low carb probiotics.2
