Do You Buy Supplements? This Kind Might Be Better!

Scott: So if they find something in your book that you mentioned, I think white spots could be, on the fingernails could be a zinc deficiency.  Is it as simple as finding that in the book, I have the white spots, it must mean I have a zinc deficiency, then I should just take zinc.  Or should they take that information to a specialist, or is it not wise to self diagnose all of this stuff and find your own answers or what do you suggest?

Donna Burka Wild: Well, I wrote the book for practitioners and doctors and the laypeople alike.  And if you notice, everything in the book is footnoted from medical books and nutrition books and peer reviewed articles.  So it's a good place to start.  

What I tell people is if you are going to take a supplement, make sure it's a food based supplement so that you have all the minerals and other vitamins and trace mineral activators and enzymes that go along so that you can completely absorb and assimilate it.  Taking a pharmaceutical supplement or a high potency extract of a nutrition, like just zinc in itself, ooooh, you might not get good absorption and assimilation and at most you'll only be absorbing 50 percent but you need good digestion and you need to have all those other co-factors because if you get too much zinc, then the copper and iron are going to get out of balance.  So if I use whole food supplements or food based supplements, the foods have natural buffers and contain some of those other things, so I don't have to worry about causing other nutritional deficiencies.  

But to answer your question, it's a good place to start.  So, and I believe, as individuals, we should know our body and make choices about our health.  And if you want to start with my book and try some of these foods and supplements on your own to see if they'd work before you go see a doctor, I don't think anybody has a problem with that.