The Vitamins You Need to Fight Toxic Foods

Dr. Sal [00:00:00]:

You're telling people not to take vitamins because they're gonna basically excrete it. Well, then why do you eat so much food if you're gonna go to the bathroom twice a day to poop out the food that you ate, then maybe you're eating too much food. Welcome to the Health Quest podcast, your guide to God's will for good health. Hello. My name is doctor Sal. I've been a practicing surgeon for well over 30 years. And my goal for each episode is that you'll be able to have your mind transformed to god's design for your health and hopefully, affect the way that you eat and the way you live. If you're new here, we release a new episode every week.

Dr. Sal [00:00:51]:

And if you enjoy the content, would you please leave us a good review? It really helps our ratings and allows our show to reach out to more people so we can hopefully change the way they eat and the way they live for a better healthy lifestyle. Thank you for your support. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about vitamins and minerals. So let's dive right in on today's health quest. I've been asked many times, doctor Sal, what kind of vitamins should I take? Or what what type do you recommend that I use or what brands? Well, this is the premise of my podcast today because, really, what I've learned throughout the years, not so much in what we learned in medical school because we were never really taught this in medical school. I learned this through my bodybuilding years and research on nutrition and the benefit for our overall health. And recently, my daughter, while she was jogging, literally tore a piece of bone attached with the tendon from one of her hips. Now she eats very, very healthy.

Dr. Sal [00:02:03]:

She's pretty much like me. She watches what she eats. And it was taking some time for her to heal properly. And I went up to her, and I asked her if she was taking any vitamins or supplements, that's and, of course, I knew that she wasn't. She has to take her fish oil, and she uses her apple cider vinegar. In fact, she'll have that for breakfast as opposed to coffee. But I told her that she needed to get on some vitamins and some minerals. And I started taking vitamins and supplements back when I joined the original powerhouse gym in Detroit back in 1978.

Dr. Sal [00:02:39]:

And, of course, I was introduced to taking supplements and using protein powders by this gentleman who came in from California, and he was bringing a lot of the ideas from California back at that time here to Detroit. And California was the mecca, the so called hub of bodybuilding at that time. And that's when I learned from this gentleman, whose name was Von Hall. He said, Sal, 85% of bodybuilding is what you eat, which then I came to realize that 85% of our health is what we put in our mouth. And it is so true. Because what we put in our mouth, it goes through our gut lining, and we've talked about this before from leaky gut. Everything goes through our gut lining. Those include the pesticides and the chemicals that are in the food to the preservative, to the nitrates, all of that.

Dr. Sal [00:03:31]:

And it eventually gets into our system. So vitamins and minerals become very important, literally in our modern day society with the changes in agriculture. Now I graduated from Michigan State's medical school the osteopathic school. And Michigan State was notoriously known as an agricultural college. It was founded as an agricultural college. It was doing a lot of research in, the farming, in the growing of vegetables, also associated with the genetically modified organisms that are being studied there, as well as the chemical companies as to what we could use is in our farming so as to keep, rodents, birds, certain insects from eating away at the food. So we started doing all that research in the chemicals. And all of this combined, we start realizing that this isn't the natural way of farming.

Dr. Sal [00:04:32]:

We've altered farming for marketing and business purposes, so as to gain more from each stalk or from each plant or from each tree, but by the same token, trying to preserve them. And as as a result of this, we've also abused the soils of our country, and we never give it a rest, and we never refertilize them. Instead, we we pump more chemicals into the ground with the hopes of altering and growing the food much faster. Now many years ago, believe it or not, you know, it was recommended today that we eat 9 fruits and vegetables, which I can assure you that 95% of Americans don't even do that. But more so than that, how it's changed over the used. Because back in the forties fifties, it was only recommended that we eat 4 to 5 fruits and vegetables a day, and that was because of the fact that our vegetables and fruits actually contain more nutrients in the form of vitamins and minerals. So I'm always recommending even if you eat 4 to 5 vegetables a day, that you still consume, supplements on the side. Now I recommended to my daughter at that time.

Dr. Sal [00:05:44]:

I said, listen. When I was 15 years old, these were the vitamins and supplements that I took. And, of course, it it was a great company. It was called NSP, Natural Source Product, actually made here in Detroit. And Ron Koslov Bob was the owner of that company. I got a chance to meet him who knew nutrition very well. He passed away a number of years ago, and his company actually nobody took it over. But the vitamins came in a box and they were individually packaged.

Dr. Sal [00:06:12]:

And, of course, you had your vitamin a, which is good for your skin and for your immune system in particular. And there were the b complex vitamins, the vitamin c, your vitamin d, and a multimineral, which at the age of 15, I believe that that's what a lot of younger folks should take. And here are the reasons why. We talked about vitamin a. It's good for the immune system. We should take. The recommended daily allowance is 5,000 international units a day. I take about 25,000 international units a day.

Dr. Sal [00:06:45]:

The worst thing that could happen, and it did happen to me over the years, is when I was taking 50,000 international units, is that my skin color started to become a little bit darkened. And a lot of people always thought that I was walking around with a suntan like, I was going to the tanning booth, which I don't have a problem if you go twice a week during the winter months for 5 minutes per session just to build up your vitamin d naturally in your skin without burning your skin and causing other that, detriments. But the vitamin a is is actually very good, and it comes from your carrots and various other colored vegetables such as peppers. Now the question is is how much of that do you daily. And so that's why taking the supplement is actually good to maintain and sustain your immune system. During an infection, I always say that you should take a 100,000 international units of vitamin a. Now doctors are gonna say that's toxicity. And I'm always asking them if they could define what toxicity is or how bad that's gonna get and what it's gonna do for your body, and I'm gonna go over that with you in a minute when we get to vitamin d.

Dr. Sal [00:07:59]:

But taking a 100000 international units a day for 7 to 10 days during a viral infection will help improve and support your immune system so that you can overcome that disorder. The next vitamins is your b complex vitamins. Of course, you got b 1, b 2, b 3, and so forth. The b complex vitamins are very important Because years ago, before vitamin supplements were even available in America, we started to process wheat. We did that during the industrial revolution, which started around 18/80. And what was happening is is that as the cities were growing, we were transporting wheat products from the farms into the cities. Well, the time that it took to get from the farms and get brought to the cities where they could then break it down and turn it into flour and make bread, the wheat got bad. And, of course, they wouldn't open up these bags.

Dr. Sal [00:08:59]:

Or if they made the flour out into the countryside and then ship it to the cities, they would open up the bags and find bugs in them. And so they had to do something in order to prevent that from happening, and so they processed the wheat. And they processed it and broke it down where they took the germ and they took the husk. The germ basically contained your omega 3 fatty acids, and the husk was great fiber. But more so than that, they stripped the wheat of the b complex vitamins. By the early 1900, people were developing what was known as wet beriberi or dry beriberi. Wet beriberi was affiliated with the heart. And the heart being a pump, of course, was pushing out blood, which is moisture, and so that's why they called it wet beriberi.

Dr. Sal [00:09:54]:

And so you you started having issues with the heart. These people could end up with heart attacks. But heart failure, they were coming across feeling fatigued and tired as a result of that. Dry berry berries where they started developing neurologic disorders, where they were having tingling sensations. They couldn't feel, the sensations in their hands or their feet. They were also getting weakness, a sense of, off balance. And so a lot of physicians and researchers at that time noticed that by stripping away or by processing and wheat. We took away the b vitamins and developed these disorders.

Dr. Sal [00:10:35]:

Now this was before the Food and Drug Administration came into being. But government looked into this. They started asking the doctors what they should do. And he said, well, we need to put the b vitamins back into the flour when the wheat is or when the bread is being made. So if you take a look even today and you go to your grocery store and go into the bread section, you will read on in the ingredients, in almost every loaf of bread that you see enriched wheat flour enriched wheat flour, which means they had to spray the vitamins back into the flour before they made the bread. And so this is one of the reasons why now, of course, a person like me, I don't eat much bread because it's a wheat product. I stay away from it as much as I possibly can. And so I take my b complex vitamins, and I take about a 100 5 milligrams.

Dr. Sal [00:11:29]:

I usually get them from the vitamin shop. That brand is actually very good. And it supports me with enough b vitamins to prevent a lot of these disorders and then some. Because for the neurologic disorders, it's actually great. Taking extra vitamin b three also helps to build Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, which is a cofactor used to generate energy in the cells, particularly in the power plant of the cell known as the mitochondria. And so by having that extra, niacin actually is what it is, vitamin b 3. That will help build up the energy levels and attain the functions of the cells and is actually known to extend the longevity of that cell and extend life plan as well. Now if you take Niacin on its own, you'll notice it causes a flushing.

Dr. Sal [00:12:23]:

And, of course, that is as a result of the mast cells which release histamine. Now you can actually take the niacin in a more broken down fashion known as NMN, that and that's nicotinamide mononucleotide, or you could actually take NAD, and that could be purchased over the counter or in the Internet. So your B complex vitamins are very important to both the heart and to the neurologic system, as well as for energy production. Now we move to vitamin c. And vitamin c is very important to help build up the cartilaginous tissue of our bodies. Old. It helps in regards to slowing down degenerative joint disease or DJD or arthritis. But the problem is is that we think that, oh, I drank a glass of orange juice.

Dr. Sal [00:13:15]:

I got my vitamin c for the day. Doctor Linus Pauling, a Pulitzer Prize winner, showed that taking up to five to 10,000 milligrams of vitamin c a day, not only strengthens your immune system, but is also feel helpful because it acts as an antioxidant and works against free free oxygen radicals, which we'll talk about here shortly. But taking that with cancer and the treatment with chemotherapy, he has shown that patients that took high levels of vitamin c up to 1,000 milligrams a day while they were going through chemotherapy actually extended their life 3 years longer. And it was because of the fact that chemotherapy is very destructive to a lot of tissues. And the vitamin c acted as a free oxygen scavenger, free oxygen radical scavenger, to prevent further damage to the normal tissue. But he always recommended high dosages of it. Usually, I would recommend up to 3,000 milligrams up to 5,000 during the winter months, build up your immune system, protect you from getting these infections as well. But a minimum of a 1000 milligrams, preferably 500 in the morning and 500 in the evening is the best way to take it.

Dr. Sal [00:14:30]:

Now if you're going to take higher dosages of 10,000 a day, it's recommended that you take the liposomal form. And the reason being is because, number 1, vitamin c could be acidic and can be irritating to the stomach. I don't recommend that you take it all at one time. The the intestines can only absorb so much, usually between 500 to a 1000 milligrams at a time. So So if you're gonna take higher dosages, take it with, take the liposomal form, which has basically lecithin or phosphatidylcholine wrapped around it, which helps with the absorption and reduces the acidity of the vitamin c. So vitamin c is great. Higher dosages, particularly during the winter months, keeps us, healthier. And, of course, as I said before, it's your diet that's very important as well.

Dr. Sal [00:15:22]:

You can't just eat candy bars and chips and drink pop all day and can expect to take these extra vitamins and think that your body's gonna be kept in in in good shape because it's just one fighting the other. And you don't want that tug of war putting in your body. So let's go to vitamin d. Now vitamin d became a very popular vitamin that was talked about during the COVID time period. We call it a vitamin, but, actually, it is a hormone. It works as a hormone. It's it it signals the the body cell as well as the DNA to produce those types of proteins that help improve our immune system. And during a viral infection or viral attack on our body, I also recommend taking a 100,000 international units of vitamin d as well.

Dr. Sal [00:16:14]:

Again, you're gonna hear doctors that are gonna say it's toxic. I like for them to please define what toxicity means. How is it toxic? Because now all we go back historically to vitamin d and its benefits many, many years ago. We, as a society, have a tendency to forget things and forget how things work and how they operate and what we used before. And The people that forget a lot about this are physicians, especially the young physicians. We come out, and we think, oh, this is the medication we've used all these years. And that's not the case. Because long before the pharmaceutical industry grew to the mega giant that it is today and has had such an influence, particularly at the level of medical schools and in the residency, and now on television commercials affecting in the population.

Dr. Sal [00:17:10]:

What we don't realize is how did we treat these diseases long before pharmaceutical agents came out? Well, let's take psoriatic arthritis. Psoriatic arthritis. It's psoriasis and arthritis combined, and it's one of the worst arthritis you can actually have. Now for those of you that have had psoriasis, you know that you get that dry scaly skin, and it can be itchy sometimes. One of the best treatments for that is actually sunlight and getting away from all products. I guarantee you that 80% of your psoriasis will improve once you go gluten free. We mentioned that before. In in one of our previous podcast.

Dr. Sal [00:17:52]:

I advised it to patients with that have psoriasis and even friends of mine, but, obviously, they don't listen too well because they can't just let go of something knowing that it's gonna be detrimental to their health. But psoriatic arthritis is very, very painful, and you have those ugly, scabby skin rashes on your skin. Well, folks, back in the 19 thirties and 19 forties, they treated psoriatic arthritis with a 100,000 international units of vitamin d and combined it with vitamin k, which comes from a lot of your, green leaf vegetables. Vitamin k not only keeps your blood thin, but it also prevents the buildup of calcium plaques in your arteries and makes certain that it goes into the areas that it's supposed to, like your teeth and your bones. So they did that, and that's how they controlled psoriatic arthritis. Now there were people that were on a 100,000 international units of vitamin d a day for years years years. And the worst complication is is that it rose your blood calcium levels, and that's why they were put on vitamin k so as to prevent that, calcium from binding to the arteries. What an interesting thing that they treated these people for years and there was no toxicity associated with it, which again, I wouldn't know what toxicity is with high dosages of vitamin d.

Dr. Sal [00:19:25]:

And so what ends up happening is is over the years, the pharmaceutical companies came up and they came up with these articles, journal articles goes that were put into scientific journals or medical journals, and they started teaching this in the medical schools. Well, ours works just the same. Ours works just the same. A decade later, they start saying, oh, ours works better, so you don't have to use that high dosage of vitamin d. Use our products. Before you know it, it's never mentioned ever again, and it's become a forgotten practice. So vitamin d becomes very important to sustain and maintain your immune system, and high dosages, particularly during infections, are beneficial to building that immune system and getting that virus under control. Vitamin e Or tocopherol is a great antioxidant.

Dr. Sal [00:20:17]:

Also, I wanna say that about vitamin c. They're great antioxidants. It's interesting because I would recommend at least 400 international units a day. But I'm gonna tell you some things that happened to me during my teenage years when I was reading these muscle magazines. At one point, I read that taking 500 milligrams of vitamin c every hour on the hour helps to build bigger, stronger muscles. Well, there was another article that I read that said taking 400 international units of vitamin e every hour on the hour helps to build your testosterone levels, which then builds bigger muscles. Well, guess what I used to do, folks? I used to do that. Now can you imagine taking 400 international units of vitamin e every hour for 12 hours? And you can imagine we're talking about close to 5,000 international units of vitamin e a day.

Dr. Sal [00:21:13]:

And I would do that for months. And there was no toxicity associated with it. But the one thing I look back on now is realizing that it because it was a free oxygen radical scavenger, that I was actually protecting my body from the detriments of these reactive oxygen species. Now what's a reactive oxygen species? It's a single oxygen molecule that gets released that now becomes radical. It starts to do damage to the cells and even the DNA and can actually cause DNA mutations. That's why as we live longer And the more we're exposed to these re, reactive oxygen species, the more chances we are of having mutations in the DNA, malfunctions in the body or specific tissues, or we develop cancers as a result. So taking these antioxidants is a great way to slow down that process and, therefore, for extending life and reducing the possibility of these disorders as well as their risks and their complications. So vitamin d, at least 400 international units a day from the age of 40 years and under.

Dr. Sal [00:22:30]:

As you get older and you start getting past your 40th year of life, safe, then I recommend taking the mixed tocopherols where you get the gamma and the delta as well as the alpha tocopherol. And these mixed tocopherols actually help in other areas that are a little bit more specific. As I said, as we get older, we need to start taking actually more of these supplements and recommending, other herbs as well like the NAD, which is a form of the vitamin b 3. When it comes to minerals, absolutely, you've got to take them. And the reason being is is because, number 1, even though you're eating 9 fruits and vegetables a day, you're still not getting the mineral supplements that those vegetables usually contain. Number 1, we really need to eat the vegetables raw, and that's a that's a challenge. It's hard to eat vegetables raw because that's where you really will get the full nutrient package gin, the enzymes that help to digest it too as well. We have a tendency to cook our vegetables, which is fine.

Dr. Sal [00:23:38]:

I don't have a problem with that. But that's why I recommend supplementing it with, minerals. You'd be amazed that 2 cups of, actually, a cup of spinach a cup of spinach has more calcium, which is also a mineral, than 2 cups of whole milk. And so we start to realize that a lot of our minerals such as your magnesium, your selenium comes mostly from our vegetables in most of us. And potatoes and corn are not vegetables, folks. Those are starchy those are just starchy foods that we're eating. So you really gotta have a lot of green leaf vegetables, rapini, your Swiss chard, collard greens, mustard greens, your leeks, all of these, to get that. But it's also I also vacated for the benefit of the fiber that's in those vegetables that helps support your good gut bacteria.

Dr. Sal [00:24:36]:

So taking a multiminerals that has a lot of these, the magnesium and the selenium, the barium, and some of these trace minerals is actually healthy for us. And what do all of these cofactors or vitamins and minerals do? Folks, if you take a car, being that we're from Detroit, and this is what I try to advocate to my patients. If you have good quality oil, if you have radiator fluid, if you have brake fluid, if you have transmission fluid, and you got good quality fluids, it doesn't doesn't make the car run faster, but it run helps the car to run more efficiently so that the car, over the years, especially if you're changing your oil frequently, the cars will actually last longer and have less breakdown, unless it's electrical, and that's some of the cases that we're having now. But as far as the mechanical side of the car, if you changed your oil every 25 100 miles, those those engines will last 2, 300,000 miles. And this is why I'm saying that taking vitamins and supplements are a benefit because it supplies the body with the cofactors is necessary to allow these reactions to function more properly, more professionally, more efficiently. Now I've heard many times, my colleagues or other physicians that say, oh, taking that, you're just creating an expensive urine because you're gonna pee it right out. And I can understand why they say that, but then my response to that, it is is, did you eat today? And they'll say, well, yeah. I said, well, did you eat yesterday? And I'll say, well, of course, I ate yesterday.

Dr. Sal [00:26:20]:

And then I'll respond by saying, well, then why did you eat today? And they'll look at me like, what? Am I crazy? And I'm gonna say no. You're telling people not to take is because they're gonna basically excrete it, well, then why do you eat so much food if you're gonna go to the bathroom twice a day to poop out the food that you ate? Then maybe you're eating too much food. Is that the case? And so the point being is is that the the body is always in flux, and it always needs these supplements, and it doesn't replenish it as often as we think it does. And our foods don't contain the supplements and the minerals that it once did because of the changes that have taken place in farming and the food industry. And it's all, of course, predicated by agencies in Washington. So I'm trying to make you more alert, more aware that it is a good thing to take these supplements, And don't be afraid of, you know, the so called toxicity that everybody talks about. Is in medicine, in a hospital where somebody overdosed on taking too much vitamin c or vitamin e or for vitamin d for that matter. In fact, those should all be boosted up as well as the vitamin a during the time of a viral infection.

Dr. Sal [00:27:42]:

Again, we talked about at one point that, when we were talking about how fat cells store and secrete extra, pro inflammatory cells as well as mediators. And that's why people who are obese have an imbalanced immune system. That's why the younger people that pretty much pass from the COVID were obese. And the reason being was because their immune system was completely out of balance, and it put them into cytokine storm where it went completely haywire. It started to attack the body, particularly the lungs, and that's why these people passed. However, it's been shown scientifically that if you're in a ketogenic state and you contract that COVID virus, that you cannot die from a cytokine storm. Because sugars feed this type of reaction immune reaction in our body. Remember, sugar feeds cancers, sugar feeds viruses and the reactions.

Dr. Sal [00:28:46]:

You go in a ketogenic state, you increase your vitamin and supplements as we talked about earlier, and you could see that it's gonna protect you from the infection or get over it much quicker. And getting exposed to the virus also builds your immune system in a much more balanced way by building your innate as well as your acquired immune system. Again, Taking these supplements starting at age 15, increasing the amounts as we get older as well as some of the other supplements said I mentioned, to boost up a little bit of energy. We talked about lithium as a mineral to be taken from mood swings. Melatonin, great is a sleeping aid to take at night. If you have a lot of inflammation, taking turmeric, another good thing. Even doctor Josh Hank talked about that, saying, why take the motrin when you could take the turmeric? And taking that with black pepper, which helps improve the absorption of it. And these are ways that God helped to create therapies for us to take.

Dr. Sal [00:29:50]:

We have the benefit now of having them in pill form, which gives it easy, accessibility. And we could it it's easier to swallow a pill than to go out and find the vegetables necessary to provide us with those supplements. So I hope that this episode was helpful for you today. The objective here is is to get started on these habits early on in life and to continue them into your ripe old age. With that, I'd like to thank you so much for watching our show today. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a good review and visit our website and social media accounts to connect with us more. If you happen to have a question about your health regarding this episode, my email will be available in the description below, and I'd be happy to answer your questions. If you would like to see any of these sources of research that we used in this episode, they will be available in the show notes and description.

Dr. Sal [00:30:45]:

Until next time. I'm doctor Sal. Have a great day, and god