5 Supplements for Heart Health & Prediabetes

We're going to talk about supplements basic supplements 101 five supplements that can impact cardiovascular health now we all know again if you've heard that once you've heard it 100 times you can't supplement your way out of a lifestyle problem there's no question if you need to lose 30 pounds of body fat supplements are not going to get you there but supplements can help and they help a lot of people in a lot of different places for example there's been a lot of information that's come out recently about vitamin D3 and COVID so let's start off talking a little bit about vitamin D3 it's a major supplement for cardiovascular health it helps us regulate insulin levels it promotes cardiovascular health immune system function brain function and nervous system function there are two major forms of it one is called D2 the technical name is ergocalciferol it's produced by plants when exposed to ultraviolet light for example mushrooms fortified foods cholecalciferol D3 is by far more active a lot of people use D2 because they say well it's kinder and gentler the problem is it takes a lot of D2 to have any impact at all and again I think that just washes out the effort in my patients with myself I use cholecalciferol vitamin D3 as I mentioned it's biologically active it's produced in humans and animals when skin is exposed to sunlight but here's a problem there's significant variation of that production of vitamin D3 from exposure to skin do not do not rely on exposure to the sun to be your only source of vitamin D3 get checked I get a lot of husband and wife patients and typically I'll see a husband who's retired out playing golf four times a week three times a week his vitamin D3 deficient and a wife that stays indoors all day who's got great vitamin D and neither one of them are supplementing and it just makes no sense now I will tell you it's so common to see a problem with relative deficiency in vitamin D3 that I recommend that people just go ahead and start with 5,000 international units supplementation even while they're waiting to get their blood level back nobody's gotten into trouble with D3 at 5,000 international units now what are some sources of it oily fish such as salmon mackerel sardines I did a video recently on kippers a lot of history behind kippers and I won't go into detail on that right now that's a bunny hole that I'll save you from you can also get it from liver and egg yolk the target vitamin D3 levels that we recommend are 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter you look at a lot of standards a lot of standards are still looking at 20 to 40 I don't recommend being satisfied with keeping it that low too high doses can cause toxic effects excessive blood serum levels like 125 nanograms or more have been linked to adverse side effects I have a video of a patient that came to see me she was taking 50,000 international units that's a weekly pill that a doctor had given her to be taken once a week she didn't know that and she was taking it once a day and I think her initial levels when she came to see me was like 145 I mean it was a huge number she was having some kidney function problems when we saw that number the lab reported it to us immediately I called the patient explained the situation she stopped that immediately we watched her kidney function return to normal and again she shared her story on our videos is vitamin D good for cardiovascular health persons with less than 30 nanograms were up to five times greater risk for developing diabetes than people with greater than 50 less than 1,000 international units is not going to have much of an impact on preventing prediabetes or type 2 diabetes so you see a study here we will plan to put this content on the blog soon it'll take a few weeks because we've got other stuff in the pipeline but again it'll help you understand and be able to go back and look up questions you may have about D3 K2 we've talked about K2 a couple of times you get a lot of questions about subtypes MK4 they have MK4 all the way up to MK13 the difference in those subtypes is the difference in the chain length you may remember I showed you some of the chain lengths earlier in the presentation in the intro you can obtain these vitamin K2 from meat eggs cheese natto and again it affects bone growth bone loss affects osteoblasts and activates osteoblasts and inhibits osteoclasts one way we used to remember the difference between those two in med school is the b in blasts can remind you that that's building so an osteoblast is building bone and c is cutting so c is cutting away bone osteoclasts it actually activates osteocalcin and MGP a matrix Gla protein again some of the details on how vitamin K2 actually works is it good for cardiovascular health there's a doctor in I think the Netherlands Joline Buelens she's been involved in several studies demonstrating that K2 has a preventive impact on prediabetes and we go into those some of those studies on the blog if you want to take a look a meta-analysis showed that vitamin K2 reduced type 2 diabetes risk by 7% with each 10 microgram increment it increased insulin sensitivity via osteocalcin metabolism it improved insulin resistance via anti-inflammatory properties and lipid-lowering effects suppressed inflammation via inactivation of the NF-kB signaling pathway you see those red faces you know we're getting ready to talk about niacin niacin is a major supplement for cardiovascular health niacin is the only thing prescription or non-prescription that positively impacts all of the blood lipids all of the cholesterols the generic name for vitamin B3 forms like nicotinamide niacinamide nicotinamide riboside it's niacin that's the generic name it's naturally present in many foods it's added to some food products and available as a supplement nicotinamide niacinamide it was discovered in 1936 it's part of the WHO list of essential medicines it's an over-the-counter treatment for pellagra pellagra is a very very serious skin a dermatitis nicotinamide riboside no flush niacin was discovered in 1944 there's still significant debate about just how well that works is niacin good for cardiovascular health recommended for patients with significant Lp(a) it also increases HDL it's not recommended to take niacin supplement if you don't have any cardiovascular risks niacin's most common side effect is flushing yes and to counter the flushing there are a lot of different things a lot of people like the flushing they say gives me a jump in the morning other people will take a shower so they'll take the niacin about 10-15 minutes before they take the shower there's a couple of extended release forms Rugby brand and Enduracin we find that our patients and I myself tolerated those two very well and tolerate Enduracin about the best it's a it's got a wax matrix so what's happening is you're getting a slower release of that niacin there were trials of giving it with a chemical called laropiprant that led to the AIM-HIGH studies and the HPS2-THRIVE studies studies which showed that actually it didn't work and here's what appears to be the case the laropiprant the chemical that decreases the flush also appears to decrease the impact on Lp(a) and the other lipids so let's move on from niacin talk about bergamot for a minute and again we've got separate videos on each of these and actually in I think all cases more than one video on my bergamot video I talked about a brand or a type of bergamot called Bergamet it's in Calabria Italy beautiful area the birthplace of Valter Longo bergamot orange farmers there and basically they were getting beat up by the economy the purchase price for bergamot oranges why because the organic chemists had figured out a way to make artificial bergamot so in in addition to being a supplement it's also used in things like perfumes and teas and you only get a few drops of the oil out of a typical bergamot orange so again when you could make it artificially that really began to have an impact on the farmers they got together formed a farmer's cooperative got a couple of grants from the government and actually did some research some science which indicated and showed gave really good evidence that the natural bergamot was a much better product so let me get back to script here bergamot is the oil of citrus bergamia it's a fruit grown in southern France southern Italy it's been known and prized for centuries in things like Earl grey tea and perfumes is it good for cardiovascular health medical evidence that bergamot positively impacts both blood glucose and cholesterol levels like statins bergamot oil has the same impact on the enzyme HMG CoA reductase bergamot's also been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects it improves LDL HDL and several other things too much bergamot oil on the skin can cause rashes you know every solution can create a whole set of problems and yes there's actually been a death reported by huge bergamot exposure to skin I think it was with some kids that were playing at the bergamot farms and did not know the danger of this concentrated bergamot oil when you talk about bergamot usually berberine comes up very similar in impact berberine is a traditional Chinese herb extract it was used in China as an over-the-counter for bacterial diarrhea it was also found to decrease blood glucose it was originally made from Rhizoma coptidis which is very expensive now it's made from Berberis amurense the barberry plant if you're a plants person plants man you may recognize that barberry there is berberine any good for cardiovascular health yes there's studies out there there's science there's true evidence indicates that yes it is drops hemoglobin A1c by two points which is about the same that you'll see with metformin a meta-analysis by Lan and associates indicated that berberine has comparable therapeutic effect on type 2 diabetes hyperlipidemia and hypertension with no serious side effects how strong is that meta-analysis and do I just I get this question all the time do I recommend that people just not use metformin and use berberine or even bergamot instead no neither one of them is as strong you do see some science which indicates that yeah they thought it would had similar impacts I don't think it does not in my experience with patients now the other question that you get though is can I use them together and the answer is yes for sure you can use them together and I personally do considering the relatively low cost compared with other first-line medicines and treatments berberine has been seen as a good alternative especially in lower socioeconomic populations for treatment of type 2 diabetes hyperlipidemia hypertension over a long time period now berberine's half-life remember is 4.8 hours so if you're going to try to have a significant impact with berberine you should probably take it twice a day not once now as we talk about common supplements one of the big ones especially in terms of diabetes is very very commonly used item we're showing cinnamon on here one of the other items that we talk about is Gymnema silvestre magnesium fiber or psyllium curcumin there's a bunch of these that we have just not covered yet and if you have more interest in going deeper in terms of supplements and their impact the true science behind supplements rather than somebody's opinion take a look at our supplements webinar it's about an hour of time where we go much deeper into the supplements that are available and we go into a deeper Q&A continue to get great feedback regarding the webinars and here's why you know on the internet when you hear a webinar you expect for somebody to try to sell you something we're not doing that we're trying to tell you something people are coming in with their labs from Quest inflammation panel OGTT insulin survey response and then they're finding out do I have inflammation do I have insulin resistance and where does that fit in terms of other folks we're getting ready to start one for CIMT as well so again people are really excited about finding out their own status looking forward to seeing you there thanks

Channel: Dr. Ford Brewer

Views: 162,155

Keywords: supplements, supplements for heart health, heart health supplements, supplements heart disease, heart supplements, supplements for prediabetes, vitamin d, vitamin d benefits, vitamin d3 supplements, vitamin d3, vitamin d3 and k2, vitamin d3 k2 benefits, vitamin k2, vitamin k2 health benefits, niacin, niacin benefits, bergamot, bergamot oil, berberine, prevmedheartrisk, ford brewer prevmed, drfordbrewer, prevmed, how to prevent stroke and heart attack, preventive medicine, yt:cc=on

Id: dcuKeK7Fhyc

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020