416: Is Your Supplement Cabinet Doing More Harm Than Good?

Anita 0:01

If your cabinet is lined with the best supplements you can find, that makes sense. You do everything with excellence, so of course you want the best for your body, too. Our cabinets used to be full of supplements, and that's the same time we were dealing with the most health struggles in our lives. In the 1990s, researchers tested beta carotene pills on more than 18,000 people who were at high risk for lung cancer. They had to stop the study early, though, because the people taking those pills had 28% more lung cancers develop. Today, we're talking about why that happened, what to put on your plate instead, and the one supplement plant-based healthcare providers agree is essential We're so happy to have you with us today on Power On Plants. Jarrod and I are going to share with you something that blew our mind when we first learned it, because there was a time when our cabinets were filled with supplements, and surprisingly, that was the time when we were our sickest

Jarrod 2:07

And I can't really say That I remember any of them helping that much. other than Maybe a little mild placebo effect, but when you feel desperate and you don't have answers and mainstream medicine just wasn't really giving us any direction, any real guidance, just test guesses. What do you do? You go to the Internet. Now, back then we didn't have Google, Claude, all those other things. So we did research and we tried to find things that would help. And we ordered quite a few supplements. I don't think it would be an overestimation to say we cleared well over a thousand dollars worth of different supplements over time.

Anita 2:44

and I'm just gonna throw this out there. And I wanna know if you agree with me, Jarrod, but I don't think that having Google and Claude makes it safer and better today. Because there are so many times I ask it a question, and then try this. After you ask it a question the next time, type in, "What did you lie about? What was not true in what you just told me?" Because it's out there doing things like giving you amounts of things to take or supplements you should add in when it doesn't know. It's spitting out this stuff, and many times it's not even true. So try that the next time you search something

Jarrod 3:15

I have heard of reports of people being seriously injured by following advice, thinking it's some super intelligence, and it's just not. Is it a helpful tool? In certain circumstances, sure. But I heard one person say it's a word calculator. It's not a super intelligence. So good for some things. Health advice, please leave that to your professional. So thinking back, Anita, was there any one particular supplement that you felt like did any good? Because from my outside perspective, I didn't really notice much of a difference

Anita 3:45

not one. what really helped was when you went to the mailbox that day,

Jarrod 3:50

Yes

Anita 3:50

and you walked back in, and you had the new journal, your PA journal, and you started reading it, because we all know how much you love research, and I'm thankful you do, because I don't know where I'd be today if we didn't get that one nugget that just shifted everything for us of, oh, it actually could be the food.

Jarrod 4:08

food, And And

Anita 4:09

hundreds of clients later, and so many of the things that we were dealing with just gone. We've seen time and again that these foods heal, and there's a reason for that. we're going to get into that right now, because I'd like for you to share with our listeners about the carrot study. That's C-A-R-E-T. It started in 1985

Jarrod 4:32

That's a great name, carrot. Right up our alley.

Anita 4:35

But

Jarrod 4:36

But there were more than 18,000 smokers, former smokers, and workers exposed to asbestos who took either beta-carotene with vitamin A or a placebo

Anita 4:46

many people may not know what a placebo is

Jarrod 4:48

Good point. A placebo is basically like a sugar pill, meaning there's no active ingredient. So if you're going to do a valuable study, you have to give some people the active ingredient, and then some people a pill, tablet, capsule, whatever it is, that looks the same but does not have the ingredient in question in it. And then you see how do people respond?

Anita 5:08

So as far as they know, they are taking the actual active ingredient Even if they're taking the placebo

Jarrod 5:15

Correct. So with this one, what they found, researchers had to stop the study early because The active ingredient group, the one taking the beta carotene with vitamin A, had 28% more lung cancers and 17% more deaths

Anita 5:32

That had resulted during the study.

Jarrod 5:35

the study.

Anita 5:36

Wow

Jarrod 5:37

The placebo group did not have that. The beta carotene group did, which clearly is the exact opposite of what we're trying to achieve with this. A second study called ATBC gave beta carotene pills to male smokers in Finland and found more lung cancer resulting in that group, too. So it wasn't just a one-off study. There was more than one study that had similar results. Yet people who eat plenty of carrots, sweet potatoes, and dark leafy greens, all rich in beta carotene, have been found to actually lower lung cancer risk. The same nutrient was linked to increased lung cancer when smokers took it as a pill, but decreased lung cancer when eaten in real food.

Anita 6:18

And we've seen so many disease processes disappear from our own lives and from the lives of the hundreds of clients we've worked with. People we work with every day reverse things like type 2

Jarrod 6:30

Yes

Anita 6:31

autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, joint pain, low energy, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, excess weight. we could go on and on. And the reliable research consistently shows that these are the foods that help prevent the most common diseases of our time. That's whole plant foods. And these foods can even reverse the most common diseases we see in society today as well

Jarrod 6:58

So Anita mentioned heart disease. Dr. Dean Ornish had a trial called the Lifestyle Heart Trial in 1990. Patients who followed a low-fat vegetarian diet along with exercise, stress management, quitting smoking, and had group support saw their narrowed heart arteries begin to open up. Imagine that. 25 years ago in school, my PA medical training, I was taught this is not possible, that the only way you could open up a closed artery is with surgery. In 1990, Dr. Dean Ornish's trial showed the opposite. After one year, 82% were moving toward reversal without cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Anita 7:39

and Jarrod and I have actually seen the angiogram photos of this, where the vessels, the same ones that were clogged, now are open. The amazing thing about that to me though, Jarrod, is not just that those ones that were clogged were open, but that when you looked at the heart of these people, you saw vessels there that weren't even showing up on the films before.

Jarrod 7:59

That's true. They were- why is that? Well, the reason being, and interestingly enough, the small little vessels don't get clogged with cholesterol. They're actually spared. What happens is these vessels get inflamed, so then they get constricted, so there's no more blood flow, which clearly is bad. but when people make these changes, even if it could take a year or two for these larger clogs to reverse, within three weeks they get improvement in their energy and their stamina because these little tiny vessels that close up, from the inflammation, they reverse, they open up. So to some degree, them closing down spares them from getting clogged, which allows for a faster return of energy and vitality and stamina and all that than that one to two years it would take for the clogged artery, the larger arteries to reverse.

Anita 8:48

And the reason that we're sharing all of these different things with you is because we want you to be able to see the things that we wish we had seen years ago, being that whole plant foods can prevent and even reverse the most common diseases of our time naturally. God gave us these foods packed with the things our bodies need. It's amazing, the owner and the creator of our bodies actually knows what they need in order to function best, and gave us those things as food, according to Genesis 1:29.

Jarrod 9:21

Yes. He created us, and He knows what works best for us.

Anita 9:25

So we're going through these things because we wanna open your eyes to the fact that whole plant foods can do the things that you're trying to accomplish with a cabinet full of very expensive supplements. And even if you don't care about the money that you're spending on the supplements that you could spend on other things, because a lot of times we're outside that poverty mindset. We're not really worried about the money But what about the effects of all these pills and things we're taking on our bodies, what if they're not only not helping us, but they actually could be harming us? And that's why we wanted to point out those two studies in the beginning. There are multiple studies that show this. This is why I have seen a panel of the most well-renowned whole food plant-based physicians and healthcare providers talking about why they do not recommend multivitamins. and Jarrod and I do not recommend multivitamins. Why? Because you may have things in your body that you already have enough of, that if you start taking a multivitamin, you're gonna be getting many of those things that you already had enough of, now you're gonna have too much of. That can cause problems. Not only that, your body does not handle these man-made components the same way, and it doesn't even handle the natural components the same way when they are pulled out of the package that God created them in. Because all of those things that are in whole plant foods, along with that one nutrient you're trying to get that's in the whole plant food, if you don't take it out of His package, they work synergistically. They work together. So now you have this whole package of amazing things God's created. It's like the best present you could ever receive, because you're out there trying to figure out all this stuff and which supplement should I take and how much of it should I take and all these different things, and which multivitamin is the best. And meanwhile, what if, what's the possibility that maybe if you just filled your plate and your life with colorful whole plant foods I'm not talking vegan food. I'm talking next level vegan food. We're talking whole plant foods with color, not just a white plate of whole plant foods. Color. So one simple thing you can do for yourself to start getting amazing results is look at your plate when you're done plating your food and ask yourself, "What percentage of things on my plate are actually whole plant foods and not a piece that's been stripped out?" And then ask yourself, "What colors are missing? This is super important for you, much more so than supplements that are in your cabinet. So we want you to start thinking about what's the possibility that if I just start filling my life with all these colorful, nutrient-dense whole plant foods, that I wouldn't need the supplements, and that maybe I would be spared the harm that some of these supplements could be causing me. So Jarrod shared about how these foods can help with heart disease. What about Type 2 diabetes? Is it possible for it to reverse? Absolutely. We see it all the time

Jarrod 12:24

It is possible.

Anita 12:26

up reverse, no longer needing medications, meaning you don't have it anymore

Jarrod 12:31

Meaning your insulin resistance is gone. You are now responding to the insulin that your body makes naturally.

Anita 12:38

With these foods? These foods that are filled with carbs and sugar? Yes, absolutely, because carbs are not the problem, animal fats are the problem. We have multiple, multiple episodes we have shared about this, and it is a researched, verified fact that it is the animal fats that are causing the problem here.

Jarrod 12:58

Yes.

Anita 12:59

you can come in right now to this amazing resource we've created for you at poweronplants.com/ppn. PPN stands for Peak Performance Network. So that's poweronplants.com/ppn. And when you access this amazing community on your computer, there's a little mauve-looking, pinkish colored magnifying glass in the bottom right-hand corner. If you will click on that and just type in whatever word you're looking for, whatever disease process you're dealing with, whatever you want to know about, if it's type 2 diabetes, type that in. Jarrod and I have created a resource that will pull up for you every single time we've mentioned that specific word or topic that you're searching right to the specific moment in that you can press play in that episode. That is over 400 and counting community service content episodes we've created for you to start getting results even before you find out if you're the right fit for our accelerator experience. That is where we lay the big foundations for you, you start laying the foundation, step one, two, three, four, five, that we know is the quickest, simplest path to optimal health. We work with you one-on-one in there. If you wanna know more about that, that's at poweronplants.com/accelerator and you can apply the next time the doors open to see if you're a good fit for the program. But why would you not get in here and use this resource? It's gonna answer these questions for you. So we can't today, in this one episode, go over everything we've ever taught about type 2 diabetes here or inside Accelerator. You need to get involved, and this is the first step, is getting into PPN at poweronplants.com/ppn. What about type 2 diabetes, Jarrod?

Jarrod 14:50

Dr. Barnard in 2006 did a trial, had 43% of people on a low-fat vegan diet. They were able to cut back on diabetes medications compared to 26% who were on a standard American Diabetes Association diet. Among those whose medications stayed the same, the A1C dropped 1.23 points on the vegan diet and 0.38 points on the standard diet. So that tells us using more plants helps to drop the hemoglobin A1C, which is a lab study that will actually help to diagnose and monitor your diabetes progress.

Anita 15:28

Now didn't they find something else about high cholesterol in that same study?

Jarrod 15:31

They did. People who didn't change their cholesterol medication, the LDL cholesterol dropped by 21%. So they had a certain cholesterol level, they were on cholesterol medication, they made no other changes other than their diet, but then it dropped 21%.

Anita 15:45

And that was in the vegan group

Jarrod 15:47

Yes, that was in the group eating whole plant foods.

Anita 15:49

And when it comes to high blood pressure, a 2014 review of 39 studies found vegetarian diets linked to lower blood pressure with an effect about half as large as common blood pressure medications. Let your mind wrap around that for a minute. I mean, we've seen our personal clients and patients decrease their need for blood pressure medication and come completely off of blood pressure medication. And what I mean by that is not needing it anymore under their doctor's supervision. Please do not start adjusting your medications on your own.

Jarrod 16:21

No, please don't do that.

Anita 16:23

super unwise. Don't do that. But find a doctor who's willing to work with you, as we work with you to help you learn the simplest, most delicious ways to eat the healing foods. Have a doctor who is following along with you and helping to adjust your medication. It is super important because as you eat these life-giving foods, what happens is things will adjust. Your blood pressure will naturally start to go down, and if you're on blood pressure meds, it can go too low because now you're on the medications, and you're eating the foods to help to lower it naturally. So it They do need to be adjusted. It is crucial, as you start eating whole food, plant-based, you are followed by a physician who is willing to work with you to get those numbers down and get you off the medications, or at least, at the very least, to start decreasing those medications.

Jarrod 17:10

And with these conditions that we've just mentioned, this plagues such a large percentage of the population.

Anita 17:15

I

Jarrod 17:16

25 years ago when I was in school, we had a practicing PA come by and talk to us, and he said, "If you can manage blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol, you will have a successful practice." Well, that's just what we've mentioned. Now, imagine if you could tell your patients about whole plant foods and that they can potentially reverse these conditions. Imagine how many lives that that would change.

Anita 17:38

Oh, we've seen it. We've seen it in our own lives. We see it in the lives of our clients regularly. It is shocking what the general population is not being taught. But you're not the general population. You're not those people. You are here looking for and finding the answers that you need that can change your life. So when you're looking at the supplements in your cabinet, think about how these are things that are stripped out. They're one-off nutrients, or they may be multiple nutrients in one thing, which I don't think that's any better. It could actually be more dangerous. Again, Jarrod and I, and the majority of whole food, plant-based providers, do not recommend taking multivitamin supplements. But even with those one-off supplements, when you're looking at it, they don't have the fiber, the water, the phytonutrients. That's plant compounds that you don't find anywhere else but in whole plant foods. A pill is giving you one isolated nutrient in a high dose, it's in a way that your body was not meant to take it. And so number one, a lot of time, the money is flushed down the toilet because your body does not absorb it the same way when it doesn't have the other nutrients, and sometimes it could absorb it faster, and so that also is not good. So what we wanna do is make sure that we're getting it in the way that our body is able to take it and use it in the most beneficial way possible. and then those one-off nutrients, they don't come with antioxidants. so there was a 2010 study that measured more than 3,000 foods and found plant foods bring far more antioxidants into the diet than animal foods Why would this be? Why is it that these foods do this? Well, according to God in Genesis 1:29, it says, "Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth and every tree whose fruit contains seeds, they will be yours for food." So think about it. Just imagine Adam and Eve in the garden. Were they weighing themselves? Were they keeping up with macros and micros? Did they have a cabinet full of supplements?

Jarrod 19:42

I dare say no, but they had a garden full of delicious foods that had the nutrients they need. And if you look at the condition of when this was written in Genesis, this was before sin had entered the world. This was their perfect food. Nothing had to die to feed them.

Anita 19:58

Then I might say to you, "Well, then that was before sin entered the world, but now sin's entered the world. Men don't take care of the soil. Men don't take care of the planet. So now we have all these whole plant foods and they're lacking in nutrients, so I surely, I must need supplements." And this is how amazing that God has made food, because regardless of that, studies still show that eating a diet filled with whole plant foods actually helps to prevent and even reverse the most common diseases of our time. How amazing is our God that even though people still do all this stuff, and the enemy tries to get you worried about it so much so that you think, "Well, even those foods won't work." Well, that's a fatalist mentality, and they're not gonna work for you because that's your mentality. Here's the

Jarrod 20:41

thing.

Anita 20:41

God has made the foods. God has put things in them, so much so that even the way that the things have been treated today, the research studies still show that these foods are the healing foods, and they work, they work, they work. So if they work now, imagine how they worked back then. But they work. We know that they still work. Jarrod, one of your biggest things was, if I'm gonna eat this way, it's gonna have to provide everything I need. If this is really the way God intended for us to eat, it has to provide every nutrient that I need

Jarrod 21:09

It needs to provide all the nutrients. And of course, like everybody else, I started thinking, "Well, what about protein?" And then really started looking at, well, what is my protein eating? Where are cows, chicken, I'd say pigs, but pigs eat everything, and they're not really food. If you really, if you read the Old Testament, they're not really intended ever to be food. So At one point, God allowed us to eat meat, but he gave certain restrictions, which if you look at it, the animals he allowed, they were herbivores. They weren't scavengers. But looking at, well, what are cows eating?

Anita 21:42

They weren't the cleaners. They didn't eat the trash is what you're saying

Jarrod 21:45

yes. Uh, we once heard a guy say, "Don't eat the cleaning crew. Don't eat the sanitation department." So you got pigs, oysters, shrimp, all that kind of stuff. Never really meant to be food. God permitted other animals that you can read in the Old Testament, but that was not his original design. But I was at that point where we were eating that way, and I looked at just what are the animals eating? What is their source of protein? And so many of the animals, they're herbivores. You don't see cows chasing down other farm animals and beating them to death and then eating them. So if they're getting protein, they're very big, weigh hundreds of pounds, then they must be getting adequate protein. And they are, because plants have complete protein in them, every plant on the face of this planet

Anita 22:28

That's so good. So what we're saying is concentrate on what we call the power five when you are eating your meals and your snacks. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes, and there's a bonus, herbs and spices. Herbs and spices are not just a bonus because they provide great flavor. You need that. You need that no matter what you're eating, you need great flavor, right? You're never gonna eat a plain chicken breast. You're not.

Jarrod 22:53

that is one supplement we do endorse, supplementing your flavor. Boost the, boost the herbs, the spices, and they're not, like you said, Anita, they're not just flavor. They have anti-inflammatories, anti-cancer properties, all kinds of compounds. Probably, and I'm gonna jump out on a limb here, many we have yet to identify. Yeah. But even if We if we haven't identified it, doesn't mean it doesn't have some type of beneficial effect for you.

Anita 23:20

Right. And I loved what you said to me earlier, and you just brought that point out about supplements. A supplement can be much more than just a supplement of a nutrient

Jarrod 23:28

Yes.

Anita 23:29

So you're not just supplementing a nutrient you're missing. A supplement can be supplementing other things, like you just brought out supplementing flavor

Jarrod 23:36

Flavor, texture,

Anita 23:38

Joy

Jarrod 23:39

joy, the visual aspect of it. Yeah. Because-

Anita 23:42

Why do they put color in Froot Loops? Why are they putting all these added colors and things into foods? To try to replicate the color God gave them that brings us joy when we look at the food. Look at your plate. Don't eat a white plate. Start getting the color in there. Think, what's the one thing that I could add or two things I could add to bring the color here So the one supplement that we know that is recommended is a B12 supplement. Why is that, Jarrod? Why do we recommend taking a B12 supplement like most of the whole food plant-based providers do recommend?

Jarrod 24:12

Well, B12 is not found in plants, but interestingly, it's found in animals, but animals don't make it. The source for this is bacteria, but because of our modern farming practices, all the chemicals that get used, soil depletion, we're not really taking care of our soil to optimize those beneficial soil organisms like they should be. Also, too, we are chlorinating our water, so we just do not get exposed to the microbiome in our environment like we should, and so then we could potentially become B12 deficient.

Anita 24:44

And what we're seeing is that most people as they age, regardless of how they eat, even if they're meat eaters, are low on B12 for this very reason. So you think that you're getting it from meat because animals just make B12, but that isn't true. They're actually getting it because they're eating those bacteria and the B12 that's

Jarrod 25:00

Well, the happy cows are, but what we know is that farm animals, they're getting supplemented with B12. Right. Right. So they're being supplemented, so we think, oh, I gotta eat beef for my B12. You don't. You take the supplement because that's likely where that food source got its B12.

Anita 25:18

Take out the middle

Jarrod 25:18

moo. Take out the middle moo or the middle cluck.

Anita 25:22

So to close, think about how beta carotene pills fell short, and the whole plant foods that were rich in beta carotene did not. This week, your main goal is to stop focusing on what supplements do I need to add, what do I need to do? Are we saying never take supplements? No. If you're critically low in something your doctor has found, there is a time and a place for supplements, just like there's a time and a place for a blood pressure medication, but then you can be weaned off of that and no longer need it when you get to the root source of, what am I missing that is causing me to not have this thing in my life? We are all about getting to the root.

Jarrod 25:55

But the importance of what you just said is that you had a deficiency that was identified, and if you're eating whole plant foods, and you still for some reason are having a deficiency, then by all means, I think it would be foolish not to take a quality supplement that is known to help that condition. But to just take something because you saw it on the internet, and you think, "I might have a problem here. It's a nutrient. If I have a little, more must be better." Well, as we've seen With the study of the smokers that have lung cancer, it actually was to their detriment. So you can overdo the vitamins and certain nutrients

Anita 26:32

And I would say don't just take the supplement if you're at a critical level. Find out what foods have that, specifically what whole plant foods have that specific nutrient in them and are high in it, and start eating those. But it's important to eat not just that one food, but there are many nutrients in other whole plant foods that help you to absorb that nutrient. So instead of thinking, "Well, I need to get more vitamin C to up my ability to digest this thing," they're all things you can mix and match and drive yourself crazy with. Just get a wide variety of whole plant foods and a lot of color at each meal, and you're gonna have all those things that work well together the way God provided them for you. We have loved spending time with you again today. There are so many things that you can learn that are gonna help you on your whole food plant-based journey. We are here to help you with every single one of them. Start here at the podcast. Join us inside PPN at powerandplants.com/ppn. Start using the search function to find things you need. Ask questions, get the cookbooks at poweronplants.com/cookbook then the next time Accelerator opens, get your name on the list, and we can look at would you be a good fit for this program. this works. It works It works, and we are here for you. We're so excited for you. it doesn't matter what diagnosis has been spoken over you. What we know is this: no matter what the diagnosis is, nothing is more difficult for God to heal than the common cold. Okay? Nothing you have been diagnosed with is more difficult for God than the common cold is difficult for Him. How many common colds have you been healed of? So increase your faith today and start eating the foods that God has given you that we know heal, and get around the people who know how to make it easy and delicious to get those into your

Jarrod 28:16

in your life.

Anita 28:16

Have a great week. Know that we're praying for you, and we look forward to spending time with you soon.