The 3 Essential Supplements for Long-Term Health and Vitality

Discover why vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and a healthy microbiome form the foundation of long-term health, influencing everything from immunity to metabolism and brain function.
Understand how modern diets, environmental toxins, and lifestyle habits disrupt nutrient balance and increase inflammation, making supplementation more essential than ever.
Learn how simple shifts—like improving food quality, supporting gut health, and reducing reliance on medications—can dramatically improve vitality and aging outcomes.

About the Expert

John Nieters, LAc, DAOM, CFMP

Dr John Nieters

Dr John Nieters has been teaching and practicing the combination of Functional Medicine paired with Traditional Chinese Medicine for several decades. He has been practicing Tai Qi, Qi Gong and meditation for 50 years.

He has hosted over 500 call-in talk radio shows on "The Balancing Point." He currently lives in Alameda, CA with his wife, Jenny and son, Johnny. His wife, Jenny, is the acupuncturist for the 49ers football and St Mary's Rugby team.

He has authored the book "The Sweet Spot," on how to read your blood work and plans to have two additional books published this year.

Dr John's patients, staff and listeners call me the "Story-teller".

salmon, krill oil, very rich in astaxanthin. But one of the things it does for the kril, apparently, is they swim around pretty close to the ocean surface a lot of times, and they'd get burned by the sun.

It would literally burn them up. And the astoxanthan, I've read, it's what protects them. Well, we went whale watching about 10 years ago and I was doing a lot of krill oil at that time and a lots of vitamin D.

So we're out doing whale-watching on a moss landing out in Monterey Bay and it's really sunny. And my wife comes up to me about an hour into our trip and said, do you have sunscreen on?

Because you can see my skin, it takes about five minutes for me to burn to a crisp. It was about and hour in to the trip, I said oh my God, no I don't.

But you know what? I'm not even pink. I wasn't even Pink. And I didn't get a sunburn. That's the only time in my life I've ever been out in the sun for a long period of time.

and I got to tell you, I blame that on the astaxanthin and the high vitamin D levels. Hi, and welcome to The Balancing Point. i'm Dr. John Needers and i am here to make traditional Chinese medicine, functional medicine and integrative health simple, practical and fun.

So you can restore balance, boost vitality, and enjoy a healthier life every single day. Hey, y'all. Thanks for joining me here today. This is a really fun show, I'm thinking, that's going to happen.

And I am here as your host of The Balancing Point. this is John Needers. Today I've got a very special guest. Very special to me and I think special for you.

His name is Dave Stouter. I have known Dave for many years. And, you know, he used to own a store in Redwood City called Apple Health. And I remember one of the things, in fact, I actually went online and looked it up and see if there was still anything there about Apple health foods.

and there still is on Google. real phrase that he went by is, he called it Mother Nature's Medicine Chest. And he really lived by that. Dave's customer service at that store, my patients miss him so much.

That store has been closed for over a decade, and I still have patients coming in and asking about Dave. Now, what's significant in my mind about David, as well as being a great person, is that, in the manufacturing side of supplements.

He has experience on the wholesale side A lot of experience on the retail side of supplements. So he probably knows as much about supplements in general as anybody around.

And so I love picking Dave's brain. We used to have a lot, a fun at one time. we were both on radio and we decided to do a radio show together called the medicine men.

and it was a gas, we would have nothing prepared. But we'd show up and Dave did most of the interviewing. He's a very good interviewer. And he'd say, all right, John, let's talk about this.

I go, okay, Dave, and we just wrapped for an hour. It was so much fun being non-scripted, unscript and just going through things. So Dave really, really focuses on the natural way of healing, the way people have taken care of themselves for centuries, lifestyle, diet.

getting enough sun, being socially, social actually, and keeping your mental health. All the things that people have done for centuries. We look at these areas they call the blue zones now, where people live to a riper older age than people in other areas.

And it's really the stuff that Dave's going to talk about today. So Dave, how you doing? I'm doing great. came back out to California and was able to come visit you more than once a year.

It was just really great and I think back to our radio show, The Medicine Man. And really folks, I can remember the old days, like I would call into the radio station and John would come into radio stations, so we wouldn't be in the same room most of the time.

I could remember, we'd be on hold waiting for the show to start and go, John, got some good questions for you today. He'd go okay. And that was it. And John and I, you know, John's very credentialed.

I've gone in as a patient. My wife has, my daughter has. Really never met anybody like John because he's humble, but he usually knows something almost about everything, at least a little something, if not a lot.

You know I don't have credentials, because John said I'd been in the industry for about 53 years. And if you're in a health food store and all these places and you pay attention, you learn things.

I got to work with people like John and some of the luminaries in the health-food business. We are confusing being medicated with being healthy. That's a real issue.

Medications have their place, but health comes from diet, lifestyle and nutrition. and we have these wonderful interventions that can save our life and do amazing things.

But if we would really understand that, you know, they say alternative medicine, we're not the alternative, okay? We are the way to health. This natural foods industry, John, to me is the only industry that actually talks about health, We don't talk about insurance and medications and disease management.

We do talk mother nature's medicine chest, exercise, real food. And I think we just need to Really attempt to rely on that more because if we don't, then we just think like, well, I have a headache.

I'll just take ad bill. It's a sort of a slippery slope. And, and, when I would hear John lecture and you know, we have good people out there. We have people in health food stores, we've got good practitioners, We've have guides to help us.

So if we could just remember that 80% of our health is diet, lifestyle, nutrition. And we're going to talk about a few supplements today. I just want to say to everybody, I don't think that supplements are a substitute for a good diet.

But I also don' think a diet is a supplement for supplements. Most of us aren't angels with our lifestyle. We do things that we know aren' t so good for us, but okay, we live in the real world.

But even if you're a saint, you live with what, 30, 40,000 liver toxins, John? And so you are being beaten up. And, so to me, I don't think you can make that up completely as you age, especially.

just with diet. And so avail yourself of Mother Nature's medicine chest. You know, I have several studies that I'd collected over the years that were done on the cord blood of infants, right?

These are babies that had never been out in the world. It was the blood that they were having circulated while they're in utero. Over 99% of the children, the cord blood that was tested, had over 200 toxins.

So they were born with those toxins, and then we're just going to add more. And I had a kid, he's kind of cocky, in one of my nutrition classes while I was teaching, acupuncture school, and I taught combination of Western and Chinese nutrition.

And I was talking about supplements and herbs. He said, well, why would we need that stuff? You know, my grandparents didn't need it. I said well that's because your grandparents were eating food that was grown in soil that still had some nutrients in it, you know?

And, I pointed to a study that done in the 1930s where they said 70% of the land that we're growing crops on had no nutrients. So if it's not in the soil, it is not going in plants.

But then I said, your parents weren't eating the type of wheat that you're eating. They were eating a much higher quality form of weed. And when they had dairy, It was raw, straight from the cow dairy with all the nutrients in it.

It hadn't been homogenized and pasteurized. So good luck finding all of the things you need without an occasional or even more than occasional supplement.

Well, thanks. And I'll expand on that just a little bit. You know, I can remember Johnny Carson, for those of you that, you know he was like the main late night talk show host at the time.

But anyway, he talking to somebody and he goes like, well, a carrot's a carat. What's the difference between an organic carrot and regular carrot? Well, you know, A through zinc, maybe not a lot.

Okay. They are very similar, but then you get into phytonutrients. And when you use pesticides and things, we destroy most of them and the phytonutrians just play a big role in health and detox.

But we can go deeper. There's supposed to be a microbial life in the soil, almost like the microbiome of the. And that should be part of the plant and that then should part the health benefit from the plan.

So even if it's organic and not full of a bunch of toxins, it may not be in great soil. As John said, generally, we all come into the world starting with more toxins than our parents.

And the environment we're growing up in has more toxins than are parents, so yeah, I know older people, you know, smoke cigars, drink alcohol, they're 95, and they are fine.

but you won't find as many of those today. And now we have, you know, six-year-olds with anxiety and GERD and all kinds of things. So folks, avail yourself of Mother Nature's Medicine Chest.

I thought, I know there's a lot of you out there that are maybe a supplement like me, you know, like I don't mind taking a lot of supplements and I had a store.

So, take a whole bunch. But I know there's a love you that would like to really try to get most of it with your diet. And I admire that. I want to talk about three supplements that I think everybody should do.

how healthy you are or not. I think when you pick three out of a thousand really good things, you're gonna leave good thing behind. But if it were me, I would not do less than the three things we're going to talk about today.

And- Great. That sounds fabulous. Okay. Maybe top of the- Roll them. Top of the list, John, you mentioned being out of sun. And the sun actually does a lot for you.

But one of main things is vitamin D3. Now I want you all to picture something. If you think about it, all the energy on the planet comes from the Sun.

You know, the different lights we see and in a sense the electricity, everything really generates from the sun. And I think of vitamin D that way. You, know the Sun hits your skin, you make vitamin d and that compound becomes so many things, just like the son gives so may forms of energy.

You know, D, we think of it as bone health, and that's true. One of the sort of major pathways of D is to help the bones. And it may be that four or 5,000 D a day may enough for bones for a lot of people.

But there's different pathways. D makes hundreds of hormonal chemicals. John, I was talking to Dr. Michael Murray. Many of you know him. He's pretty well known in the industry.

Oh yeah. and he told me something I didn't know that vitamin D helps prevent fatty liver. So people say, what does vitamin D do for you? And I'm almost like, well, it'd be easier to just tell you what it doesn't.

So it does help your bones. It does your heart muscle. Along with vitamin K2, It helps keep calcium out of your arteries and soft tissue and into your bone.

Is critical for the immune system, for autoimmunity, thyroid health, even for vision. And so we have underestimated what we need. I just want to read one paragraph.

I'm going to tell everybody that from my point of view as somebody in the supplement business, I don't know why anybody wouldn't take at least five to 10,000 a day.

John, you're welcome to chime in on this, but Dr. Reinhold Veith is one of the leading D3 researchers in world. He's a PhD toxicologist. he's worked for the CDC and he just says here, in this study goes, we present a risk assessment based on relevant, well-designed human clinical trials of vitamin D collectively.

The absence of toxicity in trials conducted in healthy adults that use vitamin-D dose over 10,000 units supports this confident selection, the value of the upper limit.

So if you lived on the equator, you'd probably pull in about 30 to 80,000 a day. So folks, doctors are still a little slow, most of them on this, and they want to stop your blood level at 40 or 50. The people studying it want you to be 100 or a bit more.

I used to take quite a bit. My levels were 206.8 and I'm still here to be on the balancing point. So because D does so much, it's one thing. It's not expensive.

If it does. I would make sure you're getting D and get more than is in your multi. And I, I put the floor to your comments, John. Yeah. The, um, the one caveat is if I find someone that has, so vitamin D, one of the reasons it.

Not much of a problem. at any level, I mean any over 60, is that it still has one more conversion to become the most active form, which is called calcitriol.

So what's being tested when you get a D3 test is 25 hydroxy vitamin D. That then converts to one comma 25 dihydroxyvitamin D, and that's what actually gets locked into your receptor sites.

And in a few people, and some people with kidney disease have to be a little careful. If they come in and they've got really, really low vitamin D, you know, it's like 10, 15, or if they're taking vitamin B and it still low, then I will run a calcitriol test just to make sure they are not over converting to that form.

But we're looking at less than 1% of the population. Would I even be concerned about that? But one thing I want to mention, And it's something I could not legally say during the pandemic because California passed a law that people in my position, even MDs, could say anything other than what the CDC told them to say.

Well, I'm looking at studies from all over the world. And one of them that was done at the Galilee Medical Center in Israel showed, and they put vitamin D users in quintiles, five different levels.

and the people that were in the lowest quintile died from COVID at 14 times the rate as the People in The Highest Quintile, 14x higher death rate. All they had to do was take a few pennies worth of vitamin D a day.

So anyway, that's my two cents worth. Not 14% people, but 14X, 1,400%. Right. And that is the thing, it does so much for you. And you say, oh, I go out in the sun a lot.

Well, if you live in Florida or, you know, Brazil, okay. But the farther you are from the equator, the less D you make, even if your in sun. So I encourage you to go to the Sun.

I'm not saying don't go at the son, but take your vitamin D. Now the next thing, uh, John, everybody talks a little about inflammation and they should be.

Uh, remember there was a big, it was either time or newsweek when they were a real magazine. had a big article on inflammation and health. And the sentence that I really took from it was, inflammation is the engine that drives every chronic disease.

Now, one of the main reasons we would have that chronic inflammation, and almost think of it as a pilot light that can just light fires all over your body if you're not careful.

is the imbalance between omega-3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty assets. I've seen studies where even if you don't eat junk food, let's say you eat really good food.

Still, if we lived out in the wild, our omega 3, omega six would be roughly equal. Maybe omega6 would two or three times as much. Typical Americans are 20 to 30 times the omega-6 to omega 3. And whether it's junk food or real food, that is an equation for inflammation.

The easiest thing to do is up the Omega-3. Now here's where we get a little complicated. I'm a big fan of fish oil, because the fish have converted the omega-3 into the active forms.

I won't mispronounce the long names, but they're EPA and DHA. And there's plenty of studies on fish, oil and you go to a health food store, you can get clean fish.

Oil because fish are being rancid or contaminated is certainly an issue. But I wanted to. point out to you very strict vegans who are listening to me and going, ah, I'm not doing the fish.

I get it. Now you have one alternative. The thing is, as we referenced before, we live in a liver toxic world. Just people are not converting your flax and your hemp and you're walnuts.

They're just not, converting the ALA into EPA and DHA at very small rate. And when I meet someone who's a strict vegan, The first thing that comes to my mind, like what their health issue might be, is fatty acids.

Because even at best, we're not converting them very well. So many of the companies make an algae oil that has been converted to EPA and DHA, and that's one good alternative.

A little expensive compared to fish oil, but it has being altered. But I want to give a shout out to a really emerging fatty acid, that is black seed oil.

I was thinking about this. Black seed oil is pretty amazing. John, I don't know if I told you this, but… Okay. I'm sure you tell your… patients to eat a colorful diet, right?

That's healthy. Yes. In fact, Chinese medicine is based on seasonal eating by color. Okay. Now to everybody out there, when I said, eat, a colourful diet.

What did you see? You saw green and red and yellow and orange. Maybe purple. So when I was a little kid in elementary school, I wasn't fascinated by mixing colors when they taught us paint.

You know, you could put like yellow paint and blue paint together and it made green. Like that just fascinated me. I remember them telling me that the absence of color was white and that all the colors mixed together were black.

Now, when said eat a colorful diet, nobody saw black, probably not. And I don't think you did. But black is all of the color. And I would tell you that black seed oil, I think, really should be more significant than turmeric as the herb that has such a broad.

And in the fatty acid profile blackseed oil. It also has some things that help the liver convert. So generally, I would recommend everybody do a good Omega-3, a fish oil if you're not a vegan.

But if your are vegan, i would add black seed oil. Did you tell me, John, that was in I think it's in the Quran that they say blackseed oil cures every death?

Well, it was Avicenna, the great Persian physician. I mean, this guy was brilliant about a thousand years ago. He's reputed to be the first doctor to do an appendectomy, but he was.

He was revered and he said, the one, one thing I cannot be without is black seed oil or blackseed. And he says, I can cure anything but death if I have black seeds.

He said if they're already dead, he can't do anything, but everything else we can heal with black. Well, most of us, when we're dead we don't go into health food stores.

You know, now I do want to give a shout out and you and I talked about this to one of the companies when it comes to black seat oil. There are a lot of good products on the shelf.

Now, the main active ingredient is called thymaquinone, kind of like we think of curcumin with turmeric. And usually if we're buying a turmeric supplement, typically we want to see how much curicumin is in it.

A lot black seed oils don't even state the thymoquinone. That doesn't mean they're bad, but I don' know how to compare them, right? Like this one, you know.

So there's one by a company called Health Aid America. And it's around here in California certainly, but you can find it on the internet too. But they make a black seed oil from India and the soil in India really is superior.

measurably, I think, than Turkey or Egypt, where a lot of it comes from. It's organic. They hand pick it, they hand press it. And I've tasted black seed oil.

I wouldn't say it's tasty, but this has actually a good taste, like a sweet, rich olive oil with a little bite, and it has a minimum of 150 thymacoinone.

in one teaspoon and the ones that do state are usually 40 to 50. So this to me is the superior black seed oil. And by the way, John, there's a lot of things, we could probably do a whole show on blackseed oil, but I noticed that there were studies on glaucoma.

on black seed oil, and that's something that you really need to go to a practitioner about because I don't see much on the health food store shelves for that.

And the other thing, I was at a trade show and was speaking with a woman who turned out to be a thyroid practitioner. We were standing at the Health Aid booth and she put her finger on top of the blackseed oil and goes, number one thing for thyroid.

I'm like, really? And she goes, especially Hashimoto's. And when I looked at PubMed.gov, there was a study where two months, I didn't read how much, but two month on black seed oil cut the elevated antibodies, the TPO and TGO in half.

So this is a really good whole food oil. It's not spiked, by the way. Just think of it like avocado oil, you know, coconut oil and so I'm a big fish oil advocate, Omega-3.

I think we need preformed EPA, DHA. And I would be curious about your thoughts, but adding black seed oil to that I, think is really great idea. You know, Dave, you are the person that turned me on to using it for Hashimoto's and I'm seeing the same type of effect.

I have quite a few patients because I treat a lot of Hashimoto's who are getting really great results where I had used. black seed oil for decades was for ulcerative colitis.

I remember this one guy came in, he was desperate. He said, look, they're going to take out my large intestine next month. You got to help me. So I did everything that I knew to do at that time.

And he went into remission enough that they let him keep his colon. But he was like 90% better, but there was that last 10% we couldn't get. And then I started giving him black seed oil and that was the final magic ingredient.

Years ago, again, I don't know how many, a couple of decades probably, I was looking for supplements that could help people with pancreatic problems and the only supplement that was ever listed in any of the studies was black seed oil.

So it has just a myriad of uses. you know, my little image of all the colors are black and you need a colorful diet. And so I would say I love turmeric and I like it that people are putting turmeric in their food and cooking with turmeric, and making turmeric drinks and turmeric milk.

But I wouldn't say that black seed oil deserves to be a tier above even turmeric. So as we talk about fatty acids, to me, you got to get your omega-3 because almost all of us need more omega 3 to balance out that omega 6 omega three relationship, which if it isn't balanced, it drives inflammation.

Now, so we've talked about two things. Vitamin D and fish oil with a little side note there about black seed oil. The third thing, and maybe this should have been the first thing.

is to take care of your microbiome. And I want to make a little distinction between probiotics and microbiomes. Probiotics are supplements that play a role in the health of the microbiote.

I'm going to go out broad with this. that the interesting thing was they found like, you know, this many genes, but this much activity. It was activity they couldn't account for in what they had mapped.

And then they realized at some point that that was the microbiome, that, your bacteria do have your DNA and this activity was that colony. By the way, folks, if I'm looking at John and he's a trillion cells, there's like probably a hundred trillion bacteria we're looking that we don't see.

They're not like ants you're supposed to brush off your sleep, they're a functioning colony. Now, mRNA, you know, we kind of think about that as the technology in the COVID shot.

But mRNA is the messenger that tells your DNA what to do. Now one of the reasons why as we age we get more conditions, diseases, not the only, but one them is that we lose our genetic stability.

We can't keep our good genes turned on and our bad genes turn off. So the mRNA is what tells your DNA what to do for the most part. That's epigenetics.

We're learning now that your fate is not in your dna as much as we used to think. Your inner and outer environment conspires to tell your genes to the right thing or the wrong thing.

And a good 80% of that mRNA message comes from your microbiome. Now let that sink in a minute. Because, you know, we all know the gut issues, oh, I've got reflux, i'm constipated, and I get nauseous.

Okay. And we go, well, one of the things you need to do is your microbiome, but there's plenty of things going on in your body. Some of them take decades to manifest.

If you're not tending that garden, if you are not keeping that up, then You know, you're heading towards some kind of problem and don't rely just on your gut to tell you.

And that's like one of the first places to go. I was attending a lecture by this guy named Dr. John Needers one time. He was talking about certain medications.

So I raised my hand and I said, so John, we know that antibiotics and hormones are particularly rough on the microbiome. What other medication should we be concerned about?

And he said, all of them. So every medication, you know, sort of inhibits your microbiome. And what I say to people is why do they put chlorine in water?

To bacteria. If you drink tap water or anything made with tapwater, when you eat sweets or sugars, even a glass of orange juice, Whatever the sugar is, it disproportionately feeds negative bacteria.

So I'm sorry, folks. To me, no one's walking around with a truly healthy microbiome unless you're doing something about it. Now, John, you and I have been talking about this issue.

There's a product out there, everybody. I got to give it the Olympic gold medal as a microbiome supplement. And by the way, probably everybody on the track team in the Olympics can run faster than I can and John, but there is a gold metal and a silver and bronze.

I'll tell you why I think this is the gold. You go into a health food store and you got a lot of products, right? And if you were asking somebody who knew about all the products why is this one good?

Why is one this good though? I'll tell you, well, this is what we did to make sure the bacteria could actually get through digestion. Cause that's tough.

When you put bacteria in your mouth, they really get it through the digestive system. They have to have certain strains and they might enterocode it and that's good.

And then when it gets down there, it has to actually be able to implant and get, you know, get work with all the friends in there. So they'll pick strains that they feel implant best.

Okay, that is good and then it needs food. And we may not be feeding it well ourselves, so they put, you know, prebiotics typically in the supplements.

But here's the thing we don't realize. So John, if I asked you, what do probiotic bacteria do for you? You'd give me a bunch of things. You know it helps with constipation, helps absorb certain nutrients, it help with mood, help us with immunity.

And to sort of make a point, I'm going to say no, John. The probiotics bacteria don' do any of that. And then as everyone's saying, well, what do they do?

If they get down there and if they implant and, if their fed, they make a whole set of compounds called postbiotic metabolites. Now, when you eat a fermented food, like, you know, sauerkraut, whatever, there's bacteria in it, but there is also post biotic metabolism.

Some researchers say that, fermented foods are better for you than probiotic supplements. I'm not so sure about that, but to me, the kernel of truth in that statement is, is that complexity of a fermented food that has post-biotic metabolites versus a really strong collection of bacteria.

Okay. Now. Because of that, there's a product out there called Dr. O'Hara's Probiotic, and that's Ohira, like a Japanese name, not Ohara. Happy St. Patrick's Day to everybody.

We're recording it on St Patrick day, so I'll mention that. as a guy that loves finding clovers, four-leaf clover. But anyway, so what Dr. Ohira, this Japanese professor found out a long time ago, and there's a story about him, I think he was in Indonesia.

And one story says he got really sick and once he at a conference and one stories says, he's got drunk. but he was not doing well. And one of the shamans there gave him this black paste and it just like picked him up and he actually was trying to figure out what it was.

He actually went and got a degree in microbiology so he could figure it out. But anyway, what Dr. Hirsch does is take a wide variety of interesting foods and some key bacteria and they ferment it for three years.

Now, When you eat food, roughly it gets through your system in 72 hours, you know, an average. And so you've got 72. Hours for that food to ferment and become some post-biotic metabolites.

Here you have three years. This stuff has over 500 post biotic metabolism in it naturally because of the fermentation. If your microbiome, if your rainforest down here is like a desert, you can put all the good animals in your mouth and they can get down there.

Nothing much is going to happen. You've probably taken a probiotic supplement and gotten really great results and taken another one and didn't. And you've taken it and the results faded.

That's because. They only really work well if they end up going through all these little barriers to make post-biotic metabolites. This is what builds your microbiome.

John, I was looking at some stats. We eat a little less carbs than we used to, probably still too many. Okay. And we're a Little more sedentary than it used To be as a, like in the last 25 years.

So, you know, most people would say that if you have an issue with weight, it's not the only thing, but too Many sweets and carbs and not enough exercise is kind of a root cause for a lot of people.

But that doesn't change very much, but obesity and diabetes are going through the roof. So there's metabolic disruption there, and it's probably different ones.

The fact that the GLP-1 drugs work, at least in terms of losing weight, shows that that's one of the key issues of metabolic disruptions. Now, I'm not a big fan of these medications, I just think they have issues with them.

I can understand if somebody is really, you know, overweight and just giving up, but I wouldn't say I'm too long if I were you. It's just my opinion. But.

Your own GLP-1 system is basically your microbiome consuming beta-glucans and certain fibers to make short-chain fatty acids, to Make L-cells, To make GLPs 1, 2, and 3. And so when you look at this product, Dr.

O'Hara's, that's just rich in post-biotic metabolites. I take a lot of different probiotics. I'm sure you use different ones in your clinic. But when I look at this three-year fermented food, that they just put the whole thing in a little capsule.

They don't isolate it, they don' monkey with it. It's really amazing because every biological system in you body has to operate through the microbiome.

Okay? And my little image is imagine like walking somewhere and you're walking through the beautiful woods with the sunlight and the butterflies and hummingbirds and trees.

How nice you would feel when you get to wherever you are going. What if you had to slog through a swamp and worry about the leeches and snakes and quicksand?

Well, if your microbiome isn't so good, then your body is operating through swamp. or if your microbiome's healthy, you're walking through the beautiful woods.

So again, I think that whoever you are, whatever you doing, whether you like to take as many supplements as you can afford, just to hedge your bets, or you'd rather not take any.

I really think plenty of vitamin D3 and omega-3 supplement. You might consider black seed oil and a good probiotic. There's lots of good pro-biotics, but I have to give the gold medal to Dr.

O'Hara's probiotics. Dave, yeah, we, I haven't, i don't remember exactly at this moment, but I think we carry about eight different types of probiotics and we use them for very specific things.

But Dr. O'Hara's is my baseline. If, you know, if someone has. Anyway, certain gut conditions, I might use one of these other formulas, but O'Hara's is absolutely the gold standard.

It is just astonishing. And then there's the professional grade, which has been fermented for five years, right? Well, yeah, in fact. And so down in the lower bowel is where you're anaerobic bacteria, like no oxygen, low oxygen bacteria.

And, so your typical green box of Dr. O'Hara is three-year fermented. The professional is an extra two years of anaeroic fermentation. So this increases the post-biotic metabolites and also increases a bifidobacteria.

Especially if you have those lower bowels symptoms. I'd start with a professional. Dave, while we're talking about Dr. Ohira, you actually introduced me to what is now my favorite supplement.

Thank you. All the black seeds right up there. And that's the product that Dr Ohura has that also has the green propolis. Now we've been fans of propolus around here for a while.

I mean, it's a magic substance. You know, what allows bees to keep their hives running. but I had not seen a product with a probiotic that also had the green propolis in it.

Can you talk about that for a minute? There used to be a vitamin company, I don't think they exist anymore. They might, but they sort of educated me on propolis a little bit.

I knew about propolis, you know, not particularly expensive. And I was told it's why the bees could crawl all over each other in the hive and not get sick.

It had antibacterial and antimicrobial, and I'd see it in throat sprays and immune products and toothpaste and things like that. But there's a green and a red propolis.

A red is extremely rare and very expensive, but the green propolis, and this is really the kind of bees and where they feed, is a treasure trove of antioxidants.

I think this is accurate enough to say, but they told me that B pollen has at least traces of every known nutrient, like, you know, A through zinc and amino acids.

But green propolis has these traces every know phytonutrient. So it is rich in all kinds of antioxidants. Now you combine that. with Dr. O'Hara's probiotic, which is really post-biotic metabolites, just another array of superfood compounds.

And then they add astaxanthin, one of the more interesting antioxidants. It's what makes the salmon pink. I know there's been studies on muscle strength and even, you know, deep immune problems.

So besides being one of your better immune products, because we know that nourishing your microbiome is going to help your immune system. And then you use this propolis, which you say this green propolis is just amazing and the astaxanthin.

I will tell you this, a lot of superfood supplements are powders. You know, so they can put a lot of good green stuff and all that. But I know a lotta you listening don't like powders or don' like the taste or it's too gritty, it' too much trouble.

I get it. but if you look at some of the same products in the capsule or tablet form, you have to take quite a bit. And I would say that the doctor here's propolis plus formula is probably your best encapsulated superfood.

But I know people who rely on that for immunity. And by the way, I think cold and flu season is about 10 and a half months long now. It's just where we worry about viruses and things.

Oh, it's November. I better take some immune stuff. besides nourishing your microbiome, just that green propolis is truly amazing. And I think… The culture of Japan has a reputation for being really precise and just focused and really great job.

And I'm just finding that, that these products made in Japan are just really superlative. They're just done well. and whether you use the green box, the regular probiotic, professional or the propolis, excellent products.

I have a little personal story here. So astaxanthin, an amazing compound, right? It's like you're talking about salmon, krill oil, very rich in astoxanthan.

But one of the things it does for the kril, apparently, is they swim around pretty close to the ocean surface a lot of times and they'd get burned by the sun.

It would literally burn them up. And the astazanthen I've read is what protects them. Well, we went whale watching about 10 years ago. And I was doing a lot of krill oil at that time and a lots of vitamin D.

So we're out doing whale watching on a moss landing out in Monterey Bay and it's really sunny. And my wife comes up to me about an hour into our trip and said, do you have sunscreen on?

Because you can see my skin. It takes about five minutes for me to burn to a crisp. And it was about an hour into the trip. I said, oh my God, no, I don't.

But you know what? I'm not even pink. And I didn't get a sunburn. That's the only time in my life I've ever been out in the sun for a long period of time.

and I got to tell you, that I blame that on the astaxanthin and the high vitamin D levels. So I love astoxanthan. No, so I think you're absolutely right.

Oh, by the way, since we, just a little aside you made me think of, I heard a very interesting thing someone was talking about, you know, there's that controversy, don't go out in the sun because you can get skin cancer, but go in a sun, because vitamin D helps prevent cancer.

I was told that when you go fry your skin in sun and it becomes bad, It's the omega-6 fatty acids in the skin that are burning. So if you have a high omega 3 content, you are less likely, even if it gets sunburned, for it to turn malignant on you.

Besides the D, and you're right, the things like the astaxanthin protect the eyes. It is really an amazing supplement. Like I said, look. I've been in the industry a long time and just because there's a best product doesn't mean other ones are bad.

Like somebody might say, well, you know, I been taking this probiotic and I really love it, Dave. I get it. And I have taken lots of different probiotics and sometimes for certain symptoms, a certain probiotical work better and faster than something else.

But when you really think about what the microbiome is and how it really works, in fact, What they're really studying now in microbiome science are postbiotic metabolites.

When they come up with a particular strain they like, you know, this particular strand is so important. It's because of the post-biome metabolite it makes, or this strain.

And so I think this is one of these things where something discovered 40 years ago is cutting edge. and that's really cool when you find something that was made 40 ago, instead of like oh, remember that old thing?

No. So I would say if you haven't tried Dr. O'Hara's, you know, I should mention, John, if I've mentioned this to you, but I'll mention it now. The thing that the Essential Formulas is the name of the company is that they've come out with a sachet, a little packet with the substance, the post-biotic substance in it.

Okay. And so for people that don't like pills, even though the pills are little or the capsule materials, and it has the post-biotic metabolite equivalent of five professional, because the other thing is, I've really seen people, if they would take more than one or two a day for a little bit, really come around, but I know say take Three in the morning and three at night.

Most people look at you like, okay, they won't do it. Say, you know, I understand. But one little sachet, by the way, it tastes good. Not because they sweetened it, but it taste like figs.

So that's something. we can look at, but I just think doctor here is probiotic or their post-biotic sachet. It's just, I think it's the best microbiome food and you can still eat a lot of good fermented foods and can you still take other products.

That's fine. But please take care of your microbiomes. One of the most critical things you could do. I saw your thing about, you know, people say like, I don't care how long I live as much as I want to live healthy every minute I'm here.

And I think that's the real important thing. So I would just argue build your supplemental program around vitamin D, omega-3, and the probiotic. Excellent.

One thing that I wanna throw in, which will probably make some people a little irritated, is when I'm interviewing people and I am looking at their diet, I see a huge weighting toward chicken, right?

It's, you know, it's the white meat. They did a brilliant job of marketing when the cholesterol studies came out. It was like, oh, don't eat that bad meat, eat chicken.

Well, the chicken that we eat, that now weighs about eight pounds in the late 1950s, weighed a little over two pounds. What they added to it is not healthy.

And chicken is a very rich source of omega-6 fatty acids. So when I'm talking to people, it's like, I see you eat a little fish and a lot of chicken. Can you reverse that?

Eat a lotta fish, and maybe chicken very occasionally, right? That's fine. But when you weight it toward the chicken, you're doing exactly what you were talking about.

You're getting that omega 6 ratio way off. My nutritionist, Sarah Keough, I heard her do a presentation and they had a group of people eating just like commercial chicken from the grocery store.

They had people eat organic chicken fed soy and organic not fed. And it actually went from a lot of inflammation to not so much inflammation, to maybe even a little in the other direction.

So, you know, I agree with you, John, we're overdoing chicken and we are not necessarily eating the best chicken. And by the way, Dr. Ross Pelton, who I've interviewed, he's a pharmacist and he happens to be the, this, the he is a brilliant guy.

I really like him. He's the science guy at Dr O'Hara's, but I had him on the radio once and I was thinking like this guy's like, you know, been around for a while.

What's really the best diet? Mediterranean, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, macrobiotic, carnivore, you know, I just said like, yeah, just want your opinion.

He goes, David, it's very simple for me. Eat real food. Now back to what you brought up earlier, John, is, the cow that might've been eaten 40 years ago on a farm is not the Cow and Safeway.

And that's where, you know, can't just say like red meat's good for you, red meats bad for. Or broccoli is good, broccoli's bad. It's how it's grown. How it was prepared and what it done.

So the other thing is. I really think, I like to say I eat a planet-based diet, not plant, planet. And I think we ought to include all the foods and not exaggerate any of them.

But whatever you're eating, try to get it as clean as possible. If you have a choice, make a good one. You decide to go out to a restaurant. I hope you go to decent one where they have fairly good food, fairly fresh food.

But you can't go in. What oil do you use? You know, it's like, you just can. It's got to eat at the restaurant, but if you're buying water for yourself, buy a Good one, if your buying food for your self, Buy real food and folks, You just have to realize like I used to say this, so John, have you ever met anyone right around in your age group and they were just doing really, really well and you're sort of jealous of them?

Like, wow, I can't believe they're my age. I've got some that are 20 years older than I am that coming in and, you wouldn't be believe it, they run circles around a lot of 40 years old.

Yeah, now, and that's because they are on better medications than you? No. Not at all. The one patient I'm thinking of is on no medications. Well, exactly.

And so my point is, when you see people that you go like, wow, he's 70 as well as I am, and look, boy, is really fit. He's this, He that. It's because maybe he is exercising more than I, am eating better than what I have and maybe not taking medication.

So we're getting healthy because of diet, lifestyle, nutrition. We're not getting health because we are on the right drugs. I made the statement at the beginning of this podcast that we may be confusing being medicated with being healthy.

The other thing I want you all to know is we can manipulate risk numbers so that you look a lot healthier than you are. Okay? I mean, we can take a statin and interfere with liver function and drop the cholesterol.

I'm not really, I can't figure out if we did anything for your heart or your vascular system. So, you know, We can say, well, John used to have 250 cholesterol and now he has 170. He's much healthier.

Is he? No, if he's cardiovascular healthy, it's because he exercises, he gets circulation, He eats right. You know, he doesn't smoke. It's those things.

So please everybody, if you want to age well. And my thing is, so far I don't think. I don't think I can live forever. So I figured I'll check out someday.

I just want to go out on my feet. And I want, I wanna be there. Be happy and healthy. You gotta use mother nature. Always be trying to up your food content.

Think of the little things you can do to be healthier. Park far away and walk. There's little thing you could do. If you're disciplined enough to get to the gym and get serious, God bless you.

And then avail yourself of Mother Nature's medicine chest. Let me say this, John, I love the internet. One time I needed a video camera. I ordered it in the evening from Amazon, got it the morning.

It's amazing. unless I really know where they came from. If I order from you on the internet, I'm fine, okay? But I don't just order stuff on internet because I am a little nervous about it.

You only need something bad. In health food stores, you really have to jump through a lot of hoops. So, i'm a big believer in find a good health foods store, or a clinic that has the supplements you need, you know they're reliable, and deal with somebody that you can talk to.

Now, there are legitimate internet places, but look into them. Don't just buy stuff like that and find places. If you're in California, go to a farm. Buy some stuff from a farmer.

Ask the farmer what they do. Go to farmer's market. up your lifestyle, little by little, reduce your plastic. There's so many things you can do, but that's gonna keep you, you're gonna be one of those 20 year older, year-older than John running rings around, okay?

That's what you wanna be, I really think that you have to be careful about medications. They wear you down. Uh, John, uh, I guess we'll wrap up here, but one time I gave a, a talk to a woman's group in San Mateo and there was a.

A woman I believe she was Chinese and she had broken English, But I'm going to say what she said, just like she set it to me because the way she sent it really made an impact.

Okay. She came up to mean says, people come to think they sick. They not sick, they on drugs. And from that point, I started asking people, you know, my joints are hurting.

Are you on a statin drug? Yeah. Or are you in a bone drug. And I starting realizing that a significant amount of some of the symptoms the older customers had may well have been either caused by or exacerbated by the medication they were on, but no one looked at that because a lot of these adverse effects happen down the road.

You know, you take a cholesterol drug, if you'll find your number goes down, and you're happy. And then in a couple of years, your memory fades a little bit.

So anyway, I'm just like, folks, You've got great health food stores. You got practitioners like my good friend here, Dr. John Needers that you can talk to, do you do telemedicine too?

I do tell a medicine and Dave, a lot of times people don't know where to start. Do I go to an MD? Do, I got to a podiatrist, a chiropractor? do I get voodoo, you know?

And so I do free 15 minute discovery calls every week. I have, some slots every weekend. People can just pick my brain for 15 minutes. And, uh, I love it, you know, it's kind of takes me back to my radio days when I would just field calls from all over the world.

You know? You never know what's going to come in. And I remember one guy used to try to play, Stump the Acupuncturist. I'm sure he studied all week to find something to ask me, but I loved that.

So I usually have four to six of those discovery calls. They're free and I have those every week. being a resource to help people go in the right direction.

Well, yeah. And look, I know people all over the country, but I've known John for a long time. I take my family to John and we love him. I don't want to embarrass you, John, but he's a kind person, he is a thoughtful person and he very knowledgeable and I like his spirit.

I'm sure he gets rattled sometimes but I've never seen it. And I think you want somebody that with a big heart that's calmly looking at you and helping you along the path.

Don't wait for a crisis to try to find a natural person to help you. Get a relationship with one. Maybe you're fine right now. maybe you want to get to know John or somebody and just let them evaluate you and give you some tips.

And then if something does come up, you've already got somebody you know and trust instead of like, My friend said this person, so folks, please, my message is, you know, again, clean up your lifestyle a little bit.

You don't have to be a saint, but clean it up. Eat better food and avail yourself of some of the wonderful things of Mother Nature's medicine chest. And this is what's going to, um, yeah, I'm not in perfect health.

But I'm 71, I don't wear glasses, and I have joint pain. I am not on any medications. Don't have great teeth. But, you know, not perfect, but I think I had bad habits when I was a kid.

And I smoked for like 35 years. Okay. So, You know I stopped drinking alcohol a couple years ago. just because I was very functional, just drinking at home.

But I said, okay, at my age, can't get away with that. So wake up everybody and enjoy yourself. And I think medication should be mostly for crises. And if you're on medication, don't throw them away, but turn your direction in diet, lifestyle, nutrition, and that will serve you well.

Well, Dave, you did succeed in embarrassing me. So thank you. Those were very kind words. Anytime, John. And B, I really want to thank you. You know, the more we can simplify, right?

And kind of boil things down to their essence. There's too much noise out there. Everything. We're surrounded by noise on one form or another. I think the the healthier we're going to be.

So I want thank for doing this and bringing this cohesive group of supplements to introduce to people. So thank you. All right, John, it was a pleasure and hopefully we'll do this again sometime.

Thank you for joining me on The Balancing Point. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Feeling out of balance?

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