Dr. Alison discusses how long it takes for supplements to start working, are you taking the right supplements, how to know, and what to do about it!
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Good morning, everyone. This is Dr. Alison Dibarto Goggin with little black bag medicine. And today we are talking about how long does it take for your supplements to start working? Because this is the biggest question I get. When someone starts on a new program, they get their recommendation, their supplements finally come in and then they’re wondering, how long is this going to take until I feel better? What changes can I expect? And then when can I be done with these supplements is really the big question, right? So the first thing I want to say is that you have to give it more than one dose. You have to give it more than one day. You have to give it more than one week, right? And I hear this all the time from my patients or their spouses saying, all right, I’ll give you one week on these supplements.
And if they don’t start working, then you’re done. And that’s just not how the body works. And thankfully, all of my patients so far has said, no, I’m going to give it more than one week to see what’s going on because you don’t expect to go to the gym and work out for one week and then lose 50 pounds and looked like Arnold, right? You know that it’s going to take months of work and dedication, commitment, and lifestyle to see those changes and the same thing with functional medicine or lifestyle support, all of these things take time. So give yourself more than one day. More than one. We make general rule with supplements is that we finished the bottle and then we evaluate. So sometimes the bottle can last a month, two months, three months, depending on if we’re going low and slow for your issues.
So after that time, we look at symptoms, we look at blood work, we look at how you’re feeling, and then reevaluate, is this the right supplements, the right brand? Is it more than enough? Do we need to up different things and make decisions from there. So finish the bottle and see how you feel. Okay. My next question for you, if you’re worried about things, not working for you, especially for supplements is what’s going on with your lifestyle because I cannot out supplement your bad lifestyle. So if you’re going to McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if you’re not working out, if you’re not drinking water, if you’re not getting good nutrition supplements, won’t be able to cure everything. That’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to support and supplement your lifestyle. Not to be the thing that makes up for the bad things that you’re doing.
So if you’re drinking, if you’re smoking, if you’re not taking care of yourself, but then you’re taking supplements, thinking that it’s going to undo all of these things, you’re missing the mark and it’s not going to work for you. And if it does work is only going to work a little bit. It’s not going to give you that full effect that you need. So taking care of yourself, improving your lifestyle will change drastically. How quickly these supplements will support your body, help regrow your organs help build up those nutritional stores because supplements are they’re foundational, but they’re also not the only thing that we need to do when we’re working on health issues. The most important thing to work on is lifestyle supplements are there to support that. So really focus in on your lifestyle. What’s going on there. What do you need improvement with?
What do you need accountability, motivation for, and start to reel that in tighten in it. And I promise you, we’re going to see a bigger difference with your supplements. Another question that I have is are you taking supplements for a daily thing or is it for a specific issue? So if you’re taking something like a multivitamin or Omega’s, or just a general like C or D, you’re probably not going to wake up the next day and be like, wow, my energy is crazy. My hormones are better. You’re not going to notice a huge difference. Those types of daily multi-cell supplements are for nutritional reasons are there to support all of your systems. Now, if you’re taking something specific for allergies or headaches or hormones, you should start noticing a difference within one to two to three weeks. Now, if you’re working at hormones, hormones, take for women two to three cycles to start changing.
So don’t expect the next day for your hormones to be changed. Because every day you wake up, if you’re cycling, you’re going to have a different body, a different hormone sets. So we have to change the brain. The adrenals over everything has to recycle. So it does take some time. And so most people will even say, especially with the malteser general supplements, like, I don’t feel a difference. I’m stopping them, I’ll call you in a month. And what happens is they don’t even realize how good they felt. Those supplements until they went off of them. That is the most common thing. I hear what the supplements right there, the lifelong vitality from doTERRA, because they are multivitamin. Multimineral antioxidants. They’re very great foundational that you don’t notice. Those changes are very, very subtle. And then you say, Oh, these aren’t working. So you take a week off.
And that’s what happened to me. When I first started them, it was like, wow, my twins are really hurting. I’m not sleeping. Very good. Oh, my stomach hurts. I’m like, because I stopped taking those supplements that I didn’t realize how much until just slowly started to shift. So that’s okay to take a break from your supplements if you’ve been taking them for two or three months. And you’re like, I don’t know if I see a difference here, take a break, reevaluate, see what’s going on. Next thing is, are you taking the right supplements? So sometimes we think that there’s a one problem, but there’s actually something going on in the bigger picture. For example, a lot of women think that they’re hypothyroid because of their symptoms like their hair’s falling out, or they’re always cold. And they can’t lose weight, really, really common symptoms so that they get their blood work.
Their doctor tells them their thyroid’s fine. Or I get to say, Hey, good news. Your thyroid is great. And that you’re taking all these thyroid supplements for no reason. When actually you have estrogen dominance and we need to work on a different set of hormones. And so once you figure out what’s actually going on, you can get on the right supplements for you instead of guessing. And then think of some most common problem I see going on is that people are reading blogs or they’re reading books. And they’re like, well, this is what my symptoms are. So it must be this issue when it might actually not be. And you’re taking all these supplements, spending all this money, wasting all this time and it’s not actually the issue. Another thing I commonly see this with essential oils is people tell me, Oh, I’ve been using this oil for this one thing.
And it’s just not working. It’s just not working. And I’ve given it all this time, but they’re actually not treating the rate issue. One really common one is someone might be treating dandruff, but this whole time they’ve actually had scalp psoriasis. So you’re not actually treating the right thing. So sometimes we have to reevaluate cause a different diagnosis actually find out what’s really wrong and sort of chasing the thing that we think is wrong. So figure out exactly what’s going on. You might be looking at a misdiagnosis of supplements or oils or whatever you’re doing. Isn’t it working. Okay. If you feel, I feel like your supplements are working, then it’s time to change things up. So number one thing I would recommend would be get your blood work done. See exactly what’s going on. Have it read by someone who does functional medicine like myself, who looks at those smaller ranges.
So what that means a functional ranges are the regions that are healthy before we get sick. So the most common one they’ll go back to thyroid. It was when you look at those lab ranges, typically they range 0.4 for TSH on the low end to five, maybe 4.5 on the high end. And that’s a very, very big range. Functionally. We typically look at like 1.2 to 2.2 being a normal range for TSH. So anything outside of that, we can start working on catching before we need medication, before things develop into significant auto-immune issues. So we can really narrow down what’s going on and catch those ranges. And that’s why when people say, Oh, my blood work came back normal, but I feel so bad. Functional medicine comes in and says, well, look at these ranges. They’re so big. Let’s look at these ranges from a smaller perspective, that is a healthy perspective and really focus in on that.
And then focus on lifestyle foods support. I always offer my patients meal plans, recipe guide, snack guides. I just, I created one for everybody. So that way you have all of that support, that accountability, that mentoring and learn how to take care of yourself. And then the next thing is you might have to switch brands. A lot of brands from those big box stores are like target. Walmart are filled with fillers, chemicals, dyes. There’s actually no nutrition in them. And it’s also synthetic chemical nutrition that your body can’t absorb as well. So switching brands, switching types might actually really help support your body which is why I offer my supplements through Fullscript. So we can use a wide range of pharmaceutical grade brands with whole food and pick out the right ones for you to make sure that they’re working. And if you have digestive issues, malabsorption issues IBS, Crohn’s colitis, IBS, gastritis, all of those things might impair your ability to break down pills, herbs, all of those things.
And absorb them into your cells so you can use them. So you might need to switch the method that you’re taking in like go to liquids or patches or cream, something that your body can more readily absorb. So it doesn’t have to go through your digestive tract. So that is a little shortcuts on how long it might take for your supplements to start working, what you should do. If you feel like they’re not working and you can always connect with me, I offer a free introductory consultation. So you can get to know me how functional medicines can support you. We can order any testing that we need to do before we get started and help you out there. So thanks for tuning in today and we’ll see you next time.
Connect with Dr. Alison DiBarto Goggin
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