Dr. Scaperato from Integrity Chiropractic here in Fairlawn and Nick Angelis, CRNA list their favorite supplements for digestion, mental health, a strong immune system, etc. They spend an excessive amount of time laughing, but also include pointers for not wasting your time and money with natural health. Below is the transcript from their conversation.
[Music] hello and welcome to the Ascend Health show I’m Nick Angelis I’m your host I’m a nurse anesthetist and the owner of Ascend Health Center and I’m here with my friend Dr Michael Scaperato
hey good morning Nick how are you
I’m great so you’re from Integrity chiropractic clinic and I was thinking today so this is going to be a long story just warning everybody maybe go back to the cat videos uh in 2018 I just quit my job at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola but I still was on the corporate Cup team because why not so for our corporate Cup team our t-shirt had the five pillars of our hospital and one of them was Integrity but they misspelled it so it’s Intergrity so all day long I was like we don’t really have any Integrity but we do have plenty of Intergrity it’s distant cousins so will that be sufficient for you so that’s what we’re going to talk about today not Integrity necessarily but how supplements and natural medicine is sometimes viewed as the integrity and some the Integrity of health because there’s that Viewpoint of well if it wouldn’t be called alternative medicine if it worked it’ll be called real medicine so we’re going to discuss supplements and some of those Integrity Integrity type of issues today all right sounds like a plan and you might have to change your clinic name to Integrity Chiropractic by the time we’re done with
I usually know when somebody calls you know that’s a telemarker because that’s exactly how they Mis they mispronounce it so at that point I know whether it’s going to be a good phone call or not that’s great so we are going to talk about supplements and usually we have uh the sort of disclaimer that says don’t listen to anything and view it as your own personal health advice but we plan to adjust it a little bit because these are supplements these are things that people are thinking of buying over the counter anyways and so if we suggest it yeah you should buy it at the same time it also depends how healthy you are for example if you get winded walking up four or five steps really you should no matter how innocent anything that we say sounds today you should really clear it with your physician uh at the same time if you are in perfect health then uh don’t do anything that we say because you’re doing fine usually unless there’s a need for your health
there is this tendency to biohack our way to Wellness and sometimes that’s not really warranted you’re just kind of wasting your money and being weird
you know completely agree with that too and not that but with supplements not all supplements are made the same just like not all care that you can be given is the same so you know chiropractors get a lot of training in the natural health room especially with supplements so we’re usually you know very particular to certain ones certain brands and we usually have a a list of ones that we trust based on our own research but also the research that they do and you want to make sure to do your own a little bit too look into the company see if you can find where they Source their ingredients from that’s super important because if you think about it a lot of supplements you may see come from overseas and they may not have the same type of protocols or the same type of criteria that makes them Stand Out Above the Rest so if you’re able to find out where things come from from seed all the way to shelf that’s a hugely great company a lot of them as you know today also have things in the bottom saying that they have a specific third party or follow the good manufacturing processes you know having more people test it not just inside that’s also a really good uh criteria to check for to make sure they have because it shows they’re looking to go above and beyond to make sure nothing is out of order that it’s safe and effective for the patient to take
absolutely cuz in my own training natural medicine I was looking at a few different programs and some of them said like certified by this organization and then you go to that website and then you quickly realize nope this is owned by the company that says that they’re certified by this other company this is ridiculous so that is certainly something to be aware of for sure so we’ll jump into different supplements for different conditions uh but another thing that we need to think of with supplements is there’s also the opposite problem where you see a really glossy label and you get really excited about an expensive supplement that’s supposed to do all these things for you and it’s really just ingredients that are no different than any other brand of supplements they just put a lot of hype and marketing into it so and that can be a bit more difficult to discern uh I guess we could pick on essential oils for a little bit that might be a way to describe it so the MLM idea where you go to church and you’re new and somebody’s your friend you’re like oh I found a new friend at this church no they just want to sell you some weird essential oils so the idea there is like they will have all sorts of studies on why this is the best essential oil for you and some of it might be true but there are studies for example that lavender oil can help you doing a cardiac catherization it will help your blood vessels that help you calm down that is a standard normal medical study so you can take some lavender oil but if you look at like a Dotera or Young Living study on the lavender that they did themselves it might not have any scientific relevance at all so you also need to see where is the source of someone telling me that this is such a great thing um and like we already mentioned if you don’t have a need for something then you probably don’t need to biohack your way to health you can probably just skip that supplement we’re talking more about you have an issue and you’re trying to figure out well what can I do for my health rather than just going to countless doctors or chiropractors or nurse anesthetists so
so is there any one of my favorite supplements that I actually take that I think would be a good one to start off with because you hear about it and people encounter it all the time is acid reflux and acid reflux in my opinion is one of the most misunderstood things by the medical community to help so whenever you go to a physician of any kind you tell him hey I get acid reflux you know I get that sour that sour burping disgusting taste you know in our M my mouth after I eat really acidic Foods or and some patients I’ve seen with any food what do they do they give you a pill you know to suppress or stop your body from producing that stomach acid that stomach acid is really important that’s you’re in your body’s first ways of actually digesting and breaking down that food and if that’s step is interfered with it’s going to cause further problems along the digestive tract so what has been seen is that your body produces that stomach acid for that reason so and your brain is in communication with your stomach and your stomach with your brain that’s where all of our health processes really start right and so your your stomach has to be at a pH level if you remember from high school chemistry you know Seven’s basic over or seven is neutral over seven is basic less than seven is acidic it has to be at a pH of two or below 2.0 below so really really acidic that break down the food but it also helps with you know any unwanted pathogens that get in there that’s way to help keep it from getting into the intestines and they getting into your bloodstream so your body is have basically even if there’s no food there your stomach is you know getting messages from the brain saying hey your pH is above two you need to keep pumping out stomach acid and the brain’s like or the stomach’s like oh but there’s no food there and the brain’s like don’t care got this override rides everything so by suppressing that stomach acid it’s going to affect digestion you could eat contaminated food and have those pathogens actually make it through the bloodstream so two supplements that I recommend from brand called Standard Process that’s one of the most typical ones you’ll see at a chiropractor’s office very natural organic um chiropractors can actually go to the actual Farm in Wisconsin and stay for a week and then learn how they take things from the very soil and the seed they planted in all the way to a bottle on the shelf and the process that it involves absolutely and so the one the one is called Zypan that basically has a bunch of the precursors of stomach acid and what that does is when you take that with your food it actually helps to break down the food so it takes a lot of stress off of that stomach from releasing that excess stomach acid right over time just like with anything else your brain en coms communication again with your body and your body to the brain starts recognizing hey this stomach acid is more and more in the range where it should be than not so it starts getting less signals to pump out more that stomach acid with the food to lower that pH and even when there’s no food in there and eventually the body helps to it helps the body to reregulate itself to the point where even when there’s no food in there that pH level is still where it should be so it’s not having to pump out that extra acid so to supplement that supplement I recommend another one called multizyme and that’s basically just a natural organic digestive enzyme to help break down the food even better and take even more stress off of the stomach to have to pump up that extra stomach acid to digest the food properly so I have myself personal testimony had to take you know mocs Mylanta oh meol you know Renatidine I don’t remember that one from way back in the day old so just shows how long I had to be on that right and my chiropractor recommend they start taking that and I noticed that I start having less and less of that stomach acid creeping up and that burning that I get it’s like that chest area from me irritating it to the point now 20 years after I probably start even 30 years after I started taking it I rarely have to take in and I rarely have any issues I have had patients that has been so severe in that they’re taking with every single meal every single day cutting it down at least in half which is a huge Improvement for them right and as you know when you take those type of uh proton pump inhibitors it has some negative effects to it it actually leeches calcium from your bones and there’s been numerous studies showing that it can lead to osteoporosis or you know lesser bone density which is a huge issue in itself in the country too
right and one thing to think of too what if you’re listening to us and you’re saying well I take Pepcid or Omeprazole and I’m perfectly fine well we’re not saying stop it tomorrow you’ve got to get something natural if it’s working well for you then you can slowly look at other options uh there’s no urgency here and I had my own digestive enzyme to talk about too but actually I’ve taken Zypan myself and it works really well and if we have too long of a list it’s not going to help anyone so we can skip on to next category but it is interesting you mentioned standard process as a brand and those are whole food supplements so a lot of times people will take supplements because they say it’s natural it’s not going to harm me the way medicine does that’s not necessarily true everything in medicine depends on concentration so in that case some of the standard processed ones will say like take nine tablets like well that’s ridiculous but it’s all whole food so it’s not concentrated and that makes a difference there’s less likely to have side effects cuz it’s basically just food and pill form as opposed to a concentrated substance great you know the big key in that too is the word supplement this isn’t something that you should take strictly to replace whole food and regular well balanced in you know meals so it’s to help supplement things that you may be deficient in that you need your body needs just a little bit more of you know I get a lot of patients that’ll come in they’ll they’ll give me you know a a laundry list of some of the things that they’re on and sometimes times it’s warranted but most of the times there needs to be a revamping and taking a look at the actual diet to say okay you’re taking this but where in your diet is it deficient to where we need to look at this absolutely cuz you can certainly take too many supplements uh again one of in the natural world a lot they you’ll hear something like well Physicians just give medicines they get kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies and we don’t even get pens anymore that’s not the the case but there are many natural practitioners that do get money from supplements and that’s okay as long as you’re realizing where this money coming from are they still being do they still have integrity if you will in what they’re doing and obviously if they’re putting you on 20 different supplements maybe they lack that Integrity that we’re referring to so we’re not telling you to be suspicious well actually I guess I am cuz I’m always suspicious of everything it’s never a bad thing they have you know questions some of the things especially if it’s like mainstream because yes guess in every profession sometimes they get a little bit wrong and needs to be revamped but you know that’s where also you know asking your physician the questions and doing some of your due diligence of you know finding some of the things out on your own from other reputable sources and then combine the two and be able to make help you know make a good decision for yourself abely and realizing when something isn’t working so you can have a personal health philosophy like maybe you want to be vegan and then you get pale and sickly you have to realize I’m wrong this isn’t helping me so having that humbleness cuz that’s what holistic care really means you’re just looking for a wider array of options as opposed to being dogmatic about a certain path to get healthy cuz you have to think like what is my priority here maybe it’s not to get healthy maybe my priority is to be right I have to be honest about that sure so uh so another and I do enjoy digestive enzymes uh I think they’re really helpful especially when you’re digesting food that isn’t good for you like if I go out and eat pizza with somebody for example uh digestion is huge for us as nurse and athetist as well uh because we’re so worried about aspiration and uh coughing food into your lungs basically under anesthesia so a similar topic would be immunity because and one of my favorite for this is the supplement interface uh so it is an enzyme it’s not one that you take with food it’s one you take away from food so that it starts breaking down uh the bacteria in your large intestine because many bacteria are smart and they have slimy Coatings that prevent uh probiotics from really colonizing the large intestine and so by taking something like this you actually start eating away at uh the bad bacteria and there’s more room for a correct colonization because the way a law medicine works uh it will just work on a receptor site block that receptor site it’s done but sometimes a healthier way is to work with your body so a supplement that will provide some competition for uh the germs is much better the way that antibacterial soap can sometimes harm the Flora on your skin and it’s sometimes better to just avoid that completely if you want to be healthy so with your immune system uh one of the Segways between digestive enzymes and digestion and Immunity is something like interface where it will start eating away at the bad bacteria do you have any particular supplements or philosophies about immune support yourself Absolut again it is a like digestion it is a bit of a vague uh you know a lot of people can say oh take this it’ll help your stomach or help your immune system and sometimes it can be too vague to really nail down like what do I actually need here right so I have a um a colleague as well as somebody else that I you know that I’ve gotten to know that is really big in the chiropratic community and he had the quote that once along lines of you know the we don’t have an immune system the body itself is an immune system because if you look at every single system in the body whether it’s the digestive system if it’s the respiratory system it has its own immune cells so the whole body in itself is like an immune system complex that kind of works together along with the lymph system and the nervous system so one of the big ones for me has been vitamin D3 but you got to make sure it’s with K2 D3 has numerous processes in every system in the body and one of them being the immune system it helps to regulate that immune system and its Effectiveness but you need that vitamin K2 with it because that K2 helps to drive that D3 molecule into the cell and have it start with the cellular processes now just like I mentioned before Sometimes some of these supplements may not be the best for you for example if you have any clotting issues or if you’re on a blood thinner like warin or even taking you know baby aspirin after a heart surgery that you have to keep taking that interferes with the clotting factors um because K2 will help your body to clot whenever you get a cut but it can actually affect say if you had a heart valve replacement or if you are on those you know for any other medical reason so you want to avoid taking the D3 with the K2 and try to get some of that into your diet naturally but of course you want to check with your physician you know whether it’s your primary care or your surgeon or specialist to make sure that even getting that in your diet so that’s where some of the you know some of the can I or should I really comes in and having a good communication good relationship with your Healthcare practitioner on it but for general purposes you know for people who aren’t on blood thinners that K2 and that D3 is really really important because other than that if you don’t have that then it keeps circulating around the blood and that’s why you may have a high blood concentration but not a high cellular tissue concentration which is not a hard to me but also some of the effects can be masked by other things so when it comes to immunity that’s always been a gold standard in the way of keeping your immune system healthy regulated and ready for any infections they may incur absolutely and in Psychiatry uh Mark gar and one of our nurse practitioners at Ascend Health Center uh he always recommends uh D3 with K2 because there’s so many studies on what D3 does for your mental health so we’ll get to mental health in a second since again Ascend Health Center R above emotional physical pain that’s kind of our thing but I did want to talk about cardiac since you mentioned uh some vascular issues with the K2 cuz I take D3 and then I just eat some spinach and good so uh usually we’re a bit more cautious about hey you don’t need your low pressure in your Plavix take some supplement and see how it works out because you have to also think of why are you taking medicine so in some cases you’ll take cholesterol medic medications or a beta blocker for your heart because you’re trying to prevent something that maybe has some side effects but you’re looking to prevent that heart attack so it’s a little different than a medicine that you’re taking dayto day to block a receptor site because of an active problem so and there are cases uh I had a family member who was going to gree and I was like I know the doctor said maybe we’ll start you on pavics but gree has a lot of rocks you’ll fall crack your head open and die why don’t we look at some supplements and we did come up with an idea although that idea I’m not telling my viewers because again it’s a little bit trickier when you’re talking about clotting vascular systems heart and standard process does have uh some heart healthy supplements but these are things that you want to have your home blood pressure you want to monitor a little bit more carefully because again some supplements make vague promises and when you’re looking to substitute things it’s a little bit like when you’re trying to take a homeopathic instead of getting a vaccine like this is a completely different story we’re looking at two different ideas you can’t substitute one for the other so uh now we can switch to mental health because I suspect we’ll only get to one or two more of these categories I mean like most of our shows we haven’t really talked about this we’re just you know I don’t want to say making stuff up as we go along but simply sharing our expertise oh that does sound a lot better than making stuff up we than making up on the Fly I have to remember that so uh for mental health one of my favorites uh would be magnesium glycinate so at Ascent Health Center we do ketamine infusions the nmda receptor has glutamate and glycine on the molecule uh for the first few years that I started the clinic I actually didn’t mess with glycine or magnesium glycinate because I’m like well it’s a very complex relationship because you’re taking the glutamate in your body which is inflammatory channeling it in your nervous system and that creates neuroplasticity and all these welcome changes to kind of shock the body out of anxiety and depression uh and it’s more of a philosophy of supplements like hey let’s not be on something for the rest of our lives let’s get this done and move on so magnesium glycinate uh magnesium threonate is actually better for your mental health it’s also more expensive and I think we need to be practical when we talk about these sort of things it’s not like health insurance where it’s like a pathetic Groupon that it may cost you nothing it may cost you a lot and sometimes the the actual care that you’re getting isn’t great so with magnesium glycinate uh the glycine will help with anxiety it helps your neurotransmitters and the Magnesium is involved in multiple processes in your mental health your physical health so that’ll be one of that just off the cuff yeah so when it comes to supplements there’s a whole list of things that that can be used for for mental health you know you can have Korean Gins sing which helps you know speed up the mind as you know alert get the Mind alert like coffee so it can help with depression symptoms it can help with those motivation symptoms um D3 D3 can help with mood as well you know they found those that have lower levels of those D3 levels can actually affect your mood too so on top of supplements one of the things I offer at my office it’s not so much a supplement pill wise but it’s a form of biof feedback called uh inner voice and what it does is I put these cool little headphones on you with a speaker and you speak into the headphone and it measures the different pitches and ranges of your voice and it finds that when your voice Gets Out Of Tune like a guitar can get it can actually affect how well you do a stressful situations and who here doesn’t deal with stress and stress can really have a very big impact on our our mood as well as our mental abilities too you know so it can help support you know supplements that deal with depression it can help with supplements that deal with anxiety but what that does is you listen to the opposite tone on a musical scale and they have found that it actually helps to kind of rewire that brain that inner voice so to speak to help with uh the different mood disorders so it’s not so much a treatment as much as is a support more than a supplement for mental health absolutely and there’s theanine that I like there’s a lot of other supplements that also are helpful for both anxiety and depression sometimes I’ll tell a patient just take an Epsom salt bath cuz with magnesium the way it’s absorbed um it can be difficult to just take it orally so but one thing I want to talk about too is my least favorite supplement and I think I’ll probably ask you what’s like the worst fraud in Natural Health but my least favorite supplement is actually St John’s wart so it should help with your serotonin levels um I tried previously to uh use it to get a patient off of an SSRI but it just doesn’t play well with others it’s really hard to manage and it’s a waste of everybody’s time so that’s just what I’ve I didn’t think of that before I started with Ascend health Center in 2019 but since then as I often try to get patients off of their medications uh and trying more natural approaches I think it’s just a waste of everybody’s time yeah St John’s W you know right person for the right situation unfortunately you hit on the biggest thing with it is it seems like a lot of medications out there you know if you look at the you should actually read the labels on those even if you don’t understand all of it because you’ll be able to pick out something in there one of the things I see most frequently is do not take St John’s war with this because yeah it interferes with a lot of the processes of them so if you’re if you’re able to take it you know talk to your Healthcare practitioner as always it may help a little bit or may help in conjunction with something um I’ve also learned you know lion’s mane and raiki mushrooms those are ones that also have been found to be nearly are as effective as St John’s word or some of the other supplements out there too so there’s a wide range and variety of things that can be done if you hear you read about one it says hey this sounds like it may be for me it may be but talking to your healthcare practitioner help you decide whether that’s right one or if there’s something better for you cuz if you’re having side effects like why are you bothering with natural medicine go take a pill and be done with it the whole point of what we’re doing is working with your body to avoid side effects and again sometimes you need a medicine and that’s all there is to it and you have to endure the side effects and you know the end of the story we’re not saying that in every case you have to find a natural alternative I’ve tried that before in my life and that was a lot of hard wasted effort yeah absolutely and another one I think that’s really good you mentioned before for helping with mood lavender lavender essential oils I know that you know putting a a drop or two into a bath and you know even in the shower just having that steam Rise Up from it has been tremendous for helping people to just get more relaxed after a really stressful day have you seen any problems with it being estrogenic or any issues like that or I personally haven’t know I do know that some people may have like a skin sensitivity to it so it can make them break out in like an eczema or a rash and of course in those cases you want to you know discontinue that and look into something else sure absolutely and then our last category since we’re running out of time would be mineral support so there’s a branch of uh natural medicine called orthomolecular medicine where they feel all the electrolytes and minerals balance themselves like on one side you have zinc on the other you have copper on one side you have calcium on the other side you have magnesium there’s a lot of tests you can do like hair mineral uh herir mineral analysis testing and sometimes it actually goes back into that fraud category that we briefly touched on um but I think a lot of times with mineral supplementation it’s the same thing as we said before can you notice a difference like again you’re a chiropractor I’m a nurse and athetist uh we both have the privilege of people can tell very quickly if we know what we’re doing because if they say no he’s the best chiro I’ve ever been to he’ll sublate you like no one else can or have trouble getting rid of them you know what they should help with but do you have any particular mineral supplementations or any opinions on that in particular yeah so when it comes comes to Mineral supplementations you know that’s one of the ones that I usually use again for immune system support okay so zinc zinc is probably my favorite one and is one of the ones that people are tend to be most efficient in so you know you have a good company because some of them will have a zinc test where they actually have you take some zinc orally and zinc produces typically a very metallic taste so when you have that metallic taste that means your body is actually deficient and you want to be able to have more zinc in your diet um and again just where it source is always important of course you know myself I have my my personal recommendations one that I like um but also for the immune support back on that you know zinc has been shown with to help prevent viral replication so you prevent viral replic replication guess what that number of the viral infection starts to dwindle so having a good zinc and a good supplement on have even if you don’t want to take it every day is great just to help with shortening the time of sickness now is it zinc picolinate or is there a particular type of zinc or so you want to look for kated zinc that is the the keyw and the thing you want to look for on the bottles in the ingredients um there’s multiple ways that can be done it but as long as it’s chelated that’s going to help your body to absorb and use it right away some that’s term bioavailability and those that have a higher bioavailability means your body can use it right away it doesn’t just circulate and the body’s not quite sure where it needs to go and then just gets rid of it after a while sure well we’re almost out of time actually we’re completely out of time so uh where do you work and what do you do again people want to learn more about you yeah so I’m at Integrity chiropractic clinic in fairon um right on West Market Street I’m in these big white medical buildings and I’m in the back they put me in the I’m on the top floor corner Suite so we can do all the you know adjustments and popping and laughing and not bother anybody um offering not only you know Chiropractic treatments and a dietary supplement line but the biof feedback called inner voice decompression table for those pesky disc issues and then I also do custom orthotics because you know just like the foundation of a house the foundation is off everything above it can be affected too so having something that’s made for you and your foot not just grabbing something off the shelf and thinking oh this may help that actually makes sure it’s for you and your foot only absolutely and I’m Nick from asend Health Center we do TMS ketamine Psychiatry counseling uh we specialize in people who haven’t been able to find answers anywhere else and we’re across from cop high school so thanks again for watching