Making Wise Health Choices and Not Just Following Fads

by Dr. David Minkoff

I’ve been asked many times about the one vitamin or supplement a person needs for good health, about this or that diet, about going Vegan or going Carnivore, and much more.

So I wanted to take a moment to look at some things here. Not the pros and cons of different diets or the importance of one vitamin over another, but instead — how you can determine what is right for you.

Which Vitamin Is The Most Important For Overall Health?

First, vitamins and supplements. 

Which one do you need? Which one is the best or most important?

Well… all of them.

Thought I was going to say PerfectAmino, right?

PerfectAmino is important. It provides the exact essential amino acids the body needs to build its structure: bones, skin, organs, muscle, hair, enzymes, hormone, the list goes on. Literally every cell and tens of thousands of different chemical types in the body are made from the essential amino acids — all of which are necessary for proper health and all of which, if missing, will lower health, energy, and longevity in one way or another. 

And it’s in a form that everybody can fully absorb and use.

But what about CoQ10? It’s necessary for the production of energy inside the cell.

Vitamin C is necessary for the immune system, Vitamin D is necessary for the immune system, energy, and a host of hormones, the B vitamins for everything from healthy skin and energy, to deep sleep. 

Magnesium allows the nervous system to function and flow and calms tight muscles. 

Which are important? Well, which fills a need that no other vitamin fills?

Answer: Every single one. 

I’m sorry, but it’s true. No supplement addresses everything. PerfectAmino is fantastic, and more broadly used in the body than almost anything else. But it is still only a protein source — not a vitamin, mineral, carbohydrate, or any of the many healthy fats needed for a well-functioning body. 

If someone was highly deficient in amino acids they could see this product as a miracle cure. But it's not. It's just one very major nutrient needed by everybody and to the degree, a body is deficient in it is the degree that they will see betterment.

That's why different people experience different results, some very far-reaching, depending on how much it was needed and what its lack was causing.

But you still need each other vitamin, food, and mineral. Each one is vital to some function occurring in the body and without which the body would not do well.

If your CoQ10 or B12 is low, your cells will be less able to fully utilize PerfectAmino. If your Vitamin D is low your body will produce less testosterone to force the body to use the amino acids to build more muscle. If you have low Omega 3 fatty acids then the cells built will be less fluid and your healing and recovery will be slower.

It’s all connected.

There is no one vitamin or mineral that will solve everything. And when you see someone who says "such and such vitamin handled my ____,” it's most likely that they were personally just quite deficient in that vitamin. if you are too then it will also help you. If not, then it won't help you as much as it helped them.

But we need all of them. Either through food or supplementation. That’s why our Multivitamin is so packed full of vitamins and minerals, and why we only use the highest quality ingredients to ensure your body can actually absorb, assimilate and use them. 

But you need them all. Everybody does.

So I hope that answers any questions there. I know it’s pretty broad and probably not what you wanted to hear. But if you want the truth, that’s it. And I don’t want to give you anything less.

On Diets and Fads

As I'm sure you know, it's rarely wise to make wide-sweeping decisions on things. We need to look at them individually. And this is nowhere more true than in our health decisions, especially as health is something that gradually improves or gradually decays.

If we cut out many things from our diet at once or added many things at once, and now feel worse three months down the road — we don't now know what caused this. Too much time has passed with too many changes made.

When we look at diets and new “systems” from the standpoint of the “broad idea” we don't see 95% of what these diets are or do.

We have Carnivore — all meats, and Vegan — all vegetables.

But the thing is… we don't need "meats" and we don't need "vegetables". 

We need the nutrients that are in these foods and different meats and different vegetables contain different nutrients and in different amounts.

There are many reasons people switch to veganism or carnivore, some personal and some health. 

And some do very well on each and some not. And I am surely not going to tell you you’re wrong or bad for your personal choices, I just care that you’re healthy and doing well.

But let's look deeper here. Say someone has high inflammation and they've been told to go vegan to address this. Maybe the inflammation goes away and maybe it doesn't.

But not everything is being evaluated here. What exactly was causing the inflammation? Not every single meat. Maybe it was from high Omega 6/low Omega 3 meats, or poor protein digestion, or trans fats, or maybe specific foods that affected that person. 

It also could have been toxins in the water, intestinal bacteria, or a host of other things.

If removing all meats removed exactly what was causing the inflammation, then it will help the inflammation. If it didn’t, then it won't.

So the real solution here is to find what exactly is causing the inflammation and then remove that. 

Because even more, while the exact cause may have been removed in the removal of all meats, we most likely also removed other sources of needed protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals which, if not replaced, will now lead to new problems down the road.

If this was a personal choice then we would just need to ensure that in our new vegan diet each of the necessary nutrients that our body needs are taken into account so we can maintain full health. And that would take looking at the nutrients our bodies need — all of them — and then finding which vegan foods we would need to eat to supply these.

And some people do very well on vegan diets.

The same goes for Carnivore. We need to first look at why we want to go carnivore? Are we just not getting enough protein and healthy fats? Okay, so eat more meat, but why cut out the vegetables that contain nutrients and fiber not found in meats and which are necessary for healthy meat digestion, cell function, and hormonal balance?

These broad, sweeping changes often just replace one problem with another. But in health, we often don't see the new problem until well down the road. And at that point, it gets very hard to determine exactly what caused it.

Food, supplements, and diet cannot be looked at as sweeping one-action things.

Ask any pro bodybuilder, personal trainer, doctor, or nutritionist and they'll tell you there is no one system that works 100% for everyone.

Each body is different. And while information can be used to make decisions, it needs to be applied individually to individual people based on a full look at their bodies and what their body is deficient in exactly.

My personal philosophy is that people should be able to think for themselves and that when given full information or access to it they very often can do so. This article is less informational and more geared toward pointing out how to look at the information.

And I hope it helps.

Because no matter who makes a decision for our health or gives us advice… only we are the ones who will be living with the benefits or consequences of that decision. 

So we should have some say in the making of the decision and an understanding of why that decision was made.