The Top 5 Supplements Recommended by Functional Medicine Doctors.

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]And we are live. It's Dr. J here in the house. Today we're going to be talking about the top five nutrients recommended by functional medicine doctors. This will be a live Q&A. So if you guys want to come in any questions, I'm happy to answer them as we go, especially if they're relevant. So I get this topic all the time. It's kind of a loaded topic because really, yeah, I mean there's going to be kind of top five nutrients that let's just say generally we see people need, need more of, and that's kind of a trend if you will. But they'll also be things that, you know, are going to be more fine-tuned and specific based on actual lab testing, right? Lab testing is obviously the better way to do it because you're going to be able to figure out exactly what you need as an individual, which is more important. But then there's general trends. So we'll kind of go into that, right? So the average person coming to see me there's going to be some kind of a chronic gut issue. So a lot of times they're not making enough stomach acid, enough enzymes. They're going to be nutrient deficient in certain key nutrients. I'll tell you out of the gate. Nutrient number one is magnesium.

[00:00:55]Magnesium gets burnt up when we're under stress. It gets burnt up when we're consuming excess carbohydrate.

[00:01:00]It burnt up when we get exposed exposed to toxins, poor sleep. So these nutrients, if we are not managing our body and we're under under stress, they're going to go up, the demand goes up, therefore those nutrients in our body go down. And if we don't get them in our diet via the food that's coming in, then that's also going to create another bottleneck and drop that. So magnesium out of the gate will be important. Now, if we have an inflamed brain, magnesium is vitally important to help with inflammation in the brain, right? There's a couple different kinds of magnesium. We could have magnesium citrate like in a natural calm that's maybe more of a laxative, but still can increase your magnesium levels well.

[00:01:35]You know, more of a laxative magnesium like a magnesium oxide is one. We'll use it more for motility, kind of getting that the gut moving better. And then we're going to have things like a magnesium malate or a glycinate that will plug more into the mitochondria and the Krebs cycle. Still have really increase your red blood cell magnesium levels sufficiently without as much magnesium, typically two to three times more potent than like let's say a citrate. You may need like 500, you know, milligrams to a solid gram, but you may only need 2 to 400 on that glycinate or malate. And then we have things like an aspartate, which is in that same kind of camp, or even a magnesium threonine, which is going to cross the blood-brain barrier. That's a magnesium um discovered at MIT and they they've used that to really increase magnesium levels in the brain. Really helps when you have a lot of inflammation in the brain, get that inflammation down. Magnesium is a powerful anti-inflammatory, so really good there. So, magnesium's going to be key. Lots of different types. I like a red blood cell magnesium test.

[00:02:28]We can also do a magnesium serum on a blood test. Um you know, two or higher is good, but that may not be enough to tell the whole story.

[00:02:36]Next, I see a lot of thyroid patients. I see a lot of people that have thyroid antibodies and thyroid inflammation. So, guess what my next nutrient's going to be? Selenium. Selenium's an important mineral cofactor for glutathione. So, glutathione really important, made by the liver. It's going to be an important, powerful endogenous antioxidant. It's going to help buffer toxic load. It's going to help with um hydrogen peroxide neutralization, right? So, selenium's an important cofactor for glutathione.

[00:03:02]Selenium will take that hydrogen peroxide that's made in the iodination process. So, iodination is simply we have a sodium iodide symporter. Brings iodine into the thyroid gland. The iodination process involves a deiodinase enzyme made from the liver, selenium-based, that will help take the tyrosine protein molecule and then bind it to four molecules of iodine to make T4.

[00:03:24]The number four is indicative of how many iodine molecules are and then there'll be an activation of that where we'll cleave a fourth iodine, making it three um on the thyroid, so now you're down to T3. You have three molecules of iodine bound to the tyrosine, so that activates your thyroid hormone. T3 is 300% more metabolically active than T4, so pretty cool. Now, in that process we spit off a lot of hydrogen peroxide though with the iodination. So, if we have a lot of antibodies present, guess what?

[00:03:53]The iodination and the hydrogen peroxide can provoke autoimmune issues. So, getting the selenium in there converts the hydrogen peroxide to water. It takes away an oxygen molecule, and now we have water instead. So, very powerful for reducing thyroid inflammation and attenuating thyroid antibodies.

[00:04:09]Next, zinc's really important. I like zinc. It has a lot of benefit for immune function. We heard about it a few years ago when some bugs were going around.

[00:04:16]Zinc can be very helpful for immune. We have zinc lozenges, great for throat inflammation. Zinc is an important cofactor for many sex hormones. We see it in guys for testosterone. Women, it can be vitally important as well. Uh it's also going to it activates a your your genes.

[00:04:31]They're what's called genetic zinc fingers, and it has a major epigenetic impact on your body. Zinc's also vitally important for your libido, for hair.

[00:04:39]It's part of the reason why you see things like oysters, they kind of have an aphrodisiac effect because of the high levels of zinc in them. So, we we love zinc. We want maybe an extra, you know, the RDA is about 10 mg a day.

[00:04:50]You can get that in one oyster. Pretty cool, right? Now, we want about 25 to 30 mg a day. So, you know, choosing healthy animal foods are going to be the best source. You'll get in some vegetables.

[00:05:00]Pumpkin seeds are a rich vegetable source as well.

[00:05:03]All right. So, we have zinc. We have selenium. We have magnesium. I would also say CoQ10 is very important as well because CoQ10, one, if you're on a statin, you're going to deplete your CoQ10 levels. So, you may not have as much CoQ10 if you're on a statin. As you get older, that mevalonic acid pathway that's activated by the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme, that pathway gets depleted.