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Don't Supplement Your Diet? You're Screwed...
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The Live Longer Formula is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Natural vs. Synthetic Health Solutions
00:00:46
chrisyzen
a Christian Ordonov here today I'm going to give you a strong dose of reality which if you're listening to this podcast you may already know a bunch of these things but a lot of people have to hear it to understand it a little bit better right so Of course, I talk to a lot of people about health and you you get ah the camp where it has to everything has to be natural, right? If it doesn't come from the diet, it's synthetic, it's um poison, it's it's a toxin, and this everything this is a little bit
00:01:32
chrisyzen
very misguided because yes a a lot of these supplements the compound the main active ingredient that we're getting it may be synthesized in a lab but at the end of the day when we're breaking down and digesting food we are breaking it down to these constituents, right?
The Role of Dietary Supplements
00:01:53
chrisyzen
So amino acids, okay, I understand the amino acid is synthesized in and in a lab, but that amino acid is exactly the same molecular structure as something that you broke down from a piece of meat, for example, right? So obviously some things are better than others, some things are not bioidentical, but there's a lot of things even in the plant kingdom
00:02:17
chrisyzen
that compounds in in plant foods that the reason they have a ah beneficial effect in the body is because they either resemble endogenous molecules or they interact with our physiology in a way that's beneficial but conversely there's a lot of things that also can can be harmful right for example the phytoestrogenic the phytoestrogens right there's quite a lot of them in plant foods and they can be very deleterious when they interact with our physiology so there's this is where I believe supplementation allows us to be more selective with what we're getting because in in one food one plant food you could be getting potentially thousands of different compounds and some of them
00:03:07
chrisyzen
will be positively but will interact positively with us, others won't. And it's a little bit of a crap shoot, I think, with a lot of these things. So this is why I really believe in order to restore your health, if you have a health issue.
00:03:23
chrisyzen
you need to supplement not only will that um accelerate your progress but it may actually get you from a place where you're just treading water especially if you you have a gut problem and the the digestive um or the intestinal lining is damaged then you are actually not absorbing and digesting your food ah properly so that actually that alone could cause you to have ah over time because of the malabsorption to have nutrient deficiencies so we have to go over and above your normal RDA's quote-unquote or your normal dietary allowances when we're trying to restore our health and then if we're trying to achieve optimal health and longevity
00:04:09
chrisyzen
Once we've restored our health, if that has been the case, then why would why the hell would we want to just do the bare minimum, just meet the ah RDAs, which are just designed to keep us alive? We want to go above and beyond our needs, because then the body will have enough vital functions and then it will have enough for nice to have functions, right?
Toxins and Detoxification in Modern Life
00:04:34
chrisyzen
Like higher higher thought, um joy, creativity, altruism, having hair, not going super gray, super early or white, ah not losing pigment in our skin, right? A million other things.
00:04:53
chrisyzen
being able to repair all the damage from the environment. So here I'm gonna condense in this um episode, I'm gonna condense the reasons why i consider supplementation absolutely a non-negotiable and essential in today's world so this was an article i had on my website at some point so i'm going to just read the major points here and just do a little discussion on all of them first of all we are all under unprecedented
00:05:28
chrisyzen
unprecedented levels of toxic exposure. This constant physiological stress requires vitamins, minerals, amino acids and energy for the body to deal with. okay The detoxification of chemicals, heavy metals, bacterial toxins takes a tremendous amount of resources that could be better used to keep you young, healthy and thriving. right So your liver and your detoxification systems are constantly, 24 seven, working overtime to detoxify all of the stuff that you are breathing in from air pollution and indoor air, which can be actually in some places dirtier than all outdoor air. All the plastics that you're constantly exposed to on a daily basis from your toothbrush to your computer's mouse, to your keyboard, to your, you know, your, um then you have the flame retardants in the plastics and the car seats.
00:06:21
chrisyzen
and the bed the mattress and the couch you you see where I'm going with it right so there's you could go on and on and on until the cows come home here the hair dyes skin care creams shampoos unless you're buying super organic stuff right But even the organic stuff, if you just buy the like the mass produced organic stuff, that still has like 20, 30 friggin' ingredients, it's shocking. um And you know a lot of those, they might not be like super toxic, but it's even if something is benign, it's still, if all you have to do is ah make it water soluble, transport it out of the body or whatever, that requires
00:07:06
chrisyzen
Energy and potentially nutrients for those enzymes that are doing those jobs, right? So even if something is benign Just it takes it takes up resources to get it out of you. Okay So it's not that all of these things are super deadly and poisonous or whatever Like a lot of these are we're actually very good at excreting The problem is that there's a lot of them like back in the day I think back in the day probably our biggest source of exposure is and I mean way back in the day, it was probably fire, right? All these carcinogenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and whatever else that were created when we're cooking meat and the fact that you're burning logs and whatever, branches of trees. So that was probably a big aspect of our toxic exposure back in the days. But now you're driving in traffic,
00:08:00
chrisyzen
you know you're going to the um mall and you're going to the bathroom there there's all these air fresheners and in your uber there's an air freshener and all these fragrances you're you're you're kind of walking by the cosmetics counter in the store so you're constantly getting um exposed to minute amounts of toxins which over time obviously these these accumulate a lot and that means that you're constantly using up resources to deal with them so if you unless you here's okay like here's the analogy i sometimes give imagine you were smart enough and lucky enough to eat exactly all of the vitamins minerals amino acids fat ah ah carbohydrates
00:08:47
chrisyzen
um calories in a day that your body needs, exactly to the calorie, to the microgram of each vitamin and mineral. Okay? Imagine you were to do that. If you take that person, this hypothetical person, you, and put them in the modern world, they immediately are at a deficit because of all of these dozens, potentially hundreds of minute toxic exposures. So let's pretend that all of this, it takes 1% of your resources daily to detoxify. Let's pretend that it's just that much.
00:09:22
chrisyzen
So now you're at a deficit in terms of your protein or your amino acids, you know, your energy, your vitamins, your minerals, you're at the 1% deficit. What did they teach us about? Well, they teach us about compound interest. They certainly didn't teach us that in school. But what were we taught if we ever took like an economics class or whatever about compound interest? It compounds.
00:09:46
chrisyzen
and if you if you had invested a dollar at the time of Jesus Christ right now you would be a trillionaire but the inflation will have eroded your savings so much that you you would be just as poor or something like that but the thing is that if you were at a 1%
00:10:05
chrisyzen
deficit daily over time this is going to compound because today you're at a deficit which means you have to rub your bones and your and maybe add other tissues for some of those amino acids maybe some function Had to be down-regulated or shut down completely in order for those vitamins and minerals that were missing that couldn't fulfill it, right? So so tomorrow you were you have this deficit that was created today. So in an ideal world, tomorrow you need to get more at 1% back.
00:10:41
chrisyzen
in order to repay that deficit today and repair that damage or whatever the what was sacrificed to take those nutrients elsewhere like from the bones or the muscles or whatever the problem is the next day you only you were only eating that amount right that you were eating the previous day. So you you had a 1% deficit and then the second day you have another 1% deficit. You understand how over time this will compound. Maybe it not it won't compound like um the way compounding interest works in the bank.
00:11:14
chrisyzen
because the body is good at kind of shutting down things and lowering its metabolism and energy requirements, but it comes at the expense of our structure, our function, and our nice-to-have ah functions, right the things that are not absolutely vital for survival. So you are actually very slowly degenerating in this specific example. But here's the thing, most people their diet and their nutritional status is already woefully inadequate. I would even say abysmal. Abysmal. I love that word. So they're not at this really good point to begin with. Okay.
00:11:59
chrisyzen
So if if those people don't supplement their diet, over time they will degenerate and you know have a lot of health problems. On top of this, never mind the toxins, let's talk about the psychological stress.
Stress, Nutrient Depletion, and Modern Agriculture
00:12:11
chrisyzen
This also depletes nutrients. right Don't forget that that when you are in this stress response that I call stress mode in my book,
00:12:19
chrisyzen
You have your cortisol, your adrenaline, you know your noradrenaline, these, quote unquote, stress hormones. A lot of them, they drive dysfunction or they, at the very least, cortisol and adrenaline, they break down the body. Now cortisol, that's the one that signals to lean, healthy tissue to break down so you can turn it into glucose. So your bones, your your joints, your muscles, skin, stuff like that, organs. And then and then we lose, right? We lose.
00:12:51
chrisyzen
minerals along the way right so magnesium is lost um potassium can be lost zinc can be lost so this is this is in response to to stress and I've actually um back when I was doing hair testing there was one lady a friend of mine that she just passed away recently actually but uh at the time her mother passed away and on a flight back from holidays and i did a hair test i took a hair test on her and some of these markers were like three four x of the charts in terms of these acute stress markers on a on a hair test right so i think
00:13:32
chrisyzen
I forget now potassium was super elevated and magnesium but just from what my study at the time my research told me that those are just very extreme acute stress types ah patterns but that that just shows us how much under stress how much we're losing some minerals and because the there's certain biochemical changes that happen and that can cause this loss of certain things right you if just as an example if if you take a urine sample and then like stress a person out and then you measure the take the urine sample again you will find minerals in there and probably a lot of other markers and metabolites and stuff like that
00:14:14
chrisyzen
ah that that got wasted, quote-unquote, lost because of that acute stress, right? These are just features of the stress response. We are sacrificing long-term health for short-term survival. And when it's chronic, like it is in today's world for many of us, that means chronically we're getting we are getting depleted of nutrients or we are in this catabolic state, as it's known.
00:14:41
chrisyzen
So, but then, okay, so those are kind of the basics. And then I think a lot of people nowadays, they realize that our soils, because we just farm and over farm the soils, they have been depleted of minerals because back in the day, the manure, so you would farm You have animals on the land. It was very much ah like an ecosystem now with all of this sort of ah monocropping. They are ah because they're stripping the minerals out of the soil and then they're replenishing some of them like the NPK, but they're not replenishing a lot of stuff like copper.
00:15:16
chrisyzen
Zinc some of these are very expensive so you can't these massive feed fields you can't expect it to be economically feasible when you're trying to sell Cheerios for like two bucks a box or a bread that's like 80 cents or whatever I don't know how much bread costs nowadays So, we are not getting as many minerals from our food as back in the day. And then the fact that a lot of foods that are ultra processed, that also strips out a lot of nutrition like vitamins and minerals. For example, the reason
00:15:54
chrisyzen
ah Flower is started getting fortified is because when I started making white flower People started developing a really severe B vitamin deficiency type diseases like I think pellagra and um There was a couple of other ones that's why they started fortifying bread with like iron uh wheat sorry with ah various kind of vitamins and zinc oxide and iron oxide just really low quality crap but at least it started preventing these really horrible deficiencies uh type diseases from occurring right so point is if you're if you're eating processed foods
00:16:33
chrisyzen
but that those are further depleted from vitamins and minerals and then some of them will get get fortified back in right because it would be really bad it would bolt badly for those manufacturers if people started like there's um you know teeth falling out and whatever else from all these diseases they're developing um then factoring this goes back to one of the first points factoring conventional agriculture so fruits vegetables are laden with like pesticides and whatnot and of course the grains a lot of glyphosate there then then conventionally grown animal products that contain a lot of residues a lot of bioaccumulated toxins so your lipophilic persistent organic pollutants these travel up the food chain in the fatty tissue of animals right and then we're ingesting those this is the case where
00:17:27
chrisyzen
really poor farming and and agricultural practices are practiced. So in those cases and most people are eating that food for now. um Don't forget that a lot of the food that you buy has been on the shelves or in transit for weeks. So we're talking about fruit fruits and vegetables. This further diminishes its quality in terms of a lot of vitamins will degrade over time there, right? Don't forget that a lot of those processed foods that I or i already mentioned are stripped of many nutrients. They also contain countless additives like emulsifiers, preservatives, colors, flavors, stabilizers, and these can not only cause leaky gut or intestinal permeability, but they can cause immune reactivity, inflame the gut,
00:18:13
chrisyzen
they can cause damage in and around the gut then in the body and then of course it costs energy and nutrients to repair said damage of course many foods are pasteurized which can diminish the quality and nutrient bioavailability the fact that people consume way too many polyunsaturated fats in the form of seed oils predominantly but also some people eat too many nuts and seeds and this this creates this high inflammation potential in the body, and it
Nutritional Deficits and Modern Challenges
00:18:46
chrisyzen
when these are in your tissues, because they're more susceptible to damage, they make you more prone to oxidative stress and damage. okay And that requires the energy and nutrients to repair.
00:19:00
chrisyzen
I mentioned personal care products are full of poisons that those increase our detoxification ah capacity requirements, which are run which run on nutrients and energy, B vitamins, amino acids, glucose, stuff stuff like that. And then people have a lot of chronic health problems that actually increase their nutrient needs because it's like credit card debt. If you have a health problem, it's like going into debt. You cannot Remember, when you go into debt, it's not just the the month the um the amount you borrowed, but then there's this accumulating interest, accumulating. Sorry for being redundant there. um So you need more than you borrowed to pay back the loan. And just like that, you need more than you normally would to restore your health. Okay.
00:19:56
chrisyzen
And then of course the fact that a lot of people are not actually chewing well, they're eating when they're stressed, they're not digesting the food well because they could have got this function. They might not be absorbing all of the nutrients. A lot of people have liver congestion.
00:20:12
chrisyzen
ah So they might not produce or they might produce enough bio, but it might not get into the small intestine on time to help to digest that food and emulsify those fats and help to absorb those fat soluble vitamins. And then all the damage to the intestine that many people have that can contribute to like I said enzyme insufficiency so that causes digestive dysfunction over time that will cause those nutrient deficiencies of not absorbing those nutrients will cause other systems in the body to ah for their functions to start suffering then over time that can cause further health problems
00:20:52
chrisyzen
And yeah, I mean, look, that that's just like me rattling off a few points from a short article, why you need to supplement your diet. And if you don't, you are kind of screwed. This is, this is the modern world. We cannot solve the challenges of the modern world.
00:21:20
chrisyzen
by trying to live like our ancestors. Because just or as I already mentioned, the food isn doesn't have as many minerals. It's not as nutritious as like even 100 years ago. This is well known. Plenty of research has done that. So how can you expect to live like your ancestors, but you're in an entirely alien environment almost?
00:21:45
chrisyzen
with all the the air pollution and the toxins and the other all the other stuff I just mentioned the plastics and so on so you cannot expect to thrive now you will survive for you could survive for a long time as well but if you want to thrive which is probably why you're here you don't just want to be like your average person with your average amount of medications that they're taking and the average amount of 2.5 diseases or however many that they're going to develop in their lifetime or whatever they're going to live an average amount they're just going to become a statistic do you want to become a statistic or do you want to be an outlier i think we know the answer to that question you're here
00:22:29
chrisyzen
because you want to be an outlier. So to be an outlier, you have to do outlier shit. And yeah, we look weird. Like I i have some clients that come to me with literally 25 to 30 supplements that they're already on. And I'm like, cool. Awesome. You're going to do amazing. You're going to do great. And you know, like I travel with my family and I have my 20 supplements in my little bag.
00:22:59
chrisyzen
And then we go, we might go to like a restaurant then, and then I'll take a little ah one small bottle that's empty. I bring one or two. Then whatever we need, I'll pop the caps, shoes in there, you know? And then in the, keep it in my pants pocket and we'll get to the restaurant and I'll take out the pills. And we're the only, we're the only people doing that everywhere we go. I don't see anybody else bringing their own little supplement bottle to the restaurant. I don't do it every time anymore, you know?
00:23:28
chrisyzen
before we used to be very strict with it and stuff but other people are not doing it and guess what a lot of those people are gonna go to the doctor and get a bunch of mystery chemicals without batting an eyelid and taking them at some point in their life and I don't want to end up like that and I'm sure you don't. right So we have to do outlier type things that most people are not doing and taking quite a number of high quality supplements, they don't have to be expensive. I don't actually use a lot of expensive supplements because I want to my stuff that I do, I want it to be accessible to to like all my clients right that come to work with me.
00:24:09
chrisyzen
and not everybody's like wealthy that whatever can afford like a hundred bucks a bottle of 10 different supplements like no nobody wants to spend a thousand bucks a month on supplements you know but I think two three hundred dollars a month why not what what what's a better way to spend it other than high quality food what's a better way to spend two three hundred dollars a month on high quality supplements to cover these bases to make sure you're you're not just meeting your RDA's you're above and beyond to ameliorate stress to improve sleep so you regenerate better right any holes in your nutrition plan you're gonna plug those in you're gonna lower the cortisol lower the stress hormones detoxify better right a myriad of different reasons why we're adding these support the gut
00:24:59
chrisyzen
support the immune system, this kind of stuff, lower inflammation.
Prioritizing Health Investments
00:25:03
chrisyzen
Why wouldn't we do that? I mean, you know, for some people, this is like a dinner out or like cocktails out drinks out to $300. And I actually had one friend where he had this thing on his whatever. And I told him, let's run some some tests, we run a couple of tests.
00:25:20
chrisyzen
and then I gave him like a protocol to kind of have got stuff and some toxicity related related stuff and I gave him the protocol and it was like super simple and it was like maybe 350 bucks and he's like Jesus Christ what am am I gonna be eating gold what what is this you're giving me like are you kidding me like this kind of this dude They will literally go out for dinner and spend more more money on on like wine and a two-course meal. you know So it's it's about priorities. And to me, there is no higher priority. ah after After the food, it's after that is the supplement. Really, that is my my priority. Obviously, when we had our daughter, you know
00:26:05
chrisyzen
the priorities kind of things get crowbarred in but it's like there was one um there's one channel called um on youtube called bro science life and he he's a comedian great very funny guy he makes this all these parody videos about like bro bro uh gym gym guys and stuff like that and he has this one about uh protein or he calls it protein and uh They ask him like he does he's like ask the professor. So they ask him questions and then people will be like ah the Audience who ask questions like ah what what do I do if my protein consumption doesn't fit my my monthly budget and he said What the hell you talk about that's not how it works, you know you you buy your protein and
00:26:54
chrisyzen
And then you make your monthly budget. you know So this is kind of the way I see see ah supplementation in food. You buy the highest quality food that your family needs, right? You get your supplements that you need for the month, make sure you're all stocked up for everybody. And then you make your budget. Then you kind of ah try to economize the rest of it because this kind of stuff, it should take priority beyond beyond what most people are doing. And at least in my opinion, now,
00:27:23
chrisyzen
If you're listening to the podcast, obviously you you may be interested in my opinion, so that's that's that's my opinion. i My opinion, and I have family members that are in this situation, my opinion is that people that don't diligently supplement their diet, but this you don't have to be like me every day and like you can take days off or weeks off and whatever else. You don't have to be like super crazy biohacker about it. But my opinion is that people that don't supplement their diet intelligently, not buying garbage from the convenience store with a random multivitamins,
00:27:57
chrisyzen
If they don't do that, they are setting themselves up for a shorter life, accelerated aging, and um accelerated disease processes. Straight up, straight up. That's the modern environment. That's what it predisposes us to.
00:28:15
chrisyzen
it's up to It's up to them to learn that and kind of begin this journey of enlightenment on the topic because I know you're here i don't i know I'm probably preaching to
Strategic Supplementation for Longevity
00:28:26
chrisyzen
the choir. I don't have to um convince you so much. But I had one client recently and he told me like, you know't am I not taking too many supplements? And the um ah so i kind of I told him like, no, why?
00:28:42
chrisyzen
You should see what I'm taking. You should see what some of my other clients are taking. It's like on half of what most of my clients are on. And I'm like at your age, cause like in his sixties, I got your age. We need to be thinking of how, how in what other way can we add more support to the body? What else could be missing instead of.
00:29:05
chrisyzen
taking less. Why would you want to take less? Is it because it's gonna save you four seconds to open that other bottle when you're taking your other stuff? twice a day, morning and evening. What, what is it gonna, do you really, is it 30 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month extra? Gonna like make a dent in any, any, in your finances, you know, when you've paid off your house and you know, you, you, whatever, you know, you're, you're set for life or already. You don't really have to sort of worry about money. So it's like, um, why, why, and and you, you, you're like in your sixties and you're getting older
00:29:45
chrisyzen
and we know with with age we lose function so why the hell would we why the hell would we leave this kind of stuff for like the lottery of life why why wouldn't we be adding more support to me the older i get the more support i want to give my body in different ways the more i want to reduce toxins the more i wanna rest well and sleep well and reduce stress and reduce strain on the body and and the damaging factors. Why the hell do we want to take these things? Now, I know sometimes people will look at me and they come into my house and they're like, oh my God, look at all these supplements. This guy's insane. I don't take them every day. I don't take all of those every day. I just have specific things for specific purposes.
00:30:26
chrisyzen
You know, when my wife is kind of near coming up to her cycle and I notice a little bit of somewhat agitation doesn't happen so much anymore. I have things for that. You know, if I don't sleep well one night or two nights because maybe it was very hot in the summer, I have things to make sure that I sleep the next day so that I'm not accumulating sleep debt. Right. If if I'm going to be like exerting myself physically a lot today um and maybe in the sun, I have electrolytes to replenish electrolytes. I have things to help me recover faster or to support my energy production system if I if I'm going to need
00:31:03
chrisyzen
to exert myself more yeah that day specifically. So I have tools in the tool chest and this is what we teach our clients, specific tools like when you want to boost cognitive function, when you want to boost your immune system, when you want to like support yourself during stressful periods, and that maybe you're finishing a project or launching a product or whatever the case may be, right? So it's to me, we need to accumulate more knowledge and experience with supplements and then go back to like a little baseline, maybe 10, 12, that are like daily support, and then have a few in our two chest whenever we need them, right? Like if i like last month, I had to drive to Spain, pick up my my wife and daughter from the airport, coming back from there their holiday with my dog, and then we have to like go find, go up to, we're staying in a castle, in a house in the castle, it was literally in the castle wall,
00:31:56
chrisyzen
and then um the parking was like super far away so i had to make like four trips with all the bags of crap and my wife was tired and then like two three days later we had to like reload the car so during like and that was in the spanish heat so like this was pretty demanding that i didn't expect it was a bit stressful dealing with traffic and whatever in spain is super busy at this time of year so i was just like popping my my stress lowering supplements and you know things are just like I was on top of things right and this is how we we maintain longevity and health and and optimal function long term knowing how to stay on top of things when things get a little bit rough and tough right okay anyway I have a client call in a few minutes I'm gonna stop here hope you got value out of this one and I'll see you on the next episode