Walk into any health food store these days, and you’ll find yourself overwhelmed by the supplement aisle. We all want to be sure that our bodies are obtaining the proper amounts of vital nutrients, but how can you really know which supplements to buy when you’re faced with thousands of options? The fact is, that reaching for any old multivitamin or other supplement to attempt to cover all your bases may not actually be doing you any favors. So let’s talk supplements…
Here’s the most important thing you need to know about essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals, the best and most effective way to make sure that you’re getting them all in and ticking all the boxes is simply to eat whole foods and pack your diet with as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible. Of course you’re going to be deficient in certain nutrients if your diet mostly consists of processed foods or sugary snacks. Making simple switches like eating a few carrots for a snack instead of an energy bar or drinking herbal tea instead of soda can load in a few extra nutrients here and there. Plus, most foods contain multiple forms of a specific vitamin rather than supplements, which tend to contain a vitamin in a single form, so you get more out of them. And while multivitamins are often suggested as a good way to make sure you’re covering all of your bases, the truth is that certain multivitamins are composed of different ratios of vitamins, so you might be over supplementing on one vitamin while still remaining deficient in another. It’s fairly difficult to overdose on vitamins, but it can be done, which is another reason why blindly buying every supplement you can think of isn’t really going to make you “healthier”. That’s where we step in.
We created GxNutrient because, the fact is, not everyone is created equal when it comes to vitamins and minerals. Even two people eating the exact same diet can have different nutrient deficiencies. Our DNA codes for genes that determine how well we absorb certain nutrients. This means that even the healthiest eater may be deficient in a critical vitamin or mineral because their body has a hard time sequestering that nutrient from food. That’s when supplementation would come in handy. We want you to know how your body works and be able to make informed decisions when it comes to buying and taking supplements. When you purchase our GxNutrient kit, we sequence your DNA and send you a full report that covers your risk of being at high, normal or low levels of 8 vitamins and 7 minerals. If a result comes back as being low for a certain vitamin or mineral, it means that you carry a gene that has been scientifically proven to correlate to low levels of that nutrient. The same goes with showing results for high levels of a certain nutrient.
With this knowledge, you can decide how to improve your diet to round out your nutrient intake. We provide you with a list of foods to eat for each vitamin and mineral so that you can add those foods into your diet as well. It’s important to note that our test results don’t mean that you are 100% deficient in that specific vitamin or mineral. Our test simply tells you what you might be deficient in. The best way to know exactly what supplements to take is to combine our genetic test results with a full panel blood test. You can then compare results to determine if you’re body actually has difficulty obtaining certain nutrients. For example, if our results told you that your DNA codes for low levels of vitamin B9 and your blood results showed low levels of vitamin B9, then odds are, you have a hard time absorbing that vitamin and should be supplementing with foods as well as a supplement.
So, moral of the story is, don’t go out and buy every supplement you can think of in order to become a healthier version of yourself. Become an informed consumer and learn more about your body’s ability to process key nutrients. With GxRenew and a little bit of research, you can figure out how to alter your diet and exactly which supplements to take to improve your overall health!
