There seems to be a trend with health aficionados recently. Instead of using health supplement for what they were intended, to supplement your diet, they are being used in a way that they shouldn’t be.

This gives them a bad name because then people wonder why they are paying $100 a month for products that seem to have no effect. Here’s a handy hint for you: it might not be the supplements. It might be you!

So, if you’re sat reading this and are thinking about giving up the supplements because they aren’t working for you, just check to make sure you aren’t making one of these 5 mistakes first.

Mistake #1 – You still eat crap!

It amazes me how often this crops up, but I hear people complaining all the time that their supplements don’t work, yet they are shoving a Big Mac down their neck, chugging Coke and dipping fries in ketchup. Health supplements can only work if you give them a platform. That platform is a healthy diet packed full of fruit and veg, as much meat as you can eat (unless you’re a vegan!) and no junk food!

Mistake #2 – You use cheap supplements

Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you get what you pay for? You’re not likely to get any benefits if you bought your fish oil for $10 from Walmart. This is your health. Why wouldn’t you want to spend a little extra to give your body the purest, healthiest supplement possible? The chances of finding a high quality product in Walmart is low – so do some research and you might find that supplements do work after all.

Mistake #3 – You forget to take them

The best way to not experience any benefit to health supplements is to simply forget to take them at all! It sounds stupid, and it is, but people can and do forget to take their supplements for days, sometimes even weeks at a time. I’ve lost count of the friends I have that keep supplements in their cabinet for years after the expiry date and then complain to me that they don’t work! Nowadays I just sigh and judge them silently. Don’t let this happen to you.

Mistake #4 – Taking advice from the guy at the health food store

Believe it or not, the guy working at your local health store for minimum wage is not qualified to tell you which supplements will work for you. So many people look to these guys for advice every day in stores all over the world and as a result, they choose inferior products that do not benefit their health. Your best bet is to do some research online, contact supplement manufacturers directly or check out their site for more information. Don’t just take one person’s advice (not even mine) when your body is the best judge of any supplement.

Mistake #5 – Treating health problems with supplements

A big culture in our society today is to take a pill to fix a health problem. If it’s a headache you can down a paracetamol or ibuprofen, antacids for stomach ache and so on. If your sole reason for taking supplements is to fix a health problem, make sure it solves the root cause. If you’ve got a headache then instead of popping an aspirin, drink some water, eat some good, wholesome food and fight the problem properly. Again, I must stress: use supplements to aid an already healthy lifestyle, not to solve all the problems you have!

Now it’s over to you. This list is definitely not exhaustive, and I know that many people reading this will have experienced many mistakes when using supplements. Spill the beans below and share your worst health supplement mistakes. Remember: you do learn from them!

Whether you are diabetic or not, whether you believe in a low carb or low protein diet, there is one basic dietary guideline that I think will help everyone. Eat everything as close to its live state as possible. Ideally that would mean growing all of your own food. Practically, it means avoiding all processed foods. That includes flours and grains that are not whole grain, canned foods, and all packaged foods. By your foods fresh and whole, and cook them simply.

Back to Diabetes, monitor your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar and get good professional advice on how to control them. That professional may not be your doctor. In North America, at least, doctors are given very little training on nutrition. Find someone who really is an expert in nutrition and follow their advice.

But read it carefully. They talk about people taking at least 200 mg of vitamin C. Everybody knows that if you want to fight off a cold you need several grams a day. I’m surprised they found 200 mg to be as useful as they did.

Next in the article they say that lycopene has no effect in preventing cancer. However they do not mention details of the study at all. Who knows what they were looking at.

All this is very interesting, considering the FDA is getting ready to shut down the supplement industry. They are raising safety standards above that of drugs. They even admit that most supplement companies will not be able to stay in business.

Look out America. Your health choices are going away. (And we call this democracy?)

A ten year study in the US, shows that tomatoes grown organically have almost double the flavonoids of their non-organic counterparts. Flavonoids are anitoxidants that have been shown to lower blood pressure and the risk of heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director in the UK said: “We welcome the now rapidly growing body of evidence which shows significant differences between the nutritional composition of organic and non-organic food.

“This is the second recent American study to find significant differences between organic and non-organic fruit.

“These findings also confirm recent European research, which showed that organic tomatoes, peaches and processed apples all have higher nutritional quality than non-organic.”

To see more on my views about why we should not generally take vitamins see this post.

Here are some other interesting tidbits:

Increasing your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables decreases your risk for prostate cancer.

Countries where people eat more beans have a lower death rates from breast, colon, and prostate cancer.

Anabolic steroids probably increase the risk of prostate cancer.

Eating fish decreases your risk of prostate cancer.

Those tidbits are from the book, Avoiding Cancer One Day at a Time, which I reviewed here.