Intermittent dosing
Hi all,
I would like to have your thoughts on something.
Let me begin by saying that my family and I take lots of supplements, around 20 different things daily, which means vitamins, minerals, adaptogens and hormetic agents. We use the smallest effective dose philosophy for each, rather than large doses. This is especially true for hormetics such as Lipoic Acid and EGCG, to name a few...
It's usual standard practice for us to take a day off weekly from all the stuff we take, not only to save some money but also that over time we learned that it's actually beneficial for the body to have a break. But then to take it a step further....
Recently however I made some unrelated searches and discoveries, namely that many compounds that we take can actually work better if intermittent dosing (not everyday) is used, like every other day for instance.
I can't point to a specific paper, as it was rather a pattern that began to emerge from all the stuff that I was looking at, which seemed to indicate that perhaps every other day dosing could actually be more beneficial or at the very least offer similar benefits as daily dosing.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
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You raise an important aspect on supplementation. When we take pharmaceuticals we know that the risk of negative interactions (side effects) go up with the number of medicines we take.
We can’t know what interactions we face when we take 10, 15, 20 supplements. Taking many supplements is not the same as getting better effects. On the contrary, they might work against each other and negate each others positive effects.
I am in the same situation as you. There are many attractive supplements. But many supplements are beneficial when they are studied as a single intervention but there it stops. We don’t know what happens in our bodies when we take many supplements at the same time. I try to cut back on the number of supplements I take each day.
Very few combinations are studied in a rigorous way. The one combinations that I know about is protandim. Which is Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) extract (70-80% Silymarin) (225 mg), Bacopa (Bacopa monnieri) extract (45% bacosides) (150 mg), Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) powder (150 mg), Green tea (Camellia sinensis) extract (98% polyphenols, 45% EGCG) (75 mg), Turmeric (Curcuma longa) extract (95% curcumin) (75 mg)
https://phenome.jax.org/projects/ITP1
The ITP program saw a life extending effect of that combination. (ps, I don’t take protandim) But It indicates that turmeric and green tea, which I use, is not a harmful combination when it is taken every day.
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Staffan Olsson said:
they might work against each other and negate each others positive effects.Staffan Olsson said:
We don’t know what happens in our bodies when we take many supplements at the same timeThanks for your informative input. I'd say that my biggest concern (which I try to mitigate as much as possible) is not knowing what I don't know, perfectly summed up by your quotes above, that the compounds might work against each other and that we don't really know what happens to our bodies when we take many supplements at once. I do my research but of course can't know for certain.
What got me interested in intermittent dosing or every other day dosing was one time I heard Dr. Sinclair say that they had better results with resveratrol when given to the mice every other day instead of daily. Then there was this study that showed carnosine worked just as well at alternate day dosing vs daily.
Then there's our evolution, we never evolved on consuming micro or macro nutrients even on a daily basis. The fasting that people often use now makes them look and feel better, our biology seems up regulated when we don't eat often. All of those things had me thinking that perhaps it would also be a good idea to take supplements every other day instead of daily. It could work just as well, maybe even better, and it'd save you like 50% in bills, which would be a bonus.
