Top Supplements for Memory and Joint Health - Ask a Nutritionist

Transcript:

LEAH: Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's “Ask a Nutritionist” podcast brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. My name is Leah Kleinschrodt and I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian and we're thrilled to be celebrating 20 years on air discussing the connection between what you eat and how you feel.

Thank you so much for your support and listenership over the years and if you're enjoying the show, let us know by leaving a review. or a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps others find these important real food messages. So on today's show, I will be answering one question that we received from one of our Dishing Up Nutrition listeners.

And this listener asks, “What would be your top three to four supplement combinations from Nutrikey for memory support and arthritis?” And this person goes on to say that they're a friend asking for a friend, and so the friend that they are asking about is 70 years old and just looking to improve overall health, blood sugars, and they've started to walk recently, which is great.

So I want to thank this listener for the question. Your friend is lucky to have you and to write into a podcast show for you. I love this question. I actually have a close family member who is in a similar camp where we're just trying to be strategic, but not overwhelming with his supplements to support both his cognition and just the physical body as well.

He struggled with some significant shoulder issues, and he's had both hips replaced in the past, so we're just doing everything we can to support as many areas of the body as we can. So I used this family member's case as a reference point, and then I really sat down and thought about which supplements do we get a good crossover effect from, and where do we get the best bang for our buck, given the information that we know about this friend.

Start with a quality omega-3 supplement

First and foremost, I would start with a quality omega-3 supplement. In most omega-3 supplements, you're getting two main fatty acids. If you ever turn over the back of the bottle, you're going to see EPA and DHA. So EPA is the part that's more responsible for the anti-inflammatory benefits of fish oil. So I recommend this a lot for clients who struggle with joint pain and arthritis.

Omega-3s are also great for cardiovascular and heart support. So think high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and it's also really great for improving insulin sensitivity and just long term blood sugar levels. So I wanted to mention that blood sugar piece because that was a little pearl left by the question asked or it sounds like this friend is paying closer attention to their blood sugar now.

In reality, anti-inflammation is a great thing for the brain. It's great for the joints and it's great for the brain. The DHA part of the omega-3s is the more structural brain fat. So we do have the EPA, which is great to just fight inflammation in general throughout the body.

And now we have this DHA fat, which is more specific to the brain. It's also helpful for the retina of the eyes. So consistent intake of DHA can be helpful for keeping DHA levels up in the brain. Now, Richard Isaacson, who's a pioneering neurologist in the field of Alzheimer's disease, said that brain DHA mass completely recycles every two and a half years or so.

So when we're thinking about supplementing with an omega-3 supplement or with a DHA supplement, you want to be in it for the long run, not just taking it for two or three months and tossing it out if you don't see a major change. I do want to mention that not everyone responds to omega-3s from the pain reduction standpoint.

Not everyone notices a significant or a major turnaround in their joint pain with omega-3s. It doesn't mean that omega-3s aren't helpful for other things. It just might mean that that's not quite getting at the crux of what's causing some of that joint pain. There are other options out there. We'll talk about one towards the end of the show here.

But there are other supplements that you can try for the joint pain if the fish oil just isn't quite up to snuff or not quite what you're looking for; things like curcumin or Kaprex or magnesium. And then you can still supplement either with that omega-3 or with the DHA supplement.

So, my first choice, especially for the brain, especially for that memory and cognition, but also for some of the anti-inflammatory benefits, would be those omega-3s. You can supplement with DHA specifically, if for whatever reason you didn't want an omega-3 complex, but I think the omega-3 would probably be the way to go, at least initially.

Include a quality multivitamin

My second recommendation would be a quality multivitamin. This is a great way to rebuild nutrient stores. So I'm just thinking based on what we know from this question, this friend may have spent many years or even decades eating more of a nutrient poor, standard American diet. And then when we're combating chronic disease or chronic pain, if we're not sleeping well, or if there's any other kinds of stressors on the body, we use up our nutrients a lot faster than usual. And third point, nobody eats perfect all the time. So a multivitamin is a great insurance policy to make sure that we're getting a lot of nutrient needs met and that both the brain and the body have building blocks that they need to function better.

Now, my colleague, Britni, wrote a great article in July of 2022 about what to look for in a quality multivitamin, because you can go to a lot of different stores out there and be overwhelmed with the wall of supplements, with the wall of choices for multivitamins out there. So she wrote a great article that kind of highlights what do we look for?

Like what entails a quality multivitamin? And I also did an “Ask a Nutritionist” episode on May 9th of 2024 talking about the same topic. So whether you read it or listen to it, those would give you some of those details as to what does a quality multivitamin look like.

So I'm not going to go in depth into that right here right now. Again, good quality multivitamin is great. And if you want to up the ante just a little bit, I would say a multivitamin that has some extra antioxidant and mitochondrial supports in there would be a nice bonus. An example of this would be our Ortho Molecular Mitocore supplement, and people can find this on our website.

So, it's got a lot of your basics in terms of multivitamins, but it's got some of those extra antioxidants and mitochondrial supports in there, like N-acetyl-cysteine. I do really love our Nutrikey Twice Per Day and Ortho Molecular's Alpha Base multivitamins if you're just looking for something a little bit more basic; just want to note that the serving size for all of these multivitamins, it is not a one capsule and done formula.

Most quality multivitamins, you're going to need to take two, sometimes even three or four capsules per day to get the full dose of what's on that supplement label. We're going to take a break. When we come back, I'll round out my thoughts on and supplements, suggestions for memory and arthritis support. And so we'll be back in a moment.

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Welcome back. So before break, I was going over my top two supplement recommendations for memory and for arthritis, and that was an omega-3 supplement or a DHA supplement, and also a quality multivitamin.

Pick #3: quality magnesium supplement

My third pick would probably be a quality magnesium supplement. So something like a magnesium glycinate. I choose magnesium because most Americans, something like two thirds to three fourths of Americans are woefully deficient in magnesium and magnesium is critical for hundreds of reactions in the body. I find myself thinking like, what doesn't magnesium make better? Magnesium glycinate can be helpful for chronic pain.

Especially if there's a component where the muscles are tight and sore, it can help relax those muscles. I don't know how well this friend sleeps, but magnesium glycinate is often my first line of defense for any kind of sleep issues. Magnesium is helpful for blood sugar regulation, so we know that about the friend that they were paying attention to their blood sugars.

There is a form of magnesium, it's called magnesium threonate. This kind of magnesium specifically supports a healthy, resilient brain and it can improve memory and cognition because the threonate helps carry that magnesium through the blood brain barrier.

So the glycinate is always a great foundational kind of overall magnesium, the magnesium threonate would be a little bit more specialized, but might be warranted in this case as well. I could see either one of these working well. So I just feel like a magnesium supplement would likely be a low risk, high potential reward route to take.

So those three supplements that I just mentioned, the omega-3s, the multivitamin, the magnesium, these would be foundational supplements. Their effects are going to be very broad reaching. But they're effective. So again, if we're thinking about things that cross a few different domains, so taking care of the brain in addition to taking care of the body, taking care of our joints, taking care of blood sugar, and things like that, the omega-3s, the multivitamin, the magnesium are going to be great go-tos.

Other possible supplement considerations

So, you know, this person asked for three to four supplements. I think there's a few options that could be up in the air for a fourth choice, but I would consider these to be a little bit more specialized or an upgrade to the basics. And I do also want to say, like, if this was a client of mine, if this was somebody I was sitting down with, I'd be doing more digging into other areas of their health and well being. I'd want to know, how is their digestive health, because if we suspect they're having some digestive problems or some leaky gut types of situations, we know leaky gut can disrupt brain function, so I would be more, much more likely to recommend a probiotic or some L-glutamine to go along with those top three supplements.

If this person was struggling with sleep, the magnesium could be helpful for sleep, but if that wasn't quite the ticket, we'd be looking at something else to support the sleep as well. We'd be asking about immune health. We'd be asking about energy. We'd be asking about skin health and other things. So just, I'm taking the information based on what I know about this person from the question and just making a couple other recommendations of what could be for that fourth supplement.

So the, a couple other ones, again, that would be a little bit more specialized for either memory or arthritis: MCT oil. It's a great healthy fat that provides kind of an alternative fuel for the brain. It helps us produce ketones, which the ketones feed the brain. And so that can be something that is helpful for cognitive function, for memory, just for thinking well overall.

Brain Vibrance Supreme is a powder that helps support the nerve cells, keeps a healthy kind of covering over those nerve cells. It's called the myelin sheath. So it helps support that myelin sheath. It's a tasteless powder. It's easy to add to coffee or to smoothies or to mix into a yogurt or something like that, but it would give some extra specialized brain support.

And I mentioned curcumin earlier too, as a great anti-inflammatory supplement. So curcumin is the active component in turmeric. It can be helpful for a variety of different aches and pains. Anything that's anti-inflammatory for the joints is probably also going to be anti-inflammatory for the brain.

So I would say those other supplements, the MCT oil, the Brain Vibrant Supreme Powder, or curcumin, those would be just a few different ideas for that more niche, fourth supplement. I would definitely prioritize the other three, but those are some other ideas if you're looking to add a fourth one.

So I hope that was helpful. I want to thank everyone so much for listening to Dishing Up Nutrition's “Ask a Nutritionist”. And again, if you found this episode helpful, be sure to leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. And if you have a nutrition question you would like us to answer, we have two options for you.

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