Most vitamins and food supplements are not necessary. Leading expert in Integrative Medicine from California shares his view. How to use vitamins and food supplements in daily diet.

Do vitamins have a role in integrative medicine treatments? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Vitamins and food supplements used in Integrative Medicine are rarely needed. What vitamins can I use for holistic medical treatments? What are dangers of vitamins and food supplements? Can vitamins be toxic to health? Can vitamins harm health? What is the best source of vitamins for health? Use of food supplements and vitamins in Integrative medicine. Video interview with top expert in integrative medicine. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Medical second opinion ensures that vitamin deficiency diagnosis is correct and complete. Medical second opinion also helps to choose the best holistic natural treatment strategy for vitamin deficiency and mineral deficiency. Seek medical second opinion on vitamin deficiency and mineral deficiency and be confident that your holistic natural treatment is the best. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Let's talk about controversial but very important topic. Let’s discuss vitamins and food supplements. Vitamin and supplement industry has become a multi-billion dollar business. Advertisements are ubiquitous and quite powerful. It's important to know that. Many health practitioners make additional income by selling branded vitamins and food supplements. And it's very understandable why that happens. Because it's a scaleable model to sell vitamins. It's quite easy to procure them from white label suppliers in large quantities and qualities. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. It's also very high-margin business. Branding is applied and the vitamins are sold. But quality of vitamins and food supplements is very important. And clearly this vitamin food supplement industry is here to stay. It has been present for a long time. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. So what is the correct way to approach taking food supplements and vitamins? How can somebody apply the evidence-based and safe approach to use food supplements and vitamins? Medical medical second opinion. It's a great question! And it's a big issue. First, let me say there are companies that are ethical and sell good products. Some vitamins have very high quality. But unfortunately there are a lot of companies that are entirely profit-driven. They will put any product out to make money. It's unregulated industry. So these are not like pharmaceutical medicines where FDA regulation exists. There is some monitoring. But it's not as rigorous. First, to address the point of practitioners selling products. So my personal belief about it is this. Anytime the practitioner has a vested interest in recommending therapy is a problem. This is true for conventional medicine or integrative medicine. That's a concern, that is a major concern. I think that can be done ethically. But I am suspicious. I would guess most of the time it's just a subconscious bias. A physician is going to recommend things that they profit from. So I don't like that. In our practice we separate that. We don't sell anything. We tell patients where to buy. We get them several brand names based on independent testing quality. So that's my preference. I think there are two questions to sort out an issue that you raised. One is this. Which products could actually be helpful? Which vitamins, which food supplements are helpful? And the second question is how to determine the specific brands to buy? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. What about the quality of those vitamins and food supplements? First of all, looking at vitamins and food supplements I say this. I more often do not actually recommend vitamins. I much more highly recommend good diet. All the research point to eating a healthy diet has health benefit. It is just common when we are looking at human evolution. We know this over and over from research. Of course, the human body has evolved to value good food. Furthermore, the food that we eat has many nutrients. Some of nutrients we probably haven't even identified. So food is almost always better than a food supplement. So I would rather have someone have a very healthy diet. They should not taking any vitamins. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Vitamins for general nutritional support? I would say, sometimes someone has a poor diet and there are some major limitations. They can't eat more healthy than they are eating. Then I reluctantly fall back on and say. OK, take a vitamin, take a general vitamin. And there are certain quality measures that one can assess when recommending brands of vitamins and food supplements. However, that is a distant second to the first preference. It is best to have healthy food in the diet. I don't think there are many diseases except vitamin deficiencies, where a vitamin specifically going to be therapeutic. It's surprising. but sometimes you look at the research most of it shows that vitamins are not helping. There's been even a couple of instances of harm. But mostly vitamins are not helping. Sometimes vitamins are helpful. Vitamin D is sometimes helpful. But that's in cases of vitamin D-deficiency in patients getting vitamin D. I don’t see a big role actually for vitamins and food supplements. Getting the vitamins through the food is the way to go. It is true at least in industrialized society with adequate nutrition. Vitamins and food supplements used in Integrative Medicine. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Do you need vitamins in holistic medical approach to health and disease therapy? Dietary food supplements.