Supplements

Part of the TYT program includes taking supplements in addition to eating the healthy foods outlined in each step. The main two supplements are fish oil and a multivitamin. I also take a calcium and Glucosamine HCP supplement. Christine recommends a fish oil with a 2:1 ratio of EPA to DHA. I buy my supplements at Costco and I was able to find that ratio in a product from Ocean Nutrition Canada Ltd called Omega-3 and sold under the Health Balance banner. These are softgels and come 240 to the bottle. They claim to be ultra-purified and I believe them, as there is very little, if any, aftertaste with these. They go down fairly easy and stay down. There is ZERO fish oil taste at all for me. And I am old enough to recall the horrible liquid cod liver oil days. The combined content of the EPA and DHA is 600mg per softgel and Christine recommends 2400mg a day, so that would equal four softgels a day. Truth be told, I have only been taking three per day. Basically one with each meal.

The multivitamin I take is produced by Pharmetics Inc. for Costco's Kirkland banner and is called Formula Forte. It has a long list of ingredients and the levels seem to be right on track with what Christine recommends. It only has 200mg of calcium though so I supplement that with another Kirkland product called Calcium Plus. It is manufactured by WN Pharmaceuticals. Each of those tablets is 600mg so I cut them in half to get a total of 500mg a day which is closer to what one should be getting. I take these two together with a fish oil softgel during lunch.

The final supplement I take is Glucosamine HCP (Hydrochloride). Hydrochloride sounds like something you'd put into your swimming pool to keep it clean. Actually it's even grosser than that. It's made from shellfish exoskeletons. It claims to help build/maintain healthy joint cartilage but my doctor said there has been no definitive study to prove it. It's not that expensive so I decided to go with it. At least during the early stages of the program when I'm placing extra stress on my underused joints. The one I bought is also sold at Costco and is produced by Nature's Bounty and they come 175 per bottle. They are triple concentrated 1500mg caplets so you only need to take one per day. I take one of these in the morning along with a fish oil softgel and my tiny high blood pressure capsule. All four of the supplements are about equal in size and are on larger side as far as caplets go. They are about the size of a Mike & Ike candy piece if you know what that is. Not that I'm eating any of those any more :-)

If you are reading this in the United States then most of the brand names I mentioned probably won't mean much to you as all of these companies are located in Canada with the exception of Nature's Bounty which exports into Canada through a company called Vitaminol Inc. The important thing is to make sure you are taking high quality supplements, in the right dosage as outlined by Christine in the book. If you are unsure about anything then check out the forums on her web site. That is where I got a lot of my questions answered about these supplements. Of course you can also do your own web research too.