Speaking of Women's Health
The Speaking of Women's Health Podcast is excited to bring you credible women's health information from host and Executive Director, Dr. Holly L. Thacker. Dr. Thacker will interview guest clinicians discussing relevant women's health topics and the latest news and tips.
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Speaking of Women's Health
Are you Getting Enough Vital Vitamins From Your Diet?
Are your meals giving you all the nutrients you need for vibrant health, or could you be missing out on vital essentials? Join Host Dr. Holly Thacker as she unravels the complex web of vitamins and minerals that should be on your plate.
In the pursuit of health, she'll take you through the nuances of Vitamin D and iron deficiencies, spotlight the risk of overdoing supplements, and discuss the real impact of whole foods versus their processed counterparts.
Whether you're curious about the benefits of specific diets for certain health conditions or you're simply looking to refine your daily nutrient intake, this episode is your roadmap to a well-nourished life, personalized for your body's unique needs. Don't miss this nutrient-packed journey to optimal health, with insights and tips that will have you rethinking the way you fill your plate!
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Welcome to the Speaking of Women's Health podcast. I'm your host, dr Holly Thacker, the Executive Director of Speaking of Women's Health, and I'm back in the Sunflower House for a brand new episode of our podcast episode of our podcast. And on this episode I am going to talk about getting enough vitamins and minerals in our diet and how do you know if you need a supplement. This is one of the most common questions I get every day. In fact, I just finished up a day of virtual visits, which I do a few times a month for my existing established patients, and I had a nicely organized patient send a list of questions to prepare that she wanted to get through during her visit and it's always a great idea to do that and be organized and it centered all around vitamins and minerals. And I said, oh, we have so much great information on our speakingofwomenshealthcom website and you can search for information for recipes for putting in specific vitamins or specific minerals, and I thought, well, let's just pull this all together and do a podcast on this topic. And unfortunately, research shows that many Americans don't get enough vitamins and minerals in their diet and a lot of people, conversely, take a lot of excessive vitamins and have what we call expensive urine that really aren't necessary, wasting hundreds of dollars a year, and certainly with the cost of food and fuel and inflation, you really want to not waste money on things that you don't need for your health. Now, part of this problem, I think, is people moving away from whole foods and getting a lot of processed foods, so anytime you can eat whole, real foods, the better. So let's talk about what vitamins and minerals our body needs and how we can firstly get these from foods, as well as when is it appropriate to supplement? So vitamins are things that our body cannot make, and minerals are organic compounds that our body needs for various metabolic and enzymatic processes, and most of the time, we get vitamins and minerals, as well as essential amino acids and essential fats. We also can ingest carbohydrates that may be rich in vitamins and minerals, but there's actually no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. So the big question I get every day is can I get everything that I need for my diet? And the short answer is yes for the most part, and for most of us, a healthy, varied diet which includes all the food groups is basically what we need to stay healthy the 13 vitamins that our body needs and eight of these come from the B vitamins.
Speaker 1:Now, not all vitamins are vitamins. If you listen to season one third podcast on vitamin D, you'll know that vitamin D is not a vitamin. It's a pro-sterile hormone. So if you live near the equator and have exposed healthy skin that can convert precursors in the skin to vitamin D, then it's something that your body can make on its own.
Speaker 1:Vitamin A is truly a vitamin. It's also fat soluble and it's stored in the liver. It's just two times the recommended daily allowance, can be toxic, particularly in pregnant women, and and can saturate the liver. Vitamin B is a series of several different vitamins and they're water soluble. Some are very short acting like folic acid, and some are very long acting, have a long half-life and they're physically a big molecule B12. Vitamin D, which isn E, is an earl, and vitamin K. There's K1 and K2.
Speaker 1:And there's hundreds of minerals. They're usually classified as either major or trace minerals and the amount you need differs between minerals. Major or for macro minerals are generally required in larger amounts. Some of those macro, larger minerals include calcium. We've had several podcasts on calcium in both season one and season two, and May was osteoporosis awareness month. Calcium is a major element of the skeleton Phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium chloride and magnesium. I do see a lot of magnesium deficiency in women and you need adequate magnesium with your vitamin D. Some of the trace minerals, or so-called micro minerals, are equally important to body functions but are required in much, much smaller amounts, and this includes iron amounts, and this includes iron.
Speaker 1:My very first podcast, season one, was all on iron, zinc, copper, and there's kind of an interesting relationship between zinc and copper, manganese, iodine and selenium, and research shows that about 40% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. In my practice in Northeast Ohio it's higher than that. At least 7% are deficient in vitamin C, and if you have complete deficiency in vitamin C you get scurvy that's why the pirates took the limes and the lemons on their ships and 13% are deficient in B6, pyridoxine and the recommended daily allowance of pyridoxine is interesting. It's really not one definite amount and I think with a lot of these vitamins and minerals, we have some better research with some compared to others and based on the age and the sex and the metabolism, as well as other medical problems and other medications can affect these vitamins. Iron deficiency is the most common form of micronutrient malnutrition globally. According to the World Health Organization, in the United States, at least one in six women is iron deficient during pregnancy, and deficiency is higher amongst non-Hispanic Blacks as well as Hispanics amongst non-Hispanic Blacks as well as Hispanics and iron deficiency is one of the most common causes of anemia or low blood count.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about some of these in a little bit more detail the sunshine vitamin, which is the pro-sterile hormone. Vitamin D, which is in a vitamin. Vitamin D which isn't a vitamin. It's produced in the skin by ultraviolet rays from the sun. So cloudy skies, gray skies and, importantly, the latitude that you're at. So it might be a really sunny winter day, but you're not going to be at the right latitude to affect that in your skin, to be at the right latitude to affect that in your skin.
Speaker 1:Sunscreen use, clothes, indoor lifestyle these are all common reasons why so many people are low, and it's not just linked to bone health, but it also is important for brain function, cognitive function, senile dementia of the Alzheimer's types, several cancers, cardiovascular disease, even hair growth. If you don't have an adequate vitamin D levels of 75 appear to be optimal for the hair that can be a problem problem. So people, especially if they're under age 40, who get about 15 minutes of sun exposure at the right latitude, usually can have adequate vitamin D maybe not optimal but adequate. But if you're not getting at least one to 2000 international units of cholecalciferol D3, and you're not getting regular sun exposure, or you're over 40, or have very sensitive skin, you should talk to your physician or nurse practitioner or physician assistant about whether you need to take a vitamin D3 K2 supplement and it's certainly the number one supplement that I recommend for bone health, joint health and overall general immunologic health. If you take vitamin D with the largest meal, you'll have better absorption. I switched taking my vitamin D3 with K2 to lunch the first time I eat and break my fast, because the supplement that I take has a little bit of coconut oil, medium chain triglycerides, so it's a few calories. So supplements can have calories and if you're quote fasting, then it should be nothing but water, black coffee or green tea. Now some supplements are the lesser potency ergocalciferol D2, which is a precursor to D3. And ironically, the prescription vitamin D which people assume prescription is stronger but that's not always the case is generally D2. So I don't really prescribe that too often.
Speaker 1:Now, if you want to eat your vitamin D and enjoy something tasty if you're a mushroom fan, mushroom or fungi, which have a lot of different nutrients in them. I personally find them slimy and not too culinarily attractive. But so many people love mushrooms. But the ones that get suntanned and have sun irradiation actually have vitamin D. Herring fresh salmon, halibut, mackerel, cod liver oil you know moms used to give kids a teaspoon of cod liver every day to prevent rickets. But cod liver also has real vitamin A and, again, it can be easy to overdose on vitamin A. So I'm not really one for recommending cod liver oil as the sole way to ingest vitamin D. Egg yolks I think eggs have been vilified. They're a wonderful protein. The egg yolk, yes, has cholesterol in it and cholesterol is the base for lots of hormones. And it also has choline too, which is good for muscle cramps and brain function. Other foods rich in D are sardines, beef liver Beef liver is also rich in iron and there are some vitamin D fortified milks typically dairy, and even some orange juices.
Speaker 1:Vitamin B12. Our specialized women's health fellow, dr Rachel Novick, wrote a really popular column on B12. In fact, one of the most searched for things on our website are why are my B12 levels high, I of course medically worry if your levels are low under 300, because that can affect brain function and nerve function. And she writes can vitamin B12 improve your energy level and mood? Improve your energy level and mood? And it's really a great column on all things B12, which you can read it on speakinginwomenshealthcom.
Speaker 1:B12 is known as cobalamin, which is a water soluble vitamin. It's involved in the red blood cell formation, dna synthesis, neuronal function at the brain and the peripheral nerves. And our body does not make B12. So you have got to ingest it and if you eat foods like meat and fish and eggs and dairy, usually you're going to get enough. So lacto-ovo vegetarians concern me and I typically will check their B12.
Speaker 1:Now B12 is added to some fortified cereals, but a lot of cereals are just a lot of gratuitous simple sugars and carbs and really aren't the most nutritious thing to start your day out with. Now nutritional and brewer's yeast can be a good source of B12. And B12 reduces homocysteine, which is an amino acid in the body that's been linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke and blood clots. Now there have been a couple of studies linked to elevated B12 with a high risk of some cancers, but more data is needed and most of the time when I see very high levels of B12, like above even the assay of our lab, it's generally because someone had just got a B12 shot and then got their blood tested too soon, or they've been drinking a lot of these energy drinks which are really rich in B12, many of them, as well as maybe taking B-complex vitamins for fatigue, and certainly B-complex can improve energy level. I have been using a low dose of balanced B50 for a long time and definitely find that it's helped my migraines and helped my energy level.
Speaker 1:That being said, you can take too much and it can be toxic, and it can sometimes irritate the bladder and you generally have a more concentrated urine. A lot of times, people that are fatigued, though, have other conditions. Maybe they have undiagnosed sleep apnea, they may have magnesium deficiency, they may have hormonal or other vitamin deficiencies. So it's really best to see your healthcare clinician and get assessed before just indiscriminately taking over-the-counter substances. But if you're a vegan, particularly a lacto-ovo vegetarian, then you're somebody who is more at risk for deficiency If you've had stomach surgery or your ileum, which is in your small intestine, has been resected, if you have Crohn's or ulcerative colitis or gastric bypass surgery.
Speaker 1:You're more likely to have a deficiency Older age, over age 60 to 65. Deficiency older age over age 60 to 65. Similarly, persons who are on medications that can affect the GI transit and absorption, such as proton pump inhibitors, colchicine, which is a medicine used to treat gout, to treat inflammation, to treat pericarditis, and the commonly used diabetic medicine, which is also kind of an anti-aging agent, metformin or glucofage, are also at a higher risk for low B12. And if you have low B12, you can have a lot of nonspecific symptoms general fatigue, lightheadedness, dizziness. One of my most listened to podcasts is actually on dizziness and vertigo. Symptoms like paresthesias, like numbness or tingling can be low B12. Your blood count can drop. Your red blood cells can get larger with a higher mean corpuscular volume. There can be mood changes and memory concerns. So, as you can imagine, seeing midlife women with lots of complaints about fatigue and brain fog, even though a lot of times this is estrogen deficiency.
Speaker 1:I will frequently grab a B12 level and you have been listening to the Speaking of Women's Health podcast. I'm your host, dr Holly Becker, in the Sunflower House and we are talking all things vitamin and minerals and we were going over B12. What is the recommended daily allowance? Well, for both adult males and females, it's about 2.5 to 2.4 micrograms, and so if you're low, your doctor may actually recommend a B12 injection. Anything excess is usually excreted into your urine. It's inexpensive. You could also supplement B12 through a balanced B50 complex.
Speaker 1:There's lots of different forms of B12. Adenylcobalamin, methylcobalamin, hydroxycobalamin, and if you're unable to swallow a pill or tablet, there's actually a nice sublingual version that dissolves under your tongue. Or you can spray that dissolves under your tongue, or you can spray, and if you have excess B12, you will excrete this generally in your urine. Now some of the B complexes, like B6 pyridoxine in super high doses, have been associated with nerve damage and neuropathy, and a lot of women with mood-associated hormonal symptoms, with PMS or PMDD, have taken megadoses of B6 and had some neuropathic symptoms, and if you find out that your level is very high, then you should back down or take a pause in your supplements.
Speaker 1:Supplements it's always best to focus on food, and foods that are rich in B12 include beef and clams without the shells, nutritional yeast, salmon, tuna, milk, yogurt, cheese If you didn't hear my podcast last season on all things cheese, that's a fun one Eggs and turkey and temp, as well as seaweed. That's not usually in my diet but, gosh, more power to you if you know how to cook and serve seaweed. Now, vitamin K is a group of fat soluble vitamins that play very important roles in blood clotting and bone metabolism and regulating where calcium goes. Your body needs vitamin K to respond to injuries, as it regulates normal blood clotting, and there's both a K1 and a K2. And K1, you probably are familiar with it's found in those green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables. It's also in dairy products, k2, that is, k2 is also found in dark chicken meat, pork, poultry and fermented foods like Japanese natto.
Speaker 1:And K2 is very important for bone health and heart health. And some good sources of K1, there's a lot more choices really for K1, like spinach and kale, broccoli, swiss chard, brussels sprouts, green leafy vegetables, swiss chard, brussels sprouts, green leafy vegetables, mustard greens, romaine lettuce and some vegetable oils. K2 is a little harder to get Some of the hard cheeses, swiss and Gouda, also blue cheese, dark chicken meat, pork and eggs, as well as, as I mentioned, the richest source is Japanese natto. So for my patients that ingest natto, I don't have to tell them to take K2. For a lot of my other patients.
Speaker 1:I don't I always like to hear kind of a summation of what people eat, because it really does vary not only between the person, but there's lots of different food fads, lots of foods have been demonized. Unfortunately, the recommended daily allowance and the food pyramids kind of totally inverted, and I do think there's a lot of pharmacogenomic differences in terms of how certain people metabolize and interact with different foods and nutrients. And that's one of the things that functional medicine focuses a lot on certain food eliminations, fodmap diets high or low histamine diets. Fodmap diets high or low histamine diets.
Speaker 1:Now calcium we have talked about calcium in so many different podcasts and, generally speaking, this is, I think, one of the most confusing areas for women. They think they have to take a calcium supplement if they have osteopenia or osteoporosis. Calcium is the building block. It's necessary but not sufficient, and really the best way to find out what your calcium balance is is to do a 24 hour urine calcium and if you haven't heard my podcast on kidney stones and calcium and calcium metabolism, that's a good one to go back to.
Speaker 1:There's lots of foods that are rich in calcium, particularly low-fat dairy. Like one cup of milk is 300 milligrams of calcium. Just one and a half ounces of cheese is 300 milligrams of calcium. Yeah, I could easily eat like six or seven ounces of cheese a day and get all my calcium allowance. In fact, you know my son's always carping at me for putting cheese on so many dishes, but I love cheese and you don't have to put cheese on all your dishes, but you do have to pay attention to having three servings a day. Salmon with the bones is good for calcium, so is sardine, broccoli, dried figs, kale. And there are, you know, calciums that are added to different drinks and juices and some of the non-dairy milks for people who cannot ingest dairy, like soy milk and coconut milk and cashew milk and almond milk, very rich in calcium. But if you don't like these foods or can't ingest them, you can simply take a calcium supplement and they're over the counter. I usually like the calcium separate from the vitamin D, because a lot of people buy them both together and then they think they're just getting enough and a lot of times the more things they put into a vitamin or the supplement, the less bioavailability it has.
Speaker 1:Calcium citrate is very well absorbed. You don't need stomach acid to absorb it. It will not increase calcium oxalate kidney stones. The citrate tends to make the urine less irritating for the vulva. We use a lot of calcium citrate or citrated salts for vulvodynia. Calcium is a mood stabilizer. It's our first line treatment for premenstrual symptoms and it can actually help lower blood pressure. Remember, when you take a calcium supplement, you can't absorb more than 500 milligrams at a time, so your food and or supplements do need to be divided. And please go to speakingofwomenshealthcom and get our calcium calculator and it will tell you, generally speaking, what milligram dose of calcium that you should aim for.
Speaker 1:Zinc oh, zinc's such an important mineral. It helps your mood and your immune system and it also helps kill viruses that infect your cells. And I find a fair number of women low in zinc. I've been getting it more frequently, especially with women concerned about their mood or fatigue or scaling skin, and eight milligrams is what women need to aim for per day at 11 milligrams during pregnancy and males men, adult men eat about 11 milligrams and people low in zinc catch more colds and viruses. That's why some of these over-the-counter cold vitamin C zinc lozenges are popular and they do help. They do work.
Speaker 1:But you should eat a diet rich in zinc, and zinc helps with your wound healing and with your vision and with thyroid functions. So some of the top eight foods are lean meat, such as beef, pork, tenderloin, as well as boneless chicken breasts, and my husband's a great cook and likes to make all of those meat dishes. Shellfish Oysters are a very rich source of zinc a little on the expensive side, but go ahead and splurge at an oyster bar. Alaskan crab oh, one of my favorites Is zinc rich, as long as you're not shellfish allergic. Legumes are the vegetarian-friendly source of zinc, like chickpeas and lentils and beans. They also have good amounts of fiber and protein and are relatively inexpensive inexpensive.
Speaker 1:I've got a great recipe for homemade hummus where I just pulverize a can of rinsed chickpeas and add about a quarter cup of tahini and about a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil and some cumin and garlic and paprika and mix it all together and then I usually like to put a little more olive oil and sprinkle some crushed red pepper flakes on it and it's just delicious and easy to make and you can have various types of vegetables to dip in hummus and it's a nice little fast, healthy appetizer. My husband gave me a recipe saying well, if you want it even smoother and creamier, boil the chickpeas and then take off the skin. So I spent like an hour pulling off the skin and it was not any creamier. So I would just recommend the fast, easy way of making homemade hummus. Oh, usually there's some fresh lemon added to the hummus Seeds pumpkin seeds you could add that to your salad or snack and that's good for zinc and magnesium.
Speaker 1:Nuts, cashew and almonds are great sources of zinc. Cashews are also good sources of almonds and they're a heart-healthy snack and they're generally not particularly expensive, although everything seems to be getting more expensive. Easy to store and rich in antioxidants. Dairy contains zinc, greek yogurt, which is also good for your gut. Microbiome Milk and cheese are also good sources. Eggs Eggs are just a wonderful food and they're high in zinc and protein and lots of minerals.
Speaker 1:Choline, good for your muscles and brain, and lutein, good for your eyes. It's very important for pregnancy and fetal development and, as I've mentioned before on this podcast, my daughter-in-law, the mother of Artemis and Beatrice Laura. She claims that Artemis is so incredibly advanced and smart because she really had a lot of choline in her pregnancy. Whole grains Definitely choose whole grain breads and cereals if you're going to eat cereals and again, try to stay away from processed foods.
Speaker 1:Magnesium it's very important for overall health because it regulates blood pressure and blood sugar and it boosts dopamine, helps reduce stress, helps with muscle aches and pains and it reduces migraine. So probably vitamin D is the most common thing I recommend, followed probably by magnesium, followed probably by B-complex, followed by zinc. I mean, of course, I always still emphasize diet, diet, diet, healthy foods first, and low magnesium may manifest as muscle spasms, stiffness, fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite. How much magnesium do we need? Well, there's a variety and a range. Females, it said they need about 310 to 320, but I think it's maybe a little higher for some women. And males need 400 to 420 each day, but there are some patients I have on up to a thousand milligrams.
Speaker 1:Not everybody absorbs it from the gut. You can absorb it through the skin and Epsom salts, which are magnesium. Sulfate salts relax the muscle and sometimes actually stimulate people to have to run to the bathroom and have a bowel movement. Some of the ways you can get magnesium in your diet avocado, and that's a heart, healthy fat as well. Nuts, dry roasted almonds, cashews, dried beans, baked beans, lentils, pumpkin seed, bananas very high in magnesium. Oh, and one of my favorite dark chocolate. Hopefully you listen to my podcast on why women like chocolate, legumes, tofu, whole grains like wheat and oats, buckwheat, quinoa, fatty fishes like salmon, halibut, mackerel, dark green leafies like spinach and good old peanut butter. Now, peanut butter has a lot of oxalate. So if you have calcium oxalate kidney stones, you really don't want to go too hog wild on peanuts, teas and rhubarb and spinach because those are pretty high in oxalates. So, dietary supplements If you're not able to get the recommended daily amount of magnesium, you can start with a 250 to 400 milligram of magnesium.
Speaker 1:400 to 500 is used to help with sleep and prevent migraine, but it can loosen the stool and you cannot take extra magnesium if you have any renal insufficiency or kidney failure. People ask well, which salt? Well, magnesium glycinate seems to be easier on the gut. The magnesium oxide's cheap. So for people with constipation I tend to pick that Magnesium citrate which is in milk of magnesia. If you're trying to get more citrate in your diet because you have calcium oxalate stones, that's another one.
Speaker 1:Copper it's a mineral that's found in the body. It's very important for your blood vessels, connective tissue and energy, maintaining your nervous system and immune system as well as activating certain genes, and it's important for brain development. So organ meats such as beef, liver and shell genes. And it's important for brain development. So organ meats such as beef, liver and shellfish like oysters, and nuts like cashews. I'm so happy that my granddaughter, who had a cashew allergy and was on oral immunotherapy desensitization for a long time and still is and needs to ingest some cashew butter every morning, has finally gotten to the point where she can sit at our bar, where we have nuts out, including cashews, and nibble on a little bite of cashew without risking anaphylaxis. So certainly there are people that do have pretty significant food allergies. Seeds, sesame seeds and sunflowers are rich in copper, and so is chocolate. That keeps coming up as a health food, isn't it? Whole grain products potatoes, mushrooms, avocados have copper. Tofu and chickpeas, and sometimes your tap water can be a source of copper, although this varies, of course, by the source.
Speaker 1:The majority of people usually get enough copper from their diet. From birth to six months, 200 micrograms are needed. It gets up to 220 by age one, 340 micrograms by age three, then 440 micrograms from ages four to eight, then 700 for the preteens. Once you're a teen you're almost up to 900 micrograms. Pregnant women need 1,000. Breastfeeding women need 1,300 micrograms of copper and just general adults generally need about 900 micrograms. But some people don't get enough copper People with celiac disease we have a really great column on our website on celiac disease, people with Mencke's disease. Also, if you take mega doses of zinc, that could drive your copper down and it could lead to inability to absorb copper and copper deficiency.
Speaker 1:Trace minerals of copper are in many multiple vitamins and other dietary supplements. You can get it in cupric oxide, cupric sulfate or copper amino chelates and copper gluconate. Too much copper can cause liver damage and abdominal pain and diarrhea and copper toxicity is rare. But if there's copper-containing pipes that leak into your drinking water, that actually can be a problem. So we check it, sometimes with extreme fatigue or lightened patches of the skin, high cholesterol levels, people with connective tissue disorder, weak and brittle bones, loss of balance and coordination, and sometimes with high levels of copper. We actually use zinc, but sometimes too much zinc can cause too low of a copper level.
Speaker 1:Iron is so important to carry oxygen throughout the body and it's a common cause of fatigue and hair thinning. You need a ferritin iron level of at least 50 to 70 to grow hair. It's important for brain development. It's important for hormonal production. Menstrual cycles, breastfeeding and pregnancy, blood loss with surgery all can cause the average woman to need, instead of eight milligrams of iron a day, to 18 or 20 milligrams a day. So if you're menstruating or not menstruating, if you donate blood to the Red Cross or you don't, there's a lot of different factors to consider as to what you need and it's a good conversation to have with your healthcare clinician.
Speaker 1:Diets can be low in iron and eating iron-rich foods, which include red meat and liver and poultry and leafy greens and nuts and enriched grain products and even eggs. So you can get about 19 milligrams for three quarters of a cup of fortified cereals like cream of wheat, cream of rice, beef in a skirt steak a six ounce steak has 9.3 milligrams, almost your entire recommended daily allowance, depending on if you're menstruating or not. Here comes oysters again. Shellfish oysters 7.8 per three ounce serving. Good old dried apricots are rich in iron 7.5 milligrams per cup. White beans are 6.6 milligrams per cup. Spinach 6.4. One of my favorites baking chocolate 5 milligrams per one ounce square. Quinoa 2.8 milligrams per cup. White button mushrooms 2.7. And squash and pumpkin seeds one little ounce has about 2.5 milligrams. And pumpkin seeds one little ounce has about 2.5 milligrams.
Speaker 1:So some of the signs that we look for to see if you're lacking in vitamins and minerals brittle hair, thinning, dandruff, scaly patches, red bumps on the skin. Restless leg syndrome is commonly seen with low iron and low magnesium. So try to focus on these superfoods, these healthy foods, and one of my popular podcasts in season one was on superfoods, and you could always get levels checked and follow this and keep records of what you're taking. Bring your bottles in and your prescriptions and your supplements in when you see your healthcare clinician and keep records of having had these tests done. And to catch all the latest on Speaking of Women's Health, you can subscribe. It's free Apple Podcasts, spotify, tunein or wherever you listen to podcasts. And thanks so much for listening and share this with your friends. Give us a five-star rating if you would. It helps us move up in the ratings. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time in the Sunflower House. Remember be strong, be healthy and be in charge.
