Supplements, Mushrooms and Adaptogens, with Pierre Haddad

2:30 - Stress and adaptation

What we try to do is adapt to our environment, to our life, to all the events that happen to us.

And sometimes we're going to get hurt.

When we have a psychological injury and we don't seek counseling or pharmacological support, it's like having a broken leg and not putting a cast on it. Our leg will heal, but it may take much longer and heal crooked. By putting a cast on, we align the bones and it heals faster because we can bear it.

It's a bit like helping yourself with, firstly, lifestyle: move more, eat better, be more zen.

It's easy to say and harder to implement, but supplements can help! They're like another crutch to help your body heal from the constant assaults you face in life.

At the cellular level, this is exactly what happens too. We are attacked by ultraviolet rays, by atmospheric and food pollutants, even running is stressful for the frame and muscles. However, our body is designed to adapt and react to these stresses.

Aging is simply that we have less ability to repair ourselves and recover from these constant microtraumas that the body undergoes.

Indeed, each system has its own particularities and there are things that help the system as a whole.

6:15 - How can we know what we need in terms of supplements?

I think it's much more personal. Every individual is unique. Even in response, there are people who are much more sensitive than others to supplements, and it's the same with medications. Doctors always start with a class, the one that most people tolerate well, then they start at the lowest dose and increase, precisely because each person reacts differently.

For example, my wife Chantal is very sensitive to many things, and not only to the beneficial effects, but also to the side effects. So, it's another way to gauge how good a particular supplement is for us. It's really through trial and error, adjusting doses, etc.

7:40 - Vitamin D

Vitamin D is important in our northern regions. We have less sun exposure, and even when we do get sun these days, sunscreen blocks UV rays.

By definition, a vitamin is something our body needs from the outside, because we don't make it. Vitamin D is an exception, since we can produce it from the skin with ultraviolet rays. I think you have to expose yourself to the sun, maybe for 10 minutes, at least a good part of the body, bare arms and face...

8:30 - How many units of vitamin D should we take daily?

There is a controversy.

The Institute of Medicine, which is a joint Canadian and American organization, increased the standards several years ago. Before, it was 800, and now it's 4,000 units per day, the maximum. So, if we already stick to the maximum recommended by these authorities, we will be better equipped than not taking any.

Many consider that this is not enough, including several credible researchers.

So there is controversy. There is no agreement, but there is always caution...

I once responded to a journalist who was reporting on this topic by saying that the harms of not getting enough are so much greater than the dangers of side effects with too much vitamin D. But you'd have to take a lot to have significant side effects.

That said, there may be people who are more sensitive, so it's really important to listen to yourself, to listen to your body.

11:15 - Precautions

I would just add a small caution, because it's good to follow the dosage indicated on natural health products. The NPN (natural product number) shows that it has been approved by Health Canada. The range it suggests: one or two or three tablets per day, don't exceed that. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's harmless. I always say it: it's pharmacologically active.

So yes, there are certain things like vitamin D and Omegas that aren't as dangerous to take too much of, but I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to overdose.

12:20 - Omega-3

This is important, it helps with Omega-3. At worst, it can cause diarrhea a little sometimes, because they are lipids. But these are still small amounts compared to a fatty meal (like fried potatoes with fried food, for example!).

13:15 - Supplements, when you stop taking them

I take several supplements. Since I'm in Ramadan, I fast and stop taking them. I stop for a month.

It's hard to say if the fatigue effect comes from fasting or from the lack of supplements, but hey...

It's also a principle of herbalism to give your body a "rest." I also take supplements constantly to help myself. Taking the crutch off from time to time to put a little more weight on your foot isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you start to feel the effects...

It's rare for the supplements we're talking about to be addictive (because that would also be a sign of addiction). To my knowledge, the normal supplements you mentioned aren't addictive, but maybe it's our body getting used to it when it has less of them. But we feel the benefits they gave us, indirectly.

2:50 p.m. - Intermittent Fasting, Ramadan & Lent

I'm taking advantage of Ramadan to take a break. It resets the clock. Then I'm off again.

It's intermittent fasting. It's interesting in essence too. When I read all the literature around intermittent fasting...

Lent was the same when it was observed by the followers.

There are some people who have difficulty with intermittent fasting. Again, it really depends on what works for you individually.

3:50 p.m. - Intestinal system, microbiota and immune health

Psyllium and fiber are good for the intestinal system and indirectly for the flora. They nourish the bacterial flora. And therein lies the close relationship between our famous microbiota, our immune health, and even the brain.

The more we study the microbiota, the more we see that there is close communication; if we keep our microbiota healthy, it will help. They are also a bit like guardians for the immune system, because they are "foreign bodies," a symbiosis that developed with evolution. So, we welcomed these microbes, which, in a way, do us a service, because they digest things that we cannot digest. But we don't want them to cross the barrier and get into our blood, because that will create problems. That's why there is always mucus to protect us. It's fascinating.

17:25 - Adaptogens & Mushrooms

There are certain mushrooms, your famous mushrooms, that I looked at more closely; I already knew a lot about their activity on the immune system. They have components that resemble the wall of microbes, of bacteria. So, these are molecular patterns that are recognized by our immune cells that line the intestine. They are like sentinels that take the pulse of what is in our intestine. We have cells expressly for that in the wall of our intestine. They have the same molecular pattern, so it's as if it sets off a small alarm: "oh watch out, there may be foreign bodies there." The immune system is alerted, not the big alarm system, but put into preparation. This is what we call immunomodulation, so it stimulates the immune system to better defend itself.

It's kind of the same principle as echinacea and other things we use for colds and flu.

7:00 p.m. - Natural health products to help fight?

Unfortunately, my daughter has been coughing for two weeks. She has viral bronchitis, and the doctors sent her home without antibiotics, since they don't give antibiotics for viruses. Antibiotics attack bacteria, not viruses. For my part, I'm treating her with natural health products because there are things that actually help, like echinacea, among others, to fight and help our immune system defend itself better.

There are several mushrooms that are adaptogenic. I think your formula is really great!

9:00 p.m. - Mushrooms & Adaptogens

They come to rebalance, exactly, and these are the three spheres once again: the immune system, the hormonal system and the nervous system. Each adaptogen will play on these three tables. Sometimes, there are some that are more predominant for the immune system, like cordyceps or astragalus, but that's more of a plant. But precisely, I found it really fun because it's a mixture of adaptogenic plants with mushrooms too.

Reishi, for example, will affect the immune system, but also the nervous system and lucidity. Ganoderma lucidum is the Latin name for this mushroom. It's not very well understood yet, because lucidity isn't something "you stick electrodes in and try to see when the person is lucid or not, what that does in the brain!" It's not easy to study, but that's what is described in traditional herbalism.

22:30 - Synthetic drugs, a bit of history

With the two world wars and the advances in chemistry, medicine, and all that, there was a transition, because if you go back 100 years, 120 years ago, the pharmaceutical companies of the time were natural health product companies. They made extracts, ointments, all kinds of herbal things.

Chemistry developed and we were able to make synthetic medicines. This revolutionized everything and somewhat pushed natural health products aside, rightly so, since they are very powerful, but they also have powerful side effects.

It's very targeted. These are pure molecules that target one or a few systems in our body. So, we can have side effects. We have to add another medication to prevent heartburn, for example, which is caused by certain medications...

25:00 - Continued on medications

There are several conditions where it helps, including schizophrenia or other situations like that where they really have helpful medications.

I actually thought they were going to give my daughter antibiotics because they're also very effective. However, there's antibiotic resistance that we have to be careful about. So we shouldn't take them too often, because bacteria adapt too. They're very well equipped to adapt. They defend themselves against antibiotics, and we have strains that become untreatable and spread throughout society.

25:45 - Antibiotics and intestinal flora

It's a good idea to take probiotics alongside or after a course of antibiotics to rebuild your microbiota. Fermented foods are also very important.

28:00 - Polypharmacy

In fact, there's a lot of literature on polypharmacy and the dangers of it in the aging population. There's concern within the medical establishment. It's not really something to denounce, it's discussed. It's a social concern about the increase in medication use, especially with age. Because chronic diseases come in, then you give one, then another, then another...

We can help ourselves with supplements. For me, as a pharmacologist, these are not equivalents, but they are approaches to help us. So the very important difference with supplements is that they are mixtures of molecules, so they tend to be gentler, and have milder side effects than medications, which are more powerful, and which target things, and which have really significant effects, hence their usefulness and perhaps also their limitation in a certain sense.

29:30 - The supplement approach

The supplement approach is more difficult to study. Indeed, we shouldn't try to dissect... Yes, we do. We try to understand. I did it myself in my research with indigenous medicinal plants, trying to understand which component could contribute the most to the effect. Our studies showed us that it was a group of molecules, most of the time. It's very rare that we can say that it's a single molecule that gives the effect; it was a grouping, sometimes three, sometimes eight...

This is a bit of the experience we had. So we talk about synergy between the different components that are in medicinal plants, in mushrooms, etc.

So, it's an interesting approach too. It's another tool to have in our wellness kit, and to help our bodies age better.

32:00 - A word about St. John's Wort

St. John's Wort, which is good for mild to moderate depression, is well known for activating and increasing our enzymes, which will break down medications and other natural health products more quickly. It is perhaps the natural health product that you should be most careful not to mix with other supplements.

(We don't have St. John's Wort at MJ)

* This live transcript is intended to help you easily find the topics that interest you and the information you are looking for. Maison Jacynthe disclaims all liability. All information contained on this page is not intended to replace justified allopathic treatment or to override the expertise of the medical profession. It is up to each individual to take charge of their own health, to inform themselves, and to make the necessary changes to improve their condition. Therapeutic supervision by a qualified health professional is obviously suggested.