Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 192 // What Consumer Reports Got Right and Wrong About Supplements for Hashimoto's

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192 // What Consumer Reports Got Right and Wrong About Supplements for Hashimoto's · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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There's one part of Lori's story from last week that has replayed over and over in my head.
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And that is the part where she said she struggled with an eating disorder for
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so long until she went into treatment for it.
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And there, when she went into treatment, they gave her an amino acid that she had been deficient in.
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And it was like everything changed in her brain.
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And all of a sudden, everything was working, working how it was designed to.
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That has just stuck with me because I think there's a lot of different things
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in our lives, micronutrients or even macronutrients, that when we fix one thing,
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then our body can work as it was designed.
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I just love that example that she shared last week.
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I would love to know, have you looked into amino acids anymore since you listened to that episode?
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And today, we're going to continue on that theme of talking about supplementation,
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and does it actually help?
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Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. This is where you will find
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clarity and simple, sustainable strategies to feel better.
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I wanna help you figure out your root causes.
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My name is Esther Yunkin, I am a registered nurse. I know how exhausting it
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is to live with fatigue, brain fog, and the ups and downs of Hashimoto's, and that is why I'm here.
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I'm here to cut through the confusion and to give you practical steps.
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Support your body, calm your immune system so that you can regain your energy
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and feel like yourself again.
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So I went to the library the other day while my kids were in archery practice for school.
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And as I walked towards the fireplace, because it was a cold day,
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as I walked toward the fireplace, I passed their magazine rack.
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I don't usually look at the magazines, but I looked at the covers because,
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you know, they're interesting, right?
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And I saw one from Consumer Reports, and it was our guide to popular supplements.
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Like, oh my goodness, I want to read this because they promised we reveal what
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works, what doesn't, and what can be dangerous.
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Now, I know that my perspective is a little bit different than the conventional
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Western perspective, and I feel like Consumer Reports is pretty mainstream in
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that way, so I wasn't sure what I would find.
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So I sat down next to the fireplace warmed up and I read this and definitely
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the expert that they interviewed for this article.
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His perspective differs from mine and the research that he has looked at differs
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from the research that I have looked at, which is always interesting.
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There's so much research available, which is one thing, honestly,
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that makes Hashimoto's and thyroid stuff kind of and health in general,
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because you can almost always find a study to cherry pick something from to
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prove what you want to prove.
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So I checked the magazine out so that I could talk to you about it on the podcast.
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And when I got home, I had an email from a scientist group. They work for a
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nutritional supplement company, and they just published an article also about
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nutritional supplements.
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And theirs is titled Why Nutritional Supplements Matter.
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So both articles, the Consumer report article and the one from the scientists
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say that a lot of people take supplements.
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Consumer reports said that it's highest in adults 60 and older.
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A quarter of adults 60 and over use four or more supplements.
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The other blog article, the research article from the scientists said in 2026,
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so this is a newer survey even than Consumer Reports,
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it said that 76% of survey participants take supplements every single day and
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44% reported increased use in 2025 compared to what they did in 2024.
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Participants, they used supplements for a couple different things.
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General health was number one.
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Immunity support, energy support, stress and mood support, and weight management
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were all in there as well.
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There's a couple of things to know about this supplement world,
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and Consumer Reports points this out very well. It's basically a quality control problem.
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It's not regulated like a pharmaceutical.
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You, at least I, when I started taking supplements, I thought they were like a pharmaceutical.
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You know, when you take a set amount, milligrams of an antibiotic,
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you know that it is that amount of antibiotic.
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So I figured supplements were the same thing. If you go to the store and you
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get a vitamin C supplement, it's going to have exactly what it says on the bottle.
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Because that is what I knew, that was my lens of taking or giving,
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you know, pills through the hospital and through the clinic.
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You give a pill and it is exactly what it says.
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However, supplements typically in the past have been regulated more like food.
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So if you order a pepperoni pizza, it might have five pepperonis on it,
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it might have 50 pepperonis on it, and both of them are considered a pepperoni pizza.
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That's what the supplement industry used to be regulated as.
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They have tightened up now, but even now in 2026, there are quality control issues.
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Consumer Reports specifically says that their tests have found that unexpired fish oil.
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Tablets or capsules are sometimes rancid. I saw a study about 10 years ago that
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found, and this one was from Australia,
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it was either 80% or 90% of the ones they tested were already oxidized of fish
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oil. So that's disgusting.
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If you're taking fish oil, you're doing it for the benefits.
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You don't want the risks.
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We want more omega-3s in our diet.
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And if we don't have enough omega-3s in our diet, so we take a fish oil.
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If it's already oxidized or if it's already rancid, then it's doing the opposite of what we want.
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We are not getting the benefits from the omega-3s. We're actually getting harm.
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But it's not just fish oil supplements. Consumer Reports also listed that protein
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powders and shakes commonly contain lead.
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In fact, more than two-thirds of the protein powders we tested contained more
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lead in a single serving than Consumer Reports experts say is safe to have in an entire day.
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The Consumer Reports briefly mentioned gummies. I would like to see more about
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gummies because what I have read is that gummies generally are more sugar than
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anything and the amount of actual supplement in them is negligible.
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Maybe Consumer Reports has covered that. I just haven't, you know,
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walked to the library when they have that magazine, when they have that issue.
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But that was the last thing I read about them and I haven't looked them up for
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quite a while because I don't give my kids gummies and I don't recommend gummies to anybody.
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However, when I volunteer up at camp, I am taking care of, you know, 150 to 300 kids.
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And the biggest supplement that their parents send with them is melatonin gummies.
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I give out so many melatonin gummies every single night because that is what kids take.
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And, you know, as I'm handing them out, I'm inwardly cringing.
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I'm like, this is just, you know, sugar to spike your blood sugar before you go to bed.
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I don't know if there's any melatonin in it. I don't know if the amount of melatonin
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is going to work, but whatever, we're just going to give you what your parents said to give you.
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That's a whole other tangent I could go on.
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So Consumer Reports does give seven different supplements to consider,
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and then some that could be harmful.
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Another thing about supplements is there are so many ads.
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All over, not just social media, but in magazines, in your friends, like everywhere.
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I feel like everybody has an opinion about what supplements you should be starting,
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should, you should be starting for different things.
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So somebody hears you have Hashimoto's or you have low energy or you have brain
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fog or you're struggling with your weight and there are different supplements
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for each one of those things that somebody might say, oh, this is going to be
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really helpful. Why don't you try this.
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I have looked, well, I have been looking at supplements since about 2002.
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So that's a lot of years. And when I first started out, I was coming from my
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nursing school background. I was freshly out of nursing school.
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And in college, I had been taught that you can get everything you need from
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your food. Well, I learned that our food is depleted.
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We're not getting what we used to get from our food just because of the soil,
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the minerals in the soil, the farming practices, things have changed.
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And while the food is going down in different micronutrients,
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our needs are going up because of the stressors that we're under.
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And when you're under a lot of stress, then your micronutrient needs for different things increase.
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So I learned that starting back in 2002.
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And so I do have a flowchart of what are the most important supplements to start with.
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Episode 83 is all about that. If you go to the show notes, I have a link to
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the blog post where you can actually see the flowchart. You can see it all at a glance.
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Why I put different things, you know, why is this foundational?
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Why is this extra? What do you think about that? It's all in episode 83.
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So head over to the blog or the podcast. The podcast is embedded in the blog
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post. So head down to the show notes and click that link. So
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The seven supplements that Consumer Reports says to consider is number one,
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calcium, because most of us are deficient.
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The second one is iron.
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You don't want to get, well, you know what? I'm going to say you don't want
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to get too much iron, but that goes for everything. You are Goldilocks. You are Goldilocks.
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You don't want too much. You don't want too little. And all supplements need
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to be in that Goldilocks range.
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What you need for your Goldilocks range might be different from what somebody
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else needs because supplements are a supplement. They're a supplement to your diet.
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So if you are getting a lot of one thing in your diet, then you don't need a
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lot of that supplement or any.
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You know, if you're not getting anything from your diet of one micronutrient,
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then you need more of that supplement.
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You are Goldilocks. So iron, they do say, you know, basically, don't take too much.
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Don't take more than 45 milligrams of iron a day unless you're under a doctor's supervision.
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Magnesium is another one they list. Magnesium is one of the biggest deficits
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in the world for micronutrients, for minerals.
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And magnesium runs so many things.
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It says here in the Consumer Report article that magnesium is involved in muscle
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contractions, nerve function, energy production, and blood sugar control.
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Absolutely true. I believe that I have read it's in over 300 different functions in the body.
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And Americans don't get enough. So magnesium, you can get it through food like
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beans, whole grains, nuts, fruits, dark leafy greens.
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And if you're not getting enough, then that's where supplementation comes in.
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Vitamin D is the next one. I did have to laugh a little bit because it says
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exceeding 4,000 international units a day can be dangerous. Well, I mean, that's true.
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Vitamin D, like everything else, you need to be in a Goldilocks range.
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However, for vitamin D, you can't feel if you're low or if you're high.
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You do need a blood test for that one.
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And to get you up to the ideal.
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Some doctors will tell you to take way more than 4,000 international units every
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day just to get you up to the ideal range.
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And there is a chart, if I remember, I will put it down in the show notes, of how to get up.
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During COVID, this was really big because vitamin D levels were one of the biggest
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indicators for how somebody was going to do with COVID.
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The higher your vitamin D, the better the outcomes.
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So one of the goals for those reading that kind of research was like,
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we need to get people's vitamin D up as fast as possible.
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Personally, to maintain my level between 80 and 100 is my goal for my labs.
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I take 4,000 international units, five days per week.
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That keeps me right at that amount.
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For some people, like when I was breastfeeding or pregnant or both,
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I had to take way more because I was not only giving me my vitamin D,
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but I was also providing that vitamin D for the baby. So it's really vitamin D.
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You do need to check your labs and you need to respond accordingly.
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The next one is multivitamins. Okay. And then the one after that is probiotics.
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So here is where their expert and I completely differed or their experts, they have multiple.
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In the multivitamin, they say, this part I agree with, nobody has a perfect
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diet all the time, so taking a multivitamin to fill any vitamin or mineral gaps
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seems like a smart, quote, insurance.
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But the science isn't clear-cut. Now, I do agree with that. That's why we take
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a multivitamin, is to fill those micronutrient gaps.
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They go on to say that there are not really any benefits, and if there are any
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benefits, they're so minor that this particular doctor does not recommend multivitamins.
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I disagree with that.
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For example, selenium. I've mentioned it a bunch over the past couple of months
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because that's when I first learned why we recommend selenium to people with thyroid problems.
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It's because for anybody, thyroid problems or not, you need selenium for your
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body to convert the T4, which is the inactive form of thyroid,
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to the T3, which is the active form of thyroid.
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If you don't have enough selenium, your body can't make that conversion.
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If your body can't make that conversion, your cells can't like turn on.
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They don't have the ignition switch
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to use that or to have the thyroid hormone tell the cell to turn on.
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We need selenium. If you're not getting enough, where do you get it?
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You get it in your multivitamin or you can get another selenium,
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actual selenium supplement.
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I get mine in my multivitamin because I don't eat enough Brazil nuts.
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You can have two Brazil nuts every single day, but it's not just selenium.
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We could go through every single micronutrient and I could tell you this is
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what you need for optimal body function, for your cells to work,
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and these are the foods that you need. However, some foods, you just need too many.
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Some micronutrients, you need too many foods to get that.
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I made a slide for one of my webinars a while back, and I talk about protandim
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NRF2 quite a bit because when you turn on that pathway, then your body starts
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to make more antioxidants like catalase and glutathione and superoxide dismutase.
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You don't have to remember those words. So one little herbal tablet,
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which is five herbs, protandum NRF2, I take it every single day.
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It is equivalent to 400 oranges every single day.
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One protandum NRF2 turns on that NRF2 pathway in your body to create so many
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antioxidants that in order to neutralize the same number of free radicals that
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your body does when the protandum tells it to turn on, you would need 400 oranges every single day.
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Or if you like broccoli better than oranges, great.
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You need 500 cups of broccoli every day.
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I don't, I can't eat that much. How about blueberries? I like blueberries better
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than oranges or broccoli.
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You would need 110 cups of blueberries every single day.
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Or, you know, even just vitamin C tablets. You would need 120 vitamin C tablets.
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And that is just all to do the same work that your body naturally does when
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you turn on that pathway with the Protandim NRF2 tablet.
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Like I said, I do that every single day because that Nrf2 pathway is so powerful in your body.
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Okay, back to consumer reports.
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So multivitamins, I disagree with what they said. I do believe that
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the benefits outweigh any risks. There's not really any risks to a multivitamin.
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Some of the companies make really bad ones. I've talked to people with a colostomy or an ileostomy.
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So that's like a hole in your gut.
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And so the things come out closer to when you eat them.
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And they have had different supplements that they've tried. And it came out,
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one of them said, some of the brands come out even with the little,
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like the stamp still visible on the supplement.
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So that's obviously not okay. It's not dissolving and it's not working.
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But other brands are good. So look for a good brand.
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I use Fullscript for supplements if I'm not getting them from LifeVantage,
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which is where I get that Protandim NRF2 and the other activators.
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Probiotics is another one that they talk about here in this article.
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And again, it says that evidence supporting the routine use of probiotic supplements
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is weak. Well, here's the thing.
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If you look at maybe all in general, maybe, but I've read SuperGut.
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I did a couple episodes about that, about the book.
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And a lot of what he talks about in that are probiotics, specific bacteria in your gut.
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And then he teaches you how to, you know, make different yogurts and different
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fermented foods that have specific strains because they help.
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If you're not getting the probiotics that you need from your food,
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that's where supplementation comes in.
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And supplements, if they are good quality, they really do help.
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On the other hand, supplements can be a huge waste of your money and they can cause problems.
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So if you're taking low quality supplements or if you're taking supplements
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that counteract each other, some supplements in one a multivitamin,
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they will have two different supplements or two different micronutrients that
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fight and one of them will like disable the other one.
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You have to take them at separate times. So I do look for supplements that have
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like an AM and PM because I don't want those nutrients fighting.
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I want everything that I take, everything that I pay for, I want it to work in my body.
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So I specifically look for AM and PM or one that doesn't have things that are
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fighting. and I also look for good quality.
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But supplements, it is an industry where you can just keep seeing more and more
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and more like, oh, this is really good.
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And this is, you know, helping to solve a problem that I am struggling with.
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And so you just keep adding more. I think that is one of the biggest dangers
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of supplements is that you can just keep looking for that next magic cure and.
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Supplements are not a magic cure. Supplements are to supplement what your diet is lacking.
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And the activators that I use, those are to tell your body to do what it's supposed to do.
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The amino acids that Lori was talking about last week, those come from protein.
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And if you're not getting enough protein, or if your protein is not supplying
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the right amounts of the amino acids that you need, then your body and your
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brain are not going to be functioning well. So if.
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In summary, I guess I would say supplements have a place and they have a time.
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I feel like they are very beneficial, especially to people who have holes in
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their diet, which is everybody,
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or people who want to turn on the pathways that have slowed down as they've
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aged, like the protandem NRF2 that I take every single day.
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I also take the protandem NRF1.
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If you go to the link down in the show notes, you'll see I have links to what's
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called the dual synergizer.
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It has both the NRF2 and NRF1. Those are just two different pathways in your body.
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The NRF2 turns on the pathway that works with antioxidants, making your body
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or telling your body to turn on antioxidant production again.
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The NRF1 is energy. It works on the mitochondria in your cells.
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And if you struggle with energy, well, then you want more mitochondria and you
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want the mitochondria working effectively, right? So I take both of those every single day.
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I have like cut back on the Brutannum NRF1 for a little bit as I was,
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you know, balancing my budget.
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And I noticed a huge drop in my energy levels.
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And so I was like, oh, well, clearly my body just isn't turning on a little mitochondria.
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It's not producing enough energy when I'm not taking it. And it's just herbs.
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There's no caffeine. It's not anything.
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It's not a stimulant. It's telling your body to do what your body was designed to do.
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And supplements do another portion of that, which is giving your body the ingredients
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to do what your body is supposed to do.
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So overall, I thought the entire magazine for Consumer Reports was interesting.
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I thought the specific article about popular supplements was also interesting,
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and most of it was pretty accurate.
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I do disagree with their experts that a multivitamin isn't helpful and probiotics aren't helpful.
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I disagree with that because I have read research,
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that indicates otherwise. I would love to know what your perspective is on supplements.
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Do you take some? Do you take a ton?
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One person I saw on Facebook a while ago, she said that she was paying,
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I want to say she was paying $500 to $700 a month for supplements.
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And that is one of the reasons that I made that flowchart. Go down to the show
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notes, head over to episode 83, where you can see exactly how I prioritize different supplements.
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You know, if your budget is $0, I have three different things to do for zero dollars.
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If your budget is tiny, I have that. If your budget is unlimited,
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you know, I go all the way to the top.
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Like, what is the extra stuff, the fun stuff?
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But I would love to hear your perspective on supplements, what you take.
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Come over to the Health with Hashimoto's community over on school, and let's talk about it.
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