How well does your body transport oxygen from your lungs to your muscles?  Does it digest proteins and utilize carbohydrates as effectively as it should?  Has your athletic performance started to decline?  Do you frequently feel fatigued or have difficulty recovering from physical or mental stress?  

Posing any one of these questions to your doctor might get you a standard, serum chemistry profile as a general screen to rule out disease.  And while insights from this type of laboratory testing can be helpful, they don’t provide any direct or relevant information about the basic, physiological processes that drive your potential for health.

At Core 4 Nutrition, determining the connection between your biological well-being and your functional performance capacity is our specialty.  Through the use of a series of unique assessments—all performed at home with a simple finger stick, saliva, or urine sample—it’s possible to identify and restore your body’s most essential nutrient needs.

I have been asked a number of times, “What’s so special about the Core 4 assessments? Can’t I just do a few extra tests the next time I go to my doctor?”  

Why Supplement Programs Fail

I was recently speaking to a coach who regularly shares the Core 4 Nutrition Program concept with his clients.  He told me that while many of his athletes were enthusiastic about getting started, others were skeptical—one of the most common symptoms of MLM (multi-level marketing) product let down.

I also spoke to three athletes who simply didn’t “believe” in taking supplements, citing a “healthy diet” as a panacea for their nutritional needs.

Unfortunately, the nutritional supplement market is too often tainted by expensive, yet ineffective, products that invariably over promise and under deliver.  After having spent a large sum of money on magic solutions that never really materialize, many users of nutritional supplements become disillusioned.

But those who have adopted an anti-supplement stance—based on a bad experience, disbelief, or misinformation—are missing the proverbial boat.

As a physician specializing in sports performance nutrition, I know two things:  Even the “healthiest” and most well-balanced of diets fall short when it comes to satisfying the human body’s nutrient needs.  And that the correct combination of the right supplemental nutrients taken in the proper amounts can have a dramatic impact on improving both cellular health and functional fitness.  During the past few years, I have amassed thousands of laboratory results to support these conclusions.

Nutritional supplements can work.  And they can work very well.  When they don’t, there’s a reason—or reasons—why.  Typically, a supplement program will fail when:    

Low Vitamin D: Like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

If you've been reading my posts, you already know that an optimal vitamin D3 level will strengthen your immune and metabolic systems while improving your muscular performance and recovery capacities.      

A recent study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition has shown that vitamin D3 is even more important because it prevents the onset of chronic disease and actually increases the human lifespan.  Researchers found that raising serum vitamin D3 levels above 50ng/ml in those who were deficient reduced their disease mortality rate by 20 percent and increased their life expectancy by a full five years.

To put these findings into perspective, consider this:  Having a low vitamin D3 level carries the same health and life expectancy risks as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for 15 years! ...