I love supplements, but I don’t like swallowing a pile of pills in a day. I have some friends and clients that really struggle to swallow pills at all. Most kids won’t swallow pills. And then we have many clients and community members who are so sensitive to new substances that a whole pill of something might give them unpleasant side effects.
What’s the common solution to all these issues? It’s supplement powders and liquids! In this blog, I’ll cover why supplement powders and liquids are a great way to get well-absorbed nutrition in a controllable dose.
1. The Trouble with Pills
A. Trouble Swallowing
As you’ll learn in my eBook, The Top-Down Guide to Digestion, the inability to swallow well may be neurological. You also may produce too little saliva to swallow pills, which can be neurological or a side effect of medication.
Children will generally not be able to swallow pills. One option for kids is to open capsules and fix them into applesauce or smoothies. But there are also many liquids and kid-friendly drink mixes I share below.
Sometimes supplements get overlooked for children. Children can develop nutrient deficiencies just like adults due to soil quality issues, convenience foods, restricted diets due to food sensitivities and picky eating. Common nutrient deficiencies in children are folate, B12, iron, vitamins C, D, E, zinc, and calcium.
“The lack of sufficient amounts of micronutrients affects health, function, and physical and cognitive development throughout the life cycle. Many diseases and morbid conditions have been described to result from nutritional deficiencies. These include developmental defects, such as birth defects, physical and cognitive development delays, increased risk of infectious diseases, as well as increased risk of poor health in adulthood.”(1)
We love seeing kids as clients in our practice, as long as they are willing! You can learn more about our options on our Private Coaching page.
B. Pills Not Absorbing
Even if you can get a pill down, you may then get nauseous from it, or not absorb it well. The reason for nausea, usually, is that the pill is concentrated nutrition or ‘medicine’ and it’s intense for the body! It’s not the way food and wild herbs would be delivered.
Some people have an iron gut and can take a handful of vitamins even on an empty stomach. If you have a queasy stomach, take your pill-form supplements with meals. I definitely need my multivitamin with a meal. I once had to get off a bus before my stop to throw up my vitamins!
You may have heard that supplements can become “expensive pee.” While this is somewhat true, it’s not all bad. Water-soluble vitamins, like vitamin C and the B vitamins, cannot be stored, so it’s normal to pee out what you cannot use that day.
C. Poor Digestion/ Inflamed Gut
Is your gut lining able to absorb the components of your supplement? While leaky gut gets a lot of attention, an inflamed gut is also a problem as the inflammation at the outermost layer of the intestines does not allow for nutrition to absorb into the bloodstream.
What you’ll also learn in my free Top-Down Guide to Digestion is that fixing digestion is complicated. I would start with a digestive enzyme with each meal and our Healthy Gut Starter kit, which includes MegaSporeBiotic and MegaPreBiotic. If you’re looking for where to buy megasporebiotic, we are one of the top five sellers in the country!
But if you can’t swallow pills, and gut healing is slow, I suggest you try some of our liquid and powdered supplements listed later in this blog.
D. You’re Super Sensitive to Supplements
Lastly, let’s talk about supplement sensitivity. This usually develops after multiple toxin and infection exposures and often goes hand-in-hand with multiple food sensitivities.
If you are supplement sensitive, you’ll often need to open a capsule and just swallow a fingertip’s worth of the ingredients!
The nice thing about liquids and powders if you are sensitive is that you can control the dosage with less fuss and mess.
2. The Advantages of Liquids
To get supplements to absorb well, you can take some short cuts. Let’s look at a few ways:
A. Topical Supplements
You may have tried topical magnesium, glutathione, pain cream, or a topical bioidentical hormone. Topical preparations can be easier to take and, if formulated correctly, can be highly absorbable. (2)
One topical preparation I usually use weekly is castor oil. You can learn more about castor oil packs for detox and gut health on our blog.
B. Liposomal Supplements
Liposomal formulation is a powerful way to help substances absorb. An example is Pure PC by Quicksilver.
“As a drug delivery system, liposomes offer several advantages including biocompatibility, capacity for self-assembly, ability to carry large drug payloads, and a wide range of physicochemical and biophysical properties that can be modified to control their biological characteristics...Encapsulation within liposomes protects compounds from early inactivation, degradation and dilution in the circulation. Liposomes are generally considered to be pharmacologically inactive with minimal toxicity, as they tend to be composed of natural phospholipids.” (3)
C. Liquid Supplements
Liquids are simply nutrients suspended in water. This means that you don’t need to break down a dense tablet, potentially causing nausea or poor absorption, and you don’t have to swallow a horse pill! (4)
D. Powdered Supplements
Powders are just meant to make liquids by mixing them with water, so they carry all the same benefits as above.
E. Tincture Supplements
Tinctures are a classic way to prepare herbs that I really love. As a student, I worked in a herb store that sells tinctures all over the country!
Tinctures are traditionally prepared in alcohol, but sometimes they are prepared in glycerin. If you cannot be exposed to alcohol, look for glycerin tinctures or drop your tincture preparation into boiled water and it will burn off the alcohol.
Our Biocidin tincture is glycerin-based and is a top-seller. It’s a great product to have on hand for stomach bugs and flu and we use it in many of our gut protocols after GI-MAP testing.
3. Liquids & Powders in Our Own Shop
We offer a wide variety of liquids and powders. In some cases, there is no liquid or powder available. In these cases, it’s best to open the pill or capsule and empty it into applesauce or a smoothie.
Detoxification
Mi Detox Electrolytes: Quality electrolytes for deep nourishment and hydration, paired with bonus ingredients for daily detox, energy, and immunity!
ACZ Nano : this is a new binder- zeolite spray we are carrying, especially for kids and sensitive clients.
ACG Glutathione Spray: This product is absorbed in the mouth and supports detoxification and antioxidant status.
Liver Health: Also new to the shop, Liver Health is a tincture that’s gentle enough for kids and can prep the body for further detoxification.
Oral Care
Dentalicidin LS Mouthwash: Use this for dental infections and a healthy oral microbiome.
Dentalicidin Toothpaste: This is a unique multi-herb, therapeutic toothpaste.
Digestion
Biocidin Liquid: This multi-herb tincture addresses fungal and bacterial infections in the gut as well as biofilms.
MegaMucosa: This powder soothes GI irritation and grows the protective mucosal lining of the gut.
MegaPre Fiber: This powder supports the growth of friendly bacteria. Best paired with MegaSporeBiotic (this is a pill you’ll have to empty into water, smoothie or food).
Immune Support
ACS Silver Nasal Spray: This this product for travel/cold season and existing nasal infections.
Biocidin Throat Spray: This is a throat spray version of the Biocidin herbal formula to kill germs in the back of the throat.
On sale now!
We are having a sale on all 10 of our ‘pill-free’ products through 1/1/24. Start the year off right in pill-free health!
If you have questions about supplements, watch this video where I take live Q/A questions surrounding how to take supplements!
Do you dislike pills? What are your tips and tricks?
Bridgit Danner, LAc, FDNP, is trained in functional health coaching and has worked with thousands of women over her career since 2004. She is the founder of Women’s Wellness Collaborative llc and FunctionalDetoxProducts.com.
Check out her easy 5-Day DIY Detox Guide here!
The thought of a coffee enema might leave you in shock, but it’s actually a practice that has been used for thousands of years. I’ve seen the correct implementation of coffee enemas truly transform energy, gut health, antioxidant status and more. Learn the right way to do a coffee enema!