Welcome to another edition of the Doctor’s Note where we talk about what’s on our minds when it comes to your health. This week I want to talk about vitamins, in particular, my personal line called Doctor Rogers’ Vitamins.
Our mission at Performance Medicine is to cultivate a community that focuses on preventative health as a means to prevent disease. Optimal Health (achieving the balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual well-being) is our target goal which can only be reached by addressing root causes: WHY you are not sleeping. WHY you are tired. WHY you are depressed. WHY you are hurting. Those answers are what led me down the path of functional medicine, and deeper into the world of vitamin supplements.
Let’s begin there…
To Take Or Not To Take Vitamin Supplements
Twenty years ago I would have told you you were nuts to take as many vitamins as I now consume on a daily basis. Note: 30 per day before I started formulating my own brand. Now 10 per day due to my formulated Super Vitamin and some of the other combination vitamins, which I will unpack later in this Note. It is true that the best way to get the essential nutrients (vitamins and minerals) in your body is by eating a healthy diet: plenty of vegetables, grass fed meat, wild caught fish, and drinking purified water, but most of the time that doesn’t happen.
Vitamins and minerals are micronutrients that your body needs to prevent diseases. Vitamins were discovered in the days of rickets and scurvy. Today they are used on a much wider level. They perform hundreds of other roles in the body, such as:
make bones strong
heal wounds
build your immune system
convert food to energy
repair cellular damage
Vitamins are different from minerals in that vitamins are organic, fragile compounds that can be easily broken down by heat, air, or acid. Minerals are inorganic and hold on to their chemical structure. Minerals in soil and water find their way into your body through plants, fish, animals and fluids you consume. It’s tougher to get your vitamins from food and other sources because of cooking, storage, and simple exposure to the air (which can inactivate the compound). Adding essential vitamins to your diet can raise “normal” health to an “optimal health”, which helps to prevent disease.
This is why I encourage my patients to take vitamin supplements, and why I formulated my own line of vitamins called Doctor Rogers’ Vitamins.
Freedom To Formulate
My interest in making combination vitamins came way before my interest in Freedom To Formulate. I was taking A LOT of vitamins (different kinds, from different manufacturing companies) and to be honest, it was expensive and time consuming. Way too many pills! Plus, a lot of companies put fillers in their vitamins, with no expiration date. That bothered me. The other thing is that most of the vitamins you see advertised don’t have nearly enough milligrams of the vitamins themselves.
Then I met Freedom To Formulate. Justin DeTurris and Pete Duenes founded the organization in 2012 with the goal of allowing healthcare practitioners the freedom to formulate customized, individualized nutritional medicine. They have their own manufacturing facilities in Sisters, Oregon.
Freedom To Formulate goes way beyond the normal requirements for compounding:
They select the purest raw ingredients. When the raw materials get there, they put them in warehouses. Quarantine them. Test and retest them, to assure its purity.
They only use European and domestic sources (full transparency of where the raw materials come from).
There are no dyes, no benzoate, no propylene glycol, no lactose, no soy, no corn starch, no dextrose.
All supplements are 100% chemical FILLER FREE. No silicone dioxide or magnesium stearate (those are the ones to steer away from). If they have to use a tiny amount of filler to put the capsule in a cellulose capsule, they use microcrystalline cellulose, which is the one I would prefer. Again, it’s such a negligible amount in the vegetarian capsule. I think it’s very safe.
They use 3rd party labeling and lab testing on 100% of their supplements.
They are fresh and dated. In the big stores with lots of large boxes sitting on shelves, you cannot be sure how long vitamins have been sitting there.
Note: Vitamin companies I’ve used in the past have started putting more fillers in their vitamins. Patients started bringing this to my attention, and I totally agreed with them. Too many fillers!
Personalized Nutrients is an NSF GMP registered facility that demonstrates a commitment to dietary supplement quality and compliance with U.S. GMP requirements. This is the highest level of rating in which Personalized Nutrients received an A+. Note: Only 1% of companies that make supplements have an A+ rating.
Doctor Rogers’ Energy Complex
As you can tell, I’m a big believer in vitamins. If you ever see any studies that say vitamins aren’t effective for certain conditions, it’s probably because the vitamin is not using enough milligrams to make it effective. The bottle may say there is D in it, or C in it, but it may not be enough to make a difference. I wanted to make sure that my vitamin formulations had the right combinations with the right doses.
For example, my Energy Complex formula doesn’t just have CoQ10 in it. It also has PQQ and Taurine as well. Everybody knows CoQ10 is for energy. I’ve taken it for years. CoQ10 really stimulates your mitochondria to produce more ATP, the ultimate source of energy from the mitochondria. PQQ stimulates the formation of more mitochondria. The latest studies show Taurine to be great for energy and longevity. Note: I don’t recommend drinking Red Bull, but Red Bull does have Taurine in it, which is the ONLY good thing about it!
With the Energy Complex, you are getting three great ingredients for about the same price that you would pay for CoQ10 by itself. See Doctor Rogers’ Vitamins Price Comparison PDF download at the end of this Note.
Doctor Rogers’ Stress Relief
My stress formula is our number one best seller. Not only does it have L-Theanine (100mg), but also Ashwagandha (125mg) AND Saffron (88.5 mg). Note: Saffron Extract (nicknamed the Sunshine spice) is one of my all time favorite supplements recommended for relieving depressive symptoms and lessening anxiety symptoms. Saffron is also used for weight loss because it takes away cravings. Saffron coupled with the amino acid, L-Theanine, and the medicinal herb, Ashwagandha, makes for great stress relief!
Doctor Rogers’ Super Vitamin
The next best seller is probably the Super vitamin. This one is loaded! Freedom to Formulate told me it’s the most packed multivitamin that they’ve ever formulated.
Vitamin A (3000 mcg)
Vitamin C (1000 mg)
Vitamin D (5000 IU)
K2 as MK7 (180 mcg)
Vitamin E as d-Alpha Tocopheryl (67 mg)
Thiamine (100 mg)
Niacin (100 mg)
B6 (100 mg)
Methylfolate (1700 mcg DFE)
Methyl B12 (1000 mcg)
Calcium (130 mg)
Iodine (100 mcg)
Zinc (30 mg)
Selenium (200 mcg)
Copper (1.5 mg)
Manganese (4 mg)
Chromium (200 mcg)
Boron (6000 mcg)
Lycopene (1000 mcg)
Horsetail (20 mg)
It’s loaded. In my opinion, it’s the best multivitamin out there. Note: Take 3 capsules once a day with food.
Doctor Rogers’ Healthy Happy Hair / Ultimate Aging Formula / Immune Complex
Once I got my feet wet with formulating, I explored more possibilities that soon became realities:
Doctor Rogers’ Immune Complex – with Vitamin C (1000mg), Vitamin D (5000iu), Folate (1700mcg DFE), Vitamin B12 (1000mcg), Zinc (30mg), Quercetin (500mg), NAC (400mg), and Vitamin K2 (180mcg). Note: This combination came about from what I learned during the Covid epidemic. I take the Immune Complex when there’s a lot of sickness going around or I start to feel bad (which is very rare). Some people take this daily, which is fine.
Doctor Rogers’ Healthy Happy Hair – with Vitamin A (630mcg), Biotin (10000mcg), Zinc (20mg), Copper (2mg), Inositol (50mg), Horsetail 7% Silica (30mg), SawPalmetto Fruit Extract (100mg), and AnaGain Nu (100mg). The game changer here is the AnaGain Nu.
Doctor Rogers’ Ultimate Aging Formula – a unique formula with a combination of Nicotinamide Riboside (300mg), Astragalus (300mg), and Apigenin (100mg). I take this one at night because the apigenin helps me sleep.
And then came more ideas…
Doctor Rogers’ Full Body Magnesium / Omega Max / Berberine Max / Vitamin D3 5000 + K2 Max
In the same way I used Personalized Nutrients to formulate my personal brand of vitamins, I used another company called Xymogen to white label their products under my brand name: Full Body Magnesium; Omega Max; Berberine Max; Vitamin D3 5000 + K2 Max. Note: Private label manufacturing is exclusive to one brand while white label manufacturing may be sold by multiple retailers. Xymogen is a family-owned health science company located in Orlando, Florida (Xymogen.com).
Doctor Rogers’ Full Body Magnesium has magnesium L-threonate (the only form of magnesium known to cross the blood-brain barrier) complemented by highly absorbable di-magnesium malate and magnesium lysinate glycinate chelate. This formula is designed to boost the brain’s magnesium level. Magnesium is vital to supporting brain health and promoting healthy nervous system functions. Note: Unless you are constipated, you really don’t need magnesium citrate.
Doctor Rogers’ Omega Max has MaxSmil® monoglyceride fish oil that has a three times greater EPA+DHA absorption rate than an equivalent dose of other leading fish oils. Through the use of maxSimil patented lipid absorption enhancement technology, the fish oil is absorption-ready and can be directly assimilated in the intestinal tract for maximum benefit. You only have to take one pill of this. Note: This is an excellent method for delivering omega-3 fatty acids, especially to individuals with digestive, pancreatic, or gall bladder challenges.
Doctor Rogers’ Berberine Max features dihydroberberine (DHB), a high bioavailable metabolite of berberine with demonstrated benefits for blood glucose metabolism. Berberine naturally occurs in several plant species used extensively in traditional Ayurvedic and Chinese herbal practices. DHB is the natural bioactive form of berberine.
Doctor Rogers’ D3 5000 + K2 is formulated for those who need a more substantial presence of vitamin K2, delivering 180 mcg per serving. The combination of highly bioavailable and bioactive menaquinone-7 (MK-7) with vitamin D3 provides complementary benefits for bone and cardiovascular health.
Closing thoughts…
I like to know where my vitamins are coming from, how they are made, and what’s in them. Freedom To Formulate has given me the perfect opportunity to be hands-on in the process! I’m not a vitamin salesman. I’m a medical doctor that supports adding vitamin supplements to your diet. Creating my own brand was a way to get the best of the best vitamins in less pills, making it easier and more affordable for people to get what they need.
For more information about Doctor Rogers vitamins, check out these handouts below. As always, do your own research.
Stay healthy. Stay educated.
Till next week.
