What Supplements Should I Actually Be Taking?

A patient came to see me recently with a photograph on her phone of her kitchen cupboard: twenty-three bottles, by her own count, most of them recommended by a different influencer, a different podcast, a different friend who felt better after starting one. In thirty years of practice, across hospital medicine, general practice and now functional medicine, I have never seen patients arrive with cupboards this full, or bills this large, for supplements nobody has actually established they need. That is not a coincidence. It is the result of an industry that has learned social media faster than medicine has.

Why is this happening now?

The global dietary supplement market is now worth well over $100 billion and continues to grow rapidly. That growth is driven by an understandable and reasonable instinct: people want to take charge of their own health. But it is also increasingly driven by an algorithm that rewards a confident claim over a careful one, and a bottle that promises a fix over the rather less glamorous work of asking what an individual actually needs. The problem is not that people want to feel better. It is that a recommendation optimised for watch time is not the same thing as a recommendation optimised for your health.

Can you actually take too many supplements?

Yes, and this is the part the industry rarely mentions. Some vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning the body can store them rather than simply excreting what it does not use. Vitamins A and D, for example, can accumulate to harmful levels when taken in excess. Iron supplementation in someone who does not need it does not simply do nothing. Excess iron can be harmful, and supplementation may be particularly problematic in someone with an unrecognised tendency to iron overload. High-dose zinc, taken for prolonged periods without oversight, can also reduce copper absorption and lead to copper deficiency. Then there are interactions: with medicines, with other supplements and occasionally with medical conditions. But there is another, quieter cost. A cupboard of well-intentioned bottles can become a reason never to investigate what is actually going on: a comfortable substitute for the harder, more useful work of finding out.

So what should you actually be taking?

Probably fewer things than the internet suggests, and chosen for a reason. There is no universal supplement stack that everybody needs. Vitamin D is perhaps the clearest UK example. Because sunlight is insufficient for reliable vitamin D synthesis during autumn and winter, UK guidance recommends that adults consider a daily vitamin D supplement during those months, with year-round supplementation advised for some people. Beyond that, I prefer to ask a different question: what does this particular person actually need? That means considering diet, lifestyle, medications, age and life stage, symptoms and medical history, alongside appropriate testing where it will genuinely inform a decision. Sometimes that might include iron status, B12, folate or vitamin D. In other circumstances, different investigations may be appropriate. Not everything worth addressing has a useful blood test, and more testing is not automatically better. Sometimes the answer is a supplement. Sometimes it is changing the diet. And sometimes the most useful recommendation is to stop taking something that was never needed in the first place. Supplements should have a job. If we cannot explain why you are taking something, what we hope it will achieve and how we will know whether it has helped, we should question whether it belongs in the cupboard.

Why take a personalised approach?

I spent twenty years as an NHS GP and have since worked extensively in functional medicine. I have also taught culinary medicine, because what people eat remains one of the most powerful and underused levers in health. Food comes first. Supplements are there to supplement, not substitute for, a good diet, movement, sleep and the fundamentals of health. Where supplementation is appropriate, it should be targeted to the individual. That may mean correcting a measured deficiency, addressing a recognised increased requirement, supporting a particular life stage or using an intervention for which there is reasonable evidence in the right clinical context. A targeted approach, built around your individual needs, is safer, more rational and usually far more useful than a cupboard of random bottles. It is also often cheaper. Rather than continually adding the latest recommendation, you know why each supplement is there, and when it may no longer be necessary.

Start with the person, not the bottle

This is why my approach to supplementation starts with the individual, not the shelf. If your current approach is a growing collection of bottles and no clear answer for why each one is there, it may be worth looking again at what you are taking, what you actually need and what you are trying to achieve. Food first. Supplement for a reason. Test where testing is useful. And do not confuse more bottles with better health.

If this resonates, get in touch to find out what a properly personalised approach to supplementation could look like for you.