Three Generations and 35 Years of  Expertise in Nutritional Therapeutics

OCTOBER 2026

If you’ve ever wondered whether the person recommending your supplements has actually swallowed them, here’s one perk of shopping at Chase’s Market: I’ve personally tried most of what’s on our shelves. SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine) was overdue. I’ve known its research for years, but I wanted to see firsthand what it did to mood and behavior. Honestly, I was impressed. Within about a week and a half, the lift in mood was clear, steady, and hard to dismiss as wishful thinking. Of all the nutritional tools I’ve used, I consider SAMe the most effective one for mood support. The reason is biochemical, not magical. Your body makes SAMe from the amino acid methionine, and it is the main “methyl donor,” the molecule that hands off the chemical tags your brain needs to build serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When methylation runs low (poor diet, low B12 or folate, chronic stress, high homocysteine), mood often goes with it. SAMe has been a prescription antidepressant in parts of Europe since the 1970s, and the U.S. data hold up. In a 2010 Harvard/Mass General trial published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, adding SAMe to an SSRI for people who hadn’t responded to the drug alone roughly doubled the response rate compared with placebo (36% vs. 18%).

The mood benefits get the headlines, but I noticed something else: my aches eased too. That fits the research. A 2002 meta-analysis found SAMe relieved osteoarthritis pain about as well as NSAIDs like ibuprofen, with fewer side effects, and it may help rebuild cartilage rather than simply mask pain. It also supports the liver, as a building block for glutathione, your master antioxidant, and has been studied for fibromyalgia. Now the transparent part: SAMe is pricey wherever you buy it, and cheap versions are usually cheap for a reason. The raw material matters. Look for the stabilized tosylate form, ideally enteric coated so stomach acid doesn’t break it down before it’s absorbed. The best results I’ve seen come at 1,600 mg a day, typically split into two doses on an empty stomach, with improvement in one to two weeks. A few honest cautions: SAMe isn’t appropriate for anyone with bipolar disorder because it can trigger mania, and if you take an antidepressant, talk with your prescriber before adding it. Pair it with B12, folate, and B6 so your body can recycle it properly. Expensive, yes. But for many people, it’s money well spent on feeling like themselves again.

Flip over a cheap multivitamin and read the fine print. You’ll likely find dl-alpha-tocopheryl acetate, synthetic beta-carotene, ergocalciferol, cupric oxide, and a splash of Red 40 or titanium dioxide to make the tablet look cheerful. None of these come anywhere near a farm. Most supplement nutrients fall into one of four groups. Synthetic isolates are built in a chemical plant, often from petrochemical or industrial starting materials. Nature-identical or bioactive forms are made to match exactly what your body uses. Fermented or “food-grown” nutrients are cultured in yeast or probiotics, which bind them to proteins much the way food does. Whole-food concentrates are simply dried and concentrated foods. The bargain brands live almost entirely in that first group, and the form matters more than most people realize. Natural vitamin E (d-alpha-tocopherol) is retained in the body about twice as well as the synthetic dl- version, which is half a molecule your body doesn’t recognize. Ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) raises blood vitamin D levels noticeably less than D3, the form your skin makes from sunlight. Cupric oxide, the cheapest copper there is, absorbs so poorly that animal-feed nutritionists stopped relying on it years ago, and yet it still shows up in human multis. Synthetic beta-carotene is the cautionary tale. In two large trials (ATBC and CARET), it raised lung cancer rates in smokers by 18% and 28%. Nobody saw that coming from carrots.

So what should you look for? Choose forms your body already speaks: natural mixed tocopherols for vitamin E, mixed carotenoids instead of lone synthetic beta-carotene, D3 rather than D2, K2 as MK-7, and trace minerals bound to amino acids (glycinate, bisglycinate) or citrate. Skip the artificial dyes. Your liver has better things to do. Fermented and whole-food formulas bring along the cofactors, enzymes and phytonutrients that nutrients travel with in real food. In my opinion, they’re also easier on the stomach for people who can’t tolerate a standard multi. A quality multivitamin costs more, and there’s no way around that. But a cheap one that passes through you mostly unabsorbed isn’t a bargain. It’s just very expensive urine.

The pain aisle at the pharmacy looks harmless. It isn’t. NSAIDs like ibuprofen and naproxen raise heart-attack risk within the first week of use, by an estimated 20 to 50%, on top of ulcers, gut bleeding and kidney strain. Acetaminophen, the “safe” one, causes roughly half of all acute liver failure in the U.S., and a 2015 BMJ meta-analysis found it no better than placebo for low back pain. Opioids lowered chronic pain by less than one point on a 10-point scale across 96 trials, and about 1 in 4 chronic-pain patients end up misusing them. Then there’s the irony. In a 2022 Science Translational Medicine study, blocking early inflammation with diclofenac or a steroid made pain last up to ten times longer in mice, and people who used NSAIDs were more likely to still have back pain years later. Inflammation is the body’s repair crew. Most of these drugs either muffle the alarm or trip up the crew.

Nutrition plays a different game. A drug typically blocks one pathway, while the right nutrients work on several, and the best choice depends on what hurts. For arthritis, curcumin matched diclofenac for knee pain with side effects in 13% of people versus 38% on the drug. Glucosamine sulfate slowed joint-space narrowing over three years, and former users had 57% fewer knee replacements. In rheumatoid arthritis, high-dose fish oil added to standard drugs made people about 70% less likely to fail treatment and twice as likely to reach remission. PEA, a fat your own body makes to calm injured tissue, is my go-to for sciatica, nerve pain and TMJ, where it beat ibuprofen. For diabetic neuropathy, alpha-lipoic acid and vitamin B12 (essential if you take metformin) have strong data. Sore after a workout? Tart cherry and curcumin both speed recovery. And don’t overlook topicals: in one trial, comfrey cream beat diclofenac gel for ankle sprains. When pain is severe, my first pick is CuraMed Acute Pain Relief, which pairs absorbable curcumin with high-AKBA boswellia (it blocks the 5-LOX pathway NSAIDs miss). In a trial of 88 adults with acute muscle and joint pain, it matched acetaminophen’s relief starting in about an hour, without the liver risk. If you’re on a blood thinner, check with your doctor first, and never stop a prescription on your own. But if your current pain plan is a bottle of ibuprofen and crossed fingers, we have better options on our shelves.