Vitamin Supplementation in Greenville, SC
Vitamin Supplementation at IHP Greenville. Dr. Hendry, DAOM — functional medicine, root-cause diagnostics, personalized care. Call (864) 365-6156.
The 2015 New York Attorney General testing found that a large share of retail herbal supplements didn't contain the labeled ingredient at all. That's not an outlier — it's the systematic quality problem of an industry without mandatory testing requirements. I stock pharmaceutical-grade supplements from manufacturers with HPLC-verified constituent profiles and third-party heavy metal and pesticide testing. The dose I prescribe is the clinically effective dose from the research literature, not the liability-minimized dose on the retail label. And I don't prescribe before testing — I identify the actual deficiencies first, prescribe what the deficiency requires, and retest at 90 days to confirm the numbers corrected.
How Vitamin Supplementation Works
Supplement prescribing at IHP follows a test, treat, and retest model: (1) identify deficiencies through functional medicine testing; (2) prescribe specific compounds at therapeutic doses from tested professional sources; (3) retest at 3–6 months to confirm correction and adjust dosing. Dr. Hendry prescribes and dispenses supplements from IHP's professional supplement dispensary or recommends specific products from high-quality manufacturers.
Conditions Treated with Vitamin Supplementation
Tested Supplementation vs. the Dismissal That Diet Covers All Needs
The clinical assertion that a balanced diet supplies all required micronutrients is accurate for a theoretical population consuming optimal whole-food diets with intact gastrointestinal absorption, adequate sun exposure, no medication-nutrient interactions, and no genetic polymorphisms affecting nutrient metabolism. In clinical practice, this theoretical patient is uncommon. Holick (NEJM, 2007) identified that even populations with access to diverse diets carry billion-person-scale vitamin D insufficiency, driven by indoor work patterns, sunscreen use, and skin pigmentation variability. A 55-year-old patient on a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) for GERD presents a concrete scenario: PPIs reduce gastric acid, impairing protein-bound B12 release from food and reducing ionized calcium absorption from the duodenum. Their diet may be nutritionally complete on paper, yet they are biochemically depleted. Serum B12 may appear normal while methylmalonic acid and homocysteine — functional markers of B12 deficiency — are elevated (Stabler, 2013). Without testing, the deficiency goes undetected and uncorrected. The clinical approach at this practice is not to assume adequacy: it is to measure, document deficiency or insufficiency, and supply the specific nutrients at doses calibrated to restore target ranges with serial retesting for confirmation.
Research & Evidence
Evidence-based vitamin supplementation begins with laboratory identification of actual deficiency rather than population-average assumptions. Holick MF (N Engl J Med, 2007;357(3):266-281) established in a landmark review that approximately one billion people worldwide carry insufficient 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels — defined as below 30 ng/mL — with clinical consequences spanning impaired calcium absorption, reduced innate immune function, and increased susceptibility to autoimmune pathology. Vitamin D operates not as a simple vitamin but as a secosteroid hormone whose active form, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (calcitriol), binds nuclear vitamin D receptors expressed in over 200 human cell types including macrophages, T-lymphocytes, and cardiac myocytes. Aranow C (J Investig Med, 2011) detailed the mechanism by which vitamin D regulates cathelicidin and defensin antimicrobial peptide production, explaining epidemiological associations between D deficiency and increased respiratory infection incidence. Stabler SP (N Engl J Med, 2013;368(2):149-160) documented that B12 deficiency is insidious in onset, neurologically devastating in consequence — subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord — and systematically underdiagnosed because serum B12 assays poorly discriminate functional deficiency without concurrent methylmalonic acid and homocysteine testing. Folate and K2 present analogous scenarios where population-level insufficiency is widespread but goes undetected without targeted assessment.
Your First Appointment
Bring all current supplements with dosages for review. Dr. Hendry evaluates what you are taking, identifies redundancies, flags any interaction concerns, and recommends additions or substitutions based on your clinical picture and test findings.
Why Dr. Hendry for Vitamin Supplementation
Dr. Hendry's research background and functional medicine training give him the ability to select supplements with the best evidence base and to prescribe them at doses that are both safe and clinically effective.