I can understand possibly why we need to take supplements when we first go keto. But our ancestors certainly didn’t have access to these. Isn’t there a point at which you wouldn’t need to supplement?
Our ancestors most likely didn’t have the availability of salt, potassium and magnesium, Especially if they didn’t live near the sea.
You don’t need anything. Eat plenty of red meat and enjoy good health. Sea salt if you like but you need zero pills, sweeteners, or commercially marketed powders.
I agree with Chris but think salt is of importance, especially when adapting to a ketogenic diet. Later on if you’re eating a pure carnivore diet it may not be as crucial especially if you’re eating liver and nutrient dense organ meats along with red meat. But right now it will help you to not feel miserable with keto flu symptoms.
How much you need is completely dependent on your diet and what you’re lacking. On our ancestors, even when they managed to not get eaten by something or starve to death, didn’t have our lifespan. Supplements should be used to first correct anything that our diets aren’t taking care of, then to optimize both our heath and how we feel.
I ditto your sentiments. I often read about our ancestors this or that, but I always have the thought that they had short life spans, all kinds of illnesses, some adjacent group could come by and club everyone to death (ok, I went too far there 
), or - like you said times where groups starved to death. There are some things to learn, certainly, but these are different times, our bodies are not the same bodies, and the food supply is certainly different. Evolution is a constant thing.
I also agree each person is going to need to understand if, and if so, what supplements are needed to optimize what is lacking and/or how they feel.
It was a bit of trial and error for me. And I was never one to take any supplements in the past.
I think once they got through childhood and various infections they probably did…
Agreed, but thanks to supplementation we’re able to fill the gaps of our needs where they couldn’t.
magnesium citrate (150 ml) High Absorption (x2 a day)
apple cider vinegar capsules (500ml) 2 at a time, 3x a day)
digestive enzymes (2 tablets when I eat usually TMAD). This because I have no gallbladder!
Multivitamin/Mineral Supplement Formula for Senior Women (one a day, and I am only 54 but bought the senior one anyway, especially for my bones)
2-3 teaspoons a day of Pink Himalyan salt (I eat it and wash it down with water)
Plus I take my prescription Singulair daily (one tablet)
My gallbladder was removed 25 or so years ago. I’ve never had to take anything because of its removal.
What happens if you don’t take them?
I love the ancestral foods subject! A few reasons some concentrated whole foods supplements (rather than lab processed isolated compounds) are often needed regardless if one is or isn’t “carnivore” or “paleo-keto”:
*Industrial agriculture has depleted topsoil (desertification demineralizes soil, and plants & animals who eat the plants continue that chain of demineralization - esp magnesium). In addition, the overwashing of veggies and/or cooking of them rids them of beneficial microbes that traditional farmers and gatherers used to get by snacking on hand-picked fresh leaves, roots, and fruits.
*The average person has at least 100 industrial chemicals in their blood/organs and breathes daily indoor and outdoor pollution - that’s quite a load of toxins which are taxing to the body and which our ancestors didn’t have to deal with on top of basic food supply. Detoxing requires high functioning processes that pivot on magnesium and other minerals.
*The average person isn’t exposed to the sun in traditional ways (gazing at the sunrise and sunset), and is an indoors creature. Vit D depletion is rampant, esp in midlife female metabolisms according to keto-obgyn Dr. Anna Cabeca - and Vit D affects how minerals are used in the body.
*Modern culture is very stressful for most folks - in ways that our stone age nervous systems and hind brains aren’t suited for. Stress burns up B vitamins and boosts cortisol. Though a great food source of calming B vits is organ meat/offal - most ketoers don’t eat it regularly or at all - unlike our ancestors, who often made soups with fish heads, and treated liver & kidneys as preferred delicacies. So taking it in capsule form can be good for self-care.
*Modern people in industrial culture have had tons of gut disruption from frequent antibiotics and processed foods. Restoring healthy gut bacteria populations via pre and probiotics throughout the 25-30 feet of intestines takes around 3 years according to many experts I’ve read. Our ancestors ate live-fermented seaweed, live-fermented birds and eggs, live-fermented raw yogurt/kefir, live-fermented cabbage, live-fermented mushrooms, and such. If one isn’t making their own live-fermented foods, it can help to supplement with a pro-enzyme like Ginger, or with serious heavy duty prebiotics like SBOs - soil-based organisms.
So, whole foods supplementation can be very helpful for healing - preferably from natural sources like some of the above mentioned food sources. The only commercial supplements I take are weekly D3 (lanolin-based, during months of minimal sun exposure due to intense heat), angstrom mag several times a week, nascent iodine when I’m not eating much seafood/seaweed, and an adaptogen like Ginger (Turmeric is also great, but often more expensive) in capsule form with every meal that doesn’t contain it in my cooking - simply because I’ve not yet gotten around to making my own Ginger pellets. Oh! And I also “supplement” with liver capsules several times a week, because I’ve still not gotten round to eating liver/offal…
I don’t trust most lab-isolated supplements and multivits - though I know that all the LCHF/keto physicians generally recommend high quality artificially created ones. I’m more a fan of whole foods concentrated sources (esp superfoods like Ginger, Moringa, Turmeric - along with raw goat milk when it can be found), and I try to aim to get nutrient density through quality pastured whole foods whenever possible. 
Considering that most of the world’s population deals with food scarcity and malnourishment though, it’s really a very privileged thing to be able to even ponder supplements on top of a nutrient-dense LCHF way of eating though, that’s a salty fact.
I didn’t take them until a little while ago. One night on here, it came up in discussion and my tummy was hard and feeling bloated all the time since Keto; and it seems to be from not having a gallbladder and eating all these fats. Since I have taken the digestive enzymes when I eat, I don’t get that same bloating and really sore tummy that I was getting every time after a meal.
If you are not getting the pain and bloating, then don’t worry about it!. I had mine out in December 2003.
I started keto may be 14 months ago and started using crono early on and for quite a while I was taking 8 or 9 pills for the micros. The goal was to keep all the micro nutrients at or above RDA (for better or worse). I got it done with the suppliments. Today I accomplish that with zero suppliments. I thought that would never happen but it wasn’t so hard after all. The only exception is magnesium which is 90% without pills. My usual meals add up to 50 net carbs, all of that from a very large dinner salad. Fats come from beef, egs, heavy cream and olive oil. Protein from beef, salmon and eggs. Carbs and lots of micro’s from the salad. I make an elaborate olive oil and garlic dressing for the salad (eat your heart out Mr. Newman, RIP)
There are a number of issues, here. Firstly, there is the matter of childhood diseases, and deaths in infancy and childhood would drag the average down. Likewise, accidents were probably less avoidable, a million years in the past, as well as failure to dodge the sabretooth, etc. But there is palaeological evidence of people living to advanced age, if they could dodge the diseases and accidents.
In historical times, several of the tribes living on the Great Plains of North America were notable for the number of centenarians in their populations. This changed, of course, once they adopted the white man’s diet. The longer lifespans we enjoy today, a century and a half later, reflect the fact that vaccinations and antibiotics help children reach adulthood, and medical technology has vastly improved, so things that killed our grandparents are now surmountable. Of course, the chronic diseases fostered by the standard American diet are now beginning to noticeably reduce the life expectancy of the average American.
When you read novels written in the 18th and 19th centuries, bear in mind that the reason the characters worry so much whenever someone is injured or gets sick is the lack of antibiotics. Things really changed with Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. Jenner’s discovery of vaccination happened a long time before then, of course, but it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that vaccines were developed for most of the childhood diseases, and it wasn’t until the late 20th century that smallpox was finally eradicated.
My mother and her father both had to deal with bouts of poliomyelitis, and I still remember how excited she was, the day she was finally able to sign my sister and me up for our vaccinations. Her eldest sister died at age 7 of whooping cough, which children almost never experience these days, thanks to the vaccination for it.
Not much; the gall bladder stores bile and releases it at a controled rate, but bile is actually produced in the liver. Many people on these forums report having no problems eating quantities of fat without a gall bladder, though others report that they have to be somewhat careful to space their fat intake out over the day.
In my opinion, the supplements aren’t so horrible. It increases muscle mass without water and fat and helps you lose weight more effectively. At the same time, it also does not have a negative effect on the body. No more than regular food. I use RAD-140 capsules and everything is good. That helped me train harder and faster, my workouts. The quality of muscle mass is important to me, but simply keto cannot provide me such a result. They really help me, although I go keto. As a result, I get a double benefit from this system, where one complements the other.