In 1978, a six-year-old girl was admitted
to the hospital with a serious gunshot wound. A long series of operations to repair her
abdomen were performed and in the process, more than three meters of her gastrointestinal
tract were removed, leaving her unable to digest food for months. She had to survive on a form of liquid nutrition
injected directly into the bloodstream called total parenteral nutrition - TPN. To avoid essential fatty acid deficiency,
fat had to be supplemented to the TPN. The fat this hospital used in the girl's TPN
“meal” came from safflower oil, which is very rich in linoleic acid and low in alpha
linolenic acid. Over the following months, she gradually started
to experience various neurological symptoms - the bottoms of her feet became numb, and
this spread to her lower legs along with a dull pain. She experienced episodes of drastic weakness
and her eyesight became blurred. They then switched the girl over to a soybean
oil supplemented TPN - soybean oil has 10 times more of the omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic
acid compared to safflower oil, and, after the switch, her symptoms slowly resolved. This is one way the importance of omega-3
fatty acids came to light. The funny thing is, this injectable TPN solution
kind of reminds me of the meal replacement Soylent. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart
came up with the idea for Soylent sometime around 2013, when he figured you could just
mixup all the nutrients the body needs in a shake and drink that instead of food. The name comes from the 1973 movie Soylent
Green where thanks to overpopulation, this smörgåsbord of food costs 279 dollars, strawberries
are 150 bucks a jar, and Tuesday is Soylent green day, where you can get the miracle nutritious
cracker-like food made of ... people! We gotta stop-” Don’t worry, actual Soylent
contains no people. This brings up an interesting question: Is
it OK to rely on a mixture of isolated nutrients to meet our body’s needs? I’m not referring to soylent, but multivitamins
and supplements. Supplements have greatly benefited many people,
helping them reach adequate levels of key nutrients, however
Vitamins and minerals are confusing because there are a lot of complex interactions between
them, and when you look at different supplement labels, you’ll see one lists Folate as Folic
Acid where another lists it as L-5-Methyltetrahydrofolate. Then, one might be providing Vitamin A as
beta carotene where another provides it as retinyl palmitate and so on. The point of this video is to educate and
hopefully confuse you enough to get you more curious about supplements so you’ll take
a more organized approach to using them, rather than just taking a multivitamin and calling
it a day. "Want to grow? The calcium in milk helps bones grow." Let’s start with calcium. It’s supposed to be good for our bones,
so we ought to make sure and get plenty of it. What’s great is dietary calcium has been
shown to be inversely related to heart disease and kidney stones. However, the opposite is true for calcium
supplements. Here is Doctor Ian Reid presenting data on
the effect of calcium supplementation on heart attacks. They were expecting extra calcium would be
preventative of heart attacks, and here we do see a nice statistically significant separation
of the two lines of data for subjects on calcium supplements and subjects on placebo. The only problem is… the lines separated
in the wrong directions. Calcium supplementation increased the risk
for heart attack. As for potential mechanisms behind this, In
the 8 hours after you take a calcium supplement, your blood calcium shoots up. Two important consequences of a calcium supplement
is that it raises your blood pressure and the coagulability of the blood goes up - it
makes your blood clot more. The primary risk factors for cardiovascular
disease - obesity, diabetes, smoking and so on are linked to platelet activation and clotting. Calcium supplements are an example of why
it’s good to rely on food for nutrients by default. Supplementing calcium sounds like a good idea
at first, but it took years of data to find out that it’s not. Similar to the earlier story of the little
girl in the hospital lacking omega-3 fatty acids, Choline, found in things like broccoli
and egg yolks, was another thing missing for a while from intravenously delivered nutrition. Unfortunately the consequence of leaving choline
out of IV nutrition was that the subjects often developed fatty liver. It was found in 1995 that choline deficiency
results in fatty liver and that choline supplementation reverses it. Choline wasn’t officially recognized as
an essential nutrient by the Institute of Medicine until 1998. The point here, is that in nutrition, assuming
we have all the pieces to the puzzle has gotten us in trouble - another reason to rely on
whole natural foods by default because they may contain important substances we are not
yet familiar with. There are some caveats though. “If you eat just one carrot every day, that
provides all the Vitamin A you need to survive.” Derek Muller of Veritasium recently talked
about vitamins in a well produced and very interesting documentary called Vitamania. While he may be correct that you can survive
on the vitamin A from 1 carrot a day, it’s very unlikely that this is optimal. This is because carrots don’t contain Vitamin
A but a carotenoid called beta carotene which is a “provitamin” - a substance that can
be converted into a vitamin. According to this book from the Us Institute
of Medicine Panel on Micronutrients, beta carotene has 1/12 the vitamin Activity of
proper Vitamin A - retinol. This study found that the bioefficacy of beta-carotene
from a mixed diet is only 1:21. This is mostly because the beta carotene is
bound up in a hard to digest fiber matrix. Carrots have other carotenoids, but for beta
carotene, you’d actually absorb about 7 times more beta-carotene if you took it suspended
in oil. So why in oil? Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin, you need
fat to absorb and assimilate it properly. So it makes sense that this research from
Ohio state found that avocado is a good way to help absorb carotenoids like beta-carotene
and convert them to Vitamin A. More than 12 times as much vitamin A was formed from carrots
when eaten with avocado than without it. On the other hand, this study concluded that
β-carotene conversion to Vitamin A, even when measured under controlled conditions,
can be surprisingly low and variable. This could be due to genetic differences - In
fact, spitting in a tube has taught me that I don’t convert beta-Carotene very well,
by about 32% or so. This is because of a particular single nucleotide
polymorphism on my BCMO1 gene. One last thing, the absorption efficiency
of carotenoids decreases as the amount of dietary carotenoids increases, so it’s doubtful
that you can just cram down more and more carrots to get optimal Vitamin A levels. Carotenoids like beta-carotene have their
own functions other than just conversion to Vitamin A, so it’s good to have them in
the diet, but you wouldn’t want to rely on the provitamin beta-carotene to meet your
Vitamin A requirements. It would be better to get your vitamin A from
fish roe or cod liver oil, good quality egg yolks, liver, rather than beta carotene. And when you eat carrots, eat them with some
butter or maybe an avocado. Another example of form being important is
when you’re getting your folate. This also comes up in the Vitamania documentary
- it seemed that due to insufficient folate, Kim Robbins was born with a hemangioma on
his back which turned out to be a neural tube defect - effectively a hole in his spinal
column. This leaves him spending most of his time
in a wheelchair. He also has spasm-like back pain give or take
200 times a day. To prevent neural tube defects, mothers need
to have sufficient folate levels before the start of pregnancy. For this reason, In 2009, Australian bread
began being fortified with folic acid. It must be added to all wheat flour for bread
making. A worthwhile effort, it seems, as the rate
of neural tube defects has halved. However, the case on this is not quite closed. As this review points out "a substantial proportion
of women who take folic acid supplements [before pregnancy] [still] give birth to Neural Tube
Defect-affected infants." Dr. Benjamin Lynch, author of “Dirty Genes”
has done an excellent job explaining why this may be the case. You see, similar to our earlier discussion
with beta carotene and vitamin A, “folic acid” is not folate. Folic Acid is synthetic and must be converted
to 5-MethylTetraHydroFolate or just “methylfolate” to be useful - methylfolate the actual vitamin
that gets things done. And a crap ton of work has to be done to transform
folic acid into methylfolate. It was thought that folic acid would be a
great supplement for humans because of studies done on rats showing that their DHFR enzyme,
the first step in transforming folic acid into methylfolate, works very efficiently. However, the efficiency of this enzyme in
actual humans is way lower. The title of this paper describes the human
DHFR enzyme activity as being“extremely slow and variable.” This leads to the DHFR enzyme being overloaded
and a lot of unmetabolized folic acid is left floating around - but folic acid itself isn’t
useful for anything unless it’s been transformed. And it's being transformed at a very slow
rate. The downside of this is not just that folic
acid is an inefficient way to up your folate levels, but that folic acid for some reason
is much more rapidly absorbed than natural folates. And, the folate receptor has a much higher
affinity, a much higher preference for folic acid than the actually useful methyl-folate. "So the folate receptor prefers folic acid
getting all stuck to it than methyl folate. Whoa, that's a huge problem. I prefer methylfolate binding to my folate
receptor, thank you.. I don't want folic acid being stuck on there,
why? Because it doesn't do anything! It's not physiologically active. Folic acid blocks the physiological effect
of methylfolate. You want methylfolate binding to your receptor,
you don't want that crap sitting on it." This phenomenon Dr. Lynch is talking about
is echoed in this paper: “The transport of folates into the brain is carried out by
the folate receptor in the choroid plexus, so the folic acid in the blood might inhibit
the transport of methyl-THF into the brain.” This is a complex topic with much more to
be said, but the point is in order to maintain optimal folate levels, you’d want to avoid
folic acid and get your folate from leafy greens, liver or if you need to use a supplement,
make sure the supplement label says something like 5-MethylTetraHydroFolate or 5-MTHF or
methyl-THF or just methyl-folate. Folinic acid is another option I didn’t
have time to discuss, but see the description for more information on that. One last point is that of balance. I think the Omega-6 to Omega-3 balance has
gotten a lot of attention lately. According to this 2002 paper, “human beings
evolved on a diet with a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids of approximately
1 to 1 whereas in Western diets the ratio is between 15 to 1 and 16.7 to 1.” So The idea of all these new omega-3 products
on the market is to improve this ratio, but it doesn't matter if you get a bunch of omega
3 if you keep getting a bunch of omega-6. Another good strategy would be to reduce your
omega-6 intake. Similarly many other things need to be in
balance. For example, Vitamin A and D. This paper found that when giving turkeys
extremely high doses of vitamin A and normal doses of vitamin D the turkeys had symptoms
of hypervitaminosis A, vitamin A toxicity. But When they gave high vitamin D and normal
vitamin A, they got hypervitaminosis D. But when they got extremely high levels of both
vitamins, no symptoms showed up - the results were no different from controls. There are several other examples of this,
but a great example of how complex this can get is the interactions between the various
minerals. Take a look at this little diagram. This shows up in Passwater and Cranton’s
book “Trace Elements, Hair Analysis and Nutrition” and they call it the mineral
wheel. If you have too much of one mineral, it could
cause a deficiency in whatever mineral its arrow is pointing to. So excess cobalt could cause iron deficiency,
excess copper could deplete zinc and so on. The point of this isn’t to scare you, but
just to have you consider things like : look at your copper intake if you supplement zinc
or consider your potassium or phosphorus levels if you want to correct an iron deficiency
and so on. So, to sum all this up,
Pay attention to the form of supplement you’re getting and how it’s absorbed
Look at how vitamins and minerals interact with each other so don’t throw yourself
off balance And, if you can, try to default to getting
your nutrients from whole foods.
Basically, everything kills you - got it.
We don't know what we don't know. This can be the issue with singular targeted nutritional intervention, the unintended consequences are because of a lack of data. This is why it's important to have a basis in natural means. This is why I follow as simple a diet as possible. I use the daily dozen formula, so I'm getting healthy carbs, protein, fats, nutrients and phytonutrients. I supplement Vitamin D3 in the summer, although there's a lot unknown about D3 supplementation. I may look at UV produced D3 in the Winter instead, 5-6 on a full body sun tan unit etc. People question a plant based diet as unnatural due to lack of B12, Iodine however it's not that is unnatural, it's unnatural and have to be careful using that word, how we produce food now. Intensive farming and hygiene have changed foid production radically. You'd get B12 from faeces, insect pollution and soil originally but this isn't how we eat anymore.
Nature has had millions of years to create the complex synergy in our foods. We're nowhere near catching up with nature yet nevermind thinking we're better. So I advise caution with vitamin supplements. Remember unintended consequences are real.
Humans can eat a wide variety of diets and survive, we're very adaptable. I eat plant based now, because I can't find a better way of eating that exists for me personally. Also there's the environmental impact of the meat/diary industries. This works for me. I'm not interested in trying to change anybody else, that's not my place.
This is a heavily experimental sub, we're all at the mercy of unintended consequences of what we supplement, it's about reward/risk. In terms of supplementation I'll try plant based supplements from now on and some pharmaceutical intervention that I see fit. I try and balance these two almost opposing forces to enhance my life. Due to the overwhelming complexity it's really about finding the whole and not concerning yourself about enhancing the singular which in all honestly you simply have zero control of.
meh a lot safer to rely on vitamins and minerals than pharmaceutical drugs that you can experience disastrous side effects from if you stop taking cold turkey, experience emotional numbness, and a lot of other issues. I can stop taking any of my vitamins and minerals and return to baseline at worst. Pick your poison, etc.
Pointless video. This is why you should ignore most of the bullshit on the internet.
This is not in depth enough. And nobody depends on supplements alone. They are called supplements for a reason. Everyone knows you need a balanced diet alongside supplements, it even says this on every packet of supplements you can buy everywhere.
All this stuff eventually winds up at, "eat a plant based diet, preferably raw vegan", because animals are cute, and chemicals are bad. You then wind up with a bare kitchen with a juicer and a vitamix and standing in line at the checkout counter with 40lbs of vegetables just to get adequate calories to feed yourself.
Whativelearned is one of the most informative YouTube channels out there today.
Reading comments here I assumed that the video itself must be equally misinformed, but some information inside it is actually good. For some reason people got the message that natural is better. Somebody even wanted to buy a "full body sun tan unit". No, it wasn't to disinfect home appliances by mutating DNA in bacteria. It was to make the source of Vitamin D more "natural".
What else is natural? Getting an infection and dying because you don't have antibiotics is natural. Getting an operation without anesthesia is natural. Dying before you're 40 is natural, as is dying before you even get to the first year of your life. Everything else is pretty fucking unnatural, like us vibrating magnetic fields to post messages on this thing called Reddit.
Even in the video itself they sum it up as "pay attention to the form of supplement you are getting and how it's absorbed, and look at how vitamins and minerals interact with one another" not "try to hide from complexities of the world by adopting irrationally reductionist heuristics"
My MIL would approve. She yells at me for taking my multi-vit daily.
When he said "I'm here to confuse you", he was serious. All he did is list a bunch of vitamin data.