Supplement Happy

Hello - i can't help but notice post after post after post here talking about supplements - almost like one would talk about what they eat in a day. it kind of concerns me - only in that it seems so widespread - like it's some kind of group philosophy. Is that the case here? I could understand it if one were severely malfunctioning/missing organs....or just had incredibly limited taste for a variety of nutrient-rich foods. On top of that - for a site so conscious of the idea of inflammation, i wonder how common it is to talk here about the potential of supplements to be inflammatory and unphysiological. On top of that - if many here have digestive problems, how confident are they that they are even absorbing much of what they're spending money on? At least food would be a cheaper waste.
I'm sure this has been brought up before - i just had to speak up about this glaring issue.

I agree

I just think they can boost things along a bit more for quicker results

Experiment. maybe you need them . maybe you don't.

It's the very same as the fitness world and their muscle building and fat loss supplements. If these people spent more time on eating properly, getting into the gym, and receiving proper rest then they'd have more muscle and, more money. It's insane some of the muscle gaining stacks I see posted on boards.

For hair loss, it's not much different. In fact, I think hair loss can be simplified in almost an identical way:

Bodybuilding: Exercise, nutrition, rest.
Hair Loss: Scalp Exercise, nutrition, rest.

Now for both, there are non-natural solutions to speed up your progress. For hair loss the answer is obviously finasteride. If you're on it, and putting in the same work as your all-natural peers, you should be making far more gains. Supplements are a luxury. Maybe buy some melatonin to aid you in the rest portion but most everything else is entirely optional because you should be getting most everything from your diet.

Anyway, the above is entirely my opinion, and I know some truly believe in supplements so I'm sure they'll chime in on their side. For diet, it's such a gray area, but I truly believe that eliminating wheat is one thing we can all do to improve our health, and our hair.

You will find discussions about every diet theory somewhere on this board. Do a search. Paleo, vegan, Ray Peat, Perfect Health diet, GAPs. It's all there. I think the discussions just ran their course.

Here's what I think

Use them temporarily to get yourself to a level of normal health

then maintain normal health, with lifestyle

If you can get a nutrient from the diet, it is always optimal to do that. Hands down. We are not full in our understanding of how nutrients and non-nutritive elements interact in the whole matrix of a food and how that looks in the human body. Logic alone tells us that we evolved consuming more complex food stuffs and we are adapted to these more complex structures, enzymatically. That does not suggest isolated nutrients aren't beneficial, but I believe there is something more happening at least synergistically between vitamins/minerals and the greater structure of the foods they are inside of.

But we do have to consider that foods today are not the foods they were for the parents of our parents. The quality of the food (the entire food chain, not just plants) is pretty much completely determined by soil. I consider it its own organism. We've been systemically destroying soil for a long time, and lo and behold, the whole food chain is weaker. When you start compromising the bottom, its a domino effect straight up to the top, even moreso at the top really.

So I believe supplementation of core nutrients and minerals is just a form of food technology in today's world. It fills in holes in the diet that today's plants and animals aren't. I think we should rely on whole foods where we can get quality sources, but in cases where we know a certain nutrient is missing (iodine for example), its a good idea to supplement.

I imagine a world a few centuries from now where wee are no longer eating food that looks anything like what we do now. I imagine us at a point where we are culturing huge amounts of bacteria to produce raw amino acids and carbohydrates and we're all eating this uniform kind of sludge. Kinda like that stuff from the first matrix movie.

101 has a good point.

It's really sad to think sometimes, how supplementing is now necessary for optimal health.

The best examples that come to mind would be selenium (essential for glutathione production), silica (essential for connective tissue), chromium (essential for eyes and glucose metabolism, prevention of liver problems), iodine, essential for hormonal balance/production), sulfur (detoxification, connective tissue, immune function), zinc (immune, mood, hormone regulation) just to name some.

Only NPK is placed/return back into the soil (not the right kind) and leaves the plants with serious mineral depletion. Even many organic foods lack nutrition, as few farmers put minerals into their soil.

Genetics are largely altered by a lack of nutrition.

Getting beyond just the basic foundational supplements (minerals), if these are not at optimal levels, other natural treatments will be limited in their scope and function.

even though the nutrient value has depleted, does that mean that it's not enough? Many nutrients we need can come from animals alone - and correctly-fed/treated animals are easier to come by than nutrient-rich soils for most. Even if it was proven that we can't get enough of the nutrients we need from produce today, we would need a readily accessible way of measuring the exact amount of whatever supplement we are needing throughout the day. Supplements open up, i believe, a larger problem than nutrient-depleted food. With that said, i do take K2.

My interest in human health actually started with a fascination in plant health. To get a real, hollistic understanding of how human health exists in nature, you've gotta start from the ground up. I was turned onto this idea of eco gardening - now a topic with much interest - by some of the things I read by Reams and others.

You can't really talk about human nutrition without an eye toward plant nutrition, and you can't talk about that without an eye to the soil.

Modern farming has a yield focus and they'd rather stop to pick up the dime than step over it to pick up the dollar. The modern fertilization paradigm emphasizes replacing anions and cations in the soil, without much regard for promoting an actual diverse environment in the soil. But feeding synthetic nutes actually compromises the bacteria in the soil. Give a plant enough NPK, it will stop sending sugars to the roots to feed the bacteria that normally make these things available from insoluble forms in the soil. We trick the plant into thinking its doing fine. But it isn't. Eventually the soluble synthetics get tied up in the soil and become unavailable to the plant.

But then what happens? Plants show deficiency, then vulnerability to pests and disease. Well, nature has a perfect crew for eliminating unhealthy plants: disease and insects. But we circumvent that too. We spray chemicals on the plants to keep nature's garbage crew from killing the crops. We are growing plants that nature would kill, but they aren't killed. You're eating unfit plants, and without our technology, it would quickly make you unfit too. Without nutrient "fortified" foods. Instead of eating these fortified foods, we instead choose to supplement vitamins and chelated forms of minerals. But its still not optimal, as I said before I believe there are synergies I think happen in the whole matrix of a food. Chemical cofactors and antioxidants that are supposed to be present with the nutrients we want. Usually the things that are necessary come as "packets" in the food they exist in.

So you end up with nutrient deprived, unhealthy plants. That feeds animals which are then nutrient deprived. Those are meant to feed you. See how the deficiency goes right on up the chain? And it magnifies each time. But then we develop technology so we have to fortify our foods with artificial nutrients just to make them do anything for us. But like CS was mentioning, this is genetics. Its altering our evolution. Nutrient deficiency alters genetic expression which has been shown (especially when it comes to mitochondria and metabolism) to be HERITABLE. This is epigenetic derangement happening across generations from poor farming practices. Saving human health starts with farming.

We develop all of this technology just to plug the holes we put in our own ship right from the start, when we could have farmed properly. Created a proper environment in the soil and fortified the entire food chain. Because bottom lines in the modern business atmosphere make people step over a dollar for a dime.

So you can't uncouple the idea of nutrient supplementation from things like plant and animal health. The reason you need to supplement the nutes CS mentioned is because plants (and the animals that eat them) are devoid of them. That means you can't just get them from livestock. They're tied up in soil and the mediators (bacteria) are gone.

And this also begs that we talk about the bacteria in your gut. Your gut is the analogy of the rhizosphere (soil and solution and bacteria/fungi near the roots) for plants. When life became ambulatory, it took the soil environment with it, just inside their intestines. Just like plants require bacteria as mediators, to make certain minerals available to them, so too you need bacteria to metabolize things in your gut. Its a complex but very important relationship. But just like we do with plants, we kill those bacteria and imbalance them with poor food and antibiotics. So when you are thinking about diet and supps, you have to also think about your gut environment. Else, its like trying to get a plant to just eat what you throw at it. It doesn't work that way. Bacteria and fungi make it all happen.

But as far as a practical solution is concerned, we're between a rock and a hard place. The best plan would be to grow your own plant food. In properly built and amended soil. It would ultimately be best to also raise your own livestock, but for many that is impossible.

You see, when we handed over all of these tasks to other entities (meaning growing our food for us) it freed up our time to pursue all of these other areas of industry, and that got us where we are today. Without these centralized, mega-businesses, we'd all have a lot more of our time and resources tied up in planting and raising our own food, like it used to be. But there's the rub. At the same time that would send us all back a few hundred years, it would also be more ideal for out health. So we've currently (stressing currently) got this tradeoff. We are able to go spend our days working jobs that help make people money, and not have to spend our daylight hours tending a farm.

But that also means most people can't raise animals. To get these we can find good farms, where animals are raised humanely and organically. But we also spend more for this.

We have options, but they all have costs. We either take full control over everything that goes in, meaning full control, which involves farming everything we eat. But that will cause you to forego other opportunities. Or we go with the sort of capitalistic, specialization paradigm in which we let mega-farms provide food to us. Then there's the middle ground. We eat commercial food but supplement that with the kind of stuff we talk about here.

You supplement nutrients based on what you are reasonably likely to be deficient in. There are consensus data for the levels of vitamins and minerals our body requires out there. They aren't hard to find. If you can supplement to within this range, you are likely to be more healthy. But again, I don't think this is optimal. Optimal would be from whole food. But we have to weigh pros and cons. Is the marginal benefit of farming everything you eat (and the associated opportunity cost) worth it, or would you rather supplement so as to keep your resources freed up to pursue other "missions". Obviously not everyone wants to be a farmer today. And that's a luxury that comes at the cost of placing your food needs in the hands of others.

I personally think these things are kind of cyclic. We're at the peak of the cycle for non-self-sufficiency. We've handed over all of our survival factors to other producers. But I think it will eventually lead to problems, and lack of trust, and a desire to be more self-sufficient, that we'll get back to a more community-based style of living where we (and perhaps a few neighbors) are farming our own food for smaller communities. I'm on a tangent but I find this all interesting, especially now that there is legislation that effects our ability to do this.

The Farm Bill actually prevents agricultural collectives. You can't get more than 13 households (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) together and grow plants communally. Scary stuff if you ask me. I like living in the US less every day.

I have had a realisation .

Nothing works if you are hypothyroid.

No supplement, therapy, shampoo, oil, lotion, gel, etc. They will only give minimal results.

And I have tried a lot of supplements.

iuyyighghghgkh wrote:I have had a realisation .

Nothing works if you are hypothyroid.

No supplement, therapy, shampoo, oil, lotion, gel, etc. They will only give minimal results.

And I have tried a lot of supplements.

There are many conditions that pertain to this, not all forms of hypothyroid.

One important message in general is that foundational nutrients are often necessary to either maximize a treatment protocol or in some cases for them to perform at all.

A good example of this is how the interaction of toxins and nutrients affect each other.

In numerous threads over the years there has been some good discussion of the importance of minerals. Vitamins do not work without minerals. Also, toxins such as mercury affect zinc levels, Lead affects magnesium levels, and various other toxins (cadmium, arsenic, etc) also affect nutrients in kind. Building up some of these nutrients can take time.

I have that found conditions do not respond to supplements until the primary infection condition is resolved. Everyone is truly different. This is part of the reason why MPB is not easily resolved by a specific protocol/regimen.