Sunday, January 21, 2007

Supplementation

Sorry I've been quiet the past couple of days. Just busy and/or tired. Today's entry will be dull, I'm afraid. No Gratuitous Musings today (though I have a a few in the works, so stay tuned).

I've decided, after a few weeks of CR, that it's time to add supplements to my routine--but just a few. I never knew much about vitamins and minerals because I never really paid much attention to what I was getting from my food. Food labels would have you believe the only things you need to pay attention to are Vitamins A and C, and the minerals Calcium and Iron. Sodium is the only mineral labels report by actual number of milligrams, while the rest just give percentages that may or may not reflect my needs.

Like most people, I always assumed that I was getting everything I needed if only because of the sheer volume of food I was eating (wrong), much of it artificially enriched.

What nutrients have I been lacking?

Like every other aspect of my eating routine, CRON-O-Meter has radically affected my understanding of my micronutrient needs and intake, and revealed some potential problems:
  • Vitamin D: Unless you delight in eating sardines on a daily basis or consume large quantities of fortified dairy products, it's extremely difficult to get adequate vitamin D, and recent list chatter suggests this vitamin is more important (and required in greater quantities) than we have thought in the past.
  • Zinc: I never knew before that men require so much more zinc. It's roughly analogous to a woman's need for iron, and like women, related to our reproductive equipment. But I'm not happy to eat oysters every day (or any day, really...I have not yet acquired the "taste" for these snotty little globs of grayness).
  • B's: I regularly find myself short on various B vitamins, but never the same ones, so determining one that I'm typically short on was impossible.
  • Biotin: While it's extremely unlikely that I am biotin deficient (especially since I've given up on my recent "discovery" of using raw (pasteurized) egg whites in my breakfast smoothies, when I read the list of symptoms, I had to acknowledge that it got my attention: hair and skin problems similar to ones I regularly experience. (I still wonder of pasteurization makes it safe for biotin: cooking egg whites denatures their protein in a way that prevents its binding to biotin, but since the pastuerized egg whites won't "whip up," I wonder if the process also makes them safe for biotin. I don't know how I'll figure out the answer to that one.)

How did I decide which nutrients to supplement?

I reviewed CRON-O-Meter nutrition reports that averaged my intake over the period that I've been doing CR, and looked at which vitamins and minerals were lowest, especially below 80%. This included the following:
  • Various B's (occasionally)
  • Vitamin D (regularly)
  • Vitamin E (occasionally)
  • Potassium (regularly)
  • Zinc (regularly)
Some others that I suspected I was low in were actually quite high on average. The only ones that remained low were zinc, Vitamin D, and potassium.

I decided that it was most important to supplement Vitamin D and Zinc; probably safe to supplement B's with a B complex (just to be sure); and to tweak my quotidian diet to fix the vitamin E and potassium deficiencies, which was pretty easy to do with a little attention and a daily MegaMuffin.

Here, then, are the supplements I am now taking:

  • Vitamin D, 400 IU, from fish liver oil
  • Chelated Zinc, 50 mg
  • B-Complex
  • Biotin, 1000 mcg

I'm interested in any tips and/or advice, and especially if I'm making any big and/or dangerous mistakes here. I'm especially concerned about zinc--is this the best form? What about balancing it with copper--that's something I don't understand very well yet.

It's a learning process, and I want to treat supplements as something very specific and deliberate, rather than the "one a day multi" approach most people take.

4 comments:

Deborah said...

Hi Chris!
Brewers Yeast is great for B's. It has protein and other minerals. It's a little tough to choke down. I hold my breath :)

Raw almonds are good for E.

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Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,

Thou hast no right but to do thy Will.

> It's a learning process, and I want to treat supplements as something
> very specific and deliberate, rather than the "one a day multi" approach
> most people take.

Congrats on doing this carefully, supplementing nutrients that you need based on detailed nutrition analysis rather than just shotgunning everything. Do have a look at teh following for some principles for supplementation:

http://www.cron-web.org/supplements-guide-1.html
http://tinyurl.com/yll8je

... and the products based on this research (whose writeups give much of the above info in more compressed form):

http://tinyurl.com/yzz4gr
http://tinyurl.com/ya26t4
http://tinyurl.com/yeq48v

See my important disclosure here:
http://lists.calorierestriction.org/pipermail/crcomm_lists.calorierestriction.org/2007-January/004955.html

On the specifics:


> * Vitamin D: Unless you delight in eating sardines on a daily basis
> or consume large quantities of fortified dairy products, it's extremely
> difficult to get adequate vitamin D, and recent list chatter suggests
> this vitamin is more important (and required in greater quantities) than
> we have thought in the past.

Yes. 400 IU, however, is really quite insufficient, as is rapidly becoming consensus. Unless you're a chronic sunbather living at a relatively central latitude, pretty much everyone should IMO be taking at least 800 IU of D3 per day.

Also:


> * Vitamin D, 400 IU, from fish liver oil

Jesus -- do NOT take D from fish liver oil! It also contains more than enough preformed vitamin A (retinol/retinyl esters) to considerably increase your risk of fracture.

> * Zinc: I never knew before that men require so much more zinc. It's
> roughly analogous to a woman's need for iron

Mostly, really, it's just larger body size etc. But:

> * Chelated Zinc, 50 mg

> What about balancing it with copper--that's
> something I don't understand very well yet.

Yikes. This much zinc is setting yourself up for toxic depletion of functional copper status. Get a TOTAL (diet + supps) of not more than 30 mg, and try to keep the Zn:Cu in roughly a 10:1 ratio.

> zinc--is this the best form?

No: "chelated zinc" could be any number of things. Citrate is fine; monomethionine is as good or better, but IMO not worth the extra price.

> * Biotin:

First, you should be aware that the current USDA database still significantly underreports biotin intake, because info isn't yet available on many foods.

>... (I still wonder of
> pasteurization makes it safe for biotin: cooking egg whites denatures
> their protein in a way that prevents its binding to biotin, but since
> the pastuerized egg whites won't "whip up," I wonder if the process also
> makes them safe for biotin. I don't know how I'll figure out the answer
> to that one.)

Actually, pasteurization IMPROVES biotin availability. Raw egg whites contain avidin, a substance that binds biotin, preventing its absorption; cooking them deactivates the stuff.

> * Vitamin E (occasionally)

Watch out: nearly all "vitamin E" supplements (including those listed as "with mixed tocopherols") are so imbalanced toward alpha-tocopherol as to seriously deplete the body of other E vitamers, leading to potentially bad health outcomes.

Love is the law, love under will.

-Michael

--
The MPrize http://www.MPrize.org : War Bonds for the Campaign Against Aging! Why I'm on board: http://www.cron-web.org/m-prize.html

April said...

Chris,

I bet we can convince MR to do everyone's supplement program at the March mini-conf at our house!

a