feeling better CAN be just a supplement away

Of course, that's not ALWAYS true....  ;-)  ...but it seems to be helping me this week.

Before i went out of town the last time, i ran out of cod-liver oil.  I placed an order for some caplets of the fermented stuff, and when it arrived i stuck it in the fridge and forgot about it.  I was resolved to eat my weekly liver and salmon, and get more sunshine, so why did i need to use the caps?  Mistake.  I can be so stupid sometimes!

When my husband is at home, my eating (not to mention drinking) is less disciplined.  Then, the climate has been dragging its feet, delaying the sort of weather i expect to see in spring.  Distracting stressful details of everyday living left their irritating effects, and i felt dragged-down, exhausted, and uninspired.  I was making sure to get my carnitine, pregnenolone and iodine, and trying harder to include two caps of epimedium every day, but my energy was NOT improving.

Digging around the back of the refrigerator the other day, i found the CLO bottle, and ... three days (doses) later i'm starting to feel a little more human again!  Ye gods, does it make a difference.  Synchronicitously, George sent me more vitamin-A info (THANK YOU!!!)  That bloody stuff is SO VALUABLE to me, either in the form of CLO or beef/chicken liver....  I obviously don't absorb it worth a damn from anything else!

I become so annoyed with myself -- when i learn things quickly and easily, i tend to retain the information rather poorly.  "Forgetting" the importance of vA:  only i could be so dumb!

Maybe i should stitch up a sampler, frame it and hang it in the bathroom, reminding myself of what supplements are actually crucial to my well-being.  MAYBE that would impress it indelibly on my faulty brain!

... and liver led to vitamin-A reading

My energy has been SO phenomenally better recently, well ... i just HAD to look at this gift-horse's teeth! :-D  I googled "vitamin a and energy" and hit the jackpot.

I read (in an blog that doesn't deserve quoting because it won't let me copy a single PHRASE to paste here) that in the FASEB Journal there was an article about retinol's role in ATP production.  AHA!  Then a short paddle around the PubMed pool revealed another wealth of information -- the author has done a LOT of work on mitochondria, our favorite organelle!  ...Okay, okay -- they're ALL important....

It's going to take awhile to read and digest this information, but the starting-point is here:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19812372 and the takeaway is this -- low retinol results in bare-minimal energy.

I also googled the factoid that 45% of people don't convert carotenes to retino's adequately; all in one place i got the (uncited) number i was looking for, PLUS material for thought.

Some people may not absorb adequate carotenes from the diet due to digestive problems and some people, even those with adequate thyroid activity, seem to have some difficulty converting the carotenes to the active form of vitamin A.  In one study, up to 47% of British women were unable to adequately convert beta-carotene to vitamin A.  The problem may be even worse in some populations.*

Am i the only one who goes on point (the hunter-bitch that i am) at the notion that SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST NOT DESIGNED TO LIVE ON AN ANIMAL-FREE DIET?  Some people do not convert this ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL nutrient from the form in which it's offered in the modern diet!  Every time i see the title "foods that provide vitamin A" followed by a list of friggin' VEGETABLES (which have NO retinol content) i want to erupt.

But no time to read today!  I'm teaching a class in tatting to a couple of dozen ladies at the Chatillon-de Menil House tonight, and i still need to print my hand-outs and collect my examples.  :-)  Later!!!

________
 *  see, i LOVE to give credit where it's due!  it's the writers who are so friggin' scared that somebody's gonna STEEEEEAL their work that they make it really difficult to quote them AT ALL....  oh well -- this quote is from www.drlwilson.com/ARTICLES/VITAMIN%20A.htm

supplements "as needed"

When i go out of town, my supplement-taking becomes a lot less organized.  It's a pain to have to pack  all those little bottles -- they take up a lot of space which means they have a train-case of their very own.  I can't always spread them out at my destination (if i stay in one place more than a couple of days), which makes my taking them more haphazard.  But when i leave some behind at home, i see pretty clearly which ones have a strong impact on my well-being.

At home, they're ranged on my side of the bathroom counter with the contact-lens solutions, deodorant, salt container for the neti-pot, electric toothbrush and scented candle -- quite a lot of clutter!    But they're also organized by time-of-day when they're taken, so i don't have to seek for the first-thing-in-the-morning bottles, and the midday take-these-together items are easily identified.  I use my comb as a divider between those i've already taken and the ones i haven't.  If i choose not to use a particular supplement today, i turn the bottle upside-down as i put it to the left of the comb.  I "have to" do things like this -- i have so vivid an imagination that sometimes i wonder if i DID take those antihistamines or just THOUGHT about it....

Being systematic about my supplement-taking has helped to define which nutrients are really necessary, and some of the conclusions are surprising.  After my thyroid glandular and the iodine and selenium, i find that the most obvious things i need to pack are the IRON and the BETAINE-HCl!  The latter is an "emergency" supplement -- indispensable when i'm so drained that my stomach doesn't work properly. My absorption of iron from foods is obviously so poor that without the supplement, taken on an empty stomach in company with selenium, C and B12, the amount of hair i shed is directly connected with my depletion.  I see NO correlation with shedding and copper, though balance of the two minerals is theoretically essential.

The "as needed" part is where things get tricky.  I "know" that cod-liver oil (or capsules of it), K2, acetyl-carnitine and CoQ10 are beneficial, and i KNOW that magnesium and zinc are essential, but i don't feel their effects much if at all.  I take them in modest quantities daily.  Carnitine i'm convinced is a good addition, but like vitamin C is a behind-the-scenes "plus" rather than a star on stage -- if i skip a day or two, i don't expect to experience a big difference.  Tyrosine is so potent a stimulant as well as a provoker of tremors, i'm treating it very gingerly these days.  If circumstances make me need to pour out my energy, i have no doubt that it is a good thing, but for an ordinary day i find it winds me up too much -- rather than improving thyroid function and boosting dopamine, it seems to prefer to take the highway to adrenaline, and i tend to secrete that a lot already.  The mucuna seems to be an antidote to tyrosine's action as an upper, balancing the catecholamines.

The pregnenolone arrived yesterday and i've let a 10mg sublingual melt in my mouth twice already -- i don't notice any reaction yet, but i'll keep you informed.  In my mid-life reduced-hormone state, i may find that getting used to it then dropping it again might show me its effects more clearly; that's a sure test for the iron.

[sigh]  The hoops i jump through, to try to function like a normal person...!!!  The young and "whole" -- that is, most paleo bloggers -- don't have a clue how fortunate they are.  And it's not like i "brought it on myself with poor choices."  :-P- - -  ...How do you blow a "razberry" using emoticons?

supplements (and foods) i missed

Since i got back home from my trip to NOLA and Houston, i've been trying to realign my nutrient intake to what i found optimal before.  It certainly has been interesting, but also complicated by my husband's pleasure in eating out, and the low energy which came with that damned head-cold.

One thing i can state with confidence is that EATING OUT = OMEGA-6 OVERDOSE.  Unless one eats nothing but wild-caught seafood while dining away from home, the 6:3 balance is totally gone.  And as my favorite bloggers taught me long ago, excess omega-6 + fructose OR alcohol = an unhappy liver.  Kids, an unhappy liver is a REALLY BAD THING.  ;-)

How to make one's liver happy again?  Eat those yummy saturated fats, preferably wrapped up in grass-fed ruminant flesh, or as coconut oil.  When we eat in, no matter which of us cooks, the balance is acceptable (with the addition of cod-liver oil).  J made another meatloaf, a crust-less quiche, his wonderful cauliflower gratin, and some miscellany; i made lots of coffee, bread from the Paleo Comfort Foods book, a pot of oysters-rockefeller bisque ... and various restaurant suggestions.  And a few cocktails.

I've been adding my supplements back in, too.  I traveled with the bare minimum -- my thyroid glandular which also contains small amounts of iodine and selenium, betaine HCl (which i didn't end up needing), melatonin (ditto), and coconut oil caps which i hardly used at all.  Tell ya the truth, it was pleasant not taking handfuls of pills, but i would have benefitted with more than i had.

Overtly, it was the iron i NOTICED missing.  The hair-shedding that increased progressively during my trip has tapered back to normal again.  I assume i used up a good deal of stored iodine, and i'm replenishing it now, but i don't PERCEIVE a lack -- unless the cold is a sign.  I probably should have carried along the mag-zinc supplements as well.

The supplement i'll probably not replenish when the bottle is empty is vitamin-c.  I eat such a low-sugar/starch diet most of the time, i believe the quantities i get from tomatoes, peppers and other vegetable substances should be enough.  I'm of two minds when it comes to the coQ10; probabilities say i'm likely deficient in it as well as things like b12, but i can't say that i FEEL any difference between supplementing and not supplementing.  Considering its price, it's likely to hit the skids too, at least for a bit.

I'm having a love-hate relationship with the carnitine and tyrosine.  On the one hand, i do feel more energy, but a lot of that energy comes through as "mental restlessness."  Not the most comfortable thing!  Perhaps i should only be using them on an as-needed basis, and not as a regular thing.

Most of the rest of the things i take belong to the BALANCING category.  Extra selenium to go with my high-dose iodine, copper to go with the iron, magnesium and zinc....  They definitely need to continue.

So the tweaking goes on!

drove away at last

I made the trip yesterday, arriving home at about midnight.  I SHOULD have gotten on the scales this morning out of simple curiosity, but absent-mindedly took some supplements, which i only do AFTER weighing, under ordinary circumstances.  Staying consistent in the way certain things are done and measured give me a sense of controlling variables better.

The cold is still dragging me down, although the OTC "ameliorants" are allowing me to sleep and function a bit, even if it's in a low-energy sort of way.  I'm adding supplements back in a bit slowly, as one does with questionable foods after removing them from the diet for awhile.  So far, it's just the systemic enzymes, cod-liver oil, medium-dose iodine and mag-zinc capsules -- there's no doubt that those are significantly beneficial for me ... and besides, i added them in slowly in the first place.

I brought back a pint of shucked oysters from Dorignac's in NOLA but haven't decided exactly what to do with them, though Oysters Rockefeller Bisque is a distinct possibility.  The P & J Oyster Co. cookbook has a lovely collection of recipes, and the one i mentioned is a freebie on the website.  They used to have an extensive free brochure full of recipes, but after the oil spill a couple of years ago, they published the expanded hardcover version -- it probably has helped to keep them in business during these hard times, so i sure didn't regret purchasing it!  I really enjoy patronizing and promoting good businesses:  i believe that Dorignac was the first grocer to reopen after Katrina, and it's a really good one; P & J has been in the oyster business in Louisiana since 1876, and a lot of the local restaurants are  provisioned by them.  They're both staffed by some great people.

An additional quart of oysters are stored in my daughter's freezer.  We'll be joining them for Thanksgiving, and i have a vision of serving those lovely shellfish barbecued as a snack or first course....

not driving away again

I sat up being social too long last night and i woke up breathing through my mouth -- i think i'll drive home TOMORROW.  ;-)

Which gives me a chance to reflect on my vacation and headcold.  RELATED.  I believe the virus wouldn't have gotten a new lease on life, if i had dutifully taken all my supplements.  My intake of those protective substances have been significantly lower for over a week now.  Iodine, omega3, vitamins c and d, magnesium, ZINC....

Excuse me while i go treat the symptoms.

vacation ... from supplements!

While packing i lined up all the little bottles and jars on the bathroom counter ... and decided to leave most of them there!  It will be interesting to see if i miss any of them.

The only things i brought along were my thyroid glandular, betaine HCl, melatonin and coconut-oil capsules.  I intend to eat plenty of seafood in NOLA, so i expect that my mineral requirements will be met well, and the betaine is along for the purpose of helping me digest them as best i can.  The coconut oil is an emergency fuel, in case my meals end up too light in fat -- it may sound funny, but when i eat away from home it's known to happen!

It'll only be a week -- i think i'll survive!  ;-)

an experiment

Despite being a scoffer at the type of person who, like Jerome K Jerome, could fancy himself the victim of every malady he ever read about ... i firmly believe i have a problem with lithium.  I think the mechanism is through the autoimmune connection -- lithium exacerbates autoimmunity.

Too many members of my family have developed thyroid problems while living in Arizona -- a place notorious for high levels of lithium in the soil and water.  When i was living in Salt Lake City (where there is also a goodly amount of this mineral), i started to develop slight "essential tremor," and the quantity of my conventional thyroid (Armour) dose hadn't changed in years; nor had my diet.  The tremor didn't change until i started using sea-salt exclusively in my cooking, living here in a major river valley (where there is generally more lithium in soils) ... when it got worse.

Why do some us seem to have a problem with it and others seem to benefit by getting more?  Allow me to quote the doc in the second link, above -- "This has not been studied."  There's obviously a shitload of stuff that hasn't been studied, when it comes to lithium.  They know it can reduce testosterone, but they don't know what it does to female hormones (and women receiving lithium treatment are five times more likely to become hypothyroid than men are.  FIVE TIMES).  Although it's found all over the body (and concentrated in some organs), what it does in every one of them is NOT KNOWN.  As the doc said, "this will take a lot more research to determine; research of the kind not easily funded, because there is no pharmaceutical company in a position to make money...."

I've identified a few ways to help myself detoxify.  The rest of the chili is going into the freezer and ditto for the cheese.  I'll also be using plenty of refined salt and taking my mag-zinc supplements more religiously, drinking lots of RO water, avoiding other dairy foods and nightshades (which are particularly good at concentrating lithium from soil and water), and using aspirin instead of ibuprofen if painkillers are called for. 

Next time i'm in AZ -- because there's no way to avoid visiting your mother* -- i guess i'll be drinking Aquafina....

_________
*  well, actually, there IS ... but i'm not going there.  ;-)

and some confirmation

Googling "PubMed" along with "lithium" and "thyroid" found me LOTS of hits.  Probably the most interesting i've read so far was this recent study, which looked at naturally-occurring lithium in drinking water.  Sure enough, they found correlation with markers of impaired thyroid function.  Not proof of my hypothesis of course, but support.

(Funnily enough, they were puzzled that higher urinary selenium was associated with better thyroid markers; they seemed to think that it should be used up, not passed out!  Did "repleteness" not occur to them?)

I did find something else that seems significant here (besides the fact that lithium can damage the heart, skin, kidneys and pancreas as well as the thyroid) -- turns out that older people can't handle the doses that younger people can.  "Elderly individuals require lower doses of lithium to achieve similar serum concentrations as those in younger adults. ... There is also a difference in lithium tolerability with age, and the prevalence of hand tremor with lithium increases with age. In the elderly, neurotoxicity clearly occurs at serum lithium levels which are considered 'therapeutic' in general adult populations."

Add to this, "there is evidence that lithium has effect on glucose metabolism and has the ability to increase the release of glucagon. Studies have suggested that lithium treatment may impair glucose tolerance or produce frank diabetes in certain patients, and the risk is higher in patients above the age of 40 years."  And some "scientists" were thinking it's a great idea to add lithium to water supplies, in order to improve mental health....

Mercifully, the folks who did these studies were a bit brighter.  Far from thinking that increased lithium is good, the first set concluded that paying more attention to levels in drinking-water is "highly warranted."  And considering what the second bunch said, i wonder how much worse the results of the drinking-water study would have been if the median age of the participants had been greater, rather than the mid-30s it was.

OH ... MY ... GOD

"High levels of lithium in neuroendocrine tissues have been reported from autopsy data on both wild animals and human beings not known to have been either treated with lithium or excessively exposed to it.  These high levels in the necropsy material approximate those of lithium-treated patients and suggest the influence of geographical differences in the lithium levels of local foods and water."  (from "The Relation of Selected Trace Elements to Health and Disease," by U.S. National Committee for Geochemistry. Subcommittee on the Geochemical Environment in Relation to Health and Disease)

...I spent my morning pursuing the INTRIGUING idea i came upon last night -- that a heretofore ignored pathway leads straight from lithium intake to thyroid pathology ... completely unrelated to psychopharmacology!  And the more i read, the more all those little ravelled threads work back to a piece of whole cloth.

The chapter on lithium in the publication i quoted above gave me all kinds of interesting information:  how lithium abounds in certain types of rock; how it easily moves into soils and waters; how it is taken up and concentrated by plants, especially nightshades; how easily it absorbs in the bodies of animals and preferentially concentrates in "the thyroid, uterus, placenta -- probably the pancreas -- the midbrain, adrenals, and ovaries."

It's a happy coincidence that a lot of the evidence of high soil and water readings for lithium come straight from Arizona, where two of my nieces grew up and developed hypERthyroidism, and one of my sisters (their other aunt) was just diagnosed hypO.  OBVIOUSLY, some people are ultra-sensitive to thyroid damage, and they just by-the-way happen to live where large quantities of lithium are in everything local they eat and drink....

Family predilections aside, we have some objective FACTS to consider.  People can consume megadoses of lithium unknowingly, through their food and water intake.  Once absorbed, this mineral can concentrate in various organs where all sorts of negative physiological affects can result.  If taken for a limited period of time, these affects MAY be temporary, OR they may be irreversible.

AND NOBODY HAS EVER CONSIDERED IT IMPORTANT TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS STUFF DOES IN THE BODY.  ...But then again, thyroid problems are overwhelmingly a woman's problem, aren't they?  All we need to do is throw synthetic thyroxine at her, and she's "fine" -- or cut/burn out her thyroid, THEN dose her with Synthroid....

Or is it because most people with thyroid problems are fatties, and it's always been okay to marginalize THEM?

yet another mineral to study up on

LITHIUM!  ...But ya know what, it's harder than hell to find out exactly how much is in common foodstuffs!  One website says, grain is a major source and beef is not, and the next site states it vice-versa.  :-(  I searched for hours for a chart listing generalized quantities, and there seem to be NONE.  (And they'd have to be generalized, because soil and water samples vary significantly from place to place.)

It's truly impressive -- the lack of knowledge about what this stuff does in the body!  In large doses, lithium can be very effective in mental disorders, but what it does in the "normal" brain and body is still a bit of a mystery.  Certainly it's known that lithium can damage the thyroid, and there's a list of nasty overdose symptoms, but descriptions of mechanisms are sadly incomplete.

Nevertheless, i feel that this might be a very important substance when it comes to thyroid problems.  One site i found revealed that THERE at least, they know what this stuff does -- "lithium increases intrathyroidal iodine content, inhibits the coupling of iodotyrosine residues to form iodothyronines (thyroxine [T4] and triiodothyronine [T3]), and inhibits release of T4 and T3."  Hmmmm....  It's no wonder that lithium administration can cause either hypO- or hypERthyroidism.

Having properties similar to sodium and potassium, and other minerals too, there's a lot of evidence that lithium interferes with all kinds of processes pertaining to them.  In another place, i was reading about how lithium interacts with various supplements, herbs and spices, exacerbating some and limiting others.  This site simply has some good general info....

Well, obviously i need to spend a lot more time reading up on the stuff.  My preliminary impression is that it isn't really NEEDED by the body, but can be put to use the way other "natural medicines" are.  The danger looks like it comes from our not knowing nearly as much about it as we should.  ...And i STILL suspect it of being one of the elements in food that a thyroid-challenged person should beware of!

iodine as antioxidant

Thanks to smgj (in a comment in Wooo's blog) for the inspiration to visit Jack Kruse's blog again....  As observed, his recent posts are a lot more intelligible to me than some of the old ones i'd explored before!  I found some VERY interesting comments about iodine!

THIS is why it's valuable to have people in different fields, with different special interests and different health challenges in your internet reading circle!  Jack spoke of iodine functions in the brain that i'd never read of before, and introduced to me the subject of iodine as an antioxidant.  WOW....

A brief google search gave me reading material enough to keep me busy for a LONG time.  In addition, i'm inspired to start at the beginning of the series in which the link above was found.

I've been a proponent of Iodoral for several years now -- it's done me immense good -- and i'm always angered and frustrated when i hear people who are less-than-expert parrot the iodine-is-dangerous pablum.  As one of my favorite esoteric writers said, anything that's strong enough to be medicinal has potential for harm!  But to frighten away people who can benefit from a nutrient (eggs, anyone?) out of  insufficient knowledge is practically criminal.

Bottom line:  iodine IS potentially problematic if you use it irresponsibly, but holds tremendous promise for whole-body wellness if supplemented intelligently.  (Selenium balance is a MUST.)  A responsible NEUROSURGEON points to its value in brain health -- his most virulent critics, many of whom have significantly fewer credentials than he, conveniently forget what this guy has accomplished.  And his latest writings prove that he hasn't "lost it" yet.

HERE'S a thyroid-adrenal connection for you....

It's my favorite non-essential amino acid.  It's one of the two building-blocks of thyroid hormones.  It's an important precursor to catecholamines too, i find.  It's tyrosine.

Tyrosine is created in the body from phenylalanine, with iron as a part of the catalysis, and oxygen.  If something is missing -- voila, hypothyroidism and STRESS in capital letters.  It makes me want to take the "iron-overload" alarmists by the throat and shake.  HARD.

I've been supplementing with tyrosine for months now, and i'm very pleased with how it has improved my native thyroid production.  I had no idea it was important in stress-management, too, through its role in norepinephrine and dopamine production; it alleviates depletion of brain catecholamines when administered to animals (including humans) who are subsequently exposed to stresses of various kinds.

Of course, i like best those trials which are decently designed and controlled, and use PEOPLE, who (for the most part) differ from mice.  ;-)  In one, the subjects were kept up all day and night, and given some mood and performance tests, in which tyrosine beat placebo for both kinds of "decline."  In another, tyrosine beat placebo again when tried on cadets undergoing combat training, and lowered blood-pressure as well.  Yet another showed that tyrosine buffered subjects from the mood and memory decreases in people stressed with cold exposure.

Hmmmm, cold exposure....  Maybe if i up my tyrosine supplementation, i can actually try (and perhaps benefit from) CT?

Well, CT or no CT, i DO plan to increase my daily dose.  Who knows what all will improve -- i'll keep you posted.

back to business :-)

Now that i've expressed myself about the foolhardiness of taking some abstract researcher's advice to not take iron if you think you might need it....

Iron is a very important component of MANY of the enzymes your body uses to catalyze reactions, without which you will DIE.  Certainly, a mere shortage will only reduce your well-being.  ONLY (ha!)....  Our bodies are "intelligent" and will funnel resources to the functions it considers most urgent.  Since iron's #1 mission seems to be oxygenating our tissues via the blood, all those "housekeeping" functions of the iron-containing enzymes will suffer first, if there is a relative shortage of iron in your system.  By the time you're certifiably anemic, you are SERIOUSLY deficient.

And how could a red-meat-eater like me be at all likely to have a shortage of iron?  EASY.  I'm a life-long hypothyroid.

One of the first things a doctor will ask, if s/he suspects hypothyroidism is, "how is your digestion?"  We hypos tend to have low stomach acid.  Low stomach acid leads to bad nutrient absorption, among many other things.  (And with the very high numbers of hypothyroid people around these days, most of the people suffering from GERD probably owe it to LOW rather than to elevated stomach acid.)

When we eat a meal, or even a single food, all of the components compete for absorption throughout our bodies, and whatever is in larger proportions usually ends up "winning."  This is why sugar-eaters need more vitaminC -- they compete for the same receptor.  Different amino acids also compete with each other.  Ditto, with the metals.

This is why most of the supplements i take are NOT taken WITH a meal.  I take my systemic enzymes in the morning, half an hour or more before anything else.  (Since i started taking my coffee black, i don't worry about when in the sequence i start drinking it.)  Next i take the tyrosine, so it doesn't have anything to compete with at all; if i haven't had oysters or liver in a long time, i sometimes take copper with it.  A half-hour or more later, i take T-100, iodine, vitamin D, and my first dose of carnitine, and afterward i eat when i get hungry.  Some four or more hours later, i have the iron, B12, C and selenium, and after a bit i eat another meal.  The second dose of carnitine (which is not an amino acid as it was originally described, but actually closer to a B-vitamin) needs to come by 2:00 in the afternoon, because it has been known to delay sleep.  Before bed, i take another thyroid glandular with my magnesium, zinc and manganese.  I rarely need melatonin, but if i'm wound up for some reason, or if i have something special to get up for the next morning, i find it valuable.

Not eating grains, or an excess of unsoaked nuts, WILL help you absorb iron and other minerals better.  Some of us must still make special efforts to get the nutrients we need.  Not wasting our "powers" on nutrients we DON'T need -- most carbohydrates -- allows us to make the most of our calories and "aging bodily resources."

IRON, IRON, IRON!

OK -- it's ranting-time again.

...I started getting suspicious when i found myself sighing a lot, and feeling the need to breathe deeply.  It reminded me of Lucy Westenra in "Dracula."  HER problem was, she had lost a lot of blood, but i hadn't.

However, we did have something in common -- not enough oxygen in the tissues.  In my case, what could it be but iron?

It makes me feel like running amok when i hear people caution against supplementing iron.  What the flying F does a complete stranger know about what supplements one might need?  Just because a VERY small subpopulation (mostly male, as usual) has a problem with a certain micronutrient, that doesn't mean that THE VAST FRIGGIN' MAJORITY OF US DON'T NEED MORE OF IT!!!

*cough* ... excuse me....

I'm absolutely incensed that some arrogant insulated academics in this world presume to pontificate over something that they have NO BLOODY EXPERIENCE WITH.  I don't care if they've tortured and murdered thousands of those gentle, intelligent creatures known as laboratory RATS* -- until you've done proper on-and-off-and-on-again experiments with real live human patients, they don't know SHIT about the effects of nutrients IN VIVO.  They have no shaggin' business acting like they know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Short version:  i tried supplementing iron (in the presence of vitamins C, B12 and selenium, which are reputed to improve absorption) and not only did i feel more oxygenated, but my hairbrush needed clearing out less.  I stopped, and the bad stuff showed up -- then i recommenced and the symptoms went away yet again.  MYSTERY SOLVED.

So if you suspect you might have a problem with the oxygenation of your blood OR excessive hair loss, do the experiment on yourself -- and to the deepest, darkest, coldest reaches of HELL with the self-proclaimed SCIENTISTS who PRESUME to dictate that it's dangerous and you don't need it.

P.S. -- and if you haven't read it before, i STRONGLY recommend this article:  http://www.thewayup.com/newsletters/081504.htm

________

*  ...in memory of two of the sweetest pets we've ever had, Sid and Catherine, who happen to have been rodents of the Long-Evans variety.

interrupting myself

Mercury has turned direct again, so a lot of the delays and misunderstandings of the past month should be unraveling.  :-D   I look forward to better internet-connectivity -- it's been HORRIBLE recently.

Boys and girls, i did it -- while out looking for an attachment for my meat-grinder (to allow me to stuff breakfast-sized sausage casings), i tried on and bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers!  They're on my feet right now, and feel great on the stairs (good tread); i look forward to walking the dog while wearing them, too.  I'm always tempted to walk Spense barefooted, even though it's not very advisable to do in the city.  Look strange, though....

I was overawed to see that Jimmy Moore included me in his list for August!  I feel like a real live grown-up now.  ;-)  I also feel a little immodest though, because i suspect it wouldn't have happened if i hadn't "tooted my own horn" on Mark's site....  Somebody had mentioned the Little House foodways right after i had posted on it, and i'm afraid i couldn't resist.  Anyhow, my thanks go to Jimmy!

While we were out, i also picked up some L-carnitine.  I was reading up on it yesterday, and it sounds like it might be worthwhile.  I know, i know -- "theoretically" it isn't advisable for hypothyroids, but i found the arguments weak in the face of the experiences clinicians have with it.  I'll keep you posted....

a big WHAT IF

Now, i generally don't like to play the "what if" game.  It's usually all about something that DIDN'T happen or COULDN'T happen, and the conversation is usually started by somebody who has a fantastical vision of "wouldn't it be cool if"....  Entre nous, fantasies are rarely attractive to those NOT INVOLVED with the fantasy, and if they ARE widely attractive, they make a lot of money.  Fantasies are all about wish-fulfillment, and if you're not having your wishes fulfilled by somebody else's dream, there's nothing in it for you.

But while reading a blog today about a lady and her thyroid woes, i was struck by something:  she had never had very high TSH levels, but had been practically incapacitated by symptoms generally recognized in hypothyroid people, including low free T3.  BTW, she's also struggling with adrenal issues.

WHAT IF the problem this lady has is not about her thyroid at all -- her symptoms are caused by shortages of ... oh, say, the nutrients in the supplements i've found that help ME?  Her thyroid is doing its job, according to her brain, but suppose her body is converting the available T4 to rT3 to protect her from even more internal stress -- the stress being exacerbated by poor absorption of nutrients?  WHAT IF all she has to do is "get selfish" and remove the impediments to good sleep and peace-of-mind in her life, thus reassuring her body that it doesn't have to hunker down in preparation for a "long winter"?  Would she perhaps not be any more hypothyroid than i am, a borderline case?

Just thinkin'....

just take a pill....

[groan]  Don't bother.

Malnutrition IS associated with obesity.  So the first suggestion that people hear is "take a multivitamin/mineral."  Unless your diet is 100% GARBAGE (and some people do have such a diet) it's not going to fix much.

What are the worst imbalances in the common diet?  Maybe, lack of pantothenic acid?  Hardly (by dictionary definition, it's everywhere).  My vote is for TOO MUCH omega-6 fats, TOO MUCH fructose, TOO MUCH insulin-stimulating foods of all kinds, TOO LITTLE protein, TOO LITTLE omega-3s, short- and medium chain fatty acids....  No vitamin in the world is going to balance these problems.

Then, what good is it going to do you to take calcium, if your low K2 just sends it into your circulatory system instead of your bones and teeth, where it'll actually do you some good?  What good, all the minerals in minuscule quantities, which compete with each other for absorption?  What good vitamin C, when all the sugar in your diet ties up the receptors?

Thanks to SOME researchers, who have determined how nutrients perform in the body (NOT in vitro, which tends to mean about as much as epidemiological studies do), we can approach the subject of supplementation intelligently.  Read up on anything you have doubts about, from a reputable source -- people get themselves into trouble supplementing single substances when they don't.  Heard the stories about Hashi's patients getting sick on iodine?  That's because somebody didn't do their homework, and make sure they were sufficient in selenium too....

I don't think that there's much doubt, nutrients are BEST acquired through whole foods ... UNLESS there are absorption issues.  Nature, which formed us, also put our ideal food together -- though not in that order -- and the way nutrients arrive through a pre-agricultural diet require less adaptation by us to assimilate.  Less STRESS to our bodies (don't we have enough stress with modern lifestyles?).

But the next time your body doesn't act quite right, it's only reasonable to ask yourself, "could i be deficient in something" rather than "can i get a prescription to fix this."

this one's for you, kids!

Toward the beginning of this week, when my daughter and her family converged with my husband and me in SF, i heard the news that my granddaughter had recently had several cavities.  She's five years old -- this needs to stop.

I still had a few sublingual K2 tablets from my last bottle, so decided to see if the kids would be willing participants in dosing them up.  Their mother being amenable, we gave it a try, and to my surprise and delight they didn't find them "gross" ... or even "YUKKY!"  (If there's going to be a perpetual struggle, it's sometimes a better idea to conduct a guerrilla-style nutritional war....)

Where they live, there's a significant drive involved in acquiring raw or pastured milk, and so i'm resigned to the fact that it's not gonna happen.  My daughter is interested in providing superior nutrition to her family, but with their busy young lives, there are limits to how much pastured and organ-meat, obscure vegetables and alternative-carb sources are going to be utilized.  Getting vitamin K2mk4 may just depend on using a supplement.

I find it's most effective to conduct my nutritional brainwashing in small steps; even here on vacation, i managed to get my daughter to watch "FatHead" via Netflix and my laptop -- and i was pleased that my SIL seemed interested, as well.  :-)  There's a virtue in having a talented presenter like Tom Naughton helping one conduct the education!

Next, i'll try to get her to read Chris Masterjohn's exposition of the vitamin K story -- that's the reason for today's post, to make this information easily available.  After that ... hmmm, should it be Mary Enig on fats, or J Stanton on protein, or That Paleo Guy on D...?  I'm so devious!!!  (She already knows about Mark's Daily Apple as an all-purpose site -- love those definitive guides.)

So anyway, when i reorder K2mk4, i'll get one for myself and have one sent to the kids as well.  The next thing i get my daughter to read or watch might depend on any challenges the children encounter.  That's a very powerful incentive for her to make progress in her nutritional education.