Better to hunt in field, for health unbought, than fee the doctor for a nauseous draft. ~John Dryden
A lot of this book has discussed the Paleolithic diet: we evolved in nature to eat certain things, therefore it may seem like what is natural is best, ergo what is natural cannot do any harm. This is the naturalistic fallacy. If everything in nature was good for you, why are there poisonous plants and mushrooms? Clearly we need to view what is “natural” with a more skeptical eye. If you walk into a supplement store today you will see numerous herbal extracts, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other ingredients.
If you ask the sales clerk if all this stuff is safe they would say,
“oh yeah it’s all natural” and the customer will buy the supplements, take them home, and consume them without knowing that there could be consequences down the road. When you spend money on something that is supposed to make you healthier, one should definitely apply a more skeptical eye to what they are buying. We aren’t supposed to be looking for what is natural; we want to look for what is safe and effective.
Now safety is not something that can always be judged, so when you consume something it should definitely have a very high benefit to risk ratio. Every supplement you consume outside of whole foods means taking a risk, if you want to take that risk, the trade-off better be beneficial.
Let’s take aspartame and stevia for example. Both are zero calorie sweeteners commonly used in products today for those who do not want to consume sugar. Aspartame is regularly blamed for causing cancer, and stevia is championed as being all-natural, thus entirely safe. I prefer my drinks with aspartame.
While stevia has been used by for generations by South American Natives, this type of data doesn’t have any edge on
64 clinical data (outcome trials, animal toxicity data, prospective epidemiology). Just because it has been used historically doesn’t mean that it’s safe. How is one generation supposed to link cancer 40 years down the road to their ingestion of stevia leaves?
If stevia caused diarrhea I can see how they would make the connection. To determine what is safe and effective we must turn to the scientific method, and so far aspartame, sucrolose, splenda all have this type of data behind it while stevia does not.:
Magnuson BA, Burdock GA, Doull J, Kroes RM, Marsh GM, Pariza MW, Spencer PS, Waddell WJ, Walker R, Williams GM.
Aspartame: a safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies. Crit
Rev Toxicol. 2007;37(8):629-727.
The most convincing study is this one that has life-span data:
Source: Soffritti M, Belpoggi F, Degli Esposti D, Lambertini L, Tibaldi E, Rigano A. First experimental demonstration of the multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame administered in the feed to
Sprague-Dawley rats. Environ Health Perspect. 2006 Mar;114(3):379-85. What they show in the study is that the rat fed aspartame and the control rats had the same lifespan. In other words aspartame did not cause more deaths despite what the conclusion of the study states (the data was probably due to chance because the researches were just really bad at taking care of the rats, many rats died prematurely). If anything, the female group seemed live longer when fed aspartame. So for the occasional treat I see no reason why I would choose regular soda over diet-soda (30 grams of sugar or couple 180mg of aspartame).
Supplements
The supplements you should be taking should really be
determined by your diet. After a week of tracking with Cron-O-Meter you should have a good idea of what you are deficient in.
If for some reason you can’t reach 1.5x the RDA for each
65 vitamin and mineral, you can decide to take a supplement.
Buying a supplement is a hard decision, because not only do you have to buy the right form of the ingredient, you should also try your best to buy a high-quality supplement so that you get what you are paying for.
Beyond the “active” ingredient in the pill, it can also contain other ingredients that are used to fill up the pill and also make it easier for the machines to pack the pill:
Lubricants. Fatty acids, or stearates, which speed up manufacturing.
Disintegrators. Cellulose or sodium lauryl sulfate that help the pill breakdown.
Binders. Promotes cohesion, like polyethylene glycol.
Diluents. Fillers, such as starch that increases the bulk of a product.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but you should be aware of what you are putting in your mouth. If you take a look at pharmaceutical drugs most pills don’t have more than 5 of these other ingredients. The less it takes to make the pill, the higher quality the pill usually is.
Some other ingredients I stay away from are:
Propylene Glycol Artificial Colorings Sweeteners
Sodium Benzoate Aluminum Silicate While ones I consider safe are:
Magnesium Stearate Gelatin
Stearic Acid Lecithin
66 Cellulose
Di-Calcium Phosphate Glycerin
These lists are by no means extensive but just keep an eye out for how other ingredients there are. I have found some very pricey supplements with 8-10 other ingredients.
Which supplements should you be taking then? Well there iss the Weston A. Price nutrients, vitamins A, D3, and K2 (MK-7 or MK-4) and maybe some magnesium and a source of omega-3s, because modern diets are usually deficient in these nutrients.
Vitamin D3
This is not actually a vitamin but a hormone that our bodies require to function optimally. Back near the equatorial region of Africa we probably produced tons of Vitamin D3 due to
exposure from the sun. In 20 minutes our bodies have the capacity to produce 20,000IU of Vitamin D3, yet for most of us, when we go outside we cover ourselves up, stay in the shade, and slap on sunscreen. These are actually fairly smart things to do considering that UV light causes skin aging, damage, and maybe cancer, but doesn’t do much for our Vitamin D status. So the first thing you should be supplementing with is at least 2000IU of Vitamin D3. What should optimally be done is to supplement with 25IU/lb of bodyweight then get blood tests performed measuring your levels to ensure that you are in the optimal range >30ng/ml and less than 50ng/ml. You can read more about Vitamin D and the Vitamin D Council website.
When you purchase the supplement ensure that it is in a softgel form because Vitamin D3 is fat-soluble, and tablets don’t have any fat.
67 Vitamin K2
We are animals so we use K2, but K2 is found mainly in cheese, organ meats, and fermented soybeans; many foods people do not consume today and because of modern processing even if you do they are not present in large enough amounts. This means we should probably supplement with it. Most people associate vitamin K with bone health and this is true. Vitamin K2 helps activate Vitamin K dependent (VKD) proteins allowing the body to bring the calcium to where it is needed, instead of letting the calcium float around in the body possibly leading to calcification (heart disease).
Beyond just bone health, it has an array of other benefits:
Cancer
Neuroprotection Cardiovascular health Dental health
There are two forms: MK-7 and MK-4. MK-7 comes from fermented soybeans while MK-4 is the endogenous animal form.
If you take MK-7 take 45mcg a day, if MK-4 take 1mg a day.
Also ensure that it is in a softgel form.
Magnesium
If you’ve analyzed your diet you are probably deficient in magnesium. It takes conscious effort to design a diet sufficient in magnesium so most people would rather supplement with it.
Even though I do achieve the RDA I choose to supplement with some extra to get over the RDA just in case.
In the distant past, the majority of our magnesium was probably from our water intake. Nowadays we filter our water and it basically has no minerals in it. Supplementing with 250mg of extra magnesium a day would benefit a lot of people in terms of bone health, cardiovascular health, and diabetes.
68 There are many different forms of magnesium but a cheap and absorbable form to take would be magnesium citrate. Make sure to stay away from magnesium oxide. While the oxide form is the most popular, it’s not as absorbable as other forms. The reason oxide is used is because the pills are smaller than if you used citrate.
Omega 3 Fatty Acids
I actually don’t recommend fish oil unless you have neurological problems. The reason for this is that the very long chains of polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish oil will be incorporated into the inner mitochondrial membrane and possibly reduces your lifespan. I am not saying that omega-3s are not beneficial, just that I would rather get my n-3s from shorter chain fatty acids. If you remember the section on vegetable oils in Chapter 2, double bonds are more likely to react and oxidize. Well, the PUFAs in fish oil have the most double bonds you will find. The more fish oil you consume the more long chain PUFAs in your body.
For an introduction to this aging theory read here:
Hulbert AJ.Explaining longevity of different animals: is membrane fatty acid composition the missing link? Age (Dordr).
2008 Sep;30(2-3):89-97.
Basically what has been found is that species with more long chain PUFAs in their membranes live a shorter life than those with less PUFAs. It is interesting to note that CR also reduces the incorporation of long chain PUFAs into the membranes.
What do we supplement instead? Well get your fish three times a week, and the rest of the days supplement with 6g of flax seed oil (1 tablespoon).
Common arguments against this are that flax seed oil conversion into animal form omega 3 fatty acids are inefficient (~10%), but
69 just because it is inefficient doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all.
Research has placed optimal amounts of omega-3 intake at around 250mg (which comes out to 3 servings of fish per week).
One tablespoon of flax seed oil is enough to make 250mg.
This may seem like a mechanistic argument (which is bad) but there is also research to show that flax seed oil has just as good cardiovascular outcomes as fish oil. You may also have heard of the flax seed and prostate cancer association. If it is the lignans in the flax seed, the oil doesn’t have any lignans so it doesn’t matter. If it is the actual oil itself, well a new study out in March 2010 showed that there is no connection:
Carayol M, Grosclaude P, Delpierre C. Prospective studies of dietary alpha-linolenic acid intake and prostate cancer risk: a meta-analysis. Cancer Causes Control. 2010 Mar;21(3):347-55
It looks at prospective studies (which is good) and they found no connection.
The Rest of the Nutrients
It’s preferable if you get the rest of your nutrients from food, but if you find it hard I suggest topping it up with a multi-vitamin.
The only good brand of multivitamins out there is AOR. Don’t take the full-dose, a partial dose will do.
I only suggest a partial dose because unless you are munching on sugar all day, you do ingest nutrients. Most of the multivitamins designed nowadays follow the principle “the more the better,”
which is good for the companies because that’s what people will buy, but it is not good for you. As I mentioned in chapter 2, too much pre-formed Vitamin can double your risk of fractures, too high of a zinc-copper ratio leads to prostate cancer, too much copper can lead to dementia, extra selenium (and most multivitamin has a lot of that) can lead to diabetes, too much folic acid and thiamine will cause cancer down the road. Most multi-vitamins these days contain a lot of these vitamins and
70 minerals, because these vitamins and minerals are what
customers actually seek out. If someone buys a multivitamin it is not rare to see them taking an extra b-vitamin supplement (way too many b-vitamins) and some extra zinc.
Just a quick note on folic acid, if you consume 100mcg of folic acid from food you absorb 50mg, if you consume 100mcg from supplements you absorb 100mcg. The RDA is set for food intake not supplement intake.
Toxicity is not the only problem. It’s the design of the
multivitamin that is also something one should pay attention too.
There are eight forms of Vitamin E, most vitamins use alpha-tocopherol which can decrease your body’s stores of the other forms of Vitamin E (in nature the gamma-tocopherol is the one that is consumed in higher amounts). The beta-carotene is usually synthetic (cheaper to make), inclusion of various herbal extracts with no evidence backing up its safety or efficacy, and also inclusion of various phytonutrients that are beneficial but not in high enough dosages to have an effect (included for cosmetic purposes). Many also include green tea extract, which binds to minerals decreasing absorption, as well as magnesium oxide instead of the other forms because it fits into a smaller pill.
However, it is not absorbed properly.
Not only is taking a full dose and badly designed multivitamin incredibly dangerous, but at best you are just wasting your money. As I said, I only know a couple of companies that design their multivitamins and do not suffer from these deficiencies, and one of them I trust is AOR. Be careful out there because your life and health depends on it.
Please see Appendix IV for more risky supplements that I believe may also beneficial.
71