10 ms·

Vitamin B1 deficiency at the heart of an environmental mystery

180 points by based2 8y ago

csmeder 8y ago
As some one who doesn’t eat fortified foods this brings up questions. Is the balance of vegetables and meat I’m eating lacking in vitamin B1 or other key vitamins? Looking up the top sources of B1 the only one that is a staple of mine is beef (100% grass fed).
- athenot 8y ago
  > This essential micronutrient is produced mainly by plants, including phytoplankton, bacteria, and fungi; people and animals must acquire it through their food. Key here is beneficial bacteria and fungi, which a lot of our foods are increasingly poor in.
  - samstave 8y ago
    Would the washing of all our "anti-bacterial" cleaning products into the oceans and water ways be killing off the invisible foundation of the food chain: Bacteria and Fungi. Molds (Fungi) and Bacteria are something Humans have been at war against with their cleaning and pesticides for decades... Phytoplankton eat bacteria, correct?
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      very interesting idea I also wonder to what extent thiamine is recycled in nature, apart from thiaminases, if an predator high up the food chain dies and floats/sinks in the sea, will all the accumulated thiamin be recycled? in what pathways is thiamine consumed in say a human? what would increase or decrease the metabolic consumption (not eating) of thiamine?
      - DoctorOetker 8y ago
        Wikipedia's Thiamine / antagonists section: >Thiamine in foods can be degraded in a variety of ways. Sulfites, which are added to foods usually as a preservative,[34] will attack thiamine at the methylene bridge in the structure, cleaving the pyrimidine ring from the thiazole ring.[13] The rate of this reaction is increased under acidic conditions. Thiamine is degraded by thermolabile thiaminases (present in raw fish and shellfish[12]). Some thiaminases are produced by bacteria. Bacterial thiaminases are cell surface enzymes that must dissociate from the membrane before being activated; the dissociation can occur in ruminants under acidotic conditions. Rumen bacteria also reduce sulfate to sulfite, therefore high dietary intakes of sulfate can have thiamine-antagonistic activities. Is this perhaps due to sulfate pollution (bunker oil?) and acidification of the oceans?
        Gravityloss 8y ago
        The heavy fuel oil sulfur pollution situation has improved in Europe massively since 2015 when the emissions controls started. By now we should see an effect.
    - Laforet 8y ago
      When Indians who follow a strict vegan diet started migrating to the western world, a lot of them would begin to suffer from pernicious amaemia, a disease caused by deficiency of dietary vitamin B12. Similar diseases are present in India but appeared to be less common. Most published research are rather diplomatic about this phenomenon[0]. However, reading between the lines, the reason appears to be the lack of fecal and insect contamination in food supply, which accidentally eliminated a lot of exogenous micronutrients not present in plants. [0]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11470726 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11470726
      - caraffle 8y ago
        B12 deficiency doesn't cause pernicious anemia, pernicious anemia is a cause of B12 deficiency, its a GI absorptive disorder (lack if intrinsic factor).
        Laforet 8y ago
        I use the term loosely in reference to all types of anaemia arising from cobalamin deficiency, as the NIH and Mayo clinic do[0][1]. After all, lack of IF is only one of the many causes and the symptoms are similar regardless of aetiology. [0]:https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vitamin-deficiency-anemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355025 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vitamin-defic... [1]:https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/pernicious-anemia https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/pernicious-anemia
    - ajnin 8y ago
      > Phytoplankton eat bacteria, correct? No, phytoplankton are basically microscopic plants, they don't eat anything per se, they are autotrophs which use inorganic substances in the environment and get their energy from sunlight.
      - cordonrouge 8y ago
        phytoplankton are not all exclusively autotrophic. there is a spectrum of mixotrophism. The very short reproductive cycle of non metazoans allows a rapid selective process to occur, the problem with antibacterials and antibiotics in sewer and gray water effluent is not death of organisms but selection for resistance to these compounds. This is why antibiotic use is extremely guarded, there is too much being thrown around like its candy and we have a dire situation on our hands, the time of total antibiotic resistance is very close.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    > Key here is beneficial bacteria and fungi, which a lot of our foods are increasingly poor in. Aren't the beneficial bacteria and fungi that are meant to inhabit our own guts supposed to be enough?
    - firethief 8y ago
      Historically, maybe. But they do their work in the colon where it's too late for most nutrients to be absorbed without a "reconsumption" step humans generally no longer practice.
- lsc 8y ago
  Do you eat yeast? It's good for that sort of thing; I mean, you can get it drinking unfiltered beer, too, but personally I kinda like how nutritional yeast tastes, and I'll use it as a condiment.
  - illegalsmile 8y ago
    Nutritional yeast on popcorn is quite tasty, add some aminos and you have a great alternative to salt and butter.
  - amelius 8y ago
    It's also in Marmite.
- OpenBSD-empire 8y ago
  >(100% grass fed) That's a scam. All beef is grass fed for most of its life. The divergence occurs near the end where grains are given for marbling and increasing weight. Cost of grains > cost of alfalfa, yet you pay out the nose for "grass fed" at Whole Foods (or similar)! HAHAHAHAHAHA! xD
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Eat more mushrooms. I do a mushroom-heavy soup about once a week, usually lentils with an entire package of crimini mushrooms sliced up. Keeping a variety of unsalted tree nuts and seeds nearby to conveniently snack on is good as well. Edit: For B12 in particular, it appears Shiitake and Lion's Mane mushrooms are best. They're not competitive with animal B12 sources, but every bit helps and mushrooms don't add much in the way of calories to a diet. Personally I consume canned wild, unsalted sardines in water fairly regularly for Omega-3s and B12 specifically. They're small and have a short lifespan, which is desirable for a variety of reasons with seafood. i.e. Low on the food chain, and less time spent in a potentially toxic environment accumulating nasties like mercury. Sardines are considered a sustainable superfood by many. It's way better nutritionally than tuna, you eat the whole fish, even the bones.
  - point78 8y ago
    Interesting going to add this to my diet
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      If you're referring to the Sardines, if you can handle the taste of room-temperature fish broth, drink the juice from the can, don't drain it. That's where most the omega-3 fatty acids end up from the cooking process. Some of the better brands like what's found at Whole Foods here in CA will even include a notice on the package about not draining the liquid. The Henry & Lisa's stuff [1] in water is quite good, but can be relatively pricy. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Lisas-Natural-Seafood-Sardines/dp/B00INUGDQO https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Lisas-Natural-Seafood-Sardines/...
  - bbrian 8y ago
    > They're not competitive with animal B12 sources, Interestingly, the B12 people get from animals is probably from supplements they were given. https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/7ujsaf/the_b12_in_meat_is_from_supplements_given_to_the/dtlj7vz/?context=8&depth=9 https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/7ujsaf/the_b12_in_me...
- jz_ 8y ago
  You can log what you eat here on an average day and find out: https://cronometer.com/ https://cronometer.com/
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  A very interesting question. E.g. I feel like would love to eat 100% natural yet given what I know so far (which, on this subject, is hardly scientifical so there is hope it is false but I hesitate to rely on this hope so I take supplements) it is impossible to get all the micronutrients your body needs for highest-possible health and performance in the long term nowadays (unless, exaggerating just slightly, you eat some pounds of every known exotic fruit every day).
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Is there a reason you don't eat fortified foods?
zombeh 8y ago
Jesus, the look of that seagull is the stuff of nightmares. Zombie wildlife really is scary.
jboggan 8y ago
I wonder if the insect die-offs that have been reported lately are linked to a nutrient deficiency such as this. It's amazing to think about the scarcity of various metabolites and how they might become concentrated in different populations and species over long time scales. I wonder if these phenomena are long scale oscillations that we are just scientifically observant enough to begin noticing.
- man_made 8y ago
  Are you trying to suggest that human activity is not the real problem, and that we should keep doing whatever we want?
  - NeonVice 8y ago
    OP was asking a genuine question that you not only did not answer, but that you then tried to cast some kind of judgment. Sometimes we need more information before jumping into the typical fray.
    - new_to_hn 8y ago
      Have you been a reader of HN comments for very long? A common trend in mutating discussion is to resort to oblique rhetoric, such that the reader is forced into a mindset of doubt, before participating. Example: Open Source Politics Rhetoric: Is it really a good thing that distributing free, open sourced software promotes innovation in the manner it does? What if this removes the incentive to profit from true innovation? Wouldn’t the best innovators be smart enough to accept payment and restrict distribution and reverse engineering on their best work? What if open source stifles the best software preventing it from ever seeing the light of day, because the best inventors cannot earn a living? And so on.
      - NeonVice 8y ago
        It's weird. Both the new_to_hn and man_made accounts were created within the last couple of hours. I wouldn't be surprised if they were created by the same person with a penchant for creating a username that mirrors the subject of his post.
tcj_phx 8y ago
Last week I watched a video about Vitamin B1. The term Alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome [0] was mentioned. This form of vitamin B1 deficiency is experienced by some heavy drinkers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_Korsakoff_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_Korsakoff_syndrome Age, alcoholism, chemotherapy, dialysis, extreme dieting, and genetic factors also contribute to the development of this syndrome. The most important treatment (aside from cessation of alcohol use) is some form of thiamine (vitamin B1) supplementation - injection/IV/oral. The causes section of that wikipedia entry says "Mercury poisoning can also lead to Korsakoff's syndrome." Maybe mercury contamination is another factor in the thiamine deficiencies observed in ocean wildlife. Edit: added the clarification that thiamine and Vitamin B1 are synonymous.
- ohiovr 8y ago
  There was an article on HN recently about a woman that used sea shells for sculptures and got heavy metal poisoning from the activity.
- jhoechtl 8y ago
  Maybe a consequence of the once habbit of adding lead to gas?
  - headShrinker 8y ago
    Coal burning power plants are the number one reason for oceanic mercury contamination.
DoctorOetker 8y ago
an invasive species of fish that is rich in thiaminase -> thiamin (vitamine B1) is broken down by thiaminase -> predators like birds normally source B1 from fish -> B1 deficiency The perverse effect is that the invasive species has an advantage in that its predator suffers, so plausibly the birds will prefer their usual food if possible, which increases the concentration of the invasive fish...
- the8472 8y ago
  that explanation only applies to the great lakes, not to the birds at the baltic.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    sure, I didn't intend the summary of the mechanism as a sweeping clarification at all. even within just the Great Lakes, this does not mean the invasive fish were necessarily the cause, in turn they may have been the result, perhaps the native fish were more dependent on thiamine than the invasive fish, and the thiamine deficiency maybe present at a lower level still say due to perhaps a change in whatever food is available to fish like plankton, plants, etc but it does suggest a relatively cheap test for those studying the other populations: try administering B1 or other nutrients since substantial improvement by essential nutrients is hard to explain by a more complicated poisoning mechanism. I.e. if for some other species a similarly significant effect is observed in controlled correlation to some vitamin, then it's probably more significant than poisoning, i.e. we can't cure poisoning by administering vitamins. One could think that by feeding them in a new environment the animals were unknowingly spared from continuing poisoning, but that does not explain why the control group died (unless they claim Balk & co intentionally poisoned the control group of course)
ggm 8y ago
Vegemite, rich source of Vitamin B. said to have been made from the yeast remaining after brewing. Thus the old wives tale that if a beer-drunk eats vegemite toast, they avoid the problems of thiamine deficient diet. (I don't think we can fix this problem in nature by feeding zoo plankton vegemite btw)
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  The irony being that for a long time beer was loaded with unfiltered yeasts, which made it far more nutritious. The advent of spirits and filtered beers, especially as it tended to arrive alongside whiter breads, was not good for the health of the poor. You see similar things occur for different reasons across different nations and at different times when key dietary staples change, or are lost. Pellagra in the US from over-reliance on corn, Beriberi in Japan from eating too much white rice and too little protein, and so on. The history of monoculture agriculture and emerging food science is a history of starvation, malnutrition, and gross misunderstandings of epidemiology. Fortunately we’d never make the same mistakes today! Heh...
PavlikPaja 8y ago
The widespread use of fertilizers could be the case. The thing is, we possibly don't know all the necessary nutrients, and causing an imbalance as the result, where some elements are supplied in excess and others are missing. The myopia and obesity epidemics could also be the result - countries that use lanthanides in fertilizers show lower levels of obesity, minimal rates of mental illness, slower aging and higher IQ, regardless of wealth. Iron toxicity is also a problem in many places, as the excess iron replaces other metals, especially manganese. Many diseases associated with aging are actually caused by this excess and may have nothing to do with aging at all. Many people are mentally retarded because of irresponsible attempts to increase intake despite inadequate research. (Iron increases the number of D2 and D1 dopamine receptors in the brain, which makes them psychotic, people who don't suffer from this are told to have "high functioning autism". The supposedly neuroptypical people are people who suffer from thought insertions - they can see you're lying, mean something else than what you say etc. and apparently accept it as perfectly normal that each of them interprets the same situation differently. They also hear voices and call it their inner monologue.) These replacements are the reason why the deficiencies are hard to notice - the protein will usually accept some other metal when the appropriate metal ion is not found, so that the protein may be known to bind to e.g. calcium, when a rare earth element would be preferable.
- orhmeh09 8y ago
  Could you further explain the relation of iron, psychoticism, and autism? Maybe I misunderstood but the proposed links sound unconvincing.
  - PavlikPaja 8y ago
    The exposure to excess iron in infancy increases the amount of dopamine receptors in the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 Antipsychotics work primarily by blocking those, without activating them. Autism has been called the opposite of schizophrenia. It has been noticed that when autistic people have high fever or encephalitis, they behave "normally". https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ I know how it sounds, but that is the best explanation I have.
alexkratm 8y ago
<i>hello</i>
mratzloff 8y ago
The three most relevant passages, in my opinion: “We found that thiamine deficiency is much more widespread and severe than previously thought,” Balk says. Given its scope, he suggests that a pervasive thiamine deficiency could be at least partly responsible for global wildlife population declines. Over a 60-year period up to 2010, for example, worldwide seabird populations declined by approximately 70%, and globally, species are being lost 1,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction (9, 10). “He has seen a thiamine deficiency in several differ phyla now,” says Fitzsimons of Balk. “One wonders what is going on. It’s a larger issue than we first suspected.” ... Balk fears that a single pervasive factor, such as an atmospheric pollutant, may be depleting the environment of thiamine at its sources, including phytoplankton and bacteria, affecting the entire food chain. To see how far the problem reaches, he is now looking at upstream terrestrial wildlife such as elk (Alces alces). Balk is also investigating whether any of several pollutants might interfere with the oxidation, hydrolysis, or synthesis of thiamine. ... Sañudo-Wilhelmy has measured very low levels of B vitamins, including thiamine, in coastal waters around California. Other researchers have estimated similar scarcities in some areas of the open ocean (16). Warming waters due to climate change could explain the seawater vitamin scarcity, he says. Warmer temperatures speed bacterial growth, making the microbes consume more B vitamins than they produce—gobbling up the vitamins before the phytoplankton can take their share. All are couched with the fact that more research is necessary into the cause or causes.
- pasta 8y ago
  Indeed we need more research. For example a lot of coral is dying and most researchers suggest this is due to rising temperatures. But now some new research suggests that coral can handle the change in temperature but they die because they eat to much plastic particles. Both can be true but the fact is we should be more carefull about our world because we just know too little about how all systems work together.
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    Is an interesting hypothesis... Dunno... Incorrect temperature kills a lot of captive corals, even at small variations. Is a diverse group and some are harder to kill than other. On the other hand, Cnidarians taste their food and reject often small stones and sand grains. Probably many types of plastic particles (if not all) would be just taken by a small peeble and ignorated. Cnidarians loose interest quickly when you touch its tentacles with an inert matherial.
pvaldes 8y ago
>fish eggs micro-injected with thiamin survived Hum, this does not look right I don't have information about the authors experience as fish pathologists, but I would expect to see a mention to Myxobolus cerebralis somewhere if you have young salmonidae with erratic swimming.

180 points by based2 8y ago

As some one who doesn’t eat fortified foods this brings up questions. Is the balance of vegetables and meat I’m eating lacking in vitamin B1 or other key vitamins? Looking up the top sources of B1 the only one that is a staple of mine is beef (100% grass fed).

athenot 8y ago
> This essential micronutrient is produced mainly by plants, including phytoplankton, bacteria, and fungi; people and animals must acquire it through their food. Key here is beneficial bacteria and fungi, which a lot of our foods are increasingly poor in.
- samstave 8y ago
  Would the washing of all our "anti-bacterial" cleaning products into the oceans and water ways be killing off the invisible foundation of the food chain: Bacteria and Fungi. Molds (Fungi) and Bacteria are something Humans have been at war against with their cleaning and pesticides for decades... Phytoplankton eat bacteria, correct?
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    very interesting idea I also wonder to what extent thiamine is recycled in nature, apart from thiaminases, if an predator high up the food chain dies and floats/sinks in the sea, will all the accumulated thiamin be recycled? in what pathways is thiamine consumed in say a human? what would increase or decrease the metabolic consumption (not eating) of thiamine?
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      Wikipedia's Thiamine / antagonists section: >Thiamine in foods can be degraded in a variety of ways. Sulfites, which are added to foods usually as a preservative,[34] will attack thiamine at the methylene bridge in the structure, cleaving the pyrimidine ring from the thiazole ring.[13] The rate of this reaction is increased under acidic conditions. Thiamine is degraded by thermolabile thiaminases (present in raw fish and shellfish[12]). Some thiaminases are produced by bacteria. Bacterial thiaminases are cell surface enzymes that must dissociate from the membrane before being activated; the dissociation can occur in ruminants under acidotic conditions. Rumen bacteria also reduce sulfate to sulfite, therefore high dietary intakes of sulfate can have thiamine-antagonistic activities. Is this perhaps due to sulfate pollution (bunker oil?) and acidification of the oceans?
      - Gravityloss 8y ago
        The heavy fuel oil sulfur pollution situation has improved in Europe massively since 2015 when the emissions controls started. By now we should see an effect.
  - Laforet 8y ago
    When Indians who follow a strict vegan diet started migrating to the western world, a lot of them would begin to suffer from pernicious amaemia, a disease caused by deficiency of dietary vitamin B12. Similar diseases are present in India but appeared to be less common. Most published research are rather diplomatic about this phenomenon[0]. However, reading between the lines, the reason appears to be the lack of fecal and insect contamination in food supply, which accidentally eliminated a lot of exogenous micronutrients not present in plants. [0]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11470726 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11470726
    - caraffle 8y ago
      B12 deficiency doesn't cause pernicious anemia, pernicious anemia is a cause of B12 deficiency, its a GI absorptive disorder (lack if intrinsic factor).
      - Laforet 8y ago
        I use the term loosely in reference to all types of anaemia arising from cobalamin deficiency, as the NIH and Mayo clinic do[0][1]. After all, lack of IF is only one of the many causes and the symptoms are similar regardless of aetiology. [0]:https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vitamin-deficiency-anemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355025 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vitamin-defic... [1]:https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/pernicious-anemia https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/pernicious-anemia
  - ajnin 8y ago
    > Phytoplankton eat bacteria, correct? No, phytoplankton are basically microscopic plants, they don't eat anything per se, they are autotrophs which use inorganic substances in the environment and get their energy from sunlight.
    - cordonrouge 8y ago
      phytoplankton are not all exclusively autotrophic. there is a spectrum of mixotrophism. The very short reproductive cycle of non metazoans allows a rapid selective process to occur, the problem with antibacterials and antibiotics in sewer and gray water effluent is not death of organisms but selection for resistance to these compounds. This is why antibiotic use is extremely guarded, there is too much being thrown around like its candy and we have a dire situation on our hands, the time of total antibiotic resistance is very close.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  > Key here is beneficial bacteria and fungi, which a lot of our foods are increasingly poor in. Aren't the beneficial bacteria and fungi that are meant to inhabit our own guts supposed to be enough?
  - firethief 8y ago
    Historically, maybe. But they do their work in the colon where it's too late for most nutrients to be absorbed without a "reconsumption" step humans generally no longer practice.
lsc 8y ago
Do you eat yeast? It's good for that sort of thing; I mean, you can get it drinking unfiltered beer, too, but personally I kinda like how nutritional yeast tastes, and I'll use it as a condiment.
- illegalsmile 8y ago
  Nutritional yeast on popcorn is quite tasty, add some aminos and you have a great alternative to salt and butter.
- amelius 8y ago
  It's also in Marmite.
OpenBSD-empire 8y ago
>(100% grass fed) That's a scam. All beef is grass fed for most of its life. The divergence occurs near the end where grains are given for marbling and increasing weight. Cost of grains > cost of alfalfa, yet you pay out the nose for "grass fed" at Whole Foods (or similar)! HAHAHAHAHAHA! xD
newnewpdro 8y ago
Eat more mushrooms. I do a mushroom-heavy soup about once a week, usually lentils with an entire package of crimini mushrooms sliced up. Keeping a variety of unsalted tree nuts and seeds nearby to conveniently snack on is good as well. Edit: For B12 in particular, it appears Shiitake and Lion's Mane mushrooms are best. They're not competitive with animal B12 sources, but every bit helps and mushrooms don't add much in the way of calories to a diet. Personally I consume canned wild, unsalted sardines in water fairly regularly for Omega-3s and B12 specifically. They're small and have a short lifespan, which is desirable for a variety of reasons with seafood. i.e. Low on the food chain, and less time spent in a potentially toxic environment accumulating nasties like mercury. Sardines are considered a sustainable superfood by many. It's way better nutritionally than tuna, you eat the whole fish, even the bones.
- point78 8y ago
  Interesting going to add this to my diet
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    If you're referring to the Sardines, if you can handle the taste of room-temperature fish broth, drink the juice from the can, don't drain it. That's where most the omega-3 fatty acids end up from the cooking process. Some of the better brands like what's found at Whole Foods here in CA will even include a notice on the package about not draining the liquid. The Henry & Lisa's stuff [1] in water is quite good, but can be relatively pricy. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Lisas-Natural-Seafood-Sardines/dp/B00INUGDQO https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Lisas-Natural-Seafood-Sardines/...
- bbrian 8y ago
  > They're not competitive with animal B12 sources, Interestingly, the B12 people get from animals is probably from supplements they were given. https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/7ujsaf/the_b12_in_meat_is_from_supplements_given_to_the/dtlj7vz/?context=8&depth=9 https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/7ujsaf/the_b12_in_me...
jz_ 8y ago
You can log what you eat here on an average day and find out: https://cronometer.com/ https://cronometer.com/
qwerty456127 8y ago
A very interesting question. E.g. I feel like would love to eat 100% natural yet given what I know so far (which, on this subject, is hardly scientifical so there is hope it is false but I hesitate to rely on this hope so I take supplements) it is impossible to get all the micronutrients your body needs for highest-possible health and performance in the long term nowadays (unless, exaggerating just slightly, you eat some pounds of every known exotic fruit every day).
gnulinux 8y ago
Is there a reason you don't eat fortified foods?

zombeh 8y ago

Jesus, the look of that seagull is the stuff of nightmares. Zombie wildlife really is scary.

jboggan 8y ago

I wonder if the insect die-offs that have been reported lately are linked to a nutrient deficiency such as this. It's amazing to think about the scarcity of various metabolites and how they might become concentrated in different populations and species over long time scales. I wonder if these phenomena are long scale oscillations that we are just scientifically observant enough to begin noticing.

man_made 8y ago
Are you trying to suggest that human activity is not the real problem, and that we should keep doing whatever we want?
- NeonVice 8y ago
  OP was asking a genuine question that you not only did not answer, but that you then tried to cast some kind of judgment. Sometimes we need more information before jumping into the typical fray.
  - new_to_hn 8y ago
    Have you been a reader of HN comments for very long? A common trend in mutating discussion is to resort to oblique rhetoric, such that the reader is forced into a mindset of doubt, before participating. Example: Open Source Politics Rhetoric: Is it really a good thing that distributing free, open sourced software promotes innovation in the manner it does? What if this removes the incentive to profit from true innovation? Wouldn’t the best innovators be smart enough to accept payment and restrict distribution and reverse engineering on their best work? What if open source stifles the best software preventing it from ever seeing the light of day, because the best inventors cannot earn a living? And so on.
    - NeonVice 8y ago
      It's weird. Both the new_to_hn and man_made accounts were created within the last couple of hours. I wouldn't be surprised if they were created by the same person with a penchant for creating a username that mirrors the subject of his post.

tcj_phx 8y ago

Last week I watched a video about Vitamin B1. The term Alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome [0] was mentioned. This form of vitamin B1 deficiency is experienced by some heavy drinkers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_Korsakoff_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_Korsakoff_syndrome Age, alcoholism, chemotherapy, dialysis, extreme dieting, and genetic factors also contribute to the development of this syndrome. The most important treatment (aside from cessation of alcohol use) is some form of thiamine (vitamin B1) supplementation - injection/IV/oral. The causes section of that wikipedia entry says "Mercury poisoning can also lead to Korsakoff's syndrome." Maybe mercury contamination is another factor in the thiamine deficiencies observed in ocean wildlife. Edit: added the clarification that thiamine and Vitamin B1 are synonymous.

ohiovr 8y ago
There was an article on HN recently about a woman that used sea shells for sculptures and got heavy metal poisoning from the activity.
jhoechtl 8y ago
Maybe a consequence of the once habbit of adding lead to gas?
- headShrinker 8y ago
  Coal burning power plants are the number one reason for oceanic mercury contamination.

DoctorOetker 8y ago

an invasive species of fish that is rich in thiaminase -> thiamin (vitamine B1) is broken down by thiaminase -> predators like birds normally source B1 from fish -> B1 deficiency The perverse effect is that the invasive species has an advantage in that its predator suffers, so plausibly the birds will prefer their usual food if possible, which increases the concentration of the invasive fish...

the8472 8y ago
that explanation only applies to the great lakes, not to the birds at the baltic.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  sure, I didn't intend the summary of the mechanism as a sweeping clarification at all. even within just the Great Lakes, this does not mean the invasive fish were necessarily the cause, in turn they may have been the result, perhaps the native fish were more dependent on thiamine than the invasive fish, and the thiamine deficiency maybe present at a lower level still say due to perhaps a change in whatever food is available to fish like plankton, plants, etc but it does suggest a relatively cheap test for those studying the other populations: try administering B1 or other nutrients since substantial improvement by essential nutrients is hard to explain by a more complicated poisoning mechanism. I.e. if for some other species a similarly significant effect is observed in controlled correlation to some vitamin, then it's probably more significant than poisoning, i.e. we can't cure poisoning by administering vitamins. One could think that by feeding them in a new environment the animals were unknowingly spared from continuing poisoning, but that does not explain why the control group died (unless they claim Balk & co intentionally poisoned the control group of course)

ggm 8y ago

Vegemite, rich source of Vitamin B. said to have been made from the yeast remaining after brewing. Thus the old wives tale that if a beer-drunk eats vegemite toast, they avoid the problems of thiamine deficient diet. (I don't think we can fix this problem in nature by feeding zoo plankton vegemite btw)

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
The irony being that for a long time beer was loaded with unfiltered yeasts, which made it far more nutritious. The advent of spirits and filtered beers, especially as it tended to arrive alongside whiter breads, was not good for the health of the poor. You see similar things occur for different reasons across different nations and at different times when key dietary staples change, or are lost. Pellagra in the US from over-reliance on corn, Beriberi in Japan from eating too much white rice and too little protein, and so on. The history of monoculture agriculture and emerging food science is a history of starvation, malnutrition, and gross misunderstandings of epidemiology. Fortunately we’d never make the same mistakes today! Heh...

PavlikPaja 8y ago

The widespread use of fertilizers could be the case. The thing is, we possibly don't know all the necessary nutrients, and causing an imbalance as the result, where some elements are supplied in excess and others are missing. The myopia and obesity epidemics could also be the result - countries that use lanthanides in fertilizers show lower levels of obesity, minimal rates of mental illness, slower aging and higher IQ, regardless of wealth. Iron toxicity is also a problem in many places, as the excess iron replaces other metals, especially manganese. Many diseases associated with aging are actually caused by this excess and may have nothing to do with aging at all. Many people are mentally retarded because of irresponsible attempts to increase intake despite inadequate research. (Iron increases the number of D2 and D1 dopamine receptors in the brain, which makes them psychotic, people who don't suffer from this are told to have "high functioning autism". The supposedly neuroptypical people are people who suffer from thought insertions - they can see you're lying, mean something else than what you say etc. and apparently accept it as perfectly normal that each of them interprets the same situation differently. They also hear voices and call it their inner monologue.) These replacements are the reason why the deficiencies are hard to notice - the protein will usually accept some other metal when the appropriate metal ion is not found, so that the protein may be known to bind to e.g. calcium, when a rare earth element would be preferable.

orhmeh09 8y ago
Could you further explain the relation of iron, psychoticism, and autism? Maybe I misunderstood but the proposed links sound unconvincing.
- PavlikPaja 8y ago
  The exposure to excess iron in infancy increases the amount of dopamine receptors in the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 Antipsychotics work primarily by blocking those, without activating them. Autism has been called the opposite of schizophrenia. It has been noticed that when autistic people have high fever or encephalitis, they behave "normally". https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ I know how it sounds, but that is the best explanation I have.

alexkratm 8y ago

<i>hello</i>

mratzloff 8y ago

The three most relevant passages, in my opinion: “We found that thiamine deficiency is much more widespread and severe than previously thought,” Balk says. Given its scope, he suggests that a pervasive thiamine deficiency could be at least partly responsible for global wildlife population declines. Over a 60-year period up to 2010, for example, worldwide seabird populations declined by approximately 70%, and globally, species are being lost 1,000 times faster than the natural rate of extinction (9, 10). “He has seen a thiamine deficiency in several differ phyla now,” says Fitzsimons of Balk. “One wonders what is going on. It’s a larger issue than we first suspected.” ... Balk fears that a single pervasive factor, such as an atmospheric pollutant, may be depleting the environment of thiamine at its sources, including phytoplankton and bacteria, affecting the entire food chain. To see how far the problem reaches, he is now looking at upstream terrestrial wildlife such as elk (Alces alces). Balk is also investigating whether any of several pollutants might interfere with the oxidation, hydrolysis, or synthesis of thiamine. ... Sañudo-Wilhelmy has measured very low levels of B vitamins, including thiamine, in coastal waters around California. Other researchers have estimated similar scarcities in some areas of the open ocean (16). Warming waters due to climate change could explain the seawater vitamin scarcity, he says. Warmer temperatures speed bacterial growth, making the microbes consume more B vitamins than they produce—gobbling up the vitamins before the phytoplankton can take their share. All are couched with the fact that more research is necessary into the cause or causes.

pasta 8y ago
Indeed we need more research. For example a lot of coral is dying and most researchers suggest this is due to rising temperatures. But now some new research suggests that coral can handle the change in temperature but they die because they eat to much plastic particles. Both can be true but the fact is we should be more carefull about our world because we just know too little about how all systems work together.
- pvaldes 8y ago
  Is an interesting hypothesis... Dunno... Incorrect temperature kills a lot of captive corals, even at small variations. Is a diverse group and some are harder to kill than other. On the other hand, Cnidarians taste their food and reject often small stones and sand grains. Probably many types of plastic particles (if not all) would be just taken by a small peeble and ignorated. Cnidarians loose interest quickly when you touch its tentacles with an inert matherial.

pvaldes 8y ago

>fish eggs micro-injected with thiamin survived Hum, this does not look right I don't have information about the authors experience as fish pathologists, but I would expect to see a mention to Myxobolus cerebralis somewhere if you have young salmonidae with erratic swimming.