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So basically once your body has all the nutrients it needs to grow or make the things it needs to make, it makes them. Even more extra stuff it doesn’t need, it
by simonh 4y ago
So basically once your body has all the nutrients it needs to grow or make the things it needs to make, it makes them. Even more extra stuff it doesn’t need, it doesn’t use. Makes sense.
This also appears to apply to the immune system. There’s zero evidence that supplements that are supposed to “boost your immune system” do any such thing. Yes your immune system functions best if you have good nutrition, but that’s it. Even better nutrition just isn’t a thing.
Side rant, sorry, but I had this conversation with a relative during covid, she was touting supplements to ‘boost her immune system’. There’s one way we have found that really does actually boost your immune system, that works with your natural defences by training them specifically to fight a particular disease. Vaccination.
- weavie 4y agoI guess the argument would be that you don't know for sure whether your diet does provide all the nutrients your body needs, so supplements could be used to fill in any gaps. The assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoIf you spend enough time looking into what micronutrients you need, you eventually figure out that it is actually pretty hard to get them all through diet. But there is essentially no end to the scientifically backed list of beneficial supplements you might choose to take, so if you want to start, there’s not really a rational place to stop, and it can spiral out of control quite quickly. I think the better approach is just to eat a varied diet.
- 300bps 4y agoThe assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely. Well worded. From my personal experience, this assumption is dangerous. About 20 years ago I was having elevated AST/ALT liver enzymes three tests in a row indicating liver damage. Doctor ordered every test to see what was going on but everything came up negative. She asked me if I took a multivitamin which I did. She told me to stop. Haven’t had elevated liver enzymes since.
- simonh 4y agoThat’s a perfectly fair point, I took Vitamin D during lockdown because I wasn’t getting enough sunlight. I’m just saying that it makes sense that beyond satisfying your body’s needs there’s no higher plane of health that supplements will take you to.
- EMM_386 4y ago> The assumption being that your body will just dispose of any excess safely. Not always. Fat-soluable vitamins (A, D, E, and K) will build up in fat tissue and can lead to toxicity.
- spacemadness 4y agoSource?
- inejge 4y agoSearch for "hypervitaminosis A", for example.
- LinuxBender 4y agoIt may also be worth noting that people with excess body fat will absorb fat soluble vitamins into the excess fat and it will not be available for the thousands of functions in the body that need them until the person is fat adapted. Ideally the high priority goal should be to remove the excess fat but until they do they will need more than the RDI of each component. How much more gets complicated as there are not yet any good tests for testing how much was absorbed into the fat.
- nradov 4y agoYou would have to take a lot of vitamin D supplements to cause clinical symptoms. Some people have done it, but as a practical matter the risk of hypervitaminosis D from regular multivitamin pills is virtually zero. Whether those pills actually have any health benefit is a separate issue.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoThat's the sales pitch for multivitamins and the like; they talk you into a problem but they provide the solution. Certain vitamins your body will dispose of safely (like vitamin C), but there's others that just build up until they kill you; there's the case of Xavier Mertz [0] who was theorized to have died from an excess of vitamin A after eating his sled dogs' livers. But the basic rule is: just eat normally / "a balanced diet"; you likely don't need supplements unless you have absorption issues or stick to a specific diet (e.g. vegetarianism / veganism, soylent / diet shakes, or the same thing every day, like the 14 year old who only ate chips and ended up (partially) blind due to a vitamin deficiency [1]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Mertz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Mertz [1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L19-0361 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L19-0361, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/british-teenager-went-blind-from-eating-only-fries-and-chips-doctors-say-warning-over-junk-food-caused-malnutrition/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/british-teenager-went-blind-fro...
- seper8 4y agoEven that balanced diet will consist of less and less minerals and vitamins as time goes on and growers optimize for vegetable, fruit VOLUME instead of vitamin/mineral contents. >>> The level of decline varied depending on the specific nutrients and the type of fruit or vegetable, but it generally ranged from 6 percent for protein to 38 percent for riboflavin. In particular, calcium dropped most dramatically in broccoli, kale, and mustard greens, while the iron content took a substantial hit in chard, cucumbers, and turnip greens. Asparagus, collard greens, mustard greens, and turnip greens lost considerable amounts of vitamin C. Further studies since then have backed up the case that nutrient levels are dissipating. Research in the January 2022 issue of the journal Foods found that while most vegetables grown in Australia had relatively similar iron content between 1980 and 2010, there were noteworthy drops in certain veggies. Declines in iron content, ranging from 30 to 50 percent, occurred for sweet corn, red-skinned potatoes, cauliflower, green beans, green peas, and chickpeas. By contrast, Hass avocados, mushrooms, and silverbeet (another name for chard) actually gained in iron. Grains have also experienced declines, experts say. A study in a 2020 issue of Scientific Reports found that protein content in wheat decreased by 23 percent from 1955 to 2016, and there were notable reductions in manganese, iron, zinc, and magnesium, as well. <<< https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...
- godshatter 4y agoThere is also the triage theory of aging where the idea is that when micronutrient levels are low (not low enough to cause acute symptoms but below the recommended daily allowance), they are triaged and used where needed (such as ATP production) at the expense of being used normally. The theory is that this can cause long-term problems such as neural decay, cancer, and other signs of aging. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693790/
- Py-o7 4y ago+1 for Bruce Ames. This idea profoundly shaped my thinking a few years ago. The one nit is I'm not sure how we'd go about testing it.
- reducesuffering 4y agoI wish him being alive at 94 was proof of something but afaik my smoking grandmother with no exercise doing nothing particularly healthy lived that long... However, she also wasn't doing novel research at age 86. Wow.
- amerkhalid 4y agoOr, in my case, I am 100% certain that my diet is missing many nutrients as I rarely eat fruits or vegetables. I take various supplements and so far things seems to be okay (based on yearly physical and blood work).
- newsclues 4y agoI think the "boost your immune system" things are just common deficiencies in modern people. If most people don't get enough vitamin C or D in regular life, then the advice to boost their immune system with a sufficient does to be non-deficient would function to boost their immune system to a normally healthy level.
- Dalewyn 4y agoMilk sold in the US almost always has vitamin D added to it, because presumably Americans don't get enough sunlight to produce sufficient amounts. Instant noodles sold in Japan almost always have vitamins B1 and B2 added to them, for presumably similar reasons.
- bayindirh 4y ago> because presumably Americans don't get enough sunlight to produce sufficient amounts. UHT denatures vitamin D, hence UHT and Pasteurized milk has lower vitamin D levels before the sterilization process.
- yucky 4y agoI don't know any adults who drink milk. I'm sure some do, but I wouldn't count on that as the solution to Vitamin D deficiency.
- walthamstow 4y agoWhite bread and processed grain products in the UK always have things like iron, calcium, vitamins, riboflavin added. I think it's to replace the loss of the nutrient-rich germ from milling. Never known what riboflavin is, still don't today, but I saw it on the side of a cereal box every day as a child and the word is etched in my mind
- jerf 4y agoRiboflavin is one of the vitamin B complex. I remember it because deficiencies are extremely rare, and there appears to be no practical upper limit on how much you can take, it is virtually impossible to overdose on. I mean, obviously, there is some limit, but it's sky high. Which makes the supplementation of it a particular joke, in my opinion. That it was discovered as a "vitamin" at all is probably more to do with it being easy to spot (very brightly colored) and easy to chemically handle and a few other accidents of history more than anything else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riboflavin#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riboflavin#History (I am editorializing that a bit and I freely admit that.) It certainly doesn't stick out like, say, iron, which has recognizable deficiency symptoms and plenty of people in the real world with them.
- treeman79 4y agoLot of issues can be autoimmune related. Goal is to calm down the immune system. Not boost it. This is where basics like getting away from sugar are so important.
- kimmik 4y agoImmune system isn’t just too much or too little. Can’t simplify it to that. People with autoimmunity are also immunesuppressed at baseline.
- treeman79 4y agoYour sort of correct. Lots of drugs like plaquninal are immune modifiers not suppressant. However shoving large amounts of sugar and basically everything in the American diet is a great way to get the immune system to decide that everything in body is the enemy.
- johnyzee 4y agoSugar is pro-inflammatory, and so is omega-6 fatty acids, the consumption of both of which has increased massively within the last 60-70 years. Omega-6 fats have gone from less than 5% of human diet to up to 30% today, thanks to the commercial success of 'vegetable' oils. These two alone probably represent the most conspicuous diet changes that have happened in our societies in recent history and should be obvious suspects when looking at disease factors, imho.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoThe biggest change in the human diet is the explosion of cheap calories on the food market, especially hyper palatable ones. If canola oil or even just linoleic acid were so bad for us, we could cause worse health outcomes by intervening them into diets, but that’s not what happens in RCTs.
- phkahler 4y ago>> So basically once your body has all the nutrients it needs to grow or make the things it needs to make, it makes them. Even more extra stuff it doesn’t need, it doesn’t use. Makes sense. I find it really common when researching the benefits of X to run across articles citing research that "X does nothing in healthy people" seemingly to discredit the idea that taking X is a good idea. But if you have a deficiency that research isn't really relevant. Gotta read the qualifiers.
- lr4444lr 4y agoWell, that and high quality, sufficient sleep. That is way harder as you age, and a worthwhile aim of lifestyle modification or supplementation to support it.
- cainxinth 4y agoI’ve often said that when discussing vitamins, in particular, the general public thinks of them incorrectly like stackable video game power ups. In reality, they are more analogous to essential pieces of the game’s code. You don’t get super powers by taking a whole bunch, and things start malfunctioning if you lack them.
- seper8 4y agoThere is a shit ton of evidence supporting vitamin d3 to fight covid...
- treeman79 4y ago[flagged]
- dgacmu 4y agoThere's not, though. There's a ton of evidence that vitamin d _correlates_ with COVID outcomes, but this is vitamin d's superpower: it correlates with good outcomes for just about everything, but nearly every time there's a good high quality study, it turns out to not be causative. A bunch of those vitamin d and COVID studies were fraudulent. Vitamin d levels are an excellent marker of good health and they can help predict outcomes but supplementing vitamin d doesn't improve those outcomes. Regretfully. (Except rickets, of course.)
- seper8 4y agoDid you even do a single bit of research before boldly stating there is no research done on the supplementation? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35166850/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35166850/ https://pmj.bmj.com/content/98/1156/87 https://pmj.bmj.com/content/98/1156/87 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0268396 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- dgacmu 4y agoYes. There's a ton. Most of it is horribly tainted by correlation effects. Let's consider one of the studies you cited above, which is an observational study from the VA hospitals: "In the population of US veterans, we show that Vitamin D2 and D3 fills were associated with reductions in COVID-19 infection of 28% and 20%, respectively" This sounds really awesome, right? Except -- you could also interpret this as "People who are following their doctor's recommendations, going to the pharmacy to fill their prescriptions, and taking them, do better". No kidding - they're probably also taking their other medications and being more generally medically careful! This is completely consistent with the 99% of vitamin d-related results that show that it correlates with all sorts of positive outcomes. The high quality interventional studies -- which are actually potentially able to demonstrate causality -- are generally negative. And the larger and better they are, the more likely they are to be negative. One of the largest was the CORONAVIT trial; it was, unfortunately, open-label, but it was large and randomized. (Note that you'd expect the open-label aspect to result in a stronger placebo effect, which .. well, given that they found no benefits, did not occur). https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071230 https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071230 The vitamin d & covid horse is pretty dead at this point, which is basically the same as the "vitamin d & x" horse for most values of X other than diseases known to be directly caused by vitamin D deficiency. Which are serious and worthy of treatment. Just don't expect vitamin D to be a miracle cure on the basis of its correlation with everything positive.
- zackees 4y ago[dead]
- johnyzee 4y agoThis is why omega-3s are effective. Your body depends on them to function optimally, and they are found in only a very few food sources, pretty much only fish. The omega-3s found in nuts and plants can convert to the most critical fatty acids, but about ten times less efficiently.
- schwartzworld 4y agoBoost your immune system is so stupid. Which part is it boosting? Fever is an immune response. Or maybe they mean "increase white blood cell count"?