August 30, 2022

Nutritionists, particularly bureaucrats, indicate that eating some sort of balanced nutrition is as good as nutrition gets and supplements are only needed where deficiencies are noticed. That type of nutrition is far from optimum.

Optimum nutrition is never totally achievable, but improvements can easily be made. So the attempt here is to describe elements of the process that are involved in optimizing nutrition in a theoretical way.

Evolution physiology is important in evaluating nutrition. I refer to myself as an evolution physiologist. I study species which are extreme examples of evolution. They show how evolution extends back in time.

Evolution is minimalist. Any change that improves survival with be promoted in evolution. Now days, the improvements are minimal. The major leaps were being made 300 to 500 million years ago. As complexities became more extreme and functions became more numerous and interdependent, only small changes could be tolerated.

Biology has become so highly differentiated that it would die out in 2-10 million years, even if humans had no influence over it. That's because so many complexities depend upon each other that any change or improvement in one element is detrimental to other elements; so species cannot adapt easily enough to changing environmental conditions.

Since humans are the most complex product of evolution, they have many biological contradictions that do not resolve.

For example, metals which are used as nutrients must be attached to protein carriers before they can enter the bloodstream. They often use the same protein carriers and compete with each other.

When taking both copper and zinc supplements, the zinc will use up the protein carriers and create a copper shortage. There may be additional reasons why zinc will create a copper shortage. So zinc and copper need to be taken at different times.

Zinc takes precedence over copper in metabolism, because zinc is needed for several highly demanding purposes with more immediate consequences than copper. The most significant is strengthening of the immune system, which has rapid consequences in survival against diseases.

Zinc was only recently added to the diet of humans in a major way. All herbivores (vegetarian animals) have a shortage of zinc, because there is almost no zinc in the plants that are eaten. It was the increased availability of zinc that allowed humans to evolve beyond the Great Apes.

The monkeys could only evolve into Great Apes upon become partial carnivores, which provided increased zinc in their diet. Not only did the increased zinc strengthen the immune system of the Great Apes, it strengthened their bones.

It appears circumstantially that monkeys were prevented from getting large due to weak bones in the absence of sufficient zinc. Why then did the dinosaurs get large on vegetarian diets? Probably because they ate such a huge volume of plant food that they extracted significant zinc, as if they were carnivores. The stomach size was huge for herbivore dinosaurs.

The increase in zinc for human ancestors allowed them to live longer, which was the critical factor in developing communication and intelligence. It takes many years of age to accumulate knowledge, even now days. The recorded human history always mentions the elders as the source of knowledge.

The reason why human ancestors got more zinc than the Great Apes is because they moved out of the forests and into the coastal area of southwest Africa where there were a large number of shore birds nesting and readily available sea creatures along the shore for a high-zinc diet. By contrast, the Great Apes found much difficulty in predation within the forests.

Humans benefit from more micro nutrients than are found in their food for the above reasons, which would be true even with the most perfect diet possible. Then when adding processed foods, even more micro nutrients are needed.

That means humans greatly benefit from adding micro nutrients as supplements to their diet. The effects are particularly noticeable for the elderly, as their metabolism slows down due to a reduced rate of proteins being synthesized.

But vitamins and minerals are generally toxic, until they get to their final destination. That means another contradiction is in taking toxic substances which do some harm in some places while adding benefits in other places. As a general concept, micro nutrients are a benefit at about two or three times the recommended daily allowance, while extreme amounts should be avoided. Some are less toxic than others, which allows greater amounts. Some persons have died taking excessive amounts of B vitamins over time.

Why more than the recommended allowance? Because the recommended amount is minimalism in estimating what actually gets used. A lot of supplements will disappear being expelled or broken down. With minimalism, some needs will be met, while others are stopped by an absence of the needed cofactor. So averaging is not optimal. There needs to be an excess, so every need gets met. At low levels, the toxicity is not as significant as disrupted metabolism from insufficient cofactors.

Vitamin D, in particular, is often needed in significantly large quantities; and a shortage results in spinal pain equivalent to nerves being pinched. I have to take 5,000 units twice a day to prevent that problem. Before I figured out the cause of the problem, back pain was so severe that I had to type standing up. I thought I was taking vitamin D, but the amount was too small and some brands were not reliable. Reliable brands need to be determined through trial-and-error, as the bureaucrats will not enforce laws in that area. There are laws against fraud in every area.

Therefore, optimum nutrition requires taking all vitamins and minerals in small amounts. It's not an easy thing to do. One problem is that silicon is usually included. Silicon should be avoided, as it mineralizes metals and cations. Mineralization means covalent bonds are formed, and they don't easily unform.

Carbon and silicon are quite similar, except that carbon forms its covalent bonds with other carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur, while silicon forms its covalent bonds with metals and cations.

Fakes sometimes say silicon is a nutrient. There is a lot of such fakery in the nutrition area. Another example is chromium. The chromium fakery began with a test for the effects of insulin while adding chromium to the brew and pretending that it was the chromium doing what insulin was doing. So chromium is said to be a "glucose tolerance factor." Why does chromium need to do what insulin does?

Fake nutrition jumps out of the page in its contempt for valid science. Real science is the determination of cause-and-effect relationships showing the details of the results. Fakery swims around in a cloud of nonsense. There are no similarities.

The underlying science indicates that so-called vitamin E is not a real vitamin but a plant generated insecticide. The supposed function is to attach to animal cell membranes and serve as an anti-oxidant. Why does it need to replace vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as the real anti-oxidant? And why did plants do animals the favor of designing a complex molecule that would attach to their membranes for a beneficial purpose? The molecules cannot attach to plant membranes, because plant cells are surrounded by cellulose and hemicellulose.

And that is why the molecules function as pesticides for plants. The molecules do no harm to plants, but they enter animal cells due to the lipid membranes surrounding animal cells. The molecules have a lipid-soluble end which allows them to enter animal cells and carry disruptive molecules into the cells.

Quinine does something similar. It is found under tree bark. It has a lipid soluble tail which draws it into animal cells and carries in a disruptive molecule.

Getting back to taking vitamins and minerals, metals are very problematic as nutritional supplements. They are generally oxidizing agents. That means they have a high tendency to react with any other molecules they come into contact with, until they are stabilized in their final locations.

Therefore, taking copper, zinc or iron results in reactions with food which creates indigestion. There is not a complete fix for that problem. One method of minimizing the problem is to take those metal with an almost empty stomach. A small amount of white rice reduces the problem, because rice is almost pure starch, and oxidation of starch is a lot less serious than oxidizing more complex molecules.

Then zinc and copper need to be taken at different times. Going through that process twice a day is not easy. Also, taking iron in mineral form also oxidizes food and creates indigestion. That makes three times a day. So the usual procedure is to ignore the result while not taking a lot of those metals. But taking copper and zinc must be separated in time.

Manganese is an overlooked micro nutrient that is important in a lot of metabolic processes. Manganese in mineral form is quite toxic; so the upper limit is set at eleven milligrams per day. I take five milligrams per day and cut 10mg pills if necessary.

Those metals need to be chelated, which means attached to organic acids. Gluconate is the most common for copper, zinc and manganese. When a name ends in "ate" it means an acid that has been neutralized by association with another molecule which replaces the hydrogen of the acid.

Molybdenum is a very unusual micro nutrient that is needed for metabolizing sulfur. It has a high electronegativity of 2.16, while copper is 1.9, iron is 1.83 and zinc is 1.65. The electronegativity tends to correlate with the reactivity, which means molybdenum is even more reactive than copper. So I cut 500µg molybdenum pills down and take one fifth of a pill per day. Molybdenum disrupts copper utilization; but I take copper apart from all other nutrients but small amounts of white rice.

The elderly make good test animals for nutrition, since their nutritional problems increase as protein synthesis decreases. So one of the things I find is that joint pains develop when eating sugary and acidic foods and disappear when totally avoiding such foods, which usually means fruits. Even vitamin C may need to be taken in small amounts to keep joint pains from occurring.

I found that taking vitamin C with zinc creates a reaction with zinc seemingly making zinc toxic instead of useful. Theory indicates that vitamin C reduces zinc from the plus two form which is usable to the plus one form or elemental zinc, which is toxic instead of useful. Therefore, vitamin C should not be taken within one half hour before or two hours after taking zinc.

The same is probably true for all metals in mineral form except iron. Vitamin C should not be taken at the same time as minerals other than iron to prevent them from being reduced to toxic or nonfunctional forms. Iron, however does need vitamin C to prevent it from oxidizing to the plus three form, which is very toxic.

The indirect evidence indicates that vitamin C evolved in a symbiotic manner with animals for the purpose of protecting cells from the toxicity of iron by keeping iron from oxidizing to the plus three form. Only small amounts of vitamin C should be taken to keep it from reducing other minerals to toxic or nonfunctional forms. About 300 milligrams per day should be enough vitamin C for average persons.

Beta Carotene should not be taken in significant amounts for vitamin A, because it accumulates and softens tissue, which can result in damage to tissue. When I was taking beta carotene, my skin got soft causing fingernail edges to cut into my skin and create infections. When I discontinued taking beta carotene, it took several months for my skin to normalize.

In regard to fat production, nutritionists, particularly bureaucrats, have a slogan that says, fat equals calories ingested minus calories burned up; and on that basis tell people to burn up calories through exercise. Exercise increases fat production, because 50 million years of evolution requires that result. The more energy that is burned up, the more energy that needs to be stored to minimize the harm that results from a shortage of energy. (Storage fat didn't exist until it evolved in yeasts 50 million years ago and then spread to other species through horizontal gene transfer.)

There are an extreme number of control mechanism in human physiology. How they interact cannot be analyzed apart from some general observations. Nutritionists pretend that there are no such things.

A raw food diet reduces fat production dramatically. Bureaucrats say the reason is because of fewer calories eaten. They don't know how many calories are eaten. The effect is a product of evolution for human ancestors as monkeys which needed to be feather-weight for climbing in trees. They ate a raw food diet. That means humans eating a diet similar to monkeys makes them lose weight.

There are any number of regulatory mechanisms involved in that process. The patterns get stored in DNA and stay there forever. DNA patterns are protected from mutation by excising out mutations and covering the unused DNA with proteins. My research shows the storage and re-use of physiological patterns with anomalies of the morel mushroom which revert to earlier growth patterns.