turquoiserose,
I am 70 with a family history that puts me at risk. I also use K2 obtained from Life Extension. Just passed a carotid artery scan.
I like Life Extension. Good service and quick delivery.
My brother in law, mid-60s, got Covid-19 last October. I had been sending resistant sister every Vitamin D/Covid article from grassrootshealth.org. Sis did some research, found a treatment called a “Vitamin D Hammer”. It involves giving ill person 20,000IU vitamin D3 twice a day. In two days his fever broke and he recovered.
Sorry if this is not the best thread to ask this, but since we’re on the subject of nutrients, anyone have a recommendation for an osteopathic doctor in the San Francisco, CA area? I’m shopping around for a new Dr that won’t give me pushback on requests for thorough blood panels.
Even though I have already been vaccinated for Covid, an Ivermectin friendly doc would be preferred (just because I would know that they can think for themselves, and who knows what future variants may do.) But I understand the current policies may prevent even the best intentioned doctor from being able to recommend or prescribe Ivermectin, so that’s not a deal breaker.
Cheers,
C&C
C&C,
Naturopathic doctors are licensed in CA, I believe. I don’t know specifics.
However, go to lifeextension.com. Many, many self ordered blood tests. Very reasonable if you catch the yearly spring sale. You can get an order to go to an independent lab or get sent a kit to have a local blood draw at a hospital lab. I get the kit because I live very rural, two hours from an independent lab. Then I send in the completed samples by UPS. Never a problem.
Hi Cheech & Chong,
I highly recommend Dr. Lois Johnson at Hill Park Medical Center in Sebastopol. She is an MD and an extremely experienced herbalist who is very thorough with diagnosis through bloodwork and other avenues.
Cheers,
Suzie
…I agree completely with JAG here. All this over reliance on studies is a dead end. 2/3rds of all studies cannot be reproduced. 2/3rds!
Now out of the 1/3 that can actually be reproduced…there’s a percentage that are reproducible for reasons other than originally theorized. So, you have the large majority of these studies being utterly worthless…actually worse than worthless because they mislead us.
Next, there is no way that vitamin D from a pill is even in the same universe as vit D from sunshine, fish liver oils, and other whole foods. It just isnt. Why? Because along with that sunshine and whole food vitamin D comes a host of other enzymes, biological agents, solar radiations, chemicals, light spectrums, and things that science doesnt have the first CLUE about.
You were not designed to absorb vitamin D by itself, in a pill. It doesnt exist in that form anywhere in nature.
If you want to be healthy and have a strong body and good immune system you need to look to nature, use good common sense and take all the science with a grain of salt. Get outside and exercise in the fresh air and sunshine. You dont need to move to Africa and run naked with the gazelles, thats just a straw man excuse. You can go out and take some sun, give me a break. You should eat moderate quantities of fresh whole food. If you want to take a multi-vitamin go ahead, it might do something.
Overall, its going to be very difficult to reproduce the effects of a natural healthy life through supplementation, and drugs. I dont think its ever been done or ever will. We dont know nearly enough, but the good news is we dont have to. We know what works even if we dont know exactly why.
Go for a brisk walk everyday in shorts. Take your shirt off for 15 minutes everyday to get some sun. Grow a garden. Thats about it. Theres nothing else you’re going to do that can have that kind of profound effect on your health and well being.
I have listened to this doc give lectures and Zooms for his patients. Nice blend of therapies and remarkable case histories of healing.
https://drtomyarema.com/
Jag wrote: But I think we are fooling ourselves if we think we can make up for poor nutrition with commercially available vitamin and mineral supplements. If you think the pharmaceutical companies are corrupt, the supplement industry is 10x worse.Jag, I suppose I could ask you where your "10X worse" came from; however, I'll just chalk it up to hyperbole on your part. You may be correct when it comes to big supplement companies who are only concerned with maximizing profit. It could even be worse than 10X worse. Painting them all with the same broad brush isn't honest or useful. The supplements industry is filled with all kinds of players. There are those who are corrupt and will focus only on the bottom line, but there are others who truly have a mission to keep their customers healthy. I can't say the same for big Pharma. The fact that they're pushing these "vaccines" that are not properly tested speaks volumes. We're cash cows for them - nothing more. Given that we're living in an imperfect world, what do we do? Should we just live with the current environment ... or should we do what we can to augment the diminished vitamin and mineral nutrient composition of mainstream food? What choices are available to us? I agree that we can't possibly reconstruct all the agricultural land that has been mined of minerals. That doesn't mean that we can't replenish the minerals in our gardens and produce enough healthy food there to supplement the vacuous calories from mainstream suppliers. Composted animal manure works wonders in the garden! It takes knowledge to know what actions will benefit the individual. Some vitamins/minerals from corrupt institutions may not be assimilated properly; however, we have medical tests that can establish the efficacy. Others on this thread have talked about blood testing to ensure that they have sufficient levels of key ingredients to stay healthy. I take multiple supplements daily. I agree with other poster's view that vitamins/minerals work analogous to a chain. The chain is no stronger than its weakest link. A plant works the same way. If it is deficient in a minor mineral, adding nitrogen will not make the plant healthy. It may still produce, but the product will not be as nutritious as it could be. The goal should be to supply our bodies the minimum necessary to keep healthy. That way, the weakest link will be strong enough to accomplish what we need. If store-bought food doesn't provide this need, a smart individual will supplement. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough. Grover
As my health and nutrition information changed over the years, I have tried to make culinary changes. It can be daunting and costly to scan the food cupboard and realize much there needs to be thrown out. I have done this several times. This housecleaning can extend to food packaging materials, storage containers, cooking devices and even eating utensils and dish ware. It takes time to accept and make the changes and introduce new foods. For a while, I committed myself to just one change a month.
Some healthy changes I have done:
c.f.
Get rid of most high fructose foods, especially high fructose corn syrup. Substitute Stevia, monk fruit, erithritol, xylitol for sweetener.
No refined seed oils like corn, soy, canola. Use tallow, lard, butter, ghee and olive, coconut, avocado oils.
Minimal to no grains, wheat, rice, corn.
Take a good probiotic, daily. Health starts in the gut.
I love coffee, but I am mostly switching to decaf, as caffein seems to jack up my insulin.
Stopped eating out, cook whole foods at home. Learning some cooking skills can save money and health.
I switched my storage and left overs containers from plastic to glass, use ceramic knives and plates and sterling silver eating utensils. You can’t beat being born with a silver spoon.
Hope this helps.
“Eating on the wild side” by Jo Robinson, gives a good rating of the variation in nutritional content of various foods; most foods are grown and selected for the self life, durability, storability and appearance, not nutritional value. Not a competition with the idea of supplements, but a good read.
You can’t beat nature, except - well - after taking niacin my life has noticeably improved. So perhaps I should just stop taking it, go back to where I was before, and pretend that the improvement never happened? No. Niacin stays. This is my lived experience. See: “trust yourself.” I do.
We take antibiotics for bacterial infections. And ivermectin for COVID. And we put casts on broken arms. We presume to be “smarter than nature” with all those interventions. Now - me - I think that leads to a better quality of life. I’ve done all those things. Some may disagree. “Nature is smarter - sure I broke my arm, but I’m just gonna let it sit there. Nature will take care of it for me.” Of course that’s a silly example - but interventions come on a spectrum. We do interventions all the time.
Having said that - I will agree that Western Med seems fascinated by single-compound interventions, probably due to profit & patentability. At the risk of going into the weeds - Artemisia Annua is a plant, which can be used to cure malaria - among many other things. Western Med extracted one component - artemisinin - which seemed to do a better job initially, only to result in strains of malaria that eventually became resistant to this single compound. Which the whole A. Annua plant still manages to cure.
Amusingly, everyone in Madagascar drinks A. Annua tea, and this country has manged to avoid COVID almost entirely. The WHO, of course, alternatively tries to ignore this, and reprimand them for their effrontery.
So while I take my niacin, and my bunch-o-supplements, I remain on the lookout for whole-plant solutions. My latest: Moringa Oleifera, a horrible-tasting substance, that large parts of Africa use in combination with A. Annua. (This was recommended to me by my friend, an African veteran - 10 years in Nigeria.) Not everyone needs Moringa, but I’m giving it a try. We’ll see how it goes. So far: after 7 days, my intake of alcohol has dropped precipitously. (One of the things I track is daily alcohol consumption). Example: I opened a beer yesterday. I couldn’t finish it. I just didn’t want to. I’ve never experienced this sort of “adverse event” before.
Note: you must mix Moringa with something. It just tastes horrible by itself.
In addition, I also do daily 25 minutes of PA, and maintain a normal BMI (=24) - with the help of 16:8 intermittent fasting. Based on what I’ve read, I consider these interventions to be at least as important as my supplements - and in aggregate, probably more important.
But supplements? While I don’t depend on the little pills to save me, but neither will I spend inordinate amounts of time to try to search for the perfect foods that will make all my industrial-society-depleted-soil mineral deficiencies go away. Supplements are a part of my arsenal.
Lastly, here’s a vitamin D paper which sums to: “dark-skinned people in high latitude countries probably need vitamin-D supplementation.” We could sit around the campfire and academically debate whether or not “going out in the sunshine” (in high latitudes, where dark skin makes sufficient vitamin D impossible to get for these people) is better for this population with claims that “you can’t outfox nature” - while this group continues to die due to vitamin D deficiency - or we could hand them vitamin D tablets and probably end up saving a bunch of lives, even if it isn’t the perfect solution.
Sometimes, the desire to obtain the perfect solution is the enemy of “good enough for right now.” I’ve seen this in engineering. “Good enough” - is often good enough. That’s where I am with vitamin D.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/2/499/htm While further research is needed to identify the optimal strategy for vitamin D supplementation and fortification, no reason exists to delay addressing vitamin D deficiency among populations with high prevalence of deficiency such as African Americans. The potential benefits promise to be large, and much evidence indicates that the risks of supplementation up to 4000 IU per day vitamin D are minimal.
I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I wanted to share this with everyone in case there is something interesting in this postmortem that someone with a better background in science can decipher and share with all of us.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971221003647?s=09
brushhog: ...I agree completely with JAG here. All this over reliance on studies is a dead end. 2/3rds of all studies cannot be reproduced. 2/3rds!LMAO! I must admit that you expressed my thoughts much better than I did. Thank you. Maybe a Tejas Gringo and a New Yorker have more in common than it appears. You made my Monday....many thanks.
We take antibiotics for bacterial infections. And ivermectin for COVID. And we put casts on broken arms. We presume to be "smarter than nature" with all those interventions. Now - me - I think that leads to a better quality of life. I've done all those things. Some may disagree. "Nature is smarter - sure I broke my arm, but I'm just gonna let it sit there. Nature will take care of it for me." Of course that's a silly example - but interventions come on a spectrum. We do interventions all the time"I agree it is a little bit if a silly example. Whenever anybody dares question the holy science, the faithful jump up with "ANTIBIOTICS!!". Antibiotics were discovered what? A century ago? Sure science hit that one out of the park and so the faithful cling to it while forgetting the 5,000 wrong theories, tragic experiments, and false hopes. Lets talk about thalydimide, celebrex, and fentanyl. Lets talk about the overdoses or the half-million deaths from malpractice every year in America. How about those Statins that they prescribed like candy that now it turns out dont do much? Or how about those blood pressure medications they handed out to people with border line hypertension that have shown no demonstrable benefit? How many people have they exposed to serious side effects while playing around with drugs that they really had no idea about? Lets talk about the psychiatric drugs that science has handed out like free bubble gum to everyone who's had the slightest inclination toward sadness or anxiety over the past 25 years....drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways "science" has absolutely no idea about? Hey, remember the earth was supposed to be under water 10 years ago according "science"? How about the FACT that science was wrong about every single climate change prediction the IPCC ever made? Thats not hyperbole. They have LITERALLY been wrong about every.....single.... prediction. 100% failure rate. I could go on and on and on. Should we talk about the human atrocities committed in India with vaccines? Nah. Am I anti-science? Do I think science is bad or completely useless? No. It has a very limited but important place in the world. I just want to inject some perspective and balance into these discussions. For every "antibiotic" level discovery there are hundreds mistakes, global tragedies, and false predictions. There are MILLIONS of studies that cannot be reproduced that lead to wrong conclusions and bad ideas. The fact is MOST of the time the science is wrong. Thats the truth. Any legitimate scientist will readily admit that. When it's right...WOW, big leap forward...but lets remember that the process INCLUDES being wrong. Its a process of hypothesis...test....wrong...new hypothesis....test....wrong, etc ,etc. We also know that even when the tests and hypothesis are shown to be correct in most studies...they cannot be reproduced so they are usually wrong too. Its a long, long process to confirm a scientific discovery, littered along the way by thousands upon thousands of mistakes [ many of them tragic ]. You'll grow old and die before the next big one IMO, and given the power dynamics, politics, and collapsing institutions in this world, we may never see it. So people throwing these studies around and trying use "science" to solve every new issue we are faced with or to bolster whatever argument/position they want to advance?...pretty ridiculous. Trying to use every new and old scientific study to navigate life?...its reached a point of mental illness, IMO. I had a guy on another forum about archery tell me that he doesnt believe that there is a subconscious, instinctive or intuitive element in sports because "no scientific studies have proven it". What do you say to these people? Its like a global case of autism.
DF: While I don't depend on the little pills to save me, but neither will I spend inordinate amounts of time to try to search for the perfect foods that will make all my industrial-society-depleted-soil mineral deficiencies go away.I predict you will (and you already are....Moringa). Warning: I'm going to do my best to write the following clear enough not to be misinterpreted. I mean this with all sincerity. DF, you are one smart dude. Your writing is always excellent and you are always learning. Here comes the tricky part because I don't want to come across as condescending. In the last 6 months, your ability to understand, analyze, and express medical research has grown exponentially. I've been especially impressed by your ability to translate medical vocabulary and scientific nomenclature into language that we all can understand. For twenty years I produced a monthly newsletter for chiropractors and alternative medicine professionals that compiled the latest research on nutraceuticals, and you are so much better at it now than I ever was. I always knew you were smart and your work was a big reason why I came back to this community, but now you "dun topped yourself". Though we may disagree on a few topics, I want you to know how much I respect you and your work. Thank you.
I believe a large part of our current societal problem is a lack of understanding by the general populace of what science is and how it fits into our sense making. Here is what Webster’s dictionary has to say:
sci·ence | \ ˈsī-ən(t)s
Definition of science
1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
Anyone who has taught science realizes that a child only has to ask “why?” a few iterations in a row to force any honest scientists to admit that the complexity of the system is so great that they don’t really know the answer. In fact, if you are being honest you have to answer the first “why?” with this is my current best understanding, as science is actually admitting to and being comfortable with the state of not knowing as expressed in the Tao. Our current understanding, as a result of Edward Lorenz’s work combined with Charles Heisenberg’s work, suggest it is not even theoretically possible to produce a model that does any better than an approximation over time. No surprise than that our brains are designed to generate successively better approximations. Stopping when the approximation is good enough (hopefully). Working with probably the best answer suggest we are often wrong and luck plays an important role in success. This process relies on a huge number of assumptions, “the story”, that while necessary are themselves generated through iterative cycles based on previous assumptions both internally and externally, so not all that reliable. Any hope of being accurate requires constant error correcting based on observations (an open mind/heart), hence the need for regular testing of beliefs in science and learning in general. As Lorenz showed any small error in initial assumptions, through the iterative process, has the potential to throw the model wildly off (butterfly effect). To make things even more complicated as illustrated beautifully in the work of Micheal Meade, the assumptions don’t even have to be true to generate useful models and in fact as exemplified with many of the traditional Myths, “untrue” stories can actually generate better working models in certain circumstances (particularly where actual quantification of data is difficult or impossible at the time). SciFi or something like 1984 come to mind, but any powerful story can help us see the world in a new way. Just as Chris has done a great job of raising questions about the state of science, I believe folks like Charles Eisenstein and Jordan Peterson have been tackling the usefulness of the current “stories” we live by. I leaned from Fritjof Capra through systems thinking that as important as it is to understanding the individual objects/players, that as the system gets more complex it is even more important to understand the patterns and process that connect them, as the connections actually tend to play a larger role in the nature of the system. Here is a link to some short videos on the science of complex systems thinking for those who might be unfamiliar with the concept or its importance:
I must admit a bias as a science teacher I’ve spent much of my life teaching students to use science to question the current assumptions held by those in authority, in a belief that those assumptions are most certainly wrong. The question is to what degree and how does that influence ones personal model of the world. Thus, I don’t believe that the models put forward by the World Economic Forum extolling a centrally controlled technocracy are consistent with the science. Quite the opposite, historically any large centrally controlled organization (public or private) has impeded scientific progress as by nature paradigm shifting innovations are developed at the fringe of society and not initially accepted by authorities as by definition they challenge their belief system. Such is the case with this paradigm shift ,which I suspect will replace much of the Davos crowd’s influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyi8-qm02hs&list=RDCMUCutCcajxhR33k9UR-DdLsAQ&index=18
Here is also a nice course on how to change a complex system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS5y--ODWeU&list=PLsJWgOB5mIMCAD33pve6_HyfuGTlCTQgd&index=1
My n=1 personal experience with nutrition goes back to humans evolving eating animal based diets (eggs, beef, pork, fish, butter, etc). Plants, sugars, carbohydrates, were minimal as an in season forage. When eating this evolutionary diet, we likely need much different nutrient levels. One theory is that the sugars, carbohydrates or plants alter the absorption of nutrients from our diets or the way the body uses them. I’ve researched some of this in books by Dr. Shawn Baker and Dr. Paul Saladino, leaders of the carnivore community. One of my tests is that after eating strictly animal based for several years, if I go back to the standard American food for a couple meals, I will end up run down every single time (usually a case of the sniffles with lung congestion). I have repeated this test 10 or more times over the years with same results every time (which is large part of why I stick with animal based). I feel the biggest culprit for me is sugars. I grow a garden to feed my livestock. It’s good to bring up liver, eat it somewhat regularly and don’t need to worry about any supplements.
The mercola article below would suggest that we are in for one heck of a ride!
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/06/14/covid-19-vaccine-mistake.aspx?
Evaluation of existing FDA approved drugs that have the potential for repurposing.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2001037021001252