Question: What are the best practices for nutrient absorption?Large meals and fat soluble vitamins. Large meals are the ally of fat soluble vitamin absorption. Fat absorption from poor fat digestion, is the enemy of not only the absorption of fat soluble nutrients, but also the absorption positively charged minerals. There might a few of them missing, but those are the ones that really stand out to me as big nutrient absorption issues.I wouldn't micromanage these things, but if it is an eminent ...
Dec 21, 2020•6 min
Question: What's the best prenatal nutrition?The things that sort of stick out to me are, you don't want to be Vitamin A deficient or Vitamin A toxic, so you're right in the middle of the range. You really don't want to be deficient in anything. Everyone knows about folic iron which is really important, but there's not really a good nutritional status test for choline. Biotin is very important. One third of mothers spontaneously become biotin deficient from pregnancy. And so I think that you wan...
Dec 18, 2020•7 min
Question: Supplement Timing and Food Combining for Zinc?So for zinc and food, the main issue is that, my guess is that a carnivore meat based meal would probably enhance zinc absorption, but that's never really been tested. There's some controversy in the field over whether you should take zinc on an empty stomach or not. So my position is basically like if it's practical for me to take the zinc on an empty stomach, do an empty stomach. And if it's not practical for you to take the zinc on an em...
Dec 17, 2020•10 min
Question: How to approach chronic joint pain?You definitely want to move the joints that are affected.So the movement must target the joints that are affected. And you definitely want like 30 minutes a day of just moderate movement, even walking would be great. But then you also want movement aimed at actually supporting the muscles and the proper joint motions and stuff like that. And so that's where weight lifting comes in. And then you definitely want some guidance from a physical therapist w...
Dec 16, 2020•11 min
Question: How should I break a 36-hour fast?The two things that I would think about are your digestion, it's probably going to take a little bit of time to ramp itself up. I don't think you're going to do any harm by eating things that are difficult to digest, probably not great for your microbiome, but probably something that would just adapt to you. And so I would take that very subjectively. In your experience, what types of things do you have trouble digesting from when you stop a fast? But ...
Dec 15, 2020•6 min
Question: What are optimal levels of B12? So there's a paper called the Pathophysiology of Elevated Vitamin B12 in clinical practice that PM Schoenfeld, another Masterpass member, had given me. And this paper is very interesting because it identifies a bunch of things that high B12 can be an indicator of, not a causal factor in but an indicator of problems. And it also disputes the low end of the range. So according to this paper, we really want B12 levels above 400 picograms per milliliter, whi...
Dec 14, 2020•11 min
Question: Are GABA or methylation support useful for panic attacks? I think anything that increases GABA activity is probably going to slow down anxiety and panic. I think that's clear just from the drugs that are used to treat an anxiety, or panic disorder. Xanax is used for that purpose. So I do think that working on nutritional support around GABA makes sense, but I also would look at histamine, because histamine is an alertness signal, but I think in very excessive amounts histamine is a pan...
Dec 11, 2020•15 min
Question: Is increasing reactive oxygen species a good strategy for appetite control?Is that going to cause satiety in the brain? Maybe. I haven't studied that. I think Stephan Guyenet would be a great person to talk to about that. It wouldn't surprise me in the sense that if you want to shut down energy coming into the cell, why wouldn't you also want, at some bigger level, to shut down energy input into the body? I guess that makes sense. But I've mostly studied this in the case of outside the...
Dec 10, 2020•17 min
Question: What's the best way to increase ferritin?If you're taking an iron chelate supplement then you should probably take it with a carnivore meal. Vitamin C and a few other ones, folate, are not really vegan nutrients but they're very plant-oriented nutrients in terms of what's the thing you're probably going to add to your diet that's going to help. And so I really feel like if I had iron deficiency anemia, I would probably just spend four weeks on a carnivore diet that was rich in red meat...
Dec 09, 2020•7 min
Question: What to eat for a 35-year-old vegan woman with hypothyroidism and low zinc levels? I think a vegan with poor zinc levels should supplement with zinc. You know, it's one thing if you have a vegan whose diet just happens to provide good zinc status, despite the fact that their diet is dramatically lower in total zinc than an omnivore who eats a lot of red meat or seafood, particularly oysters, and that the bioavailability of zinc from those foods is dramatically less. So a vegan probably...
Dec 08, 2020•12 min
Question: Are the concerns about cyanocobalamin exaggerated? I'm not sure what people have said about the dangers. I know that I have been a critic of cyanocobalamin relative to other forms of B12 and then, other people may have used something I said maybe in an exaggerated way. And then there might be just much marketing that I haven't actually been exposed to where people have come up with their own marketing claims around other forms of B12. So my opinion is basically as follows: number one, ...
Dec 07, 2020•8 min
Question: What's a better nasal spray, Sterimar or povidone-iodine? It's hard to say. So the Povidone-iodine obviously has some contraindications and it has contraindications mostly because it's been so commonly used in a medical setting and therefore has so much known about its safety and risk profile and I don't have any particular reason to think that the Sterimar is unsafe in any context. And I used it a lot. The only thing I can say anecdotally is I've used the Povidone-iodine intra nasally...
Dec 04, 2020•9 min
Question: Do postmenopausal women need to worry about iron overload?Generally, it's not men who are necessarily predisposed to iron buildup. It's men with some genetic predisposition to that, so maybe less than 10% of men. But yeah, postmenopausal women with the same genetics will, like men, be vulnerable to that. When you stop menstruating, you essentially become like a man in terms of your ability to accumulate iron. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition...
Dec 03, 2020•3 min
Question: Should NAC supplementation be pulsed?So, yes, boost glutathione. It might bring glutathione down. It's speculative that you could pulse it to avoid that. But even supplementing oral glutathione for 6 months was shown to not affect glutathione production. And certainly, oral glutathione is going to have more of a negative feedback loop than a glutathione precursor. So, I am not too worried about it. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up f...
Dec 02, 2020•3 min
Question: Why would my threonine levels be low? The two things I can think of are increased gluconeogenesis and increased conversion of methylglyoxal, both of which I would expect to be driven by a low carbohydrate diet. Then of course, it could also be not enough protein consumption. But if it's why threonine is being metabolized, I'm gonna be thinking of a low carbohydrate diet. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which...
Dec 01, 2020•3 min
Question: What's the best alcohol to microdose? I prefer red wine on a taste, and tradition, and aesthetic basis. Just for background, I think Half a drink to a drink a day is probably the net maximal benefit for alcohol and that can be averaged. It doesn't have to be every day. And that's the main thing. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, a private discussion group, pre...
Nov 30, 2020•4 min
Question: What's the best nutrition for panic and anxiety?Methylation is overwhelmingly important. I do think that other factors impacting dopamine can be relevant in the sense that the main way that methylation regulates mental rigidity is through decreasing the pool of tonic dopamine, which favors mental flexibility. And so, you can also favor mental flexibility by increasing the activity of dopamine receptors that mediate the basic response dopamine. If you would like to be part of the next l...
Nov 27, 2020•8 min
Question: What determines the absorption of nutrients? This is a gigantic question because what determines the absorption of any given nutrient is independent for that nutrient. And so, it's different for every nutrient. And we just don't have that level of data to drive modeling of absorption of other nutrients in an accurate way. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, a pr...
Nov 26, 2020•7 min
Question: Do low serine levels require IV supplements?You're probably just depleting serine through the CBS pathway and just eat more protein and consider supplementing glycine or collagen along with it. I don't see why that would require IV supplements. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, a private discussion group, premium features on all my content, and hundreds of dol...
Nov 25, 2020•3 min
Question: How to fix high iron and calcium, low copper and magnesium, without blood donation? Your only options for decreasing iron levels are to eat a low meat vegetarian diet high in vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. That's probably your best bet. But the thing is, a very vegetable rich diet is gonna be pretty high in copper. And it's going to be high in iron too, but it's gonna be very poorly absorbable iron. And you know, especially if you eat a lot of whole grains, nuts, seeds, and...
Nov 24, 2020•9 min
Question: How much time should separate my zinc supplements and nut consumption? So, phytate primarily inhibits absorption of zinc and iron. I think you're gonna have a much lower probability of zinc encountering phytate if you take the zinc 2 hours after eating the phytate than if you take the zinc while you eat the phytate. But you know, if you're trying to be maximally conscientious, 3 hours after the meal. If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up...
Nov 23, 2020•5 min
Question: What's the safe use of an iodine nasal spray?So, the iodine in the food and supplement guide for the coronavirus most recent version, I included iodine as a nasal spray. It's very important to look at the percentages. And so, 0.5% is the concentration recommended and that means that if you get a 10% solution, which is the most common one, you want to dilute it down 20-fold, which means taking one part of the 10% solution 19 parts water. If you have a different percentage starting solut...
Nov 20, 2020•7 min
Question: Why would ferritin be extremely high when transferrin saturation is low? Ferritin as a potential indicator of iron overload should not be anywhere near the level that was set to try to rule in biopsy provable hemochromatosis that is just a profoundly negligent approach to setting the range for ferritin. Now, I think part of what has stopped, you know— This mostly is a problem of the binary diagnostic mindset of conventional medicine. So, I'm not saying that this mindset is not useful. ...
Nov 19, 2020•11 min
Question: Can carnitine be used for fatty liver instead of choline? The role of choline and the role of carnitine have nothing to do with one another. Choline is going to help move fat out of the liver. Carnitine is going to help fat get into the mitochondria to be burned for energy. So, first of all, I think one thing that's important to note is that you're gonna get more bang for the buck by fixing the things that are wrong rather than pulling on levers that are working perfectly fine. If you ...
Nov 18, 2020•16 min
Question: Is it OK to drink a pint of Gerolsteiner mineral water a day?It's significantly less than a bottle. I guess conceivably if you're also drinking a lot of milk, or eating a lot of cheese, or supplementing with calcium, or taking bone meal powder, I guess you can get too much calcium. I wouldn't really worry about it from 1 pint. I do think that the main concern with carbonated beverages of any type is that you have too much acid running over your teeth a lot. So, I think it's wise to dri...
Nov 17, 2020•6 min
Question: Cataracts: what are the roles of methylglyoxal and polyols?Is the polyol pathway activation and methylglyoxal independent causes of cataract formation or are they related to one another? And the answer is a little bit of both. You know, if independent means unrelated, then they're related. Not independent. But they are independent in the sense that you could have more of one. You know, you could do something that increases one and not the other or at least disproportionately increases ...
Nov 16, 2020•10 min
Question: Is the sugar in Life Extension Enhanced Zinc Acetate lozenges a problem?In that kind of protocol attuned to the progress of the potential cold, I find no alternative is more effective than the zinc acetate lozenges. And so, therefore, I'm willing to consume 40 or 60 grams of sugar for like 1 day or 2 days and then have it taper off granted— I might have a totally different attitude if I had diabetes. But from a cost-benefit analysis, I don't think consuming 40 grams of sugar once for a...
Nov 13, 2020•13 min
Question: If I use SAMe for depression, what do I need for nutritional balance? Nutrition wise, I think the most important thing would be to make sure that you have an adequate glycine status. And you know, I don't know what your background is in terms of other issues, but the glycine buffer system, which is how you buffer excess methyl groups, which is what you would have if you take a large bolus of SAMe.Other nutritional concern would be having enough molybdenum. Generally, you're gonna have ...
Nov 12, 2020•12 min
Question: Should I take iron every day or use alternate day dosing?Reference: https://haematologica.org/article/view/9379 So, according to this abstract, in iron depleted women without anemia, oral iron supplements induce an increase in serum hepcidin that persist for 24 hours, decreasing iron absorption from supplements given later on the same or next day. Consequently, iron absorption from supplements is highest if iron is given on alternate days.Bringing this back to a practical level, is it ...
Nov 11, 2020•16 min
I'm not sure what the best dosing is given that it hasn't actually been studied fully, but I believe that it was estimated that in the people who have the highest collagen waste during collagen turnover that they can run short of glycine about 60 grams a day whereas I believe the more conservative estimate of glycine requirements based on people that turnover collagen much more efficiently.I would say that as a general rule, you should assume that you want something spread out as much as possibl...
Nov 10, 2020•7 min
