Do Supplements Kill?

Politics and marketing campaigns aside, the short answer is: anything can kill you if you consume enough of it, including water. If you’ve heard me speak about this issue you’ve heard me talk about a “window of benefit” that is dose dependent for anything we ingest. Everything we consume creates reactions inside us that are both beneficial and detrimental. Health is created when the benefits consistently outweigh the problems, and healthy cell and system function is supported.

Take a look at water for example. There is a huge window of benefit for water consumption and a significant problem if none is ingested. You have to get to a point where you overwhelm the capacity of the kidneys before you can cause death be essentially internal drowning.

Alcohol, on the other hand, has a very small window of benefit and there is no detriment to abstention. Consuming about one serving of alcohol per day confers some benefit to the cardiovascular system and contributes to stress reduction, but more than this and you end up rapidly pushing into the problem area where the damage caused by this toxin escalates beyond the benefits gained.

Everything we take in essentially is either food, medicine or poison depending on dose. For a bit of morbid humor, check out this website where you can find out how much of certain popular foods and drinks will be the death of you. I discovered it would take 51.87 Starbucks Mocha Grandes in rapid succession for me to be pushing up daisies.

I often hear clients say things like “it’s natural, so I took 6 instead of 2”. This can be a HUGE mistake. Keep in mind that nearly all our medications were at least originally derived from herbs and other compounds found in the natural world. The heart medication digitalis, for example, is derived from the plant that bears it’s name. Digitalis, or Foxglove, can be deadly: in sufficient quantities it will stop the heart.

Two supplements that have been in the news lately for being supposedly "deadly" are vitamin E and calcium. It is important to understand a few things about what gets reported and why. First, most of these studies are conducted by what’s called “meta analysis” which means researchers went back into the results of older studies to see if they could find any other interesting results or patterns. These are not studies that were done specifically on the nutrient in question. The calcium study has another issue as well which is that participants "self reported" their calcium intake. Often self reporting is extremely inaccurate (just try remembering what you had for dinner every day this week).

Another problem is a fundamental scientific process mistake:often results that show association between elements infer causation. Still further issues are the lack of ability to remove enough variables to make the results meaningful such as what dose that was taken (especially if self-reported), the type or quality of the supplement source, if it was combined with other nutrients or not, medication interaction, food intake, activity level or type, current state of participants' health, or anything about the toxic loads these people were carrying. It is next to impossible to isolate the effects of a single nutrient in these "studies".

In the case of the meta-analysis "study" of vitamin E there was no consideration of type or isolate. Vitamin E is actually a family of similar compounds with a wide range of actions. There are now believed to be 12 different types. Most supplements only include one: d-alpha tocopherol. Most of the studies that were done specifically on “vitamin E” actually were done using dl-alpha tocopherol (notice there is an “l” after the “d”) which is a laboratory created version of this single constituent of the vitamin E family. If we have learned anything in nutrition in general it is that the natural world doesn’t do well when it is out of balance. Hyper-loading of a single form of vitamin E (and a synthetic version on top of that) throws the internal environment out of balance and pushes us out of the window of benefit for this substance.

Another thing to keep in mind is the comparison of death rates by cause before you get super uptight and worried about supplements. There are thousands and thousands of more deaths caused by adverse medication reactions or medication mistakes than any herb or supplement use. The number of deaths in the US that can be attributed to medical mistakes is estimated at over 200,000 per year, and that doesn’t include medication overdoses. In 2008, the number of deaths due to prescription pain killers alone was over 41,000 which exceeded the 38,000 deaths due to car accidents. The record for the year with the highest number of deaths attributed to supplements is 2005. The total number that year? 230.

One more thing to remember is you often get what you pay for with supplements. The cheapest brands use the cheapest base materials. Yes, there may be “x” amount of milligrams of a nutrient in that tablet, but it may be in a form the body can’t even recognize or use so all you end up doing is adding to your detoxification load and possibly compromising the function of vital organs. That said, just because a supplement is pricey, doesn't mean it's good or that you need it.

Although supplements can help correct medication induced nutrient deficiencies, they can also can interact with medications in dangerous ways. It is extremely important that you work with someone who really knows about nutrients and reads up regularly on the latest research so you know what the results actually mean for you and your health, especially if you are taking any pharmaceuticals. Too many people self-prescribe natural substances in toxic doses from inferior materials and end up causing more problems than they solve. For another good perspective please visit this article published on the well respected medical news feed Medscape. Get Educated. Get Safe. Get Real.

The Soy Conundrum: Part 1

This is a HUGE topic that would take volumes to adequately explore, but I’ll try to give you the highlights. If you’ve been following health trends, you are likely as confused as most Americans about soy. Is it healthy for human consumption? My answer is a tentative maybe. Here’s why...

How Soy is Grown: About 85% of all soy grown is now genetically modified. Even if you don’t care about the genetic material itself, what this tinkering has done has allowed these crops to be even more heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides which travel up the food chain. We are seeing more and more research coming in now about how these residues contribute to disease, especially in children.

Health Claims: Most of the health claims are marginal at best. When you actually read through the literature and the research, you’ll find there are small benefits to LDL reduction associated with eating soy (although it’s hard to determine if that is the reason or if it’s because participants traded conventional meats for soy a few meals a week and maybe it was really just the removal of the damaged fats and fat soluble toxins that did the trick). Most of the positive health benefits are found from using fermented soy foods, not from products like “Tofurky” or SPI (soy protein isolate).

Protein Quality: You will hear many proponents of vegetarian and vegan diets claim that soy offers a complete protein source. While it is true on a chemical level that soy offers a broad spectrum of essential amino acids, it also important to understand that soy contains chemicals that slow or prevent the digestion of proteins and significantly impair the bioavailability of their component amino acids.

Human systems simply don’t produce the all the enzymes essential to the complete digestion of soy protein or the breakdown of the “anti-nutrients” that get in the way. When we rely strictly on soy for protein, or have a very high intake of soy products in the diet, we risk long term amino acid and mineral deficiencies that create problems in all our systems including hypothyroidism, anemia and immuno-deficiency.

Anti-nutrients: These are substances that either impair nutrient bioavailability or are chemicals that directly impinge on human systems creating health problems in the long term. One of these problematic substances is phytic acid or phytate. Soy has one of the highest amounts of phytate of any legume or grain studied, and to make matters worse, the phytates in soy are highly resistant to breaking down by heat (unlike phytates found in spinach, for example). Phytic acid blocks the absorption of vital minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc. Because we don’t have the capacity to break down phytates, we have to rely on other mechanisms to do it for us. Happily, bacteria can do this via fermentation. This is why fermented soy products are considered by most nutrition experts to be the best form for human consumption. Fermented soy products include tamari (soy sauce), miso and tempeh.

Unfermented soy also contains enzyme inhibitors that block one of your body’s main proteases: trypsin. This is essential in the digestion and breakdown of proteins. Diets high in trypsin inhibitors can precipitate pancreatitis (and other pathological conditions of the pancreas), amino acid deficiencies and gastric distress as the undigested proteins make their way through the intestines.

If you choose to use soy, please choose organic, non-GMO, fermented products, and rotate your protein sources so you don’t rely exclusively, or even heavily, on soy. It is essential that growing children NOT use soy exclusively as their bodies try to build bones and brains. There are plenty of other legumes out there and when combined with a grain you will have a complete amino acid profile, and a broader spectrum of nutrients.

Get Informed. Get Help if you need it. And Get REAL.

(also published on the Patch.com)

Post Halloween Sugar Crash

Hi All - sorry for the radio silence of late. Loads going on in my world and I'm happy to say "it's all good!" I just got interviewed here in Marin for an article on the post-Halloween sugar overload nightmare. I find it so interesting how as a culture we continually set ourselves up for disaster and then bemoan it's arrival. That pathology is the root of so many of our culturally based ills... and the subject of a dissertation at another time. Today I want to dive shallowly into sugar.

Myth: Sugar is bad.
Fact: Sugar is essential to life, just not anywhere near the quantities in which it is currently consumed. Overconsumption of sugar-laden foods and high-glycemic index carbohydrates is one of the root causes of many chronic diseases we see in the US.

Myth: Artificial sweeteners are a healthy substitute for sugar.
Fact: Long-term use of ANY artificial sweeteners leads to weight GAIN. The metabolic breakdown products of aspartame includes formaldehyde -- yes, the same stuff those pickled rats from high school biology lab were stored in, AKA embalming fluid. Sucralose is a chlorinated hydrocarbon in the same chemical family as agent orange. 'Nuff said.

Myth: Agave syrup is a healthy alternative to table sugar.
Fact: High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is about 65% fructose/35% glucose. Agave syrup is about 95% fructose. Concentrated fructose ingestion is far more damaging than an equivalent amount of table sugar. Even moderately high doses of fructose lead to fatty streaks in the liver, increases the production of triglycerides, and an increased risk of heart disease to name only a few problems. Another thing those HFCS commercials aren't telling you is that the levels of mercury found in HFCS is dangerously high.

Industry Supported Myth: Sugar consumption has no effect on children's behavior.
Fact: Just ask any parent or school teacher... I beg to differ from the industry sponsored "studies" that show there is no change in children's activity levels pre/post sugar consumption! Empirical evidence overrides this "finding" repeatedly...

Fact: Evaporated Cane Juice is sugar. The least amount of processing you can find the better as the nutrients that accompany the sweetness are still largely intact. Try unrefined sugars that still have their natural molasses brown color. (Standard "brown sugar" is actually refined white sugar with some of the molasses added back in, or food colorings and flavorings...) The refining process uses chemicals like formic acid, phosphoric acid and sulfur dioxide.

Fact: Unrefined cane sugar is about 50% glucose/50% fructose. The fructose and glucose actually act synergistically to help the body use the sugars appropriately when found in that ratio. Surprise, the body actually knows what to do with it.

Fact: The 13 grams of fructose you would find in an apple is not dangerous. The 30 grams of fructose found in a 12oz soda is a problem.

I will post more on this topic very soon, so watch this space. If you have any specific questions you'd like to see addressed, please email me or comment here. Get educated about your food. Get REAL.