Back to black, CIAB, pharmaceutical drug deficiencies & nerds.

First, a song by someone who should be alive, but isn't...

The above video was inspired by a Facebook friend who had an accident with Schwarzkopf black hair dye and spent ages getting the stains off her skin. You know who you are!

I may have mentioned that nutrient deficiencies can adversely affect mental (and/or other) function. Nowadays, many people live on a diet of Crap-In-A-Bag (CIAB). There's just enough essential amino acids (EAAs), essential fatty acids (EFAs), minerals & vitamins to keep their bodies alive. However, Alive ≠ Working properly.

To compensate for one (or more) nutrient deficiencies, many people are prescribed one (or more) pharmaceutical drugs to tweak how their brains work e.g. fluoxetine, citalopram/escitalopram, venlafaxine, quetiapine, risperidone, valproate etc. There are no pharmaceutical drug deficiencies!

There are people who suffer from mental (and/or other) illnesses, despite having diets & lifestyles that provide sufficient amounts of all nutrients. This post isn't about them. There are people who suffer from depression due to traumatic & inescapable events/situations. This post isn't about them, either.

Finally, nerds! We nerds love to compile information. For an interesting interview with a top compiler of useful information, see Examine's Supplement Goals Reference Guide.

For an excellent article with a mere 148 references, see Why Calories Count. To sum up:-

Where body weight is concerned, calories count (but don't bother trying to count them).
Where body composition is concerned, partitioning counts.
Where health is concerned, macronutrient ratios, EFAs, minerals, vitamins & lifestyles count.

N.B. Poor health can adversely affect body weight and/or body composition, by increasing appetite and/or by adversely affecting partitioning.

Continued on Chow on chow, Parkinson's Law, two ways of doing something, and love.

Diet, Nutrition & Fitness: Whatever the question, the right answer is "It all depends".

The carbohydrate pendulum keeps on swinging! Bloggers keep on fighting!

Carbohydrates are good. No, they're bad. Wait, they're good again. Nope, bad again. Good again. Aargh!

So, are carbohydrates good or bad? See the title. Gluten? See the title.

As Everyone is Different, whether "X" is good, bad or indifferent all depends on genes (including gender), the expression of those genes, environment (i.e. birth weight, exposure to pollutants in the womb & after birth), general diet (i.e. nutrients, anutrients & anti-nutrients), lifestyle (i.e. sunlight exposure, stress, sleep etc) and type, level & volume of activity.

Rigid diets & taking loadsa supplements to compensate for them.

I do not believe you want to be doing that!

This post was inspired by a recently-published study by Alan Aragon & Brad Schoenfeld, as bodybuilders are a group of people who often eat a rigid diet (some eat skinless chicken breasts, broccoli & brown rice for several meals each day).

See Nutrient timing revisited: is there a post-exercise anabolic window?
"Collectively, these data indicate an increased potential for dietary flexibility while maintaining the pursuit of optimal timing."

This post is also aimed at people who eat severely restricted diets in the (often mistaken) belief that something's making them ill.

People with type 1 diabetes who struggle to keep their blood glucose within reasonable limits (3 to 8mmol/L, or 24 to 144mg/dL) benefit from restricting their intake of high-GL carbohydrates, so this post is not aimed at them. See The problem with Diabetes.

People with type 2 diabetes who severely restrict their intake of carbohydrates must be in caloric deficit, otherwise the physiological insulin resistance caused by high serum NEFAs will mess up just about everything in their body if they are in caloric balance or caloric excess. I've read (so it could be false) that a certain non-skinny blogger who I'm in conflict with (who has type 2 diabetes and who eats a VLC diet) has heart problems and is taking medication(s) for high blood pressure. Hmmm.

People who suffer from gastrointestinal problems after eating gluten-containing foods, or mucus after eating casein-containing foods may have impaired gut integrity. See Gluten - more than just a pain in the guts?

Supplements that I consider of positive value are:-

Fish oils: If the diet is low in oily fish (tinned tuna is not an oily fish), there may be insufficient EPA & DHA (especially in men, children & post-menopausal women). Women of reproductive age can get away with taking flaxseed oil.

Magnesium: If the diet is low in veg/high in dairy, there may be too much Calcium relative to Magnesium.

Vitamin D3: If the lifestyle results in sun-avoidance, insufficiency in Vitamin D is highly likely.

Vitamin K2: If the diet is low in animal fats and/or fermented foods, insufficiency in Vitamin K2 is highly likely.

Supplements that I consider of negative value are:-

Vitamin A: If there's an insufficiency in Vitamin D, supplementing with Vitamin A/β-carotene may exacerbate it. As Vitamin D + Calcium may reduce cancer risk, supplementing with Vitamin A absent Vitamin D3 may increase cancer risk.

Vitamin E: If there's an insufficiency in γ-tocopherol, supplementing with α-tocopherol may exacerbate it. As γ-tocopherol may reduce CHD mortality risk, supplementing with α-tocopherol absent γ-tocopherol may increase CHD mortality risk. Most Vitamin E supplements contain α-tocopherol only. Some Vitamin E supplements contain mixed tocopherols and these are O.K.

Do not exceed the recommended intake/dosage.

The above warning is on mum's fish oil and on all supplements. The recommended daily intake (RDI) for Seven Seas fish oil for adults & children over 12 is 10ml/day, or 1 capsule/day if in capsules.
1 capsule contains 360mg of EPA+DHA.

Seven Seas fish oil must be dangerous stuff!

Here's some perspective. A small can (213g) of wild Alaskan red salmon contains 14g of fish oil and 1.9g of EPA+DHA. That's 533% the amount you get in one capsule of Seven Seas fish oil. There are no warnings on small cans of wild Alaskan red salmon to not eat more than a fifth of a can a day. I usually eat a whole can at a time. My brain really likes this. See Guess who didn't look after his brain?

For breakfast, I sometimes eat ten Brazil nuts and ten prunes washed down with a milky coffee. Ten Brazil nuts contain ~4,000ug of selenium. That's about 1,000% the RDI for selenium. However, I'm not showing any symptoms of selenium toxicity.

EDIT: I may be showing one symptom. Somebody told me that I smelled slightly of garlic. I had eaten a lot of raw onion on liver pate earlier that day and I was giving off a smell of onion. This has happened before.

Moral of the story: Get nutrients from foods wherever possible.

There was this Cleveland dentist...

...and his name was Weston A. Price MS., D.D.S., F.A.G.D.

He was a dentist, so he got to see inside a lot of mouths. What he saw worried him - a lot. There's no point in me copying and pasting stuff that someone else has written, so read all about it at http://www.westonaprice.org/Weston-A.-Price-DDS.html

To sum-up. Mr Price travelled around the world with his wife looking inside the mouths of relatively primitive people, compared to the residents of Cleveland. What he saw impressed him - a lot. Considering that primitive people don't have access to clean water, food, medicine and other modern aids to living, they had hardly any tooth decay, gum disease or overcrowded teeth.

So he took lots of photographs, made lots of measurements and asked lots of questions. When he finished his travels, he wrote a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects. You can read it at http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html

It's worth your while reading this book. The conclusions:-

Don't eat food that's been "buggered about with". Eat as much natural food as you can and prepare it in a way that maximises the nutrients and minimises the anti-nutrients. Don't worry about the fat in it, as fat contains the fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E & K (but not enough D unless you live on a diet of oily fish, seals & beluga whales). For more information, see http://www.westonaprice.org/

That is all.