I’ve given up on it. I’m deeply unimpressed by what mineral research I’ve looked at—it all seems like my original comment, that they are useful chronically during development, but not acutely after you’re a grown adult (except in rare cases of major deficiency like iron deficiency for pica or anemia, which is equally useless).
Right, the evidence of supplementation isn’t great, but I have plenty of cites for dietary mineral intake reducing all or specific cause mortality compared to mineral deficient diets, in adults.
As of now my hypothesis is that mineral supplementation is probably good in the case of deficiencies, but still not nearly as good as optimizing diet to fix deficiency, because the human body is a sublimely complex system and that there are many important functional nutrition ratios important beyond the widely accepted ones such as Zinc/Copper, Sodium/Potassium, etc. When we supplement a mineral without taking these unknown ratios into account, we mess things up. Natural foods seem to contain minerals in amounts that are almost never actively harmful. Consider potassium, considered one of the most dangerous supplements by medical science. Compare to coconut water, extremely high in potassium, and quite difficult to overdose on.
Right now I’m supplementing with Concentrace, which is distilled minerals from the Great Salt Lake with the sodium removed. Mostly magnesium, which I suspect I am deficient in. I trust this magnesium supplement because it comes with a highly complex natural ratio of other minerals. That I’m not unknowingly displacing my vanadium or something because I’m getting a naturally tiny dose of vanadium (among other things).
However, the studies showing Vitamin E increasing all cause mortality mostly define Vitamin E as alpha-tocopherol, but this is incorrect. Vitamin E is eight different compounds, with gamma-tocopherol being the main dietary source.
If you take Vitamin E supplements, you should go check the label. If it’s only alpha-tocopherol, you should throw it out. Vitamin E supplements should have mixed tocopherols listed as an ingredient. Even then, Vitamin E supplements comprised of mixed tocopherols plus alpha-tocopherol have much more weight of alpha-tocopherol than gamma-tocopherol. Is this bad? Well, it will definitely result in you having less gamma-tocopherol than if you were consuming natural foods high in Vitamin E. Given that these supplements were developed by groups that were almost making it up as they went along, as a rationalist, I’m increasingly inclined to trust nature.
That current state of medical knowledge doesn’t allow to make any well-supported recommendation should be a possible valid conclusion. It has nontrivial predictive power about possible recommendations, namely that any recommendations are expected to be bogus. It suggests that the current best recommendation is to take no dietary mineral supplements.
It suggests that the current best recommendation is to take no dietary mineral supplements.
I think it strongly suggests that you should try to eat food that maximizes the likelihood that you will test in vague healthy ranges for nutritional diagnostic testing. Of course, evidence on nutritional diagnostic testing is in just as bad of research shape as nutrition itself, but still useful when the goal is actually to improve people’s health.
I’ve given up on it. I’m deeply unimpressed by what mineral research I’ve looked at—it all seems like my original comment, that they are useful chronically during development, but not acutely after you’re a grown adult (except in rare cases of major deficiency like iron deficiency for pica or anemia, which is equally useless).
Right, the evidence of supplementation isn’t great, but I have plenty of cites for dietary mineral intake reducing all or specific cause mortality compared to mineral deficient diets, in adults.
As of now my hypothesis is that mineral supplementation is probably good in the case of deficiencies, but still not nearly as good as optimizing diet to fix deficiency, because the human body is a sublimely complex system and that there are many important functional nutrition ratios important beyond the widely accepted ones such as Zinc/Copper, Sodium/Potassium, etc. When we supplement a mineral without taking these unknown ratios into account, we mess things up. Natural foods seem to contain minerals in amounts that are almost never actively harmful. Consider potassium, considered one of the most dangerous supplements by medical science. Compare to coconut water, extremely high in potassium, and quite difficult to overdose on.
Right now I’m supplementing with Concentrace, which is distilled minerals from the Great Salt Lake with the sodium removed. Mostly magnesium, which I suspect I am deficient in. I trust this magnesium supplement because it comes with a highly complex natural ratio of other minerals. That I’m not unknowingly displacing my vanadium or something because I’m getting a naturally tiny dose of vanadium (among other things).
Consider: Most of the Vitamin E on people’s shelves is almost literally poison. Vitamin E supplements may increase all-cause mortality.
However, the studies showing Vitamin E increasing all cause mortality mostly define Vitamin E as alpha-tocopherol, but this is incorrect. Vitamin E is eight different compounds, with gamma-tocopherol being the main dietary source.
If you take Vitamin E supplements, you should go check the label. If it’s only alpha-tocopherol, you should throw it out. Vitamin E supplements should have mixed tocopherols listed as an ingredient. Even then, Vitamin E supplements comprised of mixed tocopherols plus alpha-tocopherol have much more weight of alpha-tocopherol than gamma-tocopherol. Is this bad? Well, it will definitely result in you having less gamma-tocopherol than if you were consuming natural foods high in Vitamin E. Given that these supplements were developed by groups that were almost making it up as they went along, as a rationalist, I’m increasingly inclined to trust nature.
That current state of medical knowledge doesn’t allow to make any well-supported recommendation should be a possible valid conclusion. It has nontrivial predictive power about possible recommendations, namely that any recommendations are expected to be bogus. It suggests that the current best recommendation is to take no dietary mineral supplements.
I think it strongly suggests that you should try to eat food that maximizes the likelihood that you will test in vague healthy ranges for nutritional diagnostic testing. Of course, evidence on nutritional diagnostic testing is in just as bad of research shape as nutrition itself, but still useful when the goal is actually to improve people’s health.
You should turn what you’ve done into a post at least.
I didn’t keep terribly good notes, so I’m not going to bother; people can just see what the contestants produce.