Mastering Nutrition

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...

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...

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 abil...

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 worri...

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 lik...

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...

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 d...

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 Abo...

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...

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...

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 af...

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...

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 bina...

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 fix...

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 o...

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,...

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...

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 bolu...

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 supp...

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 woul...

Question: Where should I buy my chicken products? You may have local options. And a good place to look for local options would be eatwild.com. I'm assuming it's still up. That was a great database and probably still is a great database of pasture-raised products of any type. Not just chicken. And then of course, there are the mail order companies that I have exclusive discounts with inside the Mas...

I don't usually interview people on my podcast, but this is an important exception and I'd appreciate it if you'd share it far and wide. Here's the YouTube version: COVID Conversations: Gabriela Gomes on Herd Immunity Gabriela Gomes is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Strathclyde Glasgow and corresponding author of the recent paper, "Herd immunity thresholds for SARS-CoV-2...

Read the written version here, with links to the original references: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid-19/are-we-already-reaching-herd-immunity Sign up for the free newsletter: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates  Discuss this in the Masterpass Free Forum at https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/discuss  Discuss this in the Coronavirus Forum when you purchase the guide, pre-order my upcomi...

Question: Why would blood glucose go up on a low-carb diet? When you're adapted to low insulin levels with lower GLUT expression, but you want to get glucose into muscle, you're going to need higher blood glucose levels to do it. I think elevated blood glucose is sufficiently known to be pathological that it would be unwise to assume the sort of more generous interpretation of that as a physiologi...

Question: Why do thyroid levels drop on a low-carb diet? So insulin and leptin are both positive regulators of thyroid hormone, production, and conversion. And generally I do think there's probably a larger effect from thyroid production than peripheral conversion. I'm not too sure about that, but insulin does directly regulate thyroid. It has TSH-like effects on the thyroid gland. It doesn't repl...