Mastering Nutrition

Question: Why does estrogen regulate tryptophan metabolism? Chris: I think that it's basically the body trying to make sure that the baby has enough niacin because chronic estrogen exposure would occur during pregnancy. When I was doing my niacin research, one thing that I found is that women seem to need more total niacin than men, but they seem to be better at making niacin from protein. What's...

Question: Insomnia is different between people who are and aren't on HRT? Carrie: Yes, sort of. If it's strictly a hormone issue, if she says, "I've never had insomnia. I turned 45 and I got insomnia. And, oh, by the way, I'm also having irregular periods and hot flashes and night sweats and all this stuff," I find that going on HRT generally resolves their insomnia. If they've had insomnia their...

Question: The use of pregnenolone to manage perimenopausal symptoms, particularly insomnia. Carrie: Well, so here's the thing about pregnenolone. Oral or sublingual, so if you've got drops or little tables you suck on. Pregnenolone and progesterone, when they go through first pass, so you swallow them and then you go through first pass, they turn into other metabolites. One is called allo, which i...

Question: Guidance on what time of day it is best to take T4 and/or T3 ? Carrie: It actually depends if you're taking immediate release T4 or T3 especially or sustained release because T4 has a much longer half-life which is why we traditionally say to take it in the morning since it helps with energy and metabolism and all those things. Although I do know some people choose to take their T4 at ni...

Question: A rant on why many people use "MTHFR" to slap a label on their health problems. I put MTHFR in quotes because I meant it the way that people mean when they say, "I have MTHFR." Everyone has MTHFR. What people mean by that is they have these MTHFR polymorphisms. What I meant by that title is that there's a very compelling—It's not totally airtight. It's not completely proven. There's a ve...

Question: Are there safety concerns in supplementing cyanocobalamin rather methylcobalamin in those with MTHFR polymorphisms? If you're concerned about methylation-related issues, you would want to be careful with methylcobalamin supplementation in a way that you would not need to be careful about hydroxocobalamin supplementation. If you don't have a specific methylation-related goal, then I think...

Question: What about pyroluria and measuring kryptopyrroles? I think it's fairly harmless to increase zinc and B6 as a test of whether that's true and see if you get results from it. But I wouldn't treat it like a diagnostic value because no one has followed up any science on that disorder in the decades since it's been proposed. Kryptopyrroles are very similar to porphyrins, that LabCorp has a wh...

Question: How to manage blood levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. I don't specifically want to look at the omega-3-to-omega-6 ratio. The AA/EPA ratio, I do not believe in wanting to get it low enough to prevent inflammation. I don't believe in using it that way. But I do believe that if it were too low, it could cause problems. I don't know what the cutoff would be. But if you're on the low...

Question: Can PEMT genetics cause fat malabsorption, mineral deficiencies, and oxalate problems? First of all, saponification of minerals, the point here is that if you have malabsorption of fat, the fatty acids are going to bind to any positively charged minerals in your diet. This has been particularly well studied in preterm infants where the poor absorption of fatty acids causes the fatty acid...

Question: Could an elevated BUN indicate protein malabsorption and low stomach acid? I get the Heidelberg test. That's the only accurate way to assess stomach acid. If you want to do something else, it would be better to use the kitchen techniques, like take half a teaspoon of baking soda and see how long you take to burp, or take HCl with your meal and keep adding capsules and see how many capsul...

Question: Are bilirubin and uric acid useful markers of antioxidant defense and oxidative stress? What are better markers? I think intracellularly where most of antioxidant support is highly relevant, then they're not that big a deal. In the plasma, they can be a big deal. It's quite possible that uric acid is one of the most important antioxidants in plasma. But I would say it's highly debatable...

Question: Does it matter what form of B12 you take? Cyanocobalamin is cheap and there's not really any clear evidence that it's harmful, but I just don't like the idea that it is cobalamin bound to cyanide. It's not found in the food supply. Forming cyanocobalamin and peeing it out is actually one of the main ways you detoxify cyanide. Hydroxocobalamin is also relatively inexpensive. It's relative...

Question: Is it useful to measure urine pH? The urine pH is telling you the acid burden that your body has been subjected to. It's telling you, you can make an inference about the compensations that your body has had to engage in. You can also make an inference about the limitations of your body in compensating for that because even your urine pH should be buffered. It's not the case that you put...

Question: Why AGEs and deficient insulin signaling are the main problem in diabetes. The reason that methylglyoxal, which I did my doctoral dissertation on, the reason that methylglyoxal, which is quantitatively the most important form of advanced glycation end products in diabetics, the reason that it is elevated is not because of hyperglycemia. It's because of deficient insulin signaling. That i...

Question: Nutritional recommendations for MTR and MTRR polymorphisms. In the methylation cycle, I've talked a lot about MTHFR, which helps finalize the methyl group of methyfolate. But then folate has to donate that methyl group to vitamin B12 in order for vitamin B12 to donate it to homocysteine. In that process, that's how you clear homocysteine primarily in the fasting state rather than the fed...

Question: Nutrition for children with ADHD. In adults 100 to 800 milligrams per day has been used in a couple studies showing effects in the brain. One of the things that's going wrong in ADHD is that the brain is not getting dopamine's signal that something is valuable enough to keep paying attention to it. I think the drugs that are used to treat ADHD are increasing the tonic level of dopamine i...

Here's what I'm doing about the coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19 Here's my 41-page 92-reference guide, The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the  mitochondria test Mitome .

Question: Nutrients important for neuroregeneration. Iron, phosphorus, and sulfate are very important for regenerating nerves. Magnesium. Acetylcholine is a major factor in regeneration of nerves, and so choline is important. If you were to use a supplement, alpha-GPC would be the ideal choline supplement to use because it's superior at generating acetylcholine. Vitamin A and zinc are very importa...

Question: Advice for what to do after suffering a transient ischemic attack. A TIA, a transient ischemic attack, is like a mini stroke, but they all kind of fall into the same category where the development of plaque is a very significant part, is the major thing disposing you to having an event like that. Nutritionally, the major factors in blood pressure are potassium is the biggest one, the sal...

Question: When on a ketogenic diet, it is a problem if ketones are going up to 5 to 6 millimoles per liter? One of the popular ketogenic advocates was saying that if the ketones are getting above 3, then it's from not eating enough protein. I don't really see it that way. I think that protein will suppress ketogenesis, and so will carbs. Five to 6 millimoles per liter is what you see in therapeuti...

Question: Are there any solutions to getting nauseated from zinc supplements even at low doses and even when the zinc comes as oysters? With the zinc, my general recommendation is to take zinc on an empty stomach. The thing that is not controversial is that phytate is the principal inhibitor of zinc absorption. Phytate is found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. I think there's a very broa...

Question: Could low LDL hurt female fertility? I haven't seen evidence of it, but that would not surprise me at all given that cholesterol is what you make sex hormones from. If you see levels that low, I don't know that it's intrinsically a problem. You kind of want to start looking at what are the reasonable things you could expect to happen from that that affect female fertility? Fat-soluble vi...

Question: Is it safe to take creatine when nursing? If you felt fatigued and you took the creatine and all of a sudden that started reversing, then you either felt fatigued because you had low creatine synthesis, or you felt fatigued because you had a methylation problem. Those aren't mutually exclusive. If you're not methylating well, the most sensitive thing that will happen is you'll synthesize...

Question: Can you explain plant polyphenols and hormesis? In brief, our detoxification system didn't evolve to handle the toxins of modern society. Modern society invents a new chemical. Our body knows it's a toxin, but it doesn't know it because we were exposed to it for millions of years. It knows it because it has similarity to other toxins. That similarity may be weaker or stronger depending o...

Question: What to do when serum magnesium is high but RBC magnesium is low? The magnesium in the blood and the hair is high. When you say blood, I'm assuming this is serum or plasma because the RBC magnesium is low. I'm hoping that's not whole blood magnesium in which case it would be hard to separate from the RBC magnesium. But I mean even for whole blood, if the RBC magnesium is low and the bloo...