Mastering Nutrition

Question: If my tryptophan is low, and I'm on a low-carb diet, would you recommend 5-HTP supplements or tryptophan supplements or both? There are multiple reasons why tryptophan could be low. It could be that you are not eating enough protein, or it could be that you have a high utilization of the tryptophan. I would look in the test and see if the 5-hydroxyindoleacetate is elevated — because if i...

Question: What to do if signs and symptoms of zinc deficiency persist despite taking 75 mg zinc gluconate per day . You should do plasma zinc.  Also you know I kind of wonder whether you're taking that right. So if you're taking 75 milligrams of zinc like at one time then it's not surprising because you're absorbing like seven of those milligrams. The rest you are not.  To maximize absorption take...

Question: Is a high value of arsenic a concern? Yes, arsenic is a toxin. You probably don't want a lot of it, if it's just a little high it might not cause terrible damage. I would look at methylation if I saw high arsenic, because methylation is needed to get rid of arsenic.   Oh actually I should add that methylation supplements have been shown to help arsenic detoxification in areas of the worl...

Question Are low polyunsaturated omega-6 values on the ION test a concern? Not the total, but if the arachidonic acid levels are low I would look at low arachidonic acid intake, or inflammation, or oxidative stress. It would concern me because arachidonic acid is important to a lot of physiological functions, but I don't care about the total omega-6. This Q&A can also be found as part of a much lo...

Question: When high selenium does not come down in response dietary efforts and cessation of supplementation, what's going on? Either there's high levels of selenium in the soil where your food is grown, or you have low methylation because methylation is needed to get rid of excess selenium. This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2...

Question: Creatine, when is it recommend that if you don't have the MTHFR SNP that causes methylation problems? 1.)When you want to improve your physique. 2.)When you want to improve your athletic performance. 3.)When you have a rare creatine synthesis disorder. 4.)If you have depression, it might help. 5.) If you have any signs that something else is messing with your methylation even though your...

Question: When should tryptophan be taken on a keto diet? Night, day, both? Presumably you're doing this to try to increase tryptophan getting into the brain.  The best thing to do is to take it two to three hours away from other protein.  The second consideration is if you have an allotment of carbs that you concentrate at one time of day, then it would be best to take the tryptophan then. With t...

Question: Do you think there are true non-responders to creatine, or do you think that those apparent non-responders have some defects in methylation that makes typical doses of creatine sufficient only for other needs. Alex Leaf would be a great person to ask about this and he's not here right now…  [Alex appears] Alex, so Jen's question is are there true non-responders to creatine or do you just...

Question: How do I bring up low levels of arachidonic acid? Should I supplement with 250 milligrams? What brand is there from well-known company?   If you want 250 milligrams of arachidonic acid, eat an egg. I don't know anything about arachidonic acid supplements yet, except that they exist because you can eat eggs and you'll get plenty. Do you want to try the supplement? Well you can, but I don'...

Question: How to interpret the pattern of high citrate, low cis-aconitate, low glutamate, and high glutamine. The aconitate and citric acid are markers on the citric acid cycle where we metabolize most of our energy. If citric acid is high and isocitric acid is low, (this must be the Great Plains Test which doesn't have isocitrate/cis-aconitate) that would indicate oxidative stress. In terms of th...

Question: What are the best ways to optimize glutathione status for someone who has a G6PD deficiency?   Riboflavin was shown to be of benefit for normalizing oxidative stress in people who have glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. So for people who don't know what this is G6PD is, glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase is an enzyme that you use to take energy from glucose specifically, you ca...

Question: Are there diminishing returns in the amount of fish in a weekly diet? I know you mentioned eating fish about twice a week. I've been trying to eat salmon once a day. Is there an ideal ratio of fish to non-fish protein you should aim for? There's not a lot of data backing that up and the data we have is pretty poor quality. But I'm of the mind that the diminishing returns come after one o...

Question: How to deal with the fact that blood tests for nutritional status aren't adapted to children? There aren't childhood-based ranges that are data-driven. So what if the ranges need to be a little bit different in children? The approach in the Cheat Sheet is not to rely exclusively on ranges, it's also to look at the diet and lifestyle analysis and to look at signs and symptoms.  So what yo...

Question: I just saw an email from Matt Stone referring to the overly deified nutrient vitamin A. Also, a few Weston A. Price Foundation bloggers are starting to spread the word about being sick on a high vitamin A diet. Any thoughts about this and comments about Vitamin A being toxic? You shouldn't deify any nutrient, right? Any point of view that breaks down the world into good and bad molecules...

Question: Is it ok to mix carbs and fat? There are a lot of people on the internet that claim the Randle cycle is behind America being fat, since the standard American diet is mixed in fats and carbs. Yet, I feel great on a diet of about 30% protein, 30% fat, and 40% carbs, based on meat, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables.  The randle cycle addresses why you would have elevated fatty acids or hyper...

Question: Can you explain what parent essential oils are? I was given some articles that seemed to be saying that high-dose cold-water fish oils are damaging to cell membranes and mitochondrial function. "Parent essential oil" is a term invented by Brian Peskin, who looked at some  data that said it's not clear that supplementing with fish oil is good for you because doing so can cause oxidative s...

Question: What are your thoughts on monitoring HRV for optimizing performance? Measure your HRV every night and you stop exercising entirely to get a baseline.  You completely stop working out, you don't go "oh no I'm going to lose my muscle mass," nothing's going to happen for a week or two. And this is the whole foundation of you having good data. This baseline ensures that you have good startin...

Question: Why did the FDA have a vitamin A requirement during pregnancy at 8,000 IU, which is much higher than the IOM recommendations in the past? I have no idea. I do know that the concerns around vitamin A during pregnancy are that in the first weeks of pregnancy, 10,000 IU and higher has been associated with birth defects. That was one prospective study in 1995, which is higher quality than re...

Question: Does mixing carbohydrate with fat cause people to get fat because of the Randle cycle? There's a theory floating around on the internet that mixed diets are more fattening than low-carb or low-fat diets because of the metabolic competition between glucose and fatty acids.  I don't believe this to be true because, in the context of isocaloric diets, mixed diets don't seem to be more fatte...

Question: What to do if gamma-tocopherol levels are low-normal while taking 100 IU/d of alpha-tocopherol.   My initial impression is that there is nothing wrong because I don't care that much about gamma tocopherol. My doctoral research specialized in gamma tocopherol and there is some evidence that gamma tocopherol does some things that alpha tocopherol doesn't do. It's likely that people who tak...

Question: What to do if taking biotin and yet beta-hydroxyisovalerate is elevated. Well in theory that's a marker of biotin deficiency, but you might have a defect in a biotin-dependent enzyme so you can try 5 milligrams, but if you still have high beta hydroxy isovaleric you need to start looking at a metabolic disorder, providing there are symptoms. You might have a 20% decrease in that enzyme a...

Question: For someone who is taking 45 mg of vitamin B6 as P5P but has xanthurenate, kynurenate, and quinolinate high in the urine as markers of vitamin B6 deficiency, and who is a man with high estrogen, what should they do? I f you have xanthurenate and kynurenate spilling into your urine , it means that quinolinate would be building up. Quinolinate is usually the last thing to rise in B6 defici...

Question: For someone who is homozygous for the H63D allele of the iron- and hemochromatosis-related HFE gene, if ferritin is low but transferrin saturation is high, should they still donate blood? H63D is one of the genes that predisposes to hemochromatosis, a condition of iron overload. Most clinicians who work in this area do not consider the H63D allele to be a concern because it's less severe...

Question: Thoughts on lowering my resting heart rate. It's often in the high 80s or low 90s once I'm up for the day. I wish I knew the answer to that. I'd use it for my heart rate. I don't even measure my heart rate because my whole life it's been kind of high. I think breathing and meditation are probably the best things that you can do.   I've typically had a white coat syndrome response to gett...

Question:   How to manage the zinc-to-copper ratio and what to do if zinc and copper are both low-normal when supplementing with 15 mg of zinc and 1 mg of copper. I don't recommend looking at the zinc-to-copper ratio. Although there are studies correlating health endpoints with the zinc-to-copper ratio, I do not believe that it is a causal factor in disease.  I believe the zinc-to-copper ratio is...