Mastering Nutrition

Question: What nutrients are needed to break down old, damaged bone and build new, healthy bone? So you are breaking down bone all the time throughout every second of your life.  We are always breaking down bone, we are always building up new bone, and if you had any kind of defect in the ability to break down old bone, then you would have problems manifesting elsewhere.  Bone breakdown is necessa...

Question: What are my thoughts on detoxing heavy metals? My thoughts are first you need to look at how bad the heavy metal is and if it is even at a level that a conventional practitioner would say you have toxicity; for example lead.  If this is your situation then I don't feel comfortable advising anyone here, but if your levels are slightly high and you would like to reduce them, then my sugges...

Question: W hat to do about elevated morning blood glucose in the mid 90s. I think usually your morning glucose is primarily impacted by your hormones and very rarely impacted by what you ate the night before, unless you are severely glucose intolerant. So the overwhelming probability is that if your blood glucose is elevated in the morning and mid-90s is not tremendously high; it is most likely c...

Question: neither my mother nor myself respond to T3 supplementation (cytomel; up to 140 mcg/d). Body temp remains low and reverse T3 stays normal. Could you discuss the factors that might interfere with thermogenesis in response to T3, and offer considerations how to improve this? Having normal levels of reverse T3 tells you that the body isn't deliberately getting rid of the thyroid hormone. Hig...

Question: "What are your top three non-nutrient factors that prevent someone from entering beta-oxidation or ketogenesis? I mean like sleep disruption." Top three non-nutrient factors? Unless you are taking a drug that prevents lipolysis, then they aren't non-nutrient.  The overwhelming things that govern those are carbohydrate and fat intake. You eat more fat, you have more beta-oxidation. You ea...

Question: "Any recommendations for peripheral neuropathy? Testing vitamin B, lion's mane?" First of all, there is no such thing as vitamin B. I'm not trying to be a nitpick, but there's literally almost a dozen B vitamins, with different tests, that do different things. So, I think it's important to establish a habit of never saying vitamin B because, not to be a grammar nitpick, but I just think...

Question: "If cholesterol, LDL-P, and oxidized LDL are high, the sterol panel is normal, and TGs are great, would you suspect clearance of the particles driven by LDL receptor in the liver is the issue, and what would you recommend to boost LDL-R?" Yes, it sounds like you should target LDL-R.  The big regulators of LDL-R function are thyroid hormone, and the amount of cholesterol in the liver cell...

Question: "What are your recommendations on magnesium supplements and dosage?" My opinion is that most people shouldn't be supplementing with high doses of magnesium. I think if you're going to supplement with more than 400 milligrams a day, you should be testing your magnesium status, and you should be making decisions on that. I think there's way too many people throwing really high doses of mag...

Question: "Calcium score, is there a way to treat one's calcium score and get it to zero?" ⇒ No, you don't treat the calcium score. You take the calcium score as indicative of what's going on in atherosclerosis, and you treat that. The goal, I think, is calcium score equals zero. No, that's a bad goal because that's like saying my goal this year is to be a billionaire. Is that going to make me har...

Question: "What do you think of alternative testing like hair mineral analysis or SpectraCell?" I'm against SpectraCell on the basis of, it's not validated. I gave more details in a podcast episode "What Makes a Good Marker of Nutritional Status?" and you can find that at chrismasterjohnphd.com/marker. Hair mineral analysis; I like hair mineral analysis when there is nothing better and more valida...

Question: How do I address edema?  Edema is basically going to be caused by excess salt retention in the body. The reason is that with the exception of very extreme scenarios, your body is going to tightly regulate the sodium concentration of the water in your body, and sodium draws water.  Now, that's not to say that the cause is eating salt. And there are cases where eating salt might remove ede...

Question: "How do you determine if you're getting enough protein? I heard Dr. Stephen Phinney say, for those on a keto diet, if ketones are greater than 3 on a regular basis, then it's a sign you're not getting enough protein." First of all, why are you on a ketogenic diet?  If your purpose is to get the ketones, why wouldn't you want your ketones higher than 3? The ketogenic diet is, regardless o...

Question: What supplements would you recommend for a ketogenic diet? Any concerns with carbs being that low?  If someone's on a keto diet and they have 80 grams total carbs, the first question I have is where are the carbs coming from?  That's really going to determine whether the person needs supplements. So, on a keto diet in general and protein, too? If you're eating a lot of fat instead of pro...

Question: "Why would a male be low in calcium?" You either have something wrong with parathyroid hormone governing your calcium levels, in which case you would want to see a doctor about that, or you have a long-going deficiency of related nutrients.  Not enough calcium and not enough vitamin D should not cause low serum calcium — unless the deficiency has been going on for a very long time and is...

Question: "I keep waking up in the middle of the night and stay awake for hours. Would low carb make it worse?" It definitely could.  Your brain will consume 120 grams of carbohydrate every day, just your brain. There's got to be another 30 grams or so that would be used no matter what obligately by red blood cells, certain cells in the testes, the kidney, and the lens of the eye. Then the rest of...

Question: "Which brand and dosage of no-carb electrolytes would you take at night to optimize sleep, especially after sauna use?" I would drink a bottle of Gerolsteiner, and I would add to it 100 milligrams of any kind of magnesium: citrate, glycinate, malate, those three are fine. And I would add to it 400 milligrams of potassium citrate, or bicarbonate if it's an empty stomach. You say no-carb....

Question: "Vitamin K2, MK-4 and MK-7, might have caused prolonged heart palpitations. Upon stopping it, symptoms mostly resolved after a week or so. Does that mean that the body is better off without it? Might increasing calcium intake mitigate this?"  I would say, the calcium is really interesting. I genuinely hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it. Even though I've heard other people ask...

Question, part 1: "Bovine colostrum from New Zealand cows. Yea or nay for those with dairy sensitivities? If nay, what would you recommend instead?" What is your goal? If you have a dairy sensitivity, your problem could be with casein, with the whey proteins, or with something more specific like certain antibodies. It's very complicated. You're less likely to tolerate colostrum if you have a known...

In part 2 of The Carnivore Debate, we cover the philosophy of the carnivore diet and the potential pitfalls of carnivore and keto. The research that Dr. Saladino and I discussed with each other before this debate is listed in the show notes -- there are five pages of references! Here's what we debated: What exactly is a carnivore diet? Is a 90% meat diet a carnivore diet, a carnivore diet you chea...

Dr. Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD, and I sit down to talk about the carnivore diet. In part 1, we focus on whether you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need on a carnivore diet, and how to best design a carnivore diet to maximize the nutrition you get. We discuss what I consider high-risk nutrients: Vitamin C Folate And what I consider conditional-risk nutrients: Manganese​  Magnesium​ Vita...

Question: If your cholesterol is high, how do you avoid having a large burden of oxidized LDL? First, normalize your cholesterol.  And no, I'm not saying that high cholesterol is the cause of heart disease. It's not, but oxidized LDL is, and the number one cause of both high cholesterol and oxidized LDL is not clearing LDL particles from the blood. So, I would never skip over the question of what...

Question: "I'm curious about the role of the lymphatic system in fat metabolism, specifically in high-fat, low-carb diets. Is there a biochemical explanation for why improving lymphatic circulation would improve fat metabolism?" Well, I wouldn't call it biochemical, I'd call it physiological, but yes.  Fat goes from your gut through your lymphatic system to your blood. If your lymphatic circulatio...

Question: "Lp(a) and genetic component with relation to cholesterol and risk of cardiovascular disease." First, I'm going to be able to give better answers to questions if they're more specific.   But to the question: Everyone seems to think that Lp(a) causes heart disease. I don't believe it. I don't believe it because the function of Lp(a) is to clean up oxidized LDL particles. It might have oth...

"Can magnesium hydroxide be absorbed via skin?" I don't know. I genuinely don't know. "I've been applying milk of magnesia as a deodorant alternative in spray form for a few years now, and it works well, but I'm concerned about I might be hypermagnesemic, as I'm having low pulse, low blood pressure, and frequent bowel movements." You might be hypermagnesemic. You should measure your magnesium stat...

Concerns about long-term bicarbonate supplementation and other suggestions for raising pH Helen Donnell says, "Your post on urine pH and exercise tolerance was a game-changer for me, but anytime I miss a dose of bicarb, I'm right back to 5. Any long-term concerns with taking bicarb two to three times a day, any suggestions for other ways to get my system pH up?" Well, I will say in my case that I...