Notes on Vitamins and Minerals

After you correct your diet you must then use your judgment whether any experimental supplementation is necessary. For example, in the cases of Vitamin A (retinol), Manganese, and Selenium (in some parts of the world), it is easy with food alone to get to levels of these nutrients which, in supplements, would be considered dangerously high. Always use caution with minerals and the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), because the body pools of these substances change only very slowly, and you may be unable to recognize any difference until toxicity begins. Although I watch that the Vitamin A (retinol) number doesn't get out of hand, I am not particularly concerned about the Daily Value for Vitamin D--it equals about 20 seconds of sun exposure, which is a pittance if you live in a sunny place and spend time outside. The Vitamin E Daily Value seems entirely correct to me, and will only seem too high to the low-fat crowd who deny themselves the benefit and enjoyment of nuts and seeds--but supplementation of Vitamin E always made me feel worse, and there is at present no scientific basis for taking Vitamin E on faith that it will offer some hidden benefit. The Daily Value for Sodium is a suggested upper limit with little scientific basis and is not a minimum daily requirement.

With the water-soluble vitamins, the "B"s and C, the experiments are much easier because these nutrients are in a constant daily flux, and a single substantial dose can frequently tell you within a day whether anything beneficial is happening. Vitamin B-6 is reported to cause irreparable nerve damage in large doses, but usually you need only a few times the Daily Value to make an informed judgment whether supplementation is useful. And yes, you will end up with a zillion bottles of vitamins where you took two or three pills and decided you didn't need it. I do not believe I am the only one who will have found multiple B vitamin deficiencies as a consequence of eating too much carbohydrate. But when you are not deficient, B vitamin supplementation can cause unwanted effects, such as headaches or jumpy feelings, or the weirdest effect that I saw in my experiments: Vitamin B-6 supplementation always made me dream of feces, apparently because B-6 is the characteristic intestinal signature of voluminous bacteria. Although most of the vitamin and mineral Daily Values seem right to me, the value for Vitamin C is way too low.

The following are my experiences and opinions on those vitamins and minerals for which I decided the nutrient's Daily Value was meaningless, i.e., you can eat well and yet still be deficient. If I give a symptom of deficiency or excess, remember that your personal symptoms would undoubtedly be different. Don't take vitamin and mineral supplements unless you can see they are doing something and you can see what they are doing--then find the minimum amount of the supplement that accomplishes the task. The idea that you cannot know in the present that you are deficient in a vitamin or mineral is just a marketing ploy and guarantees that almost everything you take will be a placebo. Taking supplements as "insurance" doesn't insure you against anything because you don't know what you need, and if they left the nutrient out of the pill, you wouldn't be able to tell. But precise supplementation of exactly what you need makes a huge difference. And get a pill splitter--sometimes the whole tablet is just too much!

• Thiamin: After I have adjusted the chromium level for the maximum mood effect, I have simultaneously adjusted chromium for the most efficient carb metabolism--and that is just when some odd symptom (often digestive) will appear that is solved with additional Thiamin. I take 25 mg. three times a day. When I experimented with foregoing my usual coffee intake, I could not discern any Thiamin deficiency, so I am convinced that the inactivation of Thiamin by coffee is a real effect. The frequency of an effective dose of Thiamin seems more important than the exact size of the dose.
• Folic Acid: I get the Daily Value for folate from food. Food folate is a large polymer, the units of which are absorbed with difficulty, as opposed to the synthetic Folic Acid, which is absorbed easily. After I started supplementing Vitamin-B12, I noticed I would get various symptoms, the worst of which were muscle injuries that took forever to heal. Folic Acid supplementation at 400 mcg. per day solves the problem.
• Vitamin B-12: I believe that everyone should try a 1 mg. sublingual tablet of the cyanocobalamin form of Vitamin B-12. If you don't need it, nothing much of anything will happen, but if you have not been absorbing B-12 properly, the world seems to come alive in a striking way. In the old days, the well-to-do would go to the doctor to get B-12 injections for added pep, but this became obsolete when it was discovered oral doses work just as well if they are at least a milligram. I take 1 milligram twice a day. The highly-touted methylcobalamin form never did anything for me, and it did not provide even the basic benefits of the cyanocobalamin form, plus it made my vision blurry and made me uncoordinated at the piano after only a few days of use, so I do not think it can be considered a superior substitute.
• Vitamin C: I heard Linus Pauling on the radio, wondering why everyone would not at least try 18 grams of Vitamin C a day. 18 grams a day is way too much but I immediately noticed I was no longer susceptible to paper cuts at the office. I found that when I didn't supplement Vitamin C, the first symptom to show up was sebaceous cysts, and I determined that 1 gram, three times a day, was the minimum to prevent them altogether. Eventually, I cut the carbs and realized that the Vitamin C was just ameliorating a problem caused by excessive carbohydrate. When I retested, I was eating a very low carbohydrate diet that I later decided was not optimal, and my Vitamin C requirement was much less. When I later raised my carb level to the optimum, I again needed more Vitamin C or else I was not sufficiently invincible to physical stress, so I settled on the original 1 gram, three times a day of a "sustained release" Vitamin C horse pill.
• Chromium: Chromium can improve mood considerably and make a contribution towards increased insulin sensitivity--the feeling you are getting more energy and well-being out of your food. Think of chromium mood effects as a measure of brain insulin sensitivity; the neuronal response to insulin is stimulation of neurotransmitter release. I take up to 400 mcg. three times a day of chromium picolinate, and 100 mcg. once a day of yeast-derived "GTF" chromium. I found there are really two separate chromium mood effects and thus both forms of chromium are required, although the yeast-derived form does almost nothing that I can detect to improve insulin sensitivity. Too much chromium in any form will cause anxiety. Both milk fat and too much Omega-3, especially alpha-linolenic acid from flax oil, seem to cause chromium side-effects, especially headaches. Chromium histidine is well-absorbed, and like a stronger version of the yeast-derived "GTF" form, provides the second chromium mood effect, which I can only lamely describe as making the world seem more intrinsically meaningful and involving, but chromium histidine does nothing for insulin sensitivity. Only chromium picolinate seems to actually increase insulin sensitivity and to effect the peculiar mood improvement that is obviously closely related to insulin sensitivity. The most common pattern I have noticed over the years is this: insulin sensitivity will increase for some unknown reason; I feel more energetic and physical, but at the same time, mood abruptly deteriorates, and the best I can describe it, the world seems slightly hostile, or at least unconcerned about my welfare. That mood perception is the signal to increase the dosage of chromium picolinate. If I get the bad mood effect at the maximum effective dose of chromium picolinate, that means I have overfilled my glycogen reserves, and I need to have high-carb meals less often. Sometimes, again for an unknown reason, insulin sensitivity will decrease, and then I begin to get some annoying side-effect from chromium picolinate, and I will decrease the dose. As this pattern has continued for four or five years, the amount of carbohydrate I can eat without experiencing fatigue or inflammation has spiralled upward. I do not understand what the physiological process is, but its discontinuity does not hide that insulin resistance really is, in some sense, a chromium deficiency. My hypothesis is that as children, we absorb what is supposed to be a lifetime reserve of chromium, but we are without any means to absorb chromium efficiently as adults. Because we are unsuited to our modern ecology, chromium reserves are used up prematurely, and there is no natural remedy.

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