We realize that our Definitive
Guide to Supplementation may not be for beginners. Or, you may just
want bottom-line facts. This Condensed ("Quick-Start") Guide
was developed for just that purpose. We hope you find it useful.
A couple of things before we begin...
- This guide was written and researched by MR and adapted for the web
by CRON-WEB. (The original title for this guide was "The Art and
Science of Supplementation: Priorities, Pitfalls and Practice".)
- Disclaimer: MR used to formulate
supplements and earn money in the process. MR no longer does so, but
still has a relationship with the company (AOR.ca).
In addition, I (Khurram) was this company's webmaster in 2004
and 2005. There are some plugs for the company's products in this Guide,
but CRON-WEB is not affiliated with AOR in any way. We have also included
links to some AOR products sold by a trusted vendor, research-nutrition.com.(
I (Khurram) have personally dealt with research-nutrition.com
for years). We are not financially compensated by or associated with
research-nutrition.com
in any way.
- The content below was written in late 2004. Please be aware of this
update from January 30, 2006.
The bottom-line, take-home message of this Guide:
- Don't be malnourished.
- Don't count on pills -- and don't kill yourself with them!
- Cut your Calories -- but understand it to be unproven, weak, crude
medicine.
- Read and participate in the
CR Lists; support the Calorie
Restriction Society
- Support the Methuselah
Foundation
- [Khurram's note: practice calorie restriction with optimum diet-based
nutrition before "pilling"!]
Important stuff first...
- CR/"CRON" practitioners are all over the map with respect
to supplements, some take 1/2 a Centrum multi-vitamin, and others take
fistfuls of supps. Neither is very wise.
- Drive of "magic pill" isn't working out very well. For example,
CoQ10 doesn't seem to extend lifespan (more on CoQ10 below).
- CR (calorie restriction) still only "proven" strategy.
Pills have no proof.
- Anything beyond CR [and more specifically, beyond CRON, calorie
restriction with optimum diet-based nutrition] is a gamble.
The question is risk vs. potential reward.
- CRON-WEB's strategy: Tier approach. Early
tier (Tier 1) is no-brainer. Further tiers more speculative.
- You CAN do yourself harm with the wrong supplements, or too
much of the right supplements. Low-quality supplements can even have
nasty toxins in them.
- We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot...
- Too much reliance on test-tube studies to justify supplements. Easy
to kill cancer cells in a test tube. The challenge is to avoid killing
the normal cells!
- Too much thinking that "if it is useful for correcting disease,
it should also enhance normal people".
Basic no-no's -- Don't take / do the following supplements:
- Retinol > 2000 IU
- Excess Mn (UL 11mg)
- Synthetic Beta-Carotene
- Excess Beta-carotene (> 15,000 IU) - no justification for taking
this much
- Excess Alpha-tocopherol? (> few scores of IU) (normal vitamin
E)
- Substances with no human data
- Graviola
- DHA, Fish Oil ??? -- good for people eating SAD (standard American
diet -- i.e. a non-CRON diet), but may not be good for CRONies
- Looks like EPA is active ingredient for psychological disorders. People
may want to consider straight EPA.
- Encouraged people to read section in Walford's
120 Year Diet on "The Nature of Evidence". Great
way to learn about how to treat evidence, for supplements and other
scientific findings.
- Now strong evidence that tomatoes, and specifically lycopene, prevents
prostate cancer.
Tier-based supplement-prioritizing system:
Tier 1: Essential Supplements
- Orthomolecules
only -- basic vitamins and minerals
- Avoid deficiency -- Stuff you'll die or get really sick without in
long run
- Specific disease / risk factors -- Niacin if you have genetically
bad cholesterol
1a) Avoid frank deficiencies:
- Scurvy, beriberi, pellagra will kill you dead
- Much cancer and heart disease from micronutrient deficiency
- Adult-onset CR fails w/o generous micronutrient supply
Unrecognized Essentials:
- Lithium
- Pyrroloquinoline Quinone (PQQ) -- required for lysine metabolism
- Boron
Tier 1 Targets -- here is where to look:
Vitamin and Mineral
Recommendations from the Council for Responsible Nutrition + 1000IU
of vitamin D3
- Crunch the numbers using diet software
- Common CR diet deficiencies: Mg, Zn, B1, B2, B6, Protein, impaired
Metabolism of Ca, Fe, A.
- Get ferritin (iron) test! Dean P. anemia at 242% -- DRI
(Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) and Recommended Dietary Allowances
(RDA)). Mostly non-heme.
- CR protects us against B1, Mg, Cu deficiencies -- don't need as much
as normals.
Biochemical Individuality: Each of us has different Genes, different
life stresses
- some people need more stuff than others -- Folate, Riboflavin for
certain genetic Population
- RDA's are designed to meet nutritional needs of 95% of population
CRON-WEB's "Insurance Intuition":
- 1.5x RDA for minerals. Up to 10x for water-soluble vitamins (e.g
vitamin C).
- His recommendation -- Start with diet, and then supplement basics
to get to 1.5x RDA of minerals.
- See above caveats for fat soluble.
- Strong evidence for vitamin K2 for osteoporosis avoidance.
Balance is important!
- Zn:Cu balance is important -- they compete with each other.
- B vitamins. Megadose of 1 depresses others
- Ca vs. P, Zn, Cu, Fe
1b) "Pharmacologic" supplements for specific disease/Risk
factors
If you have these risk factors, you might take want/need to take
these supplements:
- Bone heath (for older senior-citizen age; low DeXA; very slim (CR);
dramatic weight loss -- take strontium, K2
- Bad cholesterol -- take Niacin
Tier 2 -- "Good-Diet-in-a-Pill"
Dietary supplements
Small number of specific nutrients with safety and efficacy from combination
of prospective epidemiology, with independent variables, and experimental
studies.
Evidence-based phytochemicals:
- 13C -- Brassica (e.g. broccoli extract, raw veggies) -- 20mg
- Sulforaphane -- Brassica (e.g. broccoli extract, raw veggies) -- 7mg
- Allyl sulfides (garlic) : 55 mcg
- Limonene (citrus): 20mg
- Trans-resveratrol (red wine): 1.8mg = 1 glass of red wine per day
(Pinot Noir)
- Chlorophyll(in) (green veggies): 300mg
- Lycopene 18mg
- EgCG -- 1500mg
- Flavonoids (onions, apples, tea, etc.)
- D-Glucarate (?): 15mg
Where to find the above phytochemicals?
- Try to get them in diet first
- Orthocore (AOR)
-- Multi-vitamin + most of the above phytos
- Trans-resveratrol -- Network
Synergy (AOR)
- Limonene -- BioCare Vitasorb or Pinnacle Cold Immune
Will all this stuff make a difference?
- Observation that unless we're retarding aging, there is only so much
more mortality curve squaring we can do. We already have a pretty darn
square curve.
- Showed very cool graph of human mortality data where each curve represents
a different year, ranging from 10000 BC to present. Curve has successively
gotten very close to square. Not much room for improvement.
- If we eliminate all cancer tomorrow and you are 50 years old, you
would only [live a few years (exact number to be added here soon) longer].
Tier 3: "Sensible" "Megadose" supplementation
Dietary Supplements; Large human clinical trials showing safety:
*Notes on Selenium:
- Selenium and Cancer -- 200mcg Se cut incidence of new cancers in humans
(previously skin cancer patients) by 37%, cancer deaths by 50%. But
didn't help with skin cancer. But the people who really benefited were
people who didn't metabolize selenium well. Unfortunately you can't
tell with any available tests if you're one of them.
- Signs of selenium toxicity -- fingernail ridges and garlic breath.
- Good idea to take Selenium as SeMC -- much more effective at lower
doses than standard selenomethionine. AOR
selenium is SeMC.
Stuff MR takes himself, but a bit further down in tier system:
- Arginine -- 4g/day
- IP6
- Methylcobalamin 0.5-5mg
- Carnosine, 1500mg
- Phyroglutamate -- wake up your brain
- ALCAR (Acetyl-L-Carnitine) -- alertness and memory
- Tyrosine - like caffeine w/o addictive effect
- DMAE -- also a bit like caffeine also
Tier 4 -- Life extension Level
NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE!!!! One reason is because...
Things keep failing.
R+LA (Lipoic acid in "right" form) -- not as optimistic as
he used to be
- The hope: "rejuvenation" of normally-aging rats
- Reduces mtROS production (?)
But big caveats!
- No mortality benefit from "wrong" standard form -- Weindruck
and Prolla
- No benefit on morality for R+LA form + ALCAR -- from Ames (unpublished)
CoQ10 -- doesn't extend mortality. Might even marginally shorten life
of rodents
- De Grey says the problem with life extension studies of supplements
in rodents is that 95% of them die of cancer. If you retard aging, but
not cancer, you won't see effect in mouse. Could be what is happening
with these negative supplement studies. They may work in people, but
not mice.
- But w/o rodent studies, what have we got? We're up a creek w/o a paddle.
Need cancer-resistant mice strains to probe further.
- CoQ10 -- poster child for failure of initially promising supplement
to extend rodent lifespan.
- Stop taking CoQ10 -- some evidence of "crap" in hearts,
livers and kidney in mice in CoQ10 group. May be why there was a hint
of *decreased* lifespan from CoQ10 in mice.
Resveratrol:
Benfotiamine + Pyridoxamine (PM):
- Real anti-glycation nutrients: documented in diabetic animals and
humans
- Could therefore be beneficial -- 150-300mg Benfotiamine; 200mg PM
in humans -- shown to reduce glycation.
- Seems to be "contaminant" in all available PM -- could be
benign, but could be hideously toxic.
Case Studies
These are real accounts of three CRONies -- two females, one male --
taking supplements. Due to privacy concerns, some names not given.
Case Study 1: "Jane Doe 1" (female's orig. name not
used for privacy):
What she is doing:
- OrthoCore 9 x
- Calcium citrate 400 mg
- Magnesium citrate 200 mg
- B12 shot 1cc once a month
- Folic Acid 5 mg
- Flax oil 1 g
- [Iron 10 mg]
- Fish oil 1 g
- EGCG 3 x day
- CoQ10 30 mg
- R(+)-Lipoic Acid 3 x
- [SeMC] _
- Benfotiamin 2 x
- Carnosine 2 x
- OrthoMind 3 x
- MSM 1000 mg
- l-Tyrosine 500 mg
- Kyolic garlic extract 600 mg
What she should do:
Tier1:
- 50% of well-designed multi
- All Bs
- E complex, Cu, Zn, Fe
- 227 mg Sr; 5-15 mg menatetrenone?
Tier 2:
- 75% OrthoCore as basic multi
- EgCG, Limonene
Tier 3:
- Network Synergy
- 200-600 mcg Se (as SeMC)
Tier 4:
- R(+)-LA: Top up to 500-600 mg, + extra biotin
- Benfotiamine: 300 mg
- Trans-resveratrol, when available?
- Metformin (1500 mg)??
Case study #2: Jane Doe 2 (female's orig. name not used):
What she's doing now:
- OrthoCore 9 x
- Calcium citrate 400 mg
- Magnesium citrate 200 mg
- B12 shot 1cc once a month
- Folic Acid 5 mg
- Flax oil 1 g
- [Iron 10 mg]
- Fish oil 1 g
- EGCG 3 x day
- CoQ10 30 mg
- R(+)-Lipoic Acid 3 x
- [SeMC] _
- Benfotiamin 2 x
- Carnosine 2 x
- OrthoMind 3 x
- MSM 1000 mg
- l-Tyrosine 500 mg
- Kyolic garlic extract 600 mg
What she should do:
Tier 1:
- 50% of well-designed multi, incl. retinol
- Calcium (63-80%) + D, Iron (89-149% -- non-heme; woman, but ), Zinc
(76-82%) -- & Copper 146-163%
- Fiber
- Nearly vegetarian: taurine (250 mg), creatine (5 g), carnitine (ALCAR
pref)
- (500 mg), carnosine (500 mg), choline (200-500 mg)
- 227 mg Sr; 5-15 mg menatetrenone
Tier 2:
- 50% OrthoCore as basic multi
- EgCG, Limonene
Tier 3:
- Network Synergy
- 200-600 mcg Se (as SeMC)
Tier 4:
- R(+)-LA: Top up to 500-600 mg, + extra biotin
- Benfotiamine: 300 mg
- Trans-resveratrol, when available?
- Metformin (1500 mg)??
Case study #3: Dean P (male in late 30's, at the time of this study)
- What he's doing now:
- OrthoCore 9 x
- Ortho-Bone 5 x
- L-Methionine (LIVD) 500mg
- Flax seed oil 3x1g gelcaps
- Iron
- Niferex 150 -- Prescription 150mg (elem)
- DHA 400mg/wk
- Strontium 227mg
- Carnosine (LIVD) 500mg
- ALCAR (Lower Lp(a) + LIVD) 500mg
- R+ Lipoic Acid (balance ALCAR) 300mg
What he should do:
Tier 1:
- 50% of well-designed multi, incl. retinol
- Iron (history of anemia)
- Small dose of flax oil (Omega-3 (g) 3.14; Omega-6 (g) 7.28. Shorts
(vegan))
- Vegan-necessitated amino acids: taurine (250 mg), creatine (5 g),
carnitine (ALCAR pref) (500 mg), carnosine (500 mg), choline (500 mg)
- ALCAR (1500 mg total): Lp(a), in which case 600 mg R(+)-LA
- Niacin (2000-4000 mg, niacin or inositol hexanicotinate) if Lp(a)
doesn't normalize.
- 227-545 mg Sr; 15 mg menatetrenone (weight loss; known low DEXA;
Fosamax use).
- Low-dose Ca before sleep
Tier 2:
- 50% OrthoCore as basic multi (+ extra choline)
- EgCG .?
Tier 3:
- Network Synergy
- 200-600 mcg Se (as SeMC)
Tier 4:
- R(+)-LA: Top up to 500-600 mg, + extra biotin
- Benfotiamine: 300 mg
- Trans-resveratrol, when available?
- Metformin (1500 mg)??
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