Do you ever wonder if you are low or deficient in any nutrients?

You as a health-conscious person probably realize that nutrition is foundational to good health, but you are probably not testing your nutritional status.

And it's not your fault.

When it comes to nutrition, most of the leading voices In the health space focus on diet and a few nutrients like folate, B12, vitamin D, and zinc.

But for some reason, almost nobody talks about actually testing the level of these nutrients, or other nutrients that are also important.

It's kind of crazy.

Problems with General Nutritional Advice

Health experts and influencers spout general nutritional advice about taking nutrients like folate, B12, vitamin D, and zinc, not knowing anything about your nutrient status and not telling you that these nutrients have important relationships with other nutrients that must not be neglected.

This can be problematic for a variety of reasons.

First of all, if you're only supplementing with nutrients that are top-of-mind because they are the ones people are talking about, then you might be neglecting and becoming deficient in other nutrients that are equally important.

Most of my clients are deficient in vitamins and minerals that almost nobody talks about.

You might also be developing nutrient excesses by taking too much of the nutrients being talked about the most.

And many nutrients need to be in certain ratios with one another in order to promote health. 

When the ratios of certain nutrients are too far outside of optimum, it can cause symptoms or promote illness.

For example, if a person's ratio of copper to zinc gets too high, they can experience a wide range of symptoms such as ...

• anxiety, depression, rage, or emotional sensitivity
• headaches
• fatigue
• "brain fog"
• frequent viral infections
• chronic yeast infections
• sleep disturbances
• aching muscles or joints
• hypothyroidism
• hypoglycemia
• PMS
• heart palpitations

Thankfully, nutrient ratios have some flexibility.

For example, while the ideal ratio of copper to zinc is probably around 1 to 1, you're probably going to be OK if your ratio is 1.3 to 1.

The ratio between vitamin D and vitamin A is very flexible, but it's still important to not get too imbalanced.

Vitamins D and A have an interesting relationship in which they are collaborative but also a bit antagonistic to one another.

They work together, and they also each partially suppress the activity of the other.

If you get a lot of vitamin D or vitamin A but not much of the other, it can create symptoms of toxicity of the one you are getting much more of.

The main reason anybody would experience toxicity from vitamin D or vitamin A would be if there is far more of one than the other in the body.

Although many people are checking their vitamin D level, few people are checking their vitamin A level. 

It's more common to be deficient in vitamin D, but vitamin A deficiency, or at least "subclinical deficiency", is far from rare.

I use the term "subclinical deficiency" to refer to situations in which classic symptoms of vitamin A deficiency might not have manifested, but suble impacts of suboptimal vitamin A status are occurring. 

Interestngly, there is evidence that people who have developed "Long COVID" had low levels of vitamin A when they were exposed to the virus, even if they experienced only a mild initial infection. 

This could be evidence of a subclinical deficiency leading to a clinical outcome (Long COVID).

Although vitamin A can be produced in the body from beta carotene, which is abundant in green, yellow, and orange pllant foods, some people do not easily make this conversion due to variants in the BCMO1 gene that codes for the enzyme that converts beta carotene to vitamin A (beta carotene monooxygenase-1).

For these reasons and many others, I prioritize detailed nutrient testing with my clients.

My Favorite All-Around Nutrient Test

The main nutrient test that I like to use is the Micronutrient panel from Vibrant Wellness.

It tests B vitamins, coenzyme Q10, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, glutathione, and the fat-soluble vitamins D, A, K2, and E.

The Micronutrient panel is also unique in that it measures nutrients in two places: 

1. blood serum
2. cells (either white blood cells or red blood cells)

This provides an additionaly layer of important information that would otherwise be invisible if testing nutrient levels only in blood serum.

How Oxidative Stress Destroys, Blocks, and Depletes Nutrients

One of the reasons taht testing in both serum and cells is important is that it is extremely common for nutrients to be destroyed by oxidative stress and therefore be much lower in cells than they appear in serum.

Oxidative stress also damages cell membranes, which reduces transport of nutrients into cells.

Oxidative stress and other types of stress, including psychological stress, deplete certain minerals.

In every client I have tested so far, I have seen significantly lower levels of nutrients in cells than in serum.

So testing only the blood serum would have been misleading, yet that is what is usually done.

Here is an example where B12 is high in serum but much lower in cells.

Because oxidative stress is often what is causing the a big difference between the serum and cellular B12, much of the B12 could be oxidized, making it ineffective.

So while this person looks like they have more than enough B12 in their serum, they could be functionally deficient in B12.

In this instance, however, this appears not to be the case because a functional marker called methylmalonic acid that is used to assess whether the body has enough vitamin B12 was normal.

Address Your Oxidative Stress for Better Nutrition

Because oxidative stress damages nutrients and reduces their concentration in cells, optimizing your nutrition involves more than just getting the right amounts of nutrients. 

To avoid nutrient deficiencies and to further optimize nutrient status, it's essential to identify and address causes of oxidative stress, such as ...

• Toxicants (e.g. heavy metals, pesticides)
• Chronic infectionsIntestinal dysbiosis and hyperpermeability
• Genetic variants that reduce the body's production of antioxidant enzymes (e.g. glutathione and superoxide dismutase)
• Deficiencies of antioxidant vitamins (e..g. C and E), and minerals with antioxidant roles in the body (e.g. selenium, copper, manganese, and zinc).

Interestingly, most of my clients have turned out to be low in manganese.

One of manganese's roles is as the cofactor for a form of superoxide dismutase that is found in in mitochondria.

The job of superoxide dismutase is to help neutralize superoxide.

In mitochondria, superoxide is the main reactive oxygen species produced as a result of mitochondrial dysfunction.

"Normal" Might Not Healthy for You

By the way, the "normal" range for nutrients on the Micronutrient panel is based on 1000 "apparently healthy people". 

This is much better than how conventional testing labs establish their "normal" ranges for test markers, which include 95% of all people tested by the lab, meaning that 95% of all people tested are assumed to be "normal", which clearly is not the case these days.

That said, the level of a nutrient that is deficient, healthy, or optimal for one person could be lower or higher than for another person.

So the low end of the "normal" range on the Micronutrient panel could be insufficient for some people, especially if they have higher needs for that nutrient due to oxidative stress, chronic infection, toxicity, or genetic variants that impair their utilization of a particular nutrient.

Opportunities for Optimization?

Yesterday, I experienced an powerful example of the difference between "not deficient" and "optimal". 

I have never exhibited any overt symptoms of deficiency in riboflavin (vitamin B2) that I know of. But because of certain genetic polymorphisms that I have, I suspected that I might benefit from taking a lot more riboflavin (B2). 

So recently, I started taking mega doses of riboflavin (one of the few vitamins that are safe to take in high doses).

I started taking between 750 and 1,500 millilgrams per day.

Then after doing this for only a few days, while performing some shoulder exercises yesterday (while being out of shape) and expecting the usual quick fatiguing of my shoulder muscles (one of the weakest parts of my body), I was shocked to find that my shoulder muscles were not easily fatiguing.

I found myself doing set after set of almost the same number of repetitions, whereas normally the number of repetitions that I can perform rapidly drops, and after about 3 or 4 sets, I would typicall feel that the shoulder muscles were sufficiently "cooked" for that particular shoulder exercise.

But instead, I lost count of how many sets I completed (at least 9) with almost the same number of repetitions in each set.

This combination of more sets with more reps in each set equates to at least three times as much total exercise capacity. 

So I 3X'd my shoulder muscle exercise capacity with only about 3 days of high-dose riboflavin. And the next day (today) I am not sore. 

The only discomfort I feel in my shoulders feels like a very minor strain injury in my left shoulder from overzealously cranking out more and more sets and reps. 

And this in a context of not frequently exercising these muscles (or any others) lately. I am very out of shape right now. So this is blowing my mind.

I view this experience as evidence of an "optimization" effect caused by providing extra vitamin B2 beyond the amount needed to keep me "healthy" and not deficient. 

By the way, I should mention that I have also taking sufficient quantities of other B vitamins that work together with B2.

Summary

To summarize,

• The Micronutrient panel from Vibrant Wellness is one of the top 3 tests that I like to use.
• It is not a perfect test because it is missing a some important vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids.
• However, it is the only test I know of that tests nutrients in serum and cells, which provides a much better measure of nutrient status than serum values alone.
• Manganese has a key antioxidant role that many people are unaware of ... helping to neutralize superoxide, a reactive species of oxygen, in the mitochondria.
• Overall, the Micronutrient panel is a cost-effective way of testing the nutrients that it tests, and there are other ways to test the nutrients that it does not test.
• "Normal" levels of nutrients might not be normal or optimal for you.
• With some nutrients, like riboflavin (vitamin B2), opportunities might exist for "optimization" effects at doses that are much higher than those needed for health and avoiding deficiency.

The Next Step in Functional Nutrition Testing: The Methylation Panel

In addition to the Micronutrient panel and the OAT (covered in the previous post), the next test of functional nutrition that I like to run is a methylation panel.

I'm referring to a methylational panel that measures the metabolites produced by the methylation cucle, not a genetic "methylation" panel that tests the genes involved in the methylation cycle, though this is also a useful test.

To fully understand what is happening in a person's methylation cycle is to run a methylation panel, an organic acids test, a test of B vitamins and certain minerals in serum and cells, and a test of genetic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), but I would prefer to test the entire genome, rather than just the genes involved in the methylation cycle.

Ironically, you can get your whole genome tested for the same cost (or less) as some companies are charging just to test 5 or 10 genes in the methylation cycle.

The next post will expore the methylation panel and how it reveals how well your methylation cycle is working and and how to fix it if it is broken. 

By the way, if you would like to receive a free consultation and advice on which tests would best serve you next on your health journey, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation with me to discuss what you're looking to accomplish, what you've done so far, and some suggestions about tests to consider getting.

To learn about my approach to resolving health challenges and optimizing energy, sleep, immunity, and more, download the Bio-Individual Blueprint Roadmap and watch the walkthrough video.