Dear Dr Yong, Thank you for your efforts to educate us. I am a 75 y/o youngster engaged in a combo Blue Zones (the zen of living) and an extensively modified David Sinclair program. A few observations: Taking calcium seems to encourage arterial calcification; I get mine through milk products (low fat Mozarella), vitamin D3 should ALWAYS be taken with K2 as the latter directs the calcium to the bones. As for fish oil, the Standard American Diet (aptly named SAD) is lunatic when it comes to oil. We have bought the myth that exogenous Cholesterol raises our heart disease risk. We should be stressing avocados, olive oil and some say coconut and peanut oil. Our diet as a nation is terribly unbalanced and along with excess calories (which promotes early disease), we eat the type of food that capitalist food designers have made for us, without regard to our health. Peter H. Dohan MD
Indeed, there is much more chemistry and biochemistry behind the nutrition that we consume, and even that isn’t fully brought out before the lay person.
For example, arterial calcification can happen more readily if mineral forms of calcium were consumed - whereas chelation improves the solubility of calcium in the blood and prevents undesirable precipitation of it along the arterial walls.
Vitamin K2 activates the matrix GLA protein that binds to calcium and prevents precipitation, which is similar to the chelation principle.
Unfortunately with regards to what we eat...
There’s always some underlying bias in the reporting of what is “good”, and that bias almost always has something to do with making money.
(I don’t deny that I’m like that too - I do have affiliate links in this article with regards to nutritional supplements.)
But somehow the marketing of these “foods” does lead to the development of a whole slew of degenerative diseases...
Such that the pharmaceutical industry can come in and market half-solutions to control the symptoms of those diseases without addressing the root cause of the problem.
At the end of the day, the under-educated consumer is the one who suffers both financial and physical health issues from these shenanigans.
Dear Dr Yong, Thank you for your efforts to educate us. I am a 75 y/o youngster engaged in a combo Blue Zones (the zen of living) and an extensively modified David Sinclair program. A few observations: Taking calcium seems to encourage arterial calcification; I get mine through milk products (low fat Mozarella), vitamin D3 should ALWAYS be taken with K2 as the latter directs the calcium to the bones. As for fish oil, the Standard American Diet (aptly named SAD) is lunatic when it comes to oil. We have bought the myth that exogenous Cholesterol raises our heart disease risk. We should be stressing avocados, olive oil and some say coconut and peanut oil. Our diet as a nation is terribly unbalanced and along with excess calories (which promotes early disease), we eat the type of food that capitalist food designers have made for us, without regard to our health. Peter H. Dohan MD
Hi Peter,
Indeed, there is much more chemistry and biochemistry behind the nutrition that we consume, and even that isn’t fully brought out before the lay person.
For example, arterial calcification can happen more readily if mineral forms of calcium were consumed - whereas chelation improves the solubility of calcium in the blood and prevents undesirable precipitation of it along the arterial walls.
Vitamin K2 activates the matrix GLA protein that binds to calcium and prevents precipitation, which is similar to the chelation principle.
Unfortunately with regards to what we eat...
There’s always some underlying bias in the reporting of what is “good”, and that bias almost always has something to do with making money.
(I don’t deny that I’m like that too - I do have affiliate links in this article with regards to nutritional supplements.)
But somehow the marketing of these “foods” does lead to the development of a whole slew of degenerative diseases...
Such that the pharmaceutical industry can come in and market half-solutions to control the symptoms of those diseases without addressing the root cause of the problem.
At the end of the day, the under-educated consumer is the one who suffers both financial and physical health issues from these shenanigans.