Georgia Hunter said...
The Dude Abides said...
From my experience, most nutrient testing is based on what's floating-around in your blood. What's more important, I believe, is what's actually in your cells.
Back in 2014, I spent over $600 USD on a "NutrEval Plasma" test, that, in hindsight, may have been mostly useless -- along with most other testing from well-meaning-but-misguided Integrative/Functional Medicine Doctors.
An intracellular test like one from SpectraCell may be worth considering, either in place of or in conjunction with your plasma test(s). Assuming you feel the need to have more testing.
www.spectracell.com
If something is "low," the question should be "Why is it low?" Taking handfuls of isolated supplements might increase the number on a lab test. But, is it fixing the underlying cause? Or, simply addressing a symptom?
As for your introducing supplements, it would be a good idea to keep a journal to track as many factors as you can -- food intake, beverage intake, medications and doses, supplements and doses, weather (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure), and anything else.
I believe people frequently make erroneous correlations between their actions and what happens as a result. Having information recorded in writing can help you spot patterns and make associations more accurately.
Good post.Thank you, my good man. As Dean Martin used to tell Frank Sinatra:
"It's your world. I'm just living in it." 
Even while practicing a mostly Low-Carb-ish/Paleo-ish diet, from 2009-2013, I was worried about
living in an echo chamber. So, I also listened to podcasts and read blogs about
other dietary approaches such as Vegan, Vegetarian, Fruitarian, Raw, Starch-Based, Weston A. Price, Ketogenic, PāNu/Archevore, Primal Blueprint, Whole30, Autoimmune Protocol, GAPS, Low-FODMAP, etc.
After a while, I was buying more books/audiobooks of Vegetarians/Vegans than the Paleo/Primal/Low-Carb folks. Especially after I got sick in 2013. The main folks to which I gravitated were John McDougall, Nathan Pritikin, Jeff Novick, Pam Popper, Joel Fuhrman, Michael Greger, Caldwell Esselstyn, and T. Colin Campbell. Of the books I've read/listened, probably the most influential have been:
*
The End of Dieting, by Joel Fuhrman, MD
*
How Not to Die, by Michael Greger, MD
*
Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD with Howard Jacobson, PhD
The following quote from
Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition was one of many interesting examples:
"In studying the apple, Professor Liu and his team began by choosing to focus on vitamin C and its antioxidant effect. They found that 100 grams of apples (about a half cup) had an antioxidant, vitamin-C like activity equivalent to 1,500 milligrams of vitamin C, (about 3 times the amount of a typical vitamin C supplement). When they chemically analyzed that 100 grams of the whole apple, however, they found only 5.7 milligrams of vitamin C, far below the 1,500 milligrams that the level of antioxidant activity associated with the vitamin C indicated.
The vitamin-C like activity from 100 grams of whole apple was an astounding 263 times as potent as the same amount of the isolated chemical! Said another way, the specific chemical we refer to as vitamin C accounts for much less than 1 percent of the vitamin C-like activity in the apple – a miniscule amount. The other 99-plus percent of this activity is due to other vitamin C-like chemicals in the apple, the possible ability of vitamin C to be much more effective in context of the whole apple than it is when consumed in an isolated form, or both." (Pg. 152-153)
After considering this information, along with many others ideas from the aforementioned people, I stopped swallowing handfuls of supplements and began to more closely question their safety and efficacy, along with scrutinizing medications, lab testing, lab reference ranges, diet claims, and so forth.
While I certainly don't have all the answers, I think having a general framework within which to operate (
e.g. eat food as grown) is more helpful than to have specific rules that are applied to all and that do not change (
e.g. avoid carbohydrates).
Allegedly, Oscar Wilde stated:
"Everything popular is wrong." Whether or not he actually said it, I think there may be something to that quote.