Note: I have been wanting to have a blog for some time so that I could
quickly write down and publicly post, the insightful thoughts that I
almost daily have (and practically always tell Kitty) coming from the
various things that I read in diverse subject areas. However, I have
not been able to find a blog site or inexpensive blow software that
will easily enable me to have the control over the blog and its
commentors that I desire. Therefore I decided to just do it on this
group at least for the time being. This is blog entry number one!


Inconsistencies in Dosage Testing

There is enormous inconsistency in the testing criteria applied to
various vitamins, minerals, nutrients and drugs with respect to
safety, toxicity, adequacy and effectiveness.

1) Vitamins and minerals that have been known to be essential for
decades, together with variants of these are mainly tested for the
minimum amount that is adequate to prevent detection of the signs of
the deficiency. Several problems arise here.

a) The originally isolated, tested and standardized vitamin or mineral
compound is not the dietarily most common variant nor even the variant
that is most beneficial for a person to ingest. In addition, the
original method of testing the potency of the first isolated variant
of a vitamin/mineral compound is often not related to the most severe
and important negative health effect caused by a deficiency of that
vitamin/mineral compound. More realistically, by chance alone, this is
*usually* the case. Alpha tocopherol and its vitamers, and pyridoxine
and its vitamers are clear examples of both of these situations.

b) There may well be acutely unnoticeable deficiency effects which
accumulate to cause clear long-term deficiency effects quite unrelated
to the acute signs of deficiency. The truth of this is borne out by
the multitude of studies that have shown both health and longevity
benefits from much larger doses of vitamins and minerals, particularly
certain variants, than what are rated as adequate dietary amounts.
Therefore as a general rule, it is highly likely that higher daily
amounts than those listed in the RDA tables of vitamins and minerals,
are required for maximum health and longevity benefits.

c) Little attention is paid to the interrelationships of any of these
essential vitamins/mineral compounds with each other. The reality of
the situation is that ingestion of other compounds may have either a
negative or positive effect on the adequacy, and certainly on the
long-term health/longevity effects of a given compound.

d) Because of the operation of the DSHEA and the FDA, there have not
been any newly discovered/isolated vitamins/mineral compounds
officially classified as essential for many decades now. This means
that all such newly discovered vitamins/mineral compounds are now
effectively treated as drugs and required to go through a totally
different form of testing, which leads me to the next completely
distinct category of testing criteria.

2. All newly discovered vitamins/mineral compounds and man-created
drugs are required to undergo toxicity testing. This also has several
problems in the way that it is done (certainly not all are covered
here).

a) Toxicity studies are relatively short-term and are done on mice or
rats, neither of which is a fully adequate model of human biology.
Moreover this inadequacy (due to different enzymes, reaction rates,
transcription levels and regulation process, among other factors) may
occur separately and even in different directions with respect to
acute metabolism and long term effects.

b) Since aging dysfunction and death is not a recognized "disease,
very few of these newly discovered vitamins/mineral compounds and
man-created drugs are given any kind of lifespan test in an animal
model, much less tested for benefits to a healthy human eating a
standard diet, and never tested on humans who are already eating super
diets and practicing several other pro-health and life extension
methods.

c) For these reasons, as opposed to vitamins, it is a good general
rule to assume that smaller dosages of drugs, than are recommended in
studies or by most purveyors, are best for those who do not have the
pathology for which the compound is being tested or has been approved,
who are very healthy and are already pursuing several pro-health and
life extension practices, and whose purpose in taking the compound is
maximal health and life extension.

--Paul