Originally published sometime early 2022
It looks like most of the requests I get for blog articles surrounds the subject of diet, so lets continue down that route for a little longer shall we? Afterall, there is a good reason why diet is a big part of Eastern spiritual practices, rather than being a separate subject like it can be elsewhere.
This next subject, along with finding out lots about iron, copper and retinol over the last summer, was another that myself and my researching wife dove into. It highlighted yet again the differences that true scientists were finding and what corporation-backed science and the mainstream media AND mainstream-alternative media talk about. What a surprise 😉
Like previous posts, biochemistry subjects go much deeper and complex than what I am able to write in a blog, so this is just a bit of a summary to help you understand the subject. I do encourage you to go and research things for yourself, as always.
Calcium – is it really as important in our diet as we are told?
Certainly here in the UK, in my wife’s homeland Sweden, where I lived in New Zealand and it seems in most Western or Western influenced countries, calcium is something that we are told is important to build and maintain healthy bones and teeth. Yet in these same countries we have the highest prevalence of osteopenia, osteoporosis and other bone issues!
Calcium is certainly needed in the body as part of bone matrix, for chemical reactions, contraction of muscles and nerve transmission, but a bit like iron, there is a lot of readily available calcium in the foods we typically eat.
There are huge amounts of calcium in dairy products which are very popular in northern Europe and North America and even if you do not eat much dairy, there is a lot of calcium in plant foods – which is where dairy animals get it from in the first place.
Like I mentioned about with iron in previous blog articles, the increased acidity of soils due to modern farming practices, chemicals coming in the rain etc, means that more calcium comes out of the soil and into our plants (and less of certain other valuable nutrients). This, along with the calcium fortification of many food products, means that it is very hard to not get enough calcium, even on the many unusual diets people try out.
Why taking more calcium alone won’t sort out bone issues
Even though calcium is used for many purposes, it tends to be thought of in most people’s minds as being needed for bone and teeth health and is often the main reason a diet higher in calcium is prescribed. Especially in the case of osteopenia and osteoporosis, where the bone matrix is not very dense and thus prone to fracture.
Very often people who up their intake of calcium-rich foods or supplements don’t get any relief because other nutrients, lacking in many western diets, are needed by the osteoblast cells to actually make bone matrix. Exercise is also needed as bones are made stronger in response to pressure applied to them.
If calcium is not being held in the bones of the body then it adds to an excess of calcium in the rest of the body, contributing to a variety of health issues.
Calcium and cardio-vascular problems, kidney stones, bony spurs and cancers
Excess calcium in the body, whether or not it is being compounded by calcium being lost from the bones as they weaken, can start to deposit in the other tissues of the body instead.
This leads to a hardening of those tissues meaning that they become less flexible and less able to have nutrients come in and waste products come out. If this happens, it is harder for the health of those tissues to be maintained, leading to inflammation, the gateway to many disease states. There are other causes of inflammation in the body of course, but excess calcium is one of the major contributing factors in the modern world.
One of the most commonly talked about sites for this hardening to occur in, are the blood vessels of the body. I’ve heard many doctors and health professionals throwing around the phrase “hardening of arteries” and yet they know so little about what is actually hardening them. It is surprising that so many people still believe that an excess of cholesterol causes plaques in the heart or bloods vessels, rather than seeing that cholesterol is simply used to plug the hole, or at least gets stuck there due to the inflammation that is present.
In case you haven’t already guessed it, calcium getting stuck in the blood vessels and heart is a major factor in cardio-vascular diseases, because of the hardening and thus likelihood of inflammation. What I am describing here is likely one of the main reasons heart disease has become so prevalent in Western societies in recent decades.
In some people, they have so much calcium that their ligaments and tendons start to take on the stiffness of bone, leading to bony spurs, typically where the tendons or ligaments attach to bone. This can lead to limited movement and even fractures at these sites.
Obviously the body will try to get rid of excesses via the excretion pathways of the body before any of this happens, but if those pathways are compromised by not drinking enough clean water for example, then the above issues can occur. This is why stones can start to form in the kidneys and other tissues of the body. Some stones are more related to cholesterol, other minerals and toxins, like liver stones can be, but especially when it comes to the kidneys, they are often lumps of calcium that have accumulated over time as the kidneys struggle get get rid of the excess.
And what about cancer? Essentially, hardening of tissues and the lack of nutrient influx and toxin efflux resulting from that, leads to cellular damage. If the genetics of the effected cells is damaged in a way that stops the apoptosis (programmed cell death) process from occurring, then instead of the cells dying, they start to multiply instead. Simple really, yet the established medical professions keep saying they don’t know what causes cancer!
Why vitamin D supplements don’t help
The first thing to say is that vitamin D is actually a hormone and like all hormones it is made from forms of cholesterol that enables it to enter the cell and have a much longer effect on the receiving cell, than a signalling molecule that doesn’t enter the cell. This is why you may hear more often these days vitamin D being called “hormone D”.
It can get very complex talking about any hormone or vitamin as there are so many forms of them, many of which not only are absorbed or used by the body better than others, but even have different roles in the body. This is one of the reasons why people who haven’t looked at scientific papers get very confused and also why many people don’t know if the a supplement they are taking will actually do anything, or even if it is harmful.
Vitamin D is certainly one of those compounds that falls into this category. Vitamin D2 and D3 are the most well-known in terms of supplements but no matter which form we talk about I don’t recommend that you take vitamin D supplements at all! Yes, very different advice to what is being pushed in the alternative health industry isn’t it?
It becomes more obvious when you look at how we would naturally get vitamin D – from sun exposure. Many studies point out that when you expose yourself to the sun, the sun’s rays catalyse the formation of vitamin DÂ from steroid compounds in the skin. Also in the skin are carrier proteins that interact with vitamin D that take it the where the body needs it. So when vitamin D is formed in the skin, not only is it in the form that the body is used to, but it is also functional because of the carrier protein.
However, this does not happen if you take supplemental vitamin D. Supplements will most often have a vitamin or hormone in a different format to that inside the body because of issues concerning getting it past the acidity of the stomach or to get it through the lining of the gut and for a great many other reasons. Many nutrients need other chemicals, proteins etc to bind to them or to keep them in the correct format for the body to use which can be very difficult to do in a supplement, especially if you need a long shelf life or to cut costs.
This is why I always try to advise people to get things from natural sources where these problems aren’t a concern. You can actually get some vitamin D from mushrooms and fungi for example where they are bound in the right way. For most people however the main way you get vitamin D is from skin exposure to the sun.
So, the supplemental forms used out there are a big problem in that they easily get through the gut wall but do not have the carrier proteins to take vitamin D to where it is needed. And why is this a big problem for the body? Because vitamin D transports calcium.
If you have no vitamin D carrier proteins and especially if you are low on magnesium and vitamin K2 to help osteoblasts build bone, free-floating vitamin D will grab hold of calcium from your digested food and from your bones and it will slowly deposit calcium in the tissues of your body causing the health issues mentioned above and more.
Can you now see why vitamin D supplements are a bad idea?
Sun exposure
If you are worried about getting enough functional vitamin D because you have a darker skin tone or live in an area of the world where there isn’t much sunlight, don’t worry too much about it. Caucasian’s supposedly only need 15-20 minutes exposure to the sun, even on a gloomy overcast day, to satisfy vitamin D production. So long as you aren’t covering up your face (with those silly masks for example!) or putting sun block on, no, you don’t need to get undressed.
If you have more melanin in your skin then you will need to spend longer in the sun of course but I unfortunately don’t have any good literature on how long it would be and it depends on how dark your skin is. Suffice to say however that there are plenty of people, who emigrated from hotter countries, living in the north of Sweden, where you would only get around an hour of sunlight a day in winter. And they get on fine, most probably because of my next point…
Vitamin D is a hormone and thus easily gets stored in the fatty tissues of the liver. So the 24 hours daylight in summer in the North of Sweden for example will generate plenty of vitamin D to last through the winter.
And obviously try not to use sun block. The majority of them have nasty chemicals in them. One of the main ones is aluminium, a known neuro-toxin that has been linked to diseases such as alzheimer’s since the 90s at least. Even if you find a natural cream to use instead, again try to only use it when you are have no way of getting in the shade enough.
Sun block usage when plotted in a graph is a parallel line to that of skin-cancer rates over the decades. I know there are many other factors but that should be enough to make you think.
Sun block limiting natural formation of vitamin D, plus trying to get people to get their vitamin D through supplements instead, very much amplifies the issue of calcium being deposited throughout the body rather than where it is needed.
Why Magnesium?
Magnesium is the main nutrient to consider to balance the effects of calcium. It is widely known in alternative health circles that the majority of people in the West are deficient in magnesium. Here in the UK it is estimated to be over 90% of people. This is probably partly the reason why so many people I know crave chocolate – cocoa is a good source of magnesium!
Like calcium magnesium is very important for nerve function, including muscle contraction, and heart muscle contraction. This is why many people get relief from cramps, muscle aches, heart palpitations and brain fog when they up their magnesium intake. In fact those symptoms are a good indication of if you have low magnesium in your body, along with tooth decay.
Magnesium is also of course needed for building and maintaining bones. You could consider it the mineral needed to maintain the bone matrix. I remember decades ago reading about research of bone issues in countries where they had low soil calcium but high magnesium. In short, they did not experience osteoporosis, bone fractures and other bone issues any where near as much as countries where the reverse of these nutrients was true.
I won’t go into where you can get more magnesium from, as even though there is less in certain foods these days, thankfully it is quite easy to get hold of magnesium rich foods still, and if you have to use supplements, most are in a form usable by the body, as far as the current information I have come across states. Getting it from natural sources is always preferable as it is easier to maintain a good balance of nutrients that way, so be careful with supplements!
Vitamin K2
Upping your magnesium intake however may not be enough if you want to maintain bone health and prevent cardio-vascular problems. Vitamin K2, another nutrient that is low in modern Western diets, is very important too.
Like other vitamins, there are many variants of vitamin K2. Essentially this vitamin has been shown to maintain heart health and blood vessel health (reducing the incidence in inflammatory processes in them) as well as helping the maintain bone and teeth strength.
It does this by regulating calcium deposition – making sure calcium is deposited in bone tissues but not other tissues of the body. In this way, the processes of disease I mentioned above don’t occur, and there are plenty of studies of vitamin K2 intake showing this – reduced heart problems, reduced atherosclerosis, reduced osteoporosis, reduced bone fracture, reduced tooth decay. There are many people even claiming, along with vitamin A and magnesium especially, that the cavities in their teeth have sealed up!
Vitamin K2 intake has also been shown to reduce the incidence of many cancers including a 63% decrease in prostate cancer risk!
We currently cannot efficiently convert vitamin K1 into K2 in our bodies
Vitamin K1 according to research doesn’t appear to do the same things in the body and does not benefit our health in the same way as K2. The fact that we cannot make the latter from the former very well, means that we have to find dietry sources of vitamin K2. Whether that is true for all of us I don’t know but that seems to be the consensus currently.
There is also the conversation about having certain bacteria in our guts that could do the conversion for us, but the current information available suggests that it is better to get K2 from outside sources, likely because our gut flora in the West has been so unbalanced from all the vaccinations, courses of antibiotics, toxins in our environment etc.
I am very much a believer of our bodies being able to do more than they typically do, once our bodies are balanced enough, free of toxins, and have more genes switched on/activated etc, but that is a topic for another day. I am just presenting in these recent blog articles what is likely the path of least resistance for most people at present. Always question everything including me!
You have to be careful when looking up where to get good sources of vitamin K2, because foods that are often listed as being high in vitamin K are only high in vitamin K1 and NOT K2. Lots of plants, fruits, vegetables and nuts are high in vitamin K1 for example but have no K2.
So what’s the best source of K2 you may ask? This may not be nice to hear for some but high-fat dairy and organ meats of grass-fed animals, eggs from ducks or grass fed chickens are great for the shorter-chain versions of vitamin K2. Simply because those animals are able to convert the vitamin K1 in the grass (and other plants/vegetables/fruits they may eat) into K2 for us. Other good sources are fermented foods like sauerkraut, natto and miso for the longer-chain versions of vitamin K2.
Unless you opt more for fermented foods, getting grass-fed dairy is key here. If they are fed lots of grain instead, which has become more and more common in recent decades, then they are not getting enough vitamin K1 in their diet to convert to K2.
You can get vitamin K2 supplements but as always be careful with them for the same reasons I have said over and over again about supplements.
Summary
In short, getting out in the sun for a short period every day, avoiding vitamin D supplements and calcium fortified foods, switching to and/or upping your intake of grass-fed dairy & sauerkraut and having a few squares of organic, non-soya lecithin, dark chocolate each day (for the magnesium), will probably solve the majority of issues surrounding the diseases mentioned here. The long journey of balancing gut bacteria is also highly advised
As I am not nutritionist/naturopath (my wife is, hint hint!) it is always best to find someone who can help you with your particular experience.
