quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I kind of thought they were checking levels for this anytime they did a blood workup.
It doesn't seem to be part of any standard panels that I could find lists of tests for. But it may be something that some physicians check routinely, or in patients over a certain age, or with certain other criteria.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I also had routine blood work that the D was part of. I wasn't quite severly deficient, but I was about .4 points away.
I started making fruit smoothies for breakfast and dessert. Now I just have them with breakfast. I'm not sure if it's that or the corn syrup allergy, but between the two I feel amazingly better.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
My doctor seemed to think it was highly unusual to test my Vitamin D levels.
King of Men, dude, I don't know what to tell you. It is pretty much as predictable as the sunrise that, if I've been sleeping poorly and my teeth are all plaque-y, and I haven't been taking any D-3 for 3-4 days, I can take 5 or 10K IU and sleep like a baby that night, and also be more calm the next day, as well as having less plaque. I know when a supplement is working. I've tried a number of different ones, and they effects vary widely, and I do mean widely, even just between brands. This is most definitely NOT the reasoning of a theist. I went on a supplement-testing craze last year, and bone meal (any brand) and the Now brand Vit. D-3 both had excellent effects. Nobody TOLD me that they were better. I just basically went down the row in the health food store, trying one by one. I did vitamin C (noticed nothing), Vitamin A (already getting enough, I realized, and noticed nothing), magnesium (calming, but makes the stools loose, and tastes awful), and several others. I tried different brands, etc., etc., ad nauseam. It just happened to be those two supplements, D-3 and bone meal, that produced the effects I am happy with. My method was nothing but trial and error. I didn't even have a hypothesis, other than "let's see what THIS does *gulp*".
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Of course you had a hypothesis, to wit, "I'm deficient in something". Not having an explicit hypothesis is not a selling point for the rationality of your strategy. Tell me, how do you distinguish between the explanations "Waiting a bit works", "Vitamin D works", and "The placebo effect works"? You don't, any more than the theist "testing" his prayers does.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Of course you had a hypothesis, to wit, "I'm deficient in something". Not having an explicit hypothesis is not a selling point for the rationality of your strategy. Tell me, how do you distinguish between the explanations "Waiting a bit works", "Vitamin D works", and "The placebo effect works"? You don't, any more than the theist "testing" his prayers does.
Plaque on my teeth is quite measurable, I assure you. I mean, that's one heck of a placebo effect, if it actually changes how much plaque deposits on my teeth.
Seriously, that placebo effect is quite a bad Mamma-jamma. Wooo! He da bidness.
Seriously, I had really annoying plaque for at least a year or more, before I started using the D-3. I'd be scraping and scraping with my fingernail after eating. Now, as long as I take the D-3, it's not really very much of a problem. What do you want me to do, take pictures? Maybe use some calipers on the plaque? Dude, I KNOW when there's more or less plaque on my teeth, just like I know everything else going on in my mouth. I can feel it with my tongue. The tongue's always in there. It's not in your mouth, for pete's sake. It's in mine. Or would you like to test that too? Is that the belief of a theist?
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
So I see you've never heard of confirmation bias, either. So, to be blunt, yes, you should indeed take pictures. And get them evaluated by someone else. Self-reporting is a notoriously bad way to measure the efficiency of medicines.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Pictures? No, because plaque is white, and so are my teeth. I can see maybe scraping the plaque off my teeth, and measuring how much.
They used to make some little red chewable tablets that would show you how much plaque you had on your teeth. You would chew up the tablets, and the red dye would stick to the plaque. I don't know if they still make them. IIRC, they stopped, but don't quote me on that. Does anybody know? Those might be useful.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I wasn't the one to suggest pictures, you were. The point is that you are not a reliable observer, no, not even of the amount of plaque on your teeth.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I wasn't the one to suggest pictures, you were. The point is that you are not a reliable observer, no, not even of the amount of plaque on your teeth.
Wonderful. You're starting to sound like Tresopax.
And yes I am a reliable observer of plaque on my teeth. I have no bias here. I didn't even know that Vitamin D-3 could reduce plaque, and I'm still suspicious that it would work on other people. I might have a fairly unique body chemistry as far as Vitamin D-3 goes. I don't know. I know it works for me. You are certainly more than free to test it. I'm saying all this out of the general goodness of my heart. I don't sell any supplements.
The whole process was that, several months after starting the D-3 supplement, I happened to notice that I didn't need to scrape my teeth off all the time. Then, I started noticing that every time I slacked off on the D-3, the plaque increased, and there I was, scrapey-scrapey.
Seriously, if you can actually find a REASON for my non-existent bias, I'll listen. I'll be more than happy to. Seriously, even a far-out one might do. Or it might just entertain me.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thank you, Dobbie. I read it's also possible to get them at the local drugstore. Those might be just the ticket, although I'm not sure they would show the depth of the plaque. However, I do notice that the plaque is not just deeper, but covers more of the tooth, when I'm not eating the D-3. I think, anyway.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I did tell him I was sleeping poorly.
And he presumably did a physical exam, which may have indicated some other things that concerned him enough to do a vitamin/mineral workup. I doubt he was testing just for vitamin D, although it's certainly possible.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that certain vitamin deficiencies (which you may not be aware that you have) have an adverse affect to your health, which then vanishes following consumption of that vitamin.
After all, I suspect we all "self-medicate" to a certain extent-- that is to say, we, like all animals are somewhat aware of what kind of food we need. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this-- I believe it was tried with rats or mice or something).
It's also possible that steven does have a problem with a certain vitamin. After all, some people are more prone to anaemia than others. Some people need to eat more than others etc. These are pretty well documented facts.
I don't think vitamins really fall into the kind of natural supplements that should be re-examined. We know that vitamins are necessary to our health and so, yes, although they do occur naturally in our foodstuffs, they have a recognized health benefit.
I don't particularly recommend steven's method, though. Randomly consuming off-the-shelf vitamins and supplements to see what works seems like it could be unhealthy.
I'm curious as to why only one brand of vitamin D-3 (allegedly) works for steven, though.
As for Bone Meal, I've never heard of it being used as an edible supplement. When I was a kid and we were using it as a fertilizer I was always told not to touch it much and to wash my hands (according to wikipedia because of a lead and other toxic metal scare). Are you eating it for the calcium content, steven?
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself; and you are the easiest person to fool." Feynman's dictum holds as much for vitamins as for psychology, space shuttles, and prayer.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: I don't think vitamins really fall into the kind of natural supplements that should be re-examined. We know that vitamins are necessary to our health and so, yes, although they do occur naturally in our foodstuffs, they have a recognized health benefit.
I don't particularly recommend steven's method, though. Randomly consuming off-the-shelf vitamins and supplements to see what works seems like it could be unhealthy.
I'm curious as to why only one brand of vitamin D-3 (allegedly) works for steven, though.
As for Bone Meal, I've never heard of it being used as an edible supplement. When I was a kid and we were using it as a fertilizer I was always told not to touch it much and to wash my hands (according to wikipedia because of a lead and other toxic metal scare). Are you eating it for the calcium content, steven?
First, Teshi, dosage is pretty well-regulated. Consuming the recommended dosages, for normal people, of off-the-shelf vitamin supplements is rarely a real problem. If someone's diet is heavily oversupplied with a particular vitamin, then they would find themselves even more overbalanced in that direction, but that's where paying attention comes in. It's mainly when someone does many times the recommended daily dosages, for months at a time, that can start to cause real imbalances. I do take more than the recommended dosage, but I do get tested, and I also pay attention to what's happening with my health. Most people need to be more attentive to their health than currently.
I don't really know that it's just 1 brand of D-3. I've only carefully tested 2 brands. I've taken several other brands, but I haven't bothered to test any other brands carefully, because I've found one that works well. My guess is that the Carlson's contains very little actual D-3 at all, but I've never bothered to have it tested. Testing is expensive, and I don't feel like spending my funds on something like that. The whole reason I even tried Carlson's is because it's a liquid in a jar, instead of liquid in a softgel. I think Now was the first brand I really tried, and it worked fast.
Bone meal is safe. It did used to have much more lead, back before you were even born, because we still used leaded gasoline, but that was nearly 30 years ago. All the bone meal I buy is tested for lead, and is approved for human consumption. I do eat it for the calcium, and it works way better for controlling my tooth sensitivity than any other calcium supplement I've tried, and I've tried at least 8 or 10 different ones, and tested them carefully. It's also very calming, as is magnesium, and I recommend supplementing both, in moderation and in balance with each other.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Dec 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself; and you are the easiest person to fool." Feynman's dictum holds as much for vitamins as for psychology, space shuttles, and prayer.
Yes, and I've been fighting my way through the jungles of terrible nutritional information for about a decade. I've got a few scars from those forays, and I've learned a good deal. Fooling me re: nutrition is a great deal harder than fooling the average person, because I am pretty aware of all the fads out there, and I've actually tried quite a few of them, before settling on the nearly-all-raw, non-vegan diet. My diet still changes, though, and I'm experimenting constantly, and, most importantly, comparing notes constantly with dozens of others who research this stuff. I promise you, the average IQ of the people who eat the way I do is comparable to the average IQ of Hatrack. These people aren't even remotely dummies, and they can back up how they eat, not only with research into the biochemistry, but also into bone analysis of ancient humans (to determine their diet) and scads of personal experience and anecdotal evidence. The way I eat works, and if it doesn't, I change it. Just in the 9 years or so since I first posted here, I've gone from 100% raw pretty vegan, to 100% raw very vegan, to 100% raw fruitarian, to 80% raw with grains non-vegan, to 100% raw very-low-carb/high-fat non-vegan, to where I am now, which is about 98% raw moderately high-fat non-vegan.
I've tested dozens of "superfoods" on myself, and collected anecdotal data on hundreds of others who try experiments with diet, as well as reading the necessary biochemistry and bone analysis research. I've tried Chinese herbs, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, flax oil, honeycomb, goji berries, all the vitamins and minerals, kefir, kombucha...you name it, I've either tried it, or know at least 5 people who have,and tested it fairly carefully.
My diet is in pretty much total accord with biochemistry, ancient human bone analysis, anecdotal data from others, and my own personal experience. It works. The only things I might change are eating more or less of specific foods that fit the mostly-raw non-vegan non-processed paradigm. This is where I've settled with it, because it works. Individual foods and supplements are up for argument, both for individuals and everybody, but the mostly-raw non-vegan non-processed way works, I humbly submit. It can actually even taste good, and not be super-expensive, in some cases, depending on what you have access to, and how much legwork and local research you can do.
I certainly encourage people to do their own research. I was hoping that, when I came back to Hatrack about 4 years ago, I might find some folks who had done some serious research into diet, and could trade knowledge/info with me.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Dec 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
That was me, BTW. Skyler was here yesterday afternoon, and apparently logged in, and forgot to log out, and I missed the fact that I was logged in under her name. LOL
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
