Discussion Board

I am having a hard time believing I need to take supplements to be in good health. Like D and B12. Any comments?

Why? People originally evolved in tropical Africa near the equator. They were naked (or nearly so) and got all the vitamin D they needed from constant sun exposure. As they moved north, they lost their skin color in an attempt to compensate for the weaker sunlight, but even that isn't enough to make up for our current indoor lives. Not to mention our fear of UV radiation and use of sunscreen. So we need D.

As for B12, we used to get it from the bacteria in the dirt clinging to the roots and veggies we would dig out of the ground. When we became hypersensitive about scrubbing our food clean of every spec of dirt, we lost one of our major sources of B12.

Our bodies are very efficient - they don't waste resources synthesizing vitamins, minerals, certain 'essential' amino acids, etc. that they EXPECT us to get from our food. It's not their fault that we no longer eat the food or live the lives we evolved or (if you prefer) we were designed to.

Kate

Unfortunately, living "naturally" as nature intended would render us dead at an average age of 35... lots of b12 in the natural world... just not from sources you'd consider clean or sanitary.

Maybe if humans hadn't polluted the planet so badly, the need for supplements like D and B12 wouldn't exist. Humans created a mess. Guess they didn't have nothin' better to do.

Adam and Eve were created; the rest of us are begotten.

Actually, I think for the most part, ancient humans got their B12 from animal flesh. It's the only premise of Dr M's that I scratch my head at and wonder "what is he thinking? Farmers get their B12 from not washing their garden produce thoroughly? No...farmers get/got their b12 from eating their animals."

Possibly Adam and Eve, who didn't eat flesh, got theirs from the dirt, but since then, people have eaten animals. Even vegetarian societies consume milk and eggs...there has never been a 100% vegan culture in the world, so b12 hasn't ever been an issue.

I think you can get D by spending time in the sun.

I agree with you about the taking supplements to be healthy. I too am having a hard time with it. I am new and was taking B-12 before. I am not taking it now, but I am concerned.

There are also some cereals that add vitamins. Here is a list of cereals with added B-12: http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/cereals-high-vitamin-b12.php

Bottom line is that I want to eat and live healthy. I do not want to take any pills. I also do not want to eat a bunch of processed foods. I am not sure if our bodies store B-12 or not. I have gotten conflicting information.

Another cool list: http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/vegan-food-sources-vitamin-b-12.php

See

http://www.drmcdougall.com/med_hot_supplements.html

Never say never, somebody said. These folks sound pretty interesting, and I guess they've been around a while. I don't know whether they consider themselves a "vegan culture."

http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/life ... 080200.htm

Some other interesting stuff:
http://www.whale.to/a/laws.html

http://libaware.economads.com/b12issue.php

http://www.vitamin-basics.com/index.php?id=48

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency ... 000574.htm

http://chriskresser.com/b12-deficiency- ... nsequences

Maybe the b12 problem is less about not getting b12 and more about absorption. You can eat dead animals til they come out your ears and still be deficient in b12. Most cases of b12 deficiency in our culture occur in meat eaters, right?

Much has changed over the centuries. So much it boggles. I suppose mankind created chaos because peace is boring.

that is SO cool! They remind me of the Hunza who live high in the Himalayas. They are very long-lived. I remember a TV special about them, and the reporter introduced a wizened old woman, in her late 80's, and said some witty thing about "If she doesn't know, she can go ask her mom" and got a laugh...and then he mentioned this old woman's GRANDMOTHER. Still alive. Still hiking the steep hillsides.

and he discussed their lifestyle: tea seasoned with butter and chunks of rock salt; a common habit among them all is smoking tobacco from pipes. They aren't vegan, but they live LONNNNG lives, and healthy to the end.

*Thinking about the studies correlating reduced calorie intake w longer lives*

and maybe that's the actual secret of the Okinawans: what was their daily caloric intake? They are long-lived, the oldest people in modern civilization, right? We know what their diet consisted of, but what did they take in for calories?

and, though I'm sure they live to healthy old age, what is the mean age of this Aryan tribe? Older than Okinawans? What is the predominant disease, if any?

never mind. The claims of extreme longevity among the Hunza tribe are just that: claims, made by themselves and not verified by any outside source.

so much for that Nat'l geographic special (or whatever it was)

I still wonder if low calories is a big factor in Okinawans' longevity and I wonder about this Hindu Aryan people...if they are isolated, then there is no one documenting what they actually do eat, right?

There's a book out there, that I read years ago...something Spectrum. Written by a woman who had visited a tribe of people in south america. Like many people from industrialized societies, she was enchanted by the primitive living stone-age tribe. She saw the many good things, especially about raising their children (minimal adult hovering, and lots of adult/child interactions, all day long, every day), and ignored the ugly things (such as scars on some children's hands and arms because they were allowed to use the same knives as the adults, without supervision) so when she wrote about these people, they shone as living examples of a society void of troubles, emotionally solid and stable without war, greed, or any other ugly vice that humanity struggles with. Riiiight.

Point being, when people who live out of touch with the land, such as those of us in industrialized nations, find a society that still lives close to nature, we are often charmed and romanticize how wonderful it must be to have that kind of connection with the earth.

Maybe the trekkers who came to visit the Aryans saw things objectively, and maybe they didn't. The Europeans who encountered the Hunza or this tribe in so America certainly saw them as wonderful, disease and trouble-free human beings without a care in the world. Well, maybe the people of those tribes themselves make it seem better in their culture, than it actually is. Being proud of themselves, the Hunza, the Hindu Aryans, and the south american tribe all toot their own horns and lead the curious on, exagerrating things about the good life that they enjoy, while downplaying the unhappy circumstances that plague them (unhappy circumstances plague ALL human beings)

That's why I appreciate the China Study...it is based on data, pure and simple.

Well, when the world quits spinnin', I guess we can quit worryin' ourselves silly over crazy stuff like who's happy and who's proud and who's sick and who's fat and who's manipulating the numbers and whose horns are polluting the air and whether or not we need supplements. What's the point, if all is vanity and there's nothin' new under the sun?

Oh, and the Okinawans are supposed to have eaten between 1605 and 2012 calories per day, depending on whose calculator you want to believe. http://okicent.org/docs/anyas_cr_diet_2 ... 4_434s.pdf



Here's a question: Would you rather be a human or a statistic?

I think I'll sign up under human, though 7 is a nice number...

If you are eating a processed food like dry cereal that has B12 in it, you are essentially taking a vitamin pill. The B12 is manufactured. The grains don't naturally contain it.

Didi

It's likely that early humans ate at least some meat, but the meat they ate was very different from what we eat today and they would not have eaten much of it. Some anthropologists now believe that the first hunters, before spears existed, actually chased animals until they collapsed (animals have greater speed, but humans have greater long-term endurance). Personally, I think that if you eat only meat from wild animals you chase until they collapse from exhaustion, it probably won't harm your health.

If you find this interesting, there's more in the book "Born to Run."

Here is a link to a very interesting (and related) Kindle book:

http://www.amazon.com/Atheist-Professor ... +professor

I think it is worth 99 cents!