Treating Deficiencies Can Be Dangerous - Journal of Research and Experiential Medicine

When one is on the wrong train, every station is the wrong station. Mental as well as physical illnesses can be caused by the deficiency or insufficiency of just one nutrient, but finding the correct cause can be critally important. A hit or miss approach can be successful once, or even a few times, at the risk of overconfidence which makes future failures even more potentially dangerous.

Where there is one deficiency, there may be more, or an excess of another nutrient. The body needs time to adjust, and other medical conditions may recover or get worse during treatment, requiring new, increased or decreased medication, and other nutrients.

In recent years, as nutritional supplements have become available while many medical practitioners are undertrained on nutrition, many patients have been treating themselves to the best of their ability when their concerns are belittled.

They are both at risk from not getting treated for these conditions medically, and at risk from their own lack of training when they do the best that they can on their own.

As these conditions and treatments become more recognized, treatment by medical practitioners who can focus on safety issues which an untrained person cannot will become more available.

Until then:

Practioners: Take your patients' concerns seriously. Research how testing may not uncover long-term deficiencies, or insufficiencies. If your patient feels a nutrient has a benefit, set them to researching how it could help, as well as researching risks of excess of the nutrient, and find someone trained to support them, and monitor them on ALL conditions, or do research yourself. This website is a starting point, but there is always newer research. Never forget that there are many things we do not know.

Your patient may have the right concern but the wrong interpretation; a useful nutrient but not the best one (such as using MSM to increase methylation, which only works by supply by displacement, building methyl into tissue like joints which can then be stolen from, not the best method, but one that might work somewhat for the patient over time.)

Alternatively, the patient may be doing the exact wrong thing, which numbs the body out and feels better, or creates an addiction to something that is only partly useful. Furthermore, not all supplements are equally good, and not all have in them what they claim to have.

if you want to have cooperation with your patient, you have to start by respecting them and guiding them where you see there are mistakes in their choices, rather than issuing orders in a way that discount their experience. Encourage them to document on a day-by-day basis. Having them creating a database will clarify what is useful and what is not, especially if they only test one nutrient at a time, will create a basis for mutual respect, and leave them doing most of the work, allowing you time to focus your practice on all of your patients equally.

If you are a patient doing this alone, I cannot stress how risky this can be. Nutritional supplements are supplied in an excess of a quantity required, so even if you are correct about what you are deficient in, you can end up with an excess in one nutrient which can cause a deficiency in another, ending with a domino effect that could cause more damage than your initial deficiency.

In a similar fashion, a nutritional deficiency a Vanadium can cause diabetes, and an excess can also cause diabetes. Even when you are correct about what is wrong and what you require, you may pass the correct dose without realizing it. While zinc and magnesium tests may not show deficiencies, although exercise has been known to cause deficiencies to show up that were previously hidden, a recent change is liable to show up easily, before the body has created coping mechanisms. Therefore, even if deficiency did not show in Labs, the excess will show. It is very worthwhile to keep up with testing when you are taking nutritional supplements. If you are concerned about getting the respect of your practitioner, proving that what might have shown has low but within range and does not go out of range from taking the nutritional supplement his one way of gaining their respect, and in the process, making sure that you are both correct and safe.

Whenever possible, you find someone who is trained or at least open-minded who can monitor you constantly. Do plenty of research but I always assumed that it is not enough, because there is more to understand about the holistic processes of the body than one person can handle. Bring the information from this website or wherever you get your information to your practitioner. Use peer-reviewed whenever possible. Make sure of your people are aware of what you are doing and have them give you feedback on your condition on a regular basis. They may notice something you do not. Make sure you stay in touch with your practitioners, and keep them informed. If they're closed minded, unwilling to consider any new information, including peer reviewed, look elsewhere, because you need someone who is going to monitor your condition medically if you are going to be safe.

Example: during coronavirus, many people are taking zinc supplements. Excess ink reduces copper, and copper is required to move iron around in the body. Either high or low copper can cause an iron deficiency, one that is not treatable by taking extra iron.

A study was done in Glasgow which found that certain practitioners were giving extra zinc, causing an iron deficiency. It turned out that the patients were initially deficient in most or all cases, but that the dose given was initially correct for increasing them back to normal but the maintenance dose was way too high, because zinc comes in 50 mg and the average male body requires 11 mg, three more than the average female body. Once the body received what it required, if they required more than the average, or more than their food was supplying, their nutritional supplement, which should have been perhaps 1 or 2 mg at that point, was way in excess of their requirement.

What is more concerned for is that symptoms include a loss of appetite, and if these patients were overweight, it would look like they were doing something right instead of something wrong.

The chances are high this is going to be a serious problem after Coronavirus, when people who did not get sick or who recovered continue to take excess zinc.

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