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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

That's my pet theory as well: the standard American diet (SAD) is low in both Vitamin C (which is used as enzymatic cofactor in dozens of reactions, and is also necessary to build collagen) but also low in Vitamin K2 (necessary in formation of MGP, a calcification inhibitory protein used in cartilage and arterial walls; amongst other things).

Like, I bet merely a lifetime of supplementation of Vitamin C and K2 and sufficient D (2000-5000 IU, not the sub-1000 IU bullshit amounts) would see a lot of these modern diseases just vanish into thin air. These are extremely inexpensive to supplement, a tiny insignificant fraction of all the ED drugs, all the blood thinners and surgeries done on people with clogged arteries and heart disease, and all the expensive end of life care done on people with Alzheimers and other cognitive decline.

But, yeah, just a pet theory.

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I think it goes a bit beyond that... I mean, I think the nutrition related to fat soluble vitamins heavily correlates to the quality/types of fats taken in. There's a lot more nutrition in animal sources of fatty acids than in typical seed oils and the distribution model is very different as well. Since these are used for cellular and hormone generation, I think the "low fat" craze and anti saturated fat and anti dietary cholesterol combined with a general religious approach to veganism has lead to some generational declines.

I'm of a pretty firm belief that the typical healthy person should probably be getting around 40% of their nutrition from animal sources, and not in particular be afraid of natural fats nearly as much as refined foods in general.

It only took a couple generations of domesticated cats to show the decline from dietary changes, I think it's just taken a bit longer for industrial "food" to start showing the extent of issues in the general western populations. Supplementation helps, but the supplements need to be the actual variations the body absorbs, not precursors that are typically used.

In the end, I think the base causes of ED and sexual dysfunction is largely simply the same as mental health in general with age, along with metabolic and cardiovascular issues generally speaking. Too much refined sugar, fructose and low quality protein and fats across generations.

I took K2 and my blood pressure almost doubled. Seems like dangerous stuff to me.

Sounds like something you should bring up with your doctor.

The only thing I've ever seen is a link between specifically MK7 (currently only sourced from Natto; MK4 is what you normally see in all other fermented foods and the majority of K2 supplements; MK7 supplements are very expensive comparatively) combined with large doses of flavonoids (often found in Vitamin C complexes).

I have not seen this mentioned in a study, but I suspect the combination of both may be an issue for a minority of people. Lowering the dose or switching to a more conventional MK4 lowered their BP back to normal.

As with any supplementation, no matter how innocent, always keep a Doctor handy to run labs: the difference between screwing around and science is keeping notes.

That said, studies like https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/Fulltext/2021/06110/Vita... and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7230802/ seem to indicate that even MK7, as opposed to just MK4, should be strongly considered for inclusion in the common multivitamin.

The K1/K2 taxonomy is… not great, precisely because MK-4 and MK-7 can work quite differently. There are also forms of K not falling into either category, because microbes love to partitially hydrogenate the chain leaving you weird in-betweens.

Yeah, I agree.

Also doesn't help education of the public due to all the weird forms. It isn't as bad as how the B complex works; a bunch of different vitamins who keep appearing next to each other in numerous reactions.

There's also the fun little dude called K3. Started as a cheapo synthetic form that causes oxidative liver damage in high doses, turns out your body makes it too when you take other forms of K -- it could be what the body uses to ship Vitamin K pass the blood-brain barrier, but nobody's sure.

The damage is still true though. Natural != good, especially when you screw with doses.

* * *

Oh, B. When all the other subscripts are for Vitamers, there's this one guy that just wants to be different. It's not like we don't have enough letters! Having some similarities does not justify this terrible nomenclature!

Is there any real evidence of widespread Vitamin C deficiency? Just a small amount of fresh produce will get you all that you can usefully absorb; any excess is just excreted. Any many packaged food and beverage manufacturers add Vitamin C to their products so that they can average them as "healthy".

I see occasional stories about people showing up in the ER with scurvy symptoms after eating only junk food for months. But those cases seem very rare.

Humans are unreasonably good at doing well at Vitamin C doses that don't make sense in other primates. Megadose proponents point to chimps and suggest some 30 time increase from RDA numbers, but humans do just fine at ~100 mg per day. And supplementation don't seem to do much.

Good news, really, because our species would be stuck on fruits and raw meat otherwise.

I remember seeing a study (and spent my legally required 5 minutes Googling for it before I gave up), where older people are having collagen formation issues (a very common thing, its one of the major signs of aging), and supplementing collagen was not improving their condition, only adding C, an important cofactor, improved collagen formation rates meaningfully.

I doubt they suddenly stopped eating sources with C in it because they became 65+; instead, I think its more realistic to consider it as the end result of a lifelong habit of low C.

Personally, in my own life, its only as an adult that I have a significant constant source of C. As a child, citrus fruits, non-citrus fruits also high in C, and vegetables known for their high C content weren't common; all of my C came from kid's multivitamins, and who knows if the amount of C in them was sufficient.

Now, I eat sweet potatoes almost every day. Lots if C in those.

This is the “it could just be that easy” fallacy or whatever it is called. Complex problems more likely have complex multifactorial causes. Subtle malnutrition of a few studied compounds is unlikely to contribute much.

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