Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status • Hacker News Board

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#171

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #64

I’m not arguing against these findings but the whole subject of nutrition leaves me frustrated at times. Ever tried to have 100% daily recommended intake of every nutrient? I suspect almost nobody achieves that. And yet, despite this, and magnesium issues among likely many other issues, our species has never lived longer, grown taller, survived infancy, etc. more than we have now. That being said, as we understand an…

> Ever tried to have 100% daily recommended intake of every nutrient?

I take soylent (that is, a European fork of it) with some regularity. Mainly out of laziness, but also I hope that it's good for whatever I might have been deficient in when eating other foods. It doesn't reduce how healthy I try to eat, but with a picky partner and semi-picky self, it probably helps. It's also just convenient. Would recommend. The flavored versions, that is, not the cardboard variant.

In case anyone wants to get started and isn't sure what to try first, some of the variants I tried or know people that tried it:

- Jimmy Joy (previously: Joylent), their Plenny Shake powder: I like all flavors that I tried (that is chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and banana).

- Nano: not a big fan of it, and neither is friend A that gave it to me iirc.

- Huel: friends B and C liked it a lot better than JJ, but the Huel Black (B,C didn't try that one) is absolutely disgusting to me as well as to friend D. I and friends A,D never tried the regular Huel.

Not sure how close each is to the original Soylent, but Joylent as a name probably says enough. If you read their blog, the updates to the powder seem to be about things like "uptake was found not to be great for X so we increased that" and some such. I also liked SoylentLife which iirc was closer to Soylent than Joylent was at the time, but they went out of business.

One interesting data point is that I am much less vitamin D deficient than my girlfriend who doesn't eat any soylent variants (she doesn't like any). We eat many meals together / the same stuff, and if anything she sees more sunlight than I do, so that might say something or nothing. There have also been a lot of people that do Jimmy Joy only (eating nothing else) for months and then have their blood checked and it comes back clean. From what I've been able to find, it's quite fine as a food replacement, but of course you don't have to (and I don't) use it that way. Other brands probably have similar tests done on them but I didn't look into those as I only ever ate them experimentally.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#172

Post by s5300 » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

bmuon wrote: post #149

wincy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use this[0] not every day because I’ll get muscle spasms unless I eat a lot of calcium, but a few times a week seems to make a big difference. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZD7R4RF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

If you're getting muscle spams, are you really "supplementing"?

Yes.

Just like if you take some extra Zinc (30mg-50mg picolinate) for a variety of reasons - you have to take a bit of copper with it, or eventually your copper supplies will be drained and start causing issues.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#173

Post by rpmisms » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

icedistilled wrote: post #159

Xcelerate wrote: post #91

When we moved to the Bay Area, I started going to the farmers markets and was blown away by the quality of the vegetables. Peas grown at Iacopi Farms in Half Moon Bay were crisp and sweet. Zuckerman's Farm grew a special kind of squash bred specifically for flavor (honeynut squash). Fresh plums pulled off of trees in San Francisco were just bursting with juice. Mashed potatoes made from La Ratte potatoes. And Delta a…

More people should grow some food in their yard. There's quite a few benefits to it in addition to getting a small amount of produce like better understanding of natural cycles and more of a connection to the environment that sustains us.

Steve Solomon is the go-to guy for how to grow nutrient-dense backyard produce.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#174

Post by bamboozled » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

I know we’re all talking about the supplements we take, which fixes the issues for the individual, but what of the actual problem ?

I’m starting to feel like the USA is doomed in the long run because there’s too many corrupt influences in politics and science.

We’re constantly told x is good for us. Until we all find out it really wasn’t and now we're in trouble.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#175

Post by patall » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

croo wrote: post #146

peer2pay wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although this can mostly be attributed to ripeness. Ripe tomatoes degrade extremely quickly so store bought ones are almost exclusive picked unripe and then artificially ripened at locations closer to where they are intended to be sold. This is also why canned tomatoes are generally considered superior for making tomato soups and sauces. Tomatoes harvested with the intention to be conserved are picked much riper sinc…

No. I harvest tomatoes for 4 years now, about 30-50 plants per year. The taste of a half-green-left-on-shelf-because-i-dont-wanna-throw-it-out fruit is better than anything you can get in a shop. You can tell just by the smell, no need to taste it. Sun and soil brings more to the table than led lamps and chemical fertilizers.

I agree but think its also the variety. I once bought semigreen tomatoes in a supermarket in December in Italy and those turned out great after some ripening at home. But they were not the standard red tomatoes you would get everywhere else but real italian flesh tomatoes. Last year my grandma had only standard red ping-pong ball tomatoes and those were almost like store bought, although grown like you described. The other grandma had old varieties and the leftovers in February were still awesome. There are also rumors that grafting while increasing yield decreases flavour, though I haven't tested that

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#176

Post by celticninja » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #43

celticninja wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has psoriasis, she has recently (ish) switched to a plant based diet, her psoriasis has cleared up too. She isn't making claims that her change in diet fixed it.

Maybe it's a change in the diet that helped? Not a change to a specific, but rather a change in general.

Very possible, but diet changes usually go hand in hand with other lifestyle changes too. It could be any one of them or a combination, and it can also be person specific.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#177

Post by opportune » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #68

I wonder what the source of the nutrition information on FDA labels is. They're not assessing every batch of produce. Is the information we're told about the vitamins and minerals in our broccoli based on crops from last year? A decade ago? A century ago? Is it possible we think we're eating twice as many nutrients as we actually are?

See https://thecounter.org/nutrition-labels-meet-recipal/ and https://consolidatedlabel.com/label-articles/how-to-get-a-nu....

The TLDR is not every food needs to be lab tested as long as they can take their ingredients and compare them against national databases (e.g. NCCDB) to estimate nutritional info. And yes, some of the data in those databases is old and perhaps overly general - it's totally reasonable to suspect that vegetables grown in one area, as part of a specific breeding line, in a certain manner, have totally different nutritional info compared to the same generic vegetable grown elsewhere in a different manner.

However keep in mind a lot of food does not list all micronutrients as part of their labelling. This actually kinda drives me nuts and I have no idea why e.g. frozen vegetables don't list things like Vitamin K, magnesium, and zinc when they're often actually good sources of many nutrients.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#178

Post by changoplatanero » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #49

esquivalience wrote: post #4

From the source: "The high rate of magnesium deficiency now postulated [5,6,7,8] can be attributed in part to a steady decline in general magnesium content in cultivated fruits and vegetables, a reflection of the observed depletion of magnesium in soil over the past 100 years [11,12,13]. A report to Congress was already sounding the alarm as far back as the 1930s, pointing out the paucity of magnesium, and other mine…

It’s not just vegetables either - chickens are a lot less nutritious than they used to be. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodand...

When my grandparents told me that chicken tastes less good nowadays I thought they were just old and had lost their sense of taste. Actually they were right though.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#179

Post by stavros » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

changoplatanero wrote: post #178

jonplackett wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just vegetables either - chickens are a lot less nutritious than they used to be. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodand...

When my grandparents told me that chicken tastes less good nowadays I thought they were just old and had lost their sense of taste. Actually they were right though.

Everything tastes less good nowadays. When I was a kid, we used to eat tomatoes like apples, just biting into them, maybe with some salt. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes taste like water.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#180

Post by wincy » Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

s5300 wrote: post #172

bmuon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're getting muscle spams, are you really "supplementing"?

Yes. Just like if you take some extra Zinc (30mg-50mg picolinate) for a variety of reasons - you have to take a bit of copper with it, or eventually your copper supplies will be drained and start causing issues.

I’m not 100% sure if it was zinc but I supplemented zinc for like a week then had the worst constipation of my entire life. Like, wife had to run to the pharmacy to resolve it while I cried in agony sort of bad. So yeah, be careful with how you supplement!