Episode 205 - Vitamin Deficiencies and Personalized Health Strategies You Won't Hear Anywhere Else with Cameron Cogswell

Unlock the secrets to optimal health I delve into the world of nutrients with Cameron Cogswell of https://www.myvitaminscore.com/ (so affordable, science-based and use my code SANDYK to get a 25% discount).  Cameron is an Orthomolecular Medicine Practioner and look out for his book coming soon.

Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about vitamins, deficiencies, and your body's unique needs. In our conversation, we tackle the myths surrounding standard blood tests and the one-size-fits-all approach to vitamin intake, exposing the shortcomings of these methods and the importance of personalized assessments. Cameron's expertise shines as we dissect the complex relationship between nutrient deficiencies and chronic illness, emphasizing the vital role of professional guidance in therapeutic supplementation from a qualified practitioner.  This isn't your general physician, nor is it your personal trainer.

If you're looking to work with someone on diet, supplementation, and lifestyle, look to a Holistic Nutritionist with a college diploma (not someone who calls themself a nutritionist after a weekend retreat), a Naturopathic Doctor or an Integrative Medicine Physician.

Have you ever wondered why your energy levels dip or why that stubborn cold just won't go away? Join us as we reveal the significance of the oft-overlooked B vitamins and their synergistic role in our metabolic processes. Our discussion ventures into the common nutrient deficiencies plaguing North America, and why the cheapest vitamins off drugstore shelves could be doing more harm than good. Learn why your daily multivitamin might not be enough, and how to distinguish between the misleading guidelines and the advice that truly matters for your health. Cameron and I also explore the concept of "acquired vitamin dependency," stressing the need to address basic nutritional imbalances before considering advanced health hacks.

Wrapping up our in-depth conversation, we scrutinize the body's intricate method of nutrient prioritization, which often results in deceptive blood test results. I share personal anecdotes and professional insights into the elusive symptoms of vitamin D deficiency and the innovative methods I've developed to identify nutrient shortfalls with precision. Whether you're a health enthusiast or simply looking to fine-tune your well-being, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to tailor your supplementation to your body's unique demands. And with the specter of censorship casting a shadow over health discourse, we encourage you to venture beyond conventional platforms and embrace a world of unrestricted health wisdom.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hi everyone. It's me, sandy Cruz of Sanique, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from experts from all over the world. Whether it be suggestions in how you can age better, biohacking, alternative wellness, these are conversations to help you live your best life. I want to live a long, healthy and vibrant life, never mind all those stigmas that, as we reach midlife and beyond, we're just going to shrivel up and die with some horrible disease. Always remember balanced living works. I really look forward to this season.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K, nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me I have Cameron Cogswell of MyVitaminScorecom. We're going to talk all about nutrient deficiencies. We're also going to talk about testing and how all those super expensive blood tests that you get. Well, we might actually really turn some heads on this podcast recording, because what you see may not be what you get. So I want each and every one of you to go to MyVitaminScorecom and use Sandy K for a discount. Now you're going to hear why this is so important and how much work has gone into this incredible database to really help you decipher what vitamins and nutrients you personally need. Sandy K MyVitaminScorecom. I'm going to leave it at that and I am going to go on to a little bit of a different topic, but definitely related.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Not that long ago a new study came out on vitamin D and essentially this study was kind of scaring people to say that vitamin D levels, if they're a little too high, they can negatively affect the bone. Well, if you are an individual like myself who is trained in therapeutic grade supplementation, you know that you must take K2. You also need to ensure that all of your minerals are balanced. That's also very, very important. But if you take K2, that just helps transport the D to where it needs to get to, which means, you know, to the bone, and it prevents calcification.

Speaker 1: 3:02

So three things I will say here. Everything is not as it seems as it relates to studies and you need to dig a little bit deeper. I myself had to take an entire course learning how to decipher whether studies are slanted or flawed or biased. Number two do not take advice from a physician unless they are specifically trained in therapeutic grade supplementation, which is very rare, unless you are seeing a naturopathic doctor, a registered holistic nutritionist or a holistic nutritionist that has a college diploma. We are not talking about nutritionists that go on a weekend retreat and then call themselves nutritionists or, number three, an integrative medicine physician. No other doctors are typically trained in supplementation, so know that they have their expertise, we have ours. And then the last thing I'm going to say is testing is not what it seems, and that's where this conversation with Cameron Cogswell comes in.

Speaker 1: 4:22

So, on another note, my essential thyroid guide gosh. I'm just still putting on the finishing touches. It's a lot more work than I even realized, but it's going to be a set of video modules along with a small booklet that's easy to understand for people to just understand their thyroid a little bit better and their thyroid health, and different tests that you can get done, and also just how to optimize it through diet, lifestyle, nutrition, supplementation and more. This is actually a smaller project. My larger project for the year is my book, and the working title is Bridging the Gap Between Body and Soul. It's really meshing together the science with the esoteric, because I'm a big believer that we cannot optimize our wellness and age better if we just take a science only approach. So that's why I felt there was a really big need for a book like this.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Another note I actually got a note from YouTube. I recorded an amazing podcast last week all about colloidal silver with my podcast sponsor, silverbiotics, and I got a note about its I don't know inappropriateness on YouTube. So I am posting all of my full podcast interviews raw on YouTube. But I'm going to ask all of you to go and sign up for Rumble. I'm posting them all there as well, because I feel like certain ones that I post are not being seen.

Speaker 1: 6:08

There's a lot of censorship going on and I feel it's important that I bring awareness to this. So this was happening a few years ago. Now it's just not going to fly anymore. There are many big names behind this movement to say, yeah, it's not going to fly anymore. Individuals like Dr Eric Berg are being not necessarily well, I guess you could say, censored. Put it this way content is being minimized so that it is not seen, and there is nothing wrong with bringing awareness to different healing modalities whereby you can be proactive and preventative with your best health.

Speaker 1: 6:55

So go, follow me on Rumble. Check out locals I'm going to start being a little bit more active there. Check out other options where you can actually find the information that you want, just to optimize your best health, if you choose to do. So it's got to be there, because there's nothing harmful about talking about lots of these different topics. Nobody's giving you medical advice here, people. We're just saying these things are there just for you to live a healthier life.

Speaker 1: 7:31

And now let's cut on through to this amazing interview with Cameron. Just another thing out there to help you live your best life. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me I have a return guest and he is amazing. And he's a fellow Canadian and I love chatting with Cameron. So his name I'll give you his full name it's Cameron Cogswell. He's a nutritionist and ortho molecular health practitioner. He consulted for Canada's largest health and wellness companies, as well as the Women's National Hockey League.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Cameron realized there was a lack of meaningful ways to measure our own vitamin needs and created the my Vitamin Score Assessment as a noninvasive way to understand your vitamin needs from home. He also happens to be an author and his upcoming book is called how the Fuck Are you Supposed To Know which Vitamins you Need? And you know me, I'm not going to bleep anything out, even though in the title I don't. I believe that In the title you do, but I'm like what am I going to say? How the F Like do you want me to say that? Anyway, today we're going to discuss common symptoms and consequences of nutrient deficiencies and why blood work may be useless to identify these deficiencies. So with that, welcome Cameron, thank you so much for coming.

Speaker 2: 9:12

Thank you, cindy. Thank you, Cindy. I'm really happy to be back. We had a great conversation last time. Although we don't talk very often when we do, I love it, I know, I'm glad, I'm really glad to be back.

Speaker 1: 9:23

It is. And you know, I think I remember the last time we, the last time we recorded, I started coughing like I was choking and you started laughing. Yeah, it was pretty funny, are you okay? Yeah, you're like, are you okay? Meanwhile I'm like coughing like crazy behind the mic. Yeah, so I would love for you and I'm going to put in the show notes. I hope I remember to put that episode in the show notes so anybody can refer back to it. But you know, give us a little background of your work and tell us what you're up to.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Yeah. So I mean, I can go way back and I'll give you, like, the calls and notes. But I originally went to school for architecture and I think I might have mentioned that to you last time and you know how the universe will push you in the right direction whether you want it or not at the time. But I was being pushed out of architecture. I didn't enjoy it and I actually worked for the government for a short time when I was 19 years old so I was very young. I was hired to build mapping systems for the government. I mean, it was a huge job with a lot of responsibilities and no one knew what I was doing. They didn't understand the technology. So even the people in the government had no idea what I was doing or how to do it, and that's kind of why they pulled me straight from university. But I sat in front of a computer all day. I didn't talk to a single soul. I had an assistant who I would send out into the field to get data points for me to build a digital system.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Anyways, it's not important, but I hated it and at the time I was living in literally a halfway house because I was working for the county of Oxford. There's no place to like rent a room there, so it's just like the worst situation you could be in. And my roommate passed away while I was living there and we didn't know until the cops kicked his door down five days later and found his dead body been dead for five days. It was yeah. I won't go into the whole story, but it was a surefire sign for me to like this is something's not right here. I feel it inside me, even though at 19, I didn't have the inherent wisdom of trusting my gut and intuition, but I knew something was right. I called up the dean, I won out and I switched into kinesiology, which I love.

Speaker 2: 11:34

So when I was studying kinesiology, I got a little hint for nutrition and I fell in love even more. I was like shit, like I can eat this and feel this way and eat something else and feel a different way. Whether it was good or bad, I knew there was something different. Whatever I ate or how I nourished, my body changed, how I felt, how I acted, how I slept, everything. So I got a taste of it when I studied kinesiology and then, when I finished kinesiology, I did a postgrad in nutrition.

Speaker 2: 12:02

So I became a registered nutritionist and after that I became a registered ortho-molecular health practitioner and that's concentrated more on vitamins and using vitamins as medicine, so like vitamins rather than drugs. It's kind of saying the nutritional environment of the body is what's going to facilitate health or disease. So let's enhance the nutritional environment of your body rather than using drugs that just cover symptoms. So I became a registered ortho-molecular health practitioner and then also did continue education courses for inadequacies and vitamin deficiencies in large and subpopulations, and so that was at Oregon State University, the Linus Pauling Institute.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Oh wow, you went to Linus Pauling, you did. I didn't know that. Very cool.

Speaker 2: 12:51

So that's where I really got into like oh, wow, okay, it's not just the body, that was like kinesiology and physiology, then it was nutrition, then it was ortho-molecular and then it was live. So it's all like narrowing down into this like really small niche of like vitamins and vitamin needs and not just needs but inadequacies and deficiencies and how they play out in different populations and it was just fascinating to me. So that's where I am and with that, yeah, like you said in the introduction, I realized and this is going back years before I went to Linus Pauling Institute like how are you supposed to know what vitamins are? How the fuck are you supposed to know? I worked at a health food store At the same time that I went to the University of Waterloo. I was going back on weekends and working just to try to earn some money during university.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Sandy, the number one thing people would ask me in the store and whether it was an outright question or whether it was just underlying in the symptoms they were asking me I was like what vitamins do I need? How was I supposed to know and this is how a lot of people find out, like the number one way people buy vitamins and why they decide to buy the vitamins they do is on the advice of usually a stranger, whether it's someone they saw on Instagram they look up to, a friend, a neighbor so not necessarily a stranger in that regard or a health food store employee. At 19 years old I was that employee. People would come in and say I have dry skin, what do I take? And even though I might have been well-impensioned, how the hell am I supposed to know what you need? Honestly, I had no idea.

Speaker 2: 14:26

So I was guessing for people and they were taking the advice of a 19-year-old working in this store, and if they had asked my co-worker, maybe they would have had a different recommendation. So the question just kept like circling my mind how are you really supposed to know what you need? And not to jump too far ahead, sandy, but underlying that what you need is simply what you're lacking. You're not going to take a vitamin D if you have optimal levels of vitamin D. Taking more isn't going to give you a therapeutic benefit. So the only vitamins you want to go out and buy or purchase online are the ones that you're lacking. So essentially, I'm trying to determine what people are lacking by them coming into a store and asking me how would I know, just looking at them, what they're lacking biochemically? I wouldn't and no one would, and that's the problem.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Okay, I'm going to make a. Maybe it's a bold statement, but I feel like it's kind of. I feel like it's a good statement that you might agree with. I don't know, but I am of the belief that the majority actually wrote this in my book. I know you get this right, like you're, because you're writing a book to. The majority of illnesses begin with A nutrient deficiency of some sort.

Speaker 2: 15:48

I love that. That is exactly what I not only believe, but what the literature shows. And it's funny. You say that and not funny, I suppose. But the medical system and this isn't a bash on the medical system I don't want to be about that. I don't want to be known as someone who's against the medical system or not.

Speaker 2: 16:06

I've used it yeah, there's a place for surgeries, my, yes, but Hundreds of years ago, fifty years ago, sixty years ago, we were, I suppose, unhealthy or requiring the medical system because there were infectious diseases, okay, all of the infectious disease of the past, fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred, seventeen hundred.

Speaker 2: 16:29

The place We've now wiped those out, we don't see those anymore and modern medicine has fixed those and we can get antibiotics and suppress those things and that's done. So now we're dealing with an epidemic of the bill is that things that build up overtime, chronic illnesses that start A decade in the past. So the end result, the disease that we're dealing with, they never tied back to what started ten years ago, which were nutritional deficiencies, things that are missing in the body, that the body requires. We're not giving them insufficient quantities and overtime, the metabolic damage that's occurring is, I don't want to say irreversible gets worse and worse and worse until, yes, you develop an illness, a condition of disease, and it all started ten years ago. So they're never tied together. Yes, a huge problem, it's what we're seeing today.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Oh, my god, you're totally speaking my language, because I always say and you and I were talking about this initially that okay, I understand, we can't control absolutely everything. I can't control if I go for a walk right now and some crazy driver doesn't hit me Right, like I can't control everything. However, if I have the tools to know that, you know I potentially have some symptoms, then maybe I can tie it back to a nutritional deficiency and maybe I can mitigate my risks for those symptoms to potentially develop into disease For sure yeah, that's exactly what it is, and I'll take it one step further, sandy, excuse me.

Speaker 2: 18:13

The commonly referred to Reasons are causes of disease and conditions, and some people agree or disagree is like okay, I have bad immune system or poor gut health, environmental toxins or my genetics so? Or inflammation we hear all these like buzzwords and like that's what's causing disease. The number one promise inflammation. Okay. Well, for me at least, that still doesn't explain where this originally started out of. Inflammation start okay, vitamins and minerals are antioxidants. Okay, and they reduce inflammation.

Speaker 2: 18:47

If you are insufficient, inadequate, deficient, whatever you want to call it in vitamins and minerals, your inflammatory markers and cascade is going to run a mock. Yes, that's obvious, we know that. That's the science is is proven and true. Now, your gut health, your gut health is impaired. Your vitamin and seeds are going to be all over the place because the gut produces some vitamins and it helps obviously with the absorption and assimilation of all your vitamins. So I mean All of these things in. Like you said, there's very little that people can do to control the environmental toxins that we're breathing right now. We can't control that genetics. Yes, you can balance and optimize, but there's little we can do to change Our genetics as they are okay. Yes, we can optimize things. There's very little we can do to change our past medical history. But what we do have control over is our nutrition, how we nourish our body. If we fill in those nutritional gaps to Stifle some of the disease that might happen down the road and, of course, to correct some of the symptoms that we have now.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Yeah, and so people always ask me this question all the time. I eat well, do I even really need supplements? And I know my answer, but I want to hear yours. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate and review with a few kind words. This helps me to keep bringing fabulous guests to you each and every week. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 20:24

Yes, for sure. This is one of the chapters in my my book to. Yeah, you can. Okay, if you carefully select everything you eat and you eat organic and you cook your food Minimally just the more you cook, the more nutrients you lose all organic and you carefully select the variety and your digestion is perfect and you're absorbing all the nutrients, then is it possible? Yeah, maybe it's possible, but I think it's impractical, it's difficult and it's expensive. Now the other thing, and I don't want to get too far away from the question, because you ask me directly and I think no, you need supplements.

Speaker 2: 21:03

I really believe that me to, because Very few people live that way and even if you do, your nutrient need Can change like this Daily. The nutritional needs of myself today will be different, tomorrow will be different, the next day will be different in winter than they are summer. So, even if you're eating well all year round, are you sure? Are you sure that it's meeting your ever changing nutrient needs, even if you're eating a diverse and high nutrient profile in your foods? What if you have surgery and you still go back to eating really well, but now your need for vitamin C is five times higher than it was yesterday? Are you changing that in your diet to correct for those imbalances that just happened? Because, again, we can't control the environment. What happens to us in our past medical history? So I think it's possible, but I think it's highly unlikely.

Speaker 1: 21:57

And then we also don't grow our own food. I was, I was actually talking, and so, even if we do grow our own food, we do not have control of. You know what they call drift, so you know you might be, because I see this where people in the GTA Are putting in instead of lawns there they're on their front lawn, they're making it a garden, which I think is brilliant, but you can't control the drift from your next door neighbor that spring pesticides, right yeah, well, isn't there a big lawsuit about that with Monsanto, like how Monsanto has these like seeds?

Speaker 2: 22:40

that are obviously genetically modified. And this guy it was in one of these documentaries. I saw that name. But how. This guy wanted to have this organic farm and some of their seeds drifted over and ruined it for him. Now he's like like now, my, my crops aren't organic and they sued him.

Speaker 2: 22:56

Yeah, he didn't pay for the seeds. Yes, oh, my God, I mean that's another story. But yeah, like to what you said, sandy, you can't control that. How do you know? I mean, what you plant, even if you're doing it isn't taking care. I mean the quality is not there. And I mean, you know, some people are brilliant. I don't know what I need in the soil to make sure that cabbage is perfect or lettuce is perfect, or carrots, or beets, or whatever I'm growing. They do require slightly different nutrient levels in the soil and, my God, I don't know what those are.

Speaker 1: 23:25

No, and the other thing, too, is that you know regenerative farming is so big now where you're supposed to rotate the crops You're supposed to. Even if you have, if you raise animals, you're supposed to rotate their grazing areas, like there's so much involved. So the reason we do have many nutrient deficiencies is because we don't live that way anymore. I have parents who were traditional farmers and they did things like the old school way. And I laugh, cameron, when I see you know, hundred percent organic vegetarian fed chickens and I'm like but chickens aren't vegetarians, people, right, so you're there. The only way is if they're pasture raised.

Speaker 1: 24:20

And you know there's so much health washing In the in the world right now and people, unless you're in our industry, you just don't know. So we've covered that now. We know we need supplements for sure. We need them for many reasons and I think what you said there at the beginning makes a lot of sense, where you said Often what happens is these nutrient deficiencies build. So we, you know this. This podcast isn't about health agendas and you know everybody in the world should become vegan, which I think is the biggest loadable shit in my mind, because they're they're, they're actually perpetuating a whole agenda for people to be eating highly processed foods Highly processed and sprayed and you know what I mean like. So that's a whole other conversation. We probably have that another time. But you know, all of these things together Are really contributing to deficiencies over time. It's not like you're gonna see it in a day.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Yeah, well and that's a really great point, sandy and I say that to a lot of people in the same way that if you smoke one cigarette, you won't feel anything, but we absolutely know that if you continue that habit for years, what's gonna happen?

Speaker 2: 25:44

Illness, disease and death. In the same way, if I miss my nutrients or I eat a nutrient poor died for a day a week, I won't feel anything. But if you continue that for months, years, you will have the exact same result of the smoking illness, disease and, yes, possible death. Now it's unlikely that you're gonna have such depleted levels of zero that you're actually gonna die from a nutrient deficiency, but it is possible. So in the same way that you will never feel the ill effects of one cigarette, you're not gonna feel the ill effects of one or two days of inadequate nutrient intake either. So people ignore it and they don't get. And then they get vague symptoms which they just say are Well, it's probably just normal, it's nothing, and they ignore it and it perpetuates the problem and that metabolic damage is being done yes, or aging.

Speaker 1: 26:35

That's a big one. Oh, you know, I'm not twenty anymore, cam. So you know, meanwhile I'm like, listen, I'm gonna be fifty four and I'm feeling younger than my forty. So nutrients matter a hundred percent. So let me ask you this, because I've heard this there's a book I don't know if you've read it called the mineral fix.

Speaker 2: 27:00

No, no, but I'm gonna write it down it's doctor James.

Speaker 1: 27:04

Oh god, I always mess up his name. Dr James didn't go and you know, you know I'm talking about. He's also written the obesity fix. Anyway, he's great, he's a great resource. But I think it was him that said minerals. Think of minerals as like a foundation. So if your minerals are imbalanced or severely depleted, the vitamins Are more difficult to absorb. Even what are your thoughts on that? Does that?

Speaker 2: 27:38

make sense. They all work together and the only thing I'll say is that when we process food, when we spray the fields, like you were saying, the vitamins are more likely to be damaged than minerals. Minerals can sustain some damage and stay intact, so it's really the vitamins that get reduced. When we do processing, packaging, freezing of foods before eat them, the vitamins are destroyed very quickly. Carbohydrates and minerals can sustain some of this kind of damage, but, yes, they're required. They work together, they work synergistically and I tell people this is the best analogy and I try to use analogy so people get it, because vitamins and minerals don't need to be complicated. It's like you need them.

Speaker 2: 28:22

Yeah that's why you should take them because you need them, not because it's good for this or good for that. I'll get this benefit. You take them because you require them. But I use this analogy if you're building cars, okay, and you have tires, let's just say, each of these things is a vitamin, mineral. You have tires from one supplier, you get engines from another supplier and you get the body from another supplier. If I have four sets of tires, but I have 10 engines and 10 frames, how many cars can I make? I can only make four cars, because that's the limit of the lowest supply part. Right, by all. I have four sets of tires. I can't build six cars. It's the same thing for vitamins and minerals. You will work as beneficially or as optimally as the lowest supply nutrient because, just like you said, they do work synergistically. They absorb together, they work as co enzymes, their co factors In all of the processes that the body needs to survive. So if you're lacking one, all of the others will be disrupted.

Speaker 1: 29:22

Yeah, you know. Oh my gosh, I have so many questions for you Because I see a lot of people take B12 because it's tested Right. But back in nutrition college I was always taught because I took two of my courses were symptomatology. I went to CSNN, so we went to a couple of the bigger schools in Canada. So I was always taught that if you do take B12, let's say you do need a little more B12 for whatever the reasons we'll get into the testing soon that you should also take a methylated B complex with it.

Speaker 2: 30:09

Yeah, what are your thoughts? Yeah, so I in my test now this is for a couple of different reasons, like, and again we'll get into the whole testing layer. So some of the reason I only test for B complex. You can test, like, whether it's through whatever you, whatever measure you want to do, but even through symptomatic testing you can test for every B vitamin, but they have to be used together.

Speaker 1: 30:34

Cinergistic.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Yeah, yeah, they're synergistic and they're water soluble anyway. So something like cellular respiration, okay, using oxygen in our body, you must have B vitamins. You must also have amino acids to make the enzyme. So if you're breathing, which we are, we need that. We need oxygen in our cells. How do your cells respirate? They need to use the oxygen to pull energy from carbohydrates, from protein, from fats. So we kind of know that, like most people know, yeah, we get our energy from the foods. But how do we actually extract the energy from these macronutrients? You need oxygen and you need but B vitamins. So amino acids are required to build the enzyme. But what goes in the enzyme? What pairs with it? A coenzyme, that's what vitamins are. They're just coenzymes. They pair with an enzyme, they complete a process. So every stage of cellular respiration requires B vitamins, the B complex, all of them. They all work together.

Speaker 2: 31:37

So if you're missing either the amino acids that make the enzymes, like the structure of it, or the coenzymes, cellular respiration, it'll continue, but it'll be impaired, right, the lesson lies. Yet it's very unlikely that anyone doesn't have enough amino acids to make the enzymes because they can pull it from our body. I mean, protein is stored in our body. We can pull it from our muscle, we can pull it from food quite easily and it's stored within cells itself. Every cell has amino acids that it can pull from a pool of them to make enzymes, so it's much more. You know, I suppose vitamins are much more vulnerable than amino acids to be missing. So we need the amino acids. We're very, very rarely going to be low on those, but we can be low on the B vitamins, and if you're completing cellular respiration every day, your B vitamins will be depleted in two days.

Speaker 2: 32:32

So you need all of them just for cellular respiration, I mean, that's just one thing we need them for, and they're depleted within days. So I would take all of them. I would never say, oh, just take D12 or just take all of them, because they're all going to be flushed out within a couple of days anyways.

Speaker 1: 32:46

Yeah, and you know now that you're saying that I've talked about this, about how certain nutrients are very difficult to, let's say, overdo. I'm not going to say overdose because they're not drugs but overdue. But B vitamins are one of them because it's water soluble, quick in, quick out. So what are some of the most seen nutrient deficiencies in North America?

Speaker 2: 33:17

let's say yeah, so according to the research, potassium is number one.

Speaker 1: 33:23

Really.

Speaker 2: 33:25

Yeah, potassium is number one. So that's according to the CDC study. So I try to use the studies that other people who, even if they're not, you know, into vitamins or they don't quite believe it okay, they kind of believe the CDC. You know they'll listen to the bigger authorities right. Even if we don't agree with everything, they do conduct some studies that we can use. So their studies they basically take tens of thousands of people, assess their diets, count the nutrients in everything that they eat and then report back and create like this national survey.

Speaker 2: 34:00

And potassium is the number one nutrient missing and they compare it to what's called the EAR. So this is the estimated average requirement against the EAR. They said that 98% of the population isn't consuming enough. So I mean that is almost 100%. Now the other thing and not to make this too confusing, but you yourself might find this interesting why do they compare to the EAR? No one thinks about that, they just okay, look at it. 98% is terrible, no matter what, but the EAR is an estimated average requirement. It's not your recommended daily amount. If you notice. Estimated average requirement is the level at which 50% of the population is expected to be deficient. 98% of people don't even consume that level.

Speaker 2: 34:51

So I mean compared to like a level that's considered adequate, let alone optimal. Probably 100% of people don't consume enough. So potassium is number one. Vitamin D is up there as well. Some of the smaller, like trace minerals where you don't need much, like manganese, selenium most people get enough, but there's not a single nutrient that your body requires that they estimate 100% of people are getting enough of, so we're missing almost all of them.

Speaker 1: 35:20

In terms of the. You know how they give you a recommended daily allowance. Oh yeah, so you know what does that mean. Let's break that term down, because you know I always tell people not to go to Costco to buy their vitamins. And no, nothing against Costco, I love Costco. Who doesn't love a Costco trip? You know, easy $300 when you leave, right, but my husband hates it for that reason. No, I'm just kidding. But you know, I'm just not a big fan of when I see supplements on their shelf that, for example, is using cyanocobalamin. Yeah, you know, and people don't really understand that the form in the nutrients that you take matters. So you know, you look on that bottle and you see RDA recommended daily allowance. What does that mean for people who are listening to this podcast?

Speaker 2: 36:27

So you brought up like a couple of good points, andy. I try to take a very gentle approach with people. I believe what I believe and if I'm on a podcast like this, I'll say it straight. When I'm working with clients and they tell me, oh, you know, I've been buying the Costco vitamin, I'm gentle with them because they're making a conscious decision to try to put nutrients in their body. Good point, it's a good, good job. You know you're doing something right rather than me jumping down their throat because they'll go online and they'll read you know the Costco vitamins or shit and this, and they are.

Speaker 2: 36:59

But they were out in the store and rather than picking up the ice cream or you know, maybe that's in their shopping cart too, but they went to the shelf and they picked up and they paid money for it and they're putting it in their body. So they're they're aware and by virtue of awareness we do get healthier, right, and that's been proven just by being aware of something. So I try to be very gentle with them. But the form, yeah, it matters so much. And when? So you said like cyanome rather than methylcobal, and I mean that's a great example. But yeah, the RDA how these were, you know, defined goes back a long way. So in 1988, they established this committee who was going to go and determine Hold on a second.

Speaker 1: 37:43

Did you say 1988? Yeah, and has it changed?

Speaker 2: 37:47

since then. They will change them periodically, but the basis for them. This is the interesting part, and here's the thing how would you know, sandy and that's why I'm gentle with people like go back to the cyanocobalamin. How do you know? It's cheaper to make, so they put it in there. How would the average person know? The education around vitamins, minerals and nutrition is terrible, and that's part of my book as well. It's terrible. So I don't blame people and I'm gentle with them.

Speaker 2: 38:14

But going back to 1988, they developed a committee to investigate safe upper limits and to kind of determine, like, what is the required amount of vitamins for people to take. The most important part, without going into the specifics of every single vitamin. They were told right away you can do no new research, so there will be no human studies. They will not consider human studies, only in vitro and animal studies. And they were told to ignore all health benefits of vitamins, just to strictly look at where does harm happen or where is it potentially happen, and that's where we're going to make the decisions around recommended intake levels. So they were told you can't do any new research, so you got to use what's available to you. Well, sometimes what was available. I'll send you this after the podcast too. Sometimes what was available was an animal study that looked at cows taking high doses of B6. And now that's how they're going to decide what humans need.

Speaker 2: 39:11

So the way that they went about the experiment, the investigation to begin with, was flawed right from the beginning because it was biased. I mean, how can you look at vitamins and minerals, ignore all health benefits? I mean, what is the point of the research? And if not to understand how these impact our health? So what they did is they would take animal studies and you can go off on so many tangents here because the USDA, I mean, or the, you know, the agricultural department they understand that optimal vitamin intake is so important for animals that they will give cattle, because a sick animal is an animal that can't make money off. It's a human they can make money off. This is a huge distinction that people don't think about. A sick animal is useless to them, that costs them money and it loses their money in the potential product that they can sell. They understand what optimal dosing is. So the USDA, the levels that they recommend for like hens, cattle, pigs, all that stuff, is way higher because they know if they don't do that, then the cows and the animals get diseases. So they give them the optimal vitamin intake so they grow really well and they're strong and they produce strong offspring and they can kind of keep that lineage going so they can keep making money.

Speaker 2: 40:30

So when they found out like a potential side effect of like and I think it was B6, they gave cows something like 300,000 milligrams a day, which is completely absurd. Even if you do it weight to weight and you balance it like, divided, so you know it's an average weight of a human, it's a hundred pounds. They were giving something like 3,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, which is absolutely insane and it caused some side effects. I think it was like I can't remember exactly in this one study, but it has some side effects. So they said oh my God, okay, there's side effects of 3,000 milligrams per kilogram, let's make the recommended dose list, divide it by 10, because that was for animals, and now let's make it for human.

Speaker 2: 41:22

Now let's divide it by another 10, because, well, animals can be different than that and they just keep dividing and dividing down on these really arbitrary values. They were essentially fabricated. I mean, why divided by 10 and not six? There was really no reason other than they just kept getting it down and down and down, and then they made the values like so oh miniscule, it's not even enough for a mouse. So they decided on the values based off animal studies alone, no human studies, and they were to ignore all health benefits. That's the most important takeaway for how they determine these.

Speaker 1: 41:55

Quote ignore all health benefits.

Speaker 2: 41:58

Yeah, yeah. That's the biggest takeaway.

Speaker 1: 42:00

I mean, I couldn't believe that when they were told that they were instructed, and yet there's that whole self-care framework that just came into place a few years ago. We won't get into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I could, because it's just so conflicting, right.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Well, it's funny because when they were coming up with the values for vitamin C now remember this is 1988. They didn't put out their report until 2003. They were doing this research for a really long time because they didn't know what to do when it came to vitamin C. They used the same math divided by 10, divided by 10, divided by 10. They had these you know, they called them whatever like different variable factors that they would divide it by to make sure it's right for humans.

Speaker 2: 42:46

What they did for vitamin C is, when they got to a thousand milligrams, like well, some people can still have digestive discomfort. At a thousand milligrams, Like, yeah, I mean, some people are allergic to water. You can't make it perfect forever rather than because we always sold them like 500 milligrams yeah, Vitamin C is always 500 milligrams and people have been taking that and feeling good and nothing bad has happened them for decades. So when they got to vitamin C, they were at a thousand milligrams. They said, well, now we have to divide by a factor of three. Because, well, that's what we did for every other nutrient. That got them to 333. And they were like, holy shit, we can't say that because now we're going to say that everyone who buys vitamin C at 500 is overdosing. But there's been no side effects, so they disregarded their own rules and just stuck it at 500. So I mean, they're just playing with numbers. They're really. Yes, there's some science behind it, but it's just.

Speaker 1: 43:42

Okay. So that makes it super confusing for people not like us, because I mean, we're pretty brilliant as it relates to supplementation. Someone say I'm just kidding, no, but for people who are not trained in supplements and therapeutic grade supplementation, it makes it very confusing Of course Of course, because there's dosage, there is type like we talked about, like cyanocobalamin is probably not a great form for the majority of the human population.

Speaker 1: 44:25

So I know we're going to get into the how do we know? I know, but I have to ask what? Okay, we said B vitamins. Is that what we said B vitamins? You said vitamin D. What are the top five?

Speaker 2: 44:40

Oh, yeah, so I'm having here in front of me. I've pulled it up, so potassium is number one. At 98% of people were not meeting daily requirements.

Speaker 1: 44:47

Potassium.

Speaker 2: 44:48

So this is from the CDC funded study.

Speaker 1: 44:49

Okay.

Speaker 2: 44:50

Okay, Potassium. Number two at 95% is vitamin D.

Speaker 1: 44:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:55

At 94% of people. Again, this is 94%, not meeting the estimated average requirement Okay 94% is vitamin E.

Speaker 2: 45:06

After that at 71% is vitamin K. So it seems to be a lot of the fat soluble vitamins. And that's of course because water soluble vitamins they fortify and they put in enriched foods and stuff. So people generally do get a decent supply of that. But I mean all of them. I mean I can go down the list. I mean 50% aren't meeting calcium, 60%, 61% sorry aren't meeting magnesium B vitamins. It's at 15%. So it can much lower, but I wouldn't want to be that 15% anyway, right? So, and then a vitamin A is at 50%.

Speaker 1: 45:42

Okay, you want to hear something really interesting. This is so interesting. At least this is applicable in the United States. I'm going to assume it's applicable in Canada too. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But if you're buying fortified foods that are, let's say, fortified with B vitamins or it says fortified with folic acid instead of folate, if you are not buying organic, you are getting the vitamin fortification of the cheapest form in the food that you're buying. Yeah, so, yes, so, as you know, cam, some people really, it can do harm. It can actually do harm to them if they're taking folic acid instead of folate.

Speaker 2: 46:44

For sure, for sure. And I mean here's the thing with the enrichment and this is part of my book too Like I go really deep on everything, why things happen, how we're misled by the big three, which I consider like the government. They mislead us by coming up with these numbers, by putting out the studies, by what they believe and what they put out about vitamins, official health standpoints and statements about nutrition. I mean they put out food pyramids but it's hard to find anything on vitamins. They usually say take at the discretion of your healthcare practitioner.

Speaker 1: 47:20

Yeah, by the way, people who happens they're referring to a doctor who has never received any training in supplementation. So go to the right expert people, please. I just have to note that, cameron.

Speaker 2: 47:35

Well, yeah, and that's another point too. I mean, we can go on forever. This is why people are misled. Less than 5% of all doctors get any training in nutrition, and the 5% that do is because they chose to. They chose to take those courses. It's not mandatory. So 0% of doctors are required to study nutrition, nevermind understand the interplay of vitamins and minerals and how to understand when you need them and what doses work for what people. Nevermind that. Just less than 5% get even a cursory review of nutrition in general.

Speaker 2: 48:07

Okay, so that's the government, the medical system, and then there's the natural healthcare system, which also misleads people by putting shiny objects up. Now, there are some wonderful people in all of these places, I'm not saying otherwise, but the natural healthcare community always has an answer. They always have an answer oh, you need this, you need this, you need this. But they've also done nothing to make any headway in the deficiency crisis. These numbers have not gotten better since the natural healthcare community came out. Yes, we have access to them, but we still don't know which ones are best for us.

Speaker 2: 48:38

So, I said, all three of those mislead you. But going back to what you were saying about, like the enrichment of food, the vitamins that they put in are, exactly like you said, the absolute worst garbage vitamins. And then they're put in and then the food is still frozen and packaged, so even the ones that they enrich with. By the time that you put the food in your body and digest it you're getting scraps, very little, a little tiny bit of even what's on the label.

Speaker 1: 49:05

Okay, so we touched on a lot already and common nutrients that most, or a lot of the population are deficient in. What about testing? This is a big one because you saw, you saw, I see it, because it's it's. It's a very passionate area for you, and you saw my interview with Dr Caroline Dean. She is the guru in magnesium and she actually wrote the book the Magnesium Miracle that many practitioners, doctors alike, all refer to for magnesium and she was saying if you are even it's, I think it's a good example. It is a mineral, but you go and you get your magnesium checked. If you the, the, the, the actual value is such a narrow value and if you're even below by a tiny amount, your body's basically twitching as though you have Parkinson's. So what point is there for blood testing and are there any nutrients that are of value to test in the blood?

Speaker 2: 50:27

Yeah, so I love that interview because she said something so wonderful and I think I even like wrote to you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:34

Yeah, she was saying you can't test magnesium in the blood. You can't. I mean you can physically do it and get a reading, but there's no point. And the same thing goes for calcium. So I'll get to your question of which ones can use. But yeah, magnesium point was so wonderful and I swear it like the biggest smile on my face when I when I heard that like chimes were going off.

Speaker 2: 50:57

Your body will do anything to survive. That's all it cares about. It doesn't give a shit about muscle and that's why, when you stop wearing out, it disappears. Your body only cares about survival. It will divert nutrients to where they're needed most. And this is where, like I, want to make this easy for people. But it can become, you know, very nuanced and there are a lot of little things and everyone's so individual in their needs, biochemical individuality. We all require slightly different things. We all lead different lives, we all have different genetics, we all have different past medical histories, we all express ourselves, have different emotions, so our bodily needs are all very different.

Speaker 2: 51:35

Okay, but the body is so smart that it will divert nutrients to where they need to go the electrolytes and calcium, magnesium. They are required in the blood for normal heart function, for nerve function. If the level in your blood drops down below, will your hormones send out signals to pull from their own body tissues. It will destroy your own body tissues just to keep your blood levels. Even so, you're never going to measure your blood and say, oh my God, my magnesium, my calcium is way low.

Speaker 2: 52:05

There are countless studies that prove that people can be in a state of osteoporosis and their blood level of calcium is absolutely normal because your body will keep pulling it from your bones to make sure that your blood stays. Even so, what's the point of measuring that? When it is regulated in the blood, it must stay. Even your body will do that till it's death. Till the day you die, it will pull and pull and pull from your own tissues just to make sure the blood level will stay. Even so, you're never going to get a measurement that says, oh yeah, it's way off. I mean, it just won't happen.

Speaker 1: 52:35

And if it does just like what Dr Carol and Dean said, you're basically twitching on a table.

Speaker 2: 52:42

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 52:43

Right. So it is pretty fascinating because I often wonder this Cam like okay, my head spins with questions all the time and that's why I have to turn everything off at night, because otherwise I won't sleep, because the questions will just keep going in my head. But I'm like so blood really is the transport for everywhere in the body.

Speaker 2: 53:15

Oh, my God, yes.

Speaker 1: 53:17

Right, so, and there's read my book already, I know right, because there's something called homeostasis and I don't think do you want to describe what that is to people, because I don't think people, unless you're in our community, they don't even know what homeostasis is.

Speaker 2: 53:33

Yeah, it's the point of regulation, of just staying normal, I suppose, or alive. Really, homeostasis is the point where things are balanced. Yes, Right.

Speaker 2: 53:44

So you never want things to be too high, you never want things to be too low. So homeostasis, things are just in balance. Things are functioning sort of as they should. Things are just normal. That's how I would describe it. I wouldn't say it's optimal to say homeostasis is living in a balanced state, or your blood is in a balanced state and your blood, yes, like you said, will always, always regulate homeostasis, so it will keep it in a very fine balance.

Speaker 1: 54:09

You're going to. Okay, this might be it's a little bit off topic, but I just had my cholesterol checked, okay, and I'm like you know, I even wonder what's the point of that, and I'll tell you why. Because you hear of so many people who will try, and you know I'm going to say MacGyver. Their cholesterol tests, like okay, I'm not going to eat any fat for, like you know, three days before, and I'm not. So I'm like what's the point? And then they say to do it fasting. And then I'm like, but, but you only fast pretty much unless you're in. You know, one of these big fasters. You're only fasting overnight. Like what's the point? Yeah, I know, Unless you're testing regularly, cameron, to see what is the trend. It's for me. I'm always looking for trends.

Speaker 2: 55:05

Yeah, but that's exactly. You should always be looking for trends. How would you track it other than that? I mean, how would you know if you're progressing? Otherwise, like FloodWork, is a snapshot, a polar picture of right now, what have I done recently, and it can change within an hour. It can change tomorrow, it can change all the time and even if, like for calcium magnesium, like we're saying, it will never change, but your body certainly does. Your cellular status of these nutrients will change. And I don't want to forget what you asked about earlier. Are there any nutrients that I would trust in blood or cancer? For me? No, for me, no, I'll give you one.

Speaker 1: 55:42

What about vitamin D Cam?

Speaker 2: 55:45

I'm glad you asked. I'll give you the general and then I'll say about vitamin D In general. Like I was mentioning earlier, your body has this inherent wisdom about it. It will take nutrients from where they're less needed and put them to where they're more crucially important. Of course, in times of inadequacy and we're all inadequate If you're not taking the optimal amount, which could be different for every person, your body will say well, guess what? I don't need it here, I'll put it into my heart, or I'll put it into my lungs or a critical process that I need to survive. So what happens in blood testing is you can actually be in a state of deficiency. Your cells will break down and what they do is they break down and release what vitamins they have into the blood so they can be taken to where they're needed. So they can actually vitamins can be high in your blood because you're deficient, because your cells are breaking down to release their vitamins to go elsewhere in the body.

Speaker 1: 56:42

Okay, can you repeat that again, like in a different way, just to make sure that everyone gets that For sure.

Speaker 2: 56:50

Okay, let me try it.

Speaker 1: 56:53

I want a different way, because that's a very important point that you just made. Yeah, because I've heard this exact same thing.

Speaker 2: 57:03

Well, it happens? It happens that your body will say, oh my God, and this is okay. I'll try to say it this way we all have different symptoms that we usually live with like, oh my God, I wish I didn't have dry skin, whereas your brother says, well, I wish I didn't have this problem. You're biochemically a little bit different and that's where vitamin deficiencies or inadequacies again, whatever you want to call them that's where they attack. They will manifest symptoms where you are biochemically weakest. That means that part of your body is seen as not as important as another part. And let's just take like your hair, for example. Some people, well, when they're low on a certain vitamin, their hair gets really dry or their hair starts to fall out, because your body doesn't give a shit about your hair looking shiny and beautiful.

Speaker 1: 57:52

It's like last case. Who cares? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:57

It cares that there's enough vitamins in your cerebral spinal fluid to make sure that your brain is being nursed. That's much more important and we would agree, of course. It's more important. I'd rather be bald than my brain melts away and my brain can't function. This is what happens with people with dementia. They all have low B12 in their cerebral spinal fluid, but it looks normal in their blood. So, to go back to explaining in a different way, it will take vitamins for where they're not as crucially important to survival and it will break down the cells in that area. It'll break down your hair cells and say give me those vitamins, I'm going to put them in my brain. So it will break down those cells, release the vitamins into the blood. Now you go into a blood test.

Speaker 1: 58:39

Oh, it's still fine, it's all good.

Speaker 2: 58:42

I know it's because they're being transported to another crucial area and this has been seen time and time again and that's a perfect example is patients with dementia. If they test their cerebral spinal fluid, their B12, their other B complex vitamins are always low. I'm not saying the deficiency causes dementia, but it's always low. But when they test their blood it's normal, Because breaking down in other areas and being transported to the cerebral spinal fluid is needed there.

Speaker 1: 59:12

Yeah. So I guess a really good way of just saying it is the body's always prioritizing. It's like alarm bells are going off Ding ding, ding, ding ding. We need you here, so let's push that over to this area.

Speaker 2: 59:26

And, like you said, the blood is the highway.

Speaker 1: 59:29

It's where the delivery is.

Speaker 2: 59:30

It's delivering these nutrients to other areas. Now, before I forget, I'll say the vitamin D. I'm really glad you asked this, because vitamin D is all over the place and this is part of my gripe, or my push, or what I really believe. Why should we? I'll get to your question. But like, why is it that we should test vitamin D? Like, why is it? Why is that more important than potassium or vitamin K or vitamin AY? These things are like trendy for some reason. Like magnesium and vitamin D. You hear it all the time. Well, why is it any more likely that I need those two than I need something else? Well, according to the evidence, it's not. It's not more likely.

Speaker 2: 1:00:08

But when they test for vitamin D, they test for 25 hydroxy vitamin D. This is the vitamin D that's available in your blood. Now, that's not the active form. That's inactive, it's unusable and it's outside of your cells. Your body needs one 25 dihydroxy vitamin D. Now, the names don't matter, except there's someone listening to this podcast that loves this kind of geek out on this stuff. 25 hydroxy vitamin D is unusable, it's inactive, it's outside of your cells. One 25 dihydroxy is active, it's usable and it's inside your cells where the functions take place. So they're measuring what's in your blood. They're measuring a vitamin D that's inactive and unusable by the body. It has to go to your liver, it has to go to your kidneys.

Speaker 2: 1:00:57

It has to be converted right, and then it's used by the cells. So, do you have a perfectly functioning kidneys? Do you have a perfectly functioning liver?

Speaker 1: 1:01:05

Why, yes, I do? No, I'm just kidding, Maybe you do. I'm just kidding, I do not.

Speaker 2: 1:01:10

But there are people who sure they do. I'm not going to be this person who says no one has a perfect liver Although some would argue that Maybe there are some people that do, but I'm talking about a general population of people who take this information. Oh my God, I have to go get a vitamin D test. Those are, unfortunately, the people who don't have a perfectly functioning liver or set of kidneys. They only have one kidney and they're not converting it perfectly. So we're testing nutrients before they're in their active form and we're testing it outside of the cells. What matters is the cellular status of your vitamins and blood testing measures. What's outside of your cells?

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

So then, how do we know? Because here's the thing. Okay, you were saying so, listen, I'm learning something new about vitamin D. It goes deep, sandy, it does.

Speaker 2: 1:02:01

I've been studying this for years. It's crazy. I mean, this stuff was surprising to me. I didn't invent this stuff. I didn't want this to be reality. I just kept digging deeper and deeper. Like I said, I went to iGen, then I did a post-grad, then I went to Oregon State and I was like, oh my God, this is insane.

Speaker 1: 1:02:18

So, okay, I'm one of these people that is notoriously low in vitamin D. I carry two genetic snips, so single nucleotide polymorphisms. For those of you who don't know, they're just genes that just kind of make it more difficult for me to really absorb vitamin D from natural sources like going out in the sun. So how am I supposed to know?

Speaker 2: 1:02:52

So what I believe and what I think is the best way, and I mean, I've used this with thousands of people, sandy, and this isn't. Let me start by saying this I didn't invent this idea. I created a better method. So your body will always show symptoms of inadequacy. It will always show symptoms, and this could be a really, really long discussion. You can tell by the symptoms. Now people will say, well, I don't believe that, because that's how the nutrition and vitamin industry already works. By dry skin, what should I take? But they're asking for one symptom. Symptoms can overlap. Symptoms can be from various different causes. You can have a symptom because you have an allergy and intolerance. It could be a vitamin deficiency, or it could be a drug, or hormones.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

Hormones. It could be various reasons. So you have to be very careful. But you have to think biologically.

Speaker 2: 1:03:48

If, like I said, your cells are breaking down to take nutrients and put them in a more critical place, if those processes aren't happening because we know, vitamins again pair with enzymes to complete a function or process within our body If that function or process is impaired, what's going to happen? If those cells aren't full with vitamins and that function cannot happen? You're going to have a symptom. Something is going to go wrong. There's a break in the chain. There will be a health symptom. Now, some of them are extremely vague, some of them are emotional, some of them are physical, some of them again are so vague that you wouldn't notice them or you've been taught to just assume that they're normal. And if you again have one or two symptoms, it's very difficult to rule out another reason for that symptom. So what I believe is you can take a systematic array of symptoms. I take all of the clinical literature, the research, the studies that go back years and years and years, because we have done these studies what we found is when we deplete a single nutrient so we take humans, we have a group of humans, we deplete a single nutrient, we give them zero. So we're completely exhausting all of this supply and we're giving them none. So we know that they're going to let's say it's vitamin C they're going to get scurvy. We know that's going to happen. What's interesting is between day five and day 10, everyone had biochemical disruptions, which means some of the processes that we need this vitamin to fulfill, this bodily process. Now it's not happening, so they get some symptoms. Now, at day 200, everyone was depleted and they had, for instance, with B1, they had berry berry For vitamin C. It was scurvy. That took 200 days.

Speaker 2: 1:05:45

What's most interesting is what happens in the 190 days in between the initial onset of cellular disruption because we're not getting enough, and now complete another clinical deficiency that we can see, that we know you're on your deathbed. In those 190 days, every single person had symptoms, to varying degrees and different symptoms. So for me, maybe the first thing that happened is my hair started falling out. For you, maybe you started getting nervous or getting ticks. Well, shit, that's difficult because everyone develops them in different ways, at different times and to different severities. But by the end, the 190 days as days pass, when they got to day 200, every single person had all of the same symptoms to the same severity level. So we know that because of our again biochemical individuality, like we spoke about earlier, for some people it says, well, your hair's not important, I'll pull it from there, your skin's not important, I'll pull it from there. So our symptoms can arise at different times, but by the end we all experience the same symptoms. That's all a condition or illness is is a set of symptoms that we cluster together. That's what any kind of illness is right. So I know this is a little long and this is roundabout, but what we have to do to create a test that is reliable, so we have to use reliable symptoms. So what I do is use only symptoms that have been recorded or documented or observed in clinical study, clinical practice or research.

Speaker 2: 1:07:18

Okay, now to take it a step further, kind of as a fail-safe, the symptom also must be related to an impairment of function of that vitamin. So let's say we, you know, give people zero vitamin C and in 200 days they have all these symptoms and all of them have the same, like 12 symptoms. But then someone else has diarrhea. Well, if I, that just could be related to something else. It's not an impairment of a vitamin C function. So that can't be included. So it kind of acts as a fail-safe. So that ensures that the symptoms are a reliable indicator of you know vitamin status Right Now.

Speaker 2: 1:08:00

To make sure that the test is consistent, that means I can take it. I can take it two months later, I can take it a year later and it will give me consistent feedback. It will tell me if my level is going up or down or staying the same. It must be consistent with me because again my needs change. It also must be consistent amongst different populations and subpopulations of people who again express symptoms at different times. That means tests must use at least 10 symptoms that again are documented and related to the impairment of function. And they must use 10 symptoms so it accounts for different biochemical individuality.

Speaker 1: 1:08:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:08:42

Again to ensure that it's actually reliable, a person must experience at least three of the symptoms, so you must have at least 30% of the 10 or more. 10 is the minimum. 10 or more symptoms. You must experience 30% of them for me and the test to say yes, you would benefit from taking this vitamin. Because if you just have one or two symptoms, I can't rule out that those symptoms were again brought out by an allergy and intolerance, hormonal dysfunction, a drug that you're taking a different nutrient in that actually.

Speaker 2: 1:09:16

So again, there's different fail states that we use to make sure that you're expressing the symptoms. So I can feel three symptoms. You can feel three different symptoms, but we both get the same results, and that's what's important in using a test like this.

Speaker 1: 1:09:29

Yeah, because, for example, if you're someone like myself who has potential for thyroid disruption, it's not because I have one, it's because my medications sometimes they absorb. I can also take things that can interact with the absorption of my medications. So I have no thyroid, but hair loss and dry, brittle hair can also be a thyroid symptom. Absolutely, so you do, but it can also be related to biotin deficiency.

Speaker 2: 1:10:08

Yeah, exactly Another vitamin, and that's why you have to experience at least 30% of the symptoms.

Speaker 2: 1:10:12

I get what you're saying and you can say that at that point it is definitely benefit, because I mean, and think about it just logically. Just logically, let's say again, there's 10 proven symptoms of a vitamin deficiency. Well, if I have one symptom or if I have 10, who's more likely to need it? Yeah, the person that's called 10 symptoms. So the less symptoms you have, the less that we can accurately and reliably say yeah, it's from this. So I say the cutoff must be at least 30% and in clinical studies, this is what tends to be true.

Speaker 2: 1:10:41

Once you have at least three of them out of 10, or four of them out of 12 or whatever it is. Yeah, okay, it looks like you need this. And just to kind of come back to it. So it's easy for people to understand, because there's a lot of information and this is new for people. Totally To educate them, I'll use vitamin C as a perfect example. We can do clinical studies and the symptoms are all over the place. I'm going back to like the 1700s, when they were finding this in sailors and they started giving them lines. That's why the contemporary sailors lilies?

Speaker 2: 1:11:16

right, these symptoms were so all over the place that it's documented. We actually have the documents from the generals in the army that this disease is like nothing we've ever seen before. The symptoms take on different diseases and look different among every other person. They couldn't document it till the end stage where, again, everyone had the same symptoms.

Speaker 2: 1:11:35

So what we do for vitamin C? We know that vitamin C is required for collagen production. If you're not taking enough vitamin C, your collagen production will be impaired, right, because you're not getting enough to synthesize the collagen. Well, now that we know that that's a function of vitamin C. And then we look at the symptoms well, where's collagen located? In your joints, in your teeth, in your gums? Well, and in your tissues it's the most extensive tissue system in the body collagen. Well, what happens when vitamin C is low and collagen's impaired? We get loose teeth, we get bleeding gums, we get swollen joints, we get blood vessels that burst under the skin. Well then, that makes sense. So those symptoms that have been documented, yes, those are functions of vitamin C that now aren't happening. So that makes total sense. If collagen's in your gums, now collagen's impaired and now my gums are bleeding, well, that makes total sense. So, again, it has to fit those criteria in order to be used.

Speaker 1: 1:12:36

So this is all okay. I have to ask you a couple more questions because we're over an hour now, but I mean I could talk to you forever. Oh yeah, do you believe in multivitamins?

Speaker 2: 1:12:52

I do, I do.

Speaker 1: 1:12:53

You do See, I was gonna say I don't, I don't.

Speaker 2: 1:13:00

I would rather I mean you took my test right. Like my test breaks down what you need right. It gives you a better idea. It's better than guessing. Now it's gonna be my company headlight too. It's like it's better than guessing.

Speaker 1: 1:13:12

Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:16

Well, how else would you know? I'll get back to the multivitamins, but I swear, sandy, this is the greatest single question. I ask people how, when you go out to the store or you go online, how do you decide which vitamins you buy? You know the number one answer I get what A blood work. I say, give me your blood work. Oh no, no, I've never done it.

Speaker 1: 1:13:36

No, they don't test for it. Doctors don't test for it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:40

And people don't. It's like really, really, you go out and do a blood test when you wanna go vitamin shopping. No, you don't.

Speaker 1: 1:13:46

No, you don't.

Speaker 2: 1:13:47

People just think that's the answer, but I say no, no, no, no, Not what you think you should do. What do you actually do to decide what you buy? When you go out and buy magnesium or vitamin D, why did you pick those? Why do you think that you're lacking those two and not something else? They don't have an answer.

Speaker 1: 1:14:04

Or they just saw it from you know. Yeah, I saw it online. I thought it was good for this, yeah. Or that most are deficient. That's what I hear a lot. Most people are deficient.

Speaker 2: 1:14:14

And that's true.

Speaker 1: 1:14:15

It is.

Speaker 2: 1:14:16

Again it goes back like, hey, at least you're buying something, but wouldn't you rather buy exactly what you need? Well, this test tells you what you need. But yeah, so I test for individual nutrients because I agree with you. I believe filling in precise nutrient gaps for you is what's gonna be the best solution. Why I said I believe in multivitamins is there are some people who won't do this.

Speaker 2: 1:14:40

There are some people who are so nutrient deficient and I use this analogy and I am almost getting deja vu, Like I might have used this analogy with you before. It's like you have an army coming at you Again. All these symptoms, all these conditions, environmental thoughts, all these things. I wanna use a sniper rifle and you know, pick each vitamin. Or do I just want a machine gun, Like when all this stuff's coming at me? So the multivitamins acts as a machine gun. It just takes care of everything for you. So people that I see that have never taken a vitamin in their life, who eat fast food, junk food, processed food forever, I say get a freaking multivitamin rather than buying every individual nutrient. So I believe in them in that regard. But when I'm consulting people, like in practice and clinic, I usually very rarely recommend it.

Speaker 1: 1:15:27

Yeah, okay, so I do. In two instances I believe in a multivitamin. I'll tell you actually three. One would be aligned with what you're saying Somebody who doesn't wanna take anything and will take one supplement per day, and that's in that case, yes. Number two, university students, cause I've got two and I know what it's like and I know what their habits are. And number three, elderly people, because it can get very complex for them to get a number of different nutrients or supplements into their body. But those are my top three where I would recommend it.

Speaker 1: 1:16:23

But for the most part I align with you that we should target our supplements and typically the way that I do it is like you said. There's symptoms, but I don't have a comprehensive system like you do, but there's symptoms genetics, diet and lifestyle where you live, exposure to chemicals, if you cut out certain food groups, which I don't believe in. I always believe in having a balanced diet, unless you cannot eat something for whatever reason. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, so let's wrap this up. Let's wrap this up. Give me one statement that would be the longterm consequence of no supplementation at all.

Speaker 2: 1:17:26

Yeah, well, we see it.

Speaker 2: 1:17:28

We see it in people and I'll say it like this not only is, if you don't wanna take supplements and you're relying on your diet and you're including any food that's nutrient poor, you will actually rob your body of vitamins and people can put themselves into a vitamin debt.

Speaker 2: 1:17:47

So the longterm consequence that I've talked about and not a lot of people know about some people don't even believe is you will develop an acquired vitamin dependency. This means if you've been insufficient for an extended period of time years, decades even for some people but you're eating junk food and now your body needs to use what vitamins it has stored in itself it's using them just to digest this food You're actually putting yourself in a vitamin debt because you're taking in very little and your body's expending it. You're putting yourself in this vitamin debt. You'll acquire a vitamin dependence. That means you're now gonna require more of this particular vitamin for the rest of your life, like indefinitely, to try to make up this vitamin debt. So you're gonna be indebted to vitamins, which means you're gonna need more and more and more to fulfill the role. So you'll almost be playing a game of catch-up that you're just never gonna win.

Speaker 1: 1:18:40

Wow, that's powerful. And the one thing I am gonna say, too, for anybody who cause there's a lot of people who listen, who are bio-hackers or whatever I'm always like listen, get your shit straight first. Like get the balance in the vitamins and minerals right first before you start going and experimenting with NAD. And right, do you agree?

Speaker 2: 1:19:07

with that. Oh my God, yeah, I wasn't even thinking about that. I love that you brought that up and I know we're gonna wrap this up, but people are on this oh well, how can I do this longevity? Can I start injecting hormones Like, get your vitamins right, get what your body requires, get that right first, and then start thinking about these longevity? It's like the car that's breaking down and you never fill up the oil, you never fill up the coolant. But can I put a turbocharger in the car yes.

Speaker 2: 1:19:34

Dude, just take care of the normal stuff that your body requires, the raw materials it requires to function properly. Once that's optimal, you know how good you're gonna feel, and then if you wanna do some other things, then what do you mean? Go for it, sure.

Speaker 1: 1:19:47

Yeah, I love it. Okay, where can we find you, cameron, and tell us a little more about your book? When is it coming out? And I won't use the swear word again, it's called how the F, how the F. I hate that because I feel it's inauthentic. But I understand. You can't put fuck on the cover.

Speaker 2: 1:20:07

Oh yeah, well, when I was working with my editor, we almost thought that this will be a series. I think you're talking about that, dr James D. It's like the, something fixed. It was like how the F, and I'll have like a book how the F, yes, yeah, so kind of like a series. The book should be coming out early next year. You know how this goes. There's always delays and reedits and things like that, but early next year. They can find me mostly on Instagram is Cameron Cogsall, but I wanted to say this too Myvitaminscorecom anyone can do the test. I created a coupon code, sandyk. Anyone who wants to. It will get 25% off. So they can go ahead. Myvitaminscorecom promo code SandyK and they'll give them 25% off. But they wanna interact with me, cameron Cogsall, on Instagram. I reply to everybody. People write me DMs, it doesn't matter. I reply to every single person so they can find me there.

Speaker 1: 1:20:58

That's awesome. Thank you so much, Cam. I loved our conversation, as always, so great. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit and always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going and bringing these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new exciting conversations to help you live your best life.