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I am specifically NOT looking for advice or strategies. I’m looking for a sociobiological theory of supplements. Humans adapted over millennia to a variety of nutritional environments. So why ‘supplement’ at all? The only wild supplement seeking I can think of is salt-seeking.
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Does anybody have a good theory of health supplements? One that argues for whether you should take 0, 5, 10, or 150 (SV millionaire level) as a function of life conditions and budget? Seems to be a random market
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FWIW I've heard that the body is designed to efficiently expel reasonable surpluses of crap but to use everything up to that point. I take a couple multivitamins a day and based on what I expel and how I feel I can definitely tell when I've been low vs when I've been "full".
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Why the body is designed to accommodate that level instead of lower, I don't know. Certainly our modern life circumstances, as we eat pre-cooked compressed foods in dark rooms, are quite a bit different from the circumstances of our progenitors.
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Can't comment on other nutrients but we probably only recently spent loads of time heavily clothed and sheltered from the sun. This is especially risky for darker-skinned people where vitamin d deficiency is concerned.
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There isn't one type of supplementing. There are two broad categories; those whose bodies require them to perform a baseline function and those chasing an imagined/real optimum. Must distinguish before hypothesize-ing.
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Certain supplements like calcium, magnesium, zinc, etc. aren't as readily available in food anymore because of soil-leaching, so we have to take them in supplement form instead. Also, I've read that a higher VO2 Max determines whether supplements will work for you
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