From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: Vitamin Supplements
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,misc.fitness.weights,misc.health.alternative,
	misc.fitness.misc,sci.bio.food-science

In <33C40DC0.2544@ptc.com> Christine Sanderson <tmpcsanderson@ptc.com>
writes:
>
>>   Water soluable vitamins are not just stored in the blood plasma, but in
>> all kinds of odd places in tissues. Levels in plasma don't reflect body
>> stores if a large dose is given. On the contrary, you can temporarily
>> have a very high level in plasma, and still have body stores down,
>> because there's a limit to how fast the body can store the vitamin.
>> During that time, your body wastes vitamin that it actually needs. B12
>> is an extreme example: you might have a 2000 mcg storage pool, but if
>> you have a depleted pool, you'll still save only 200 mcg out of a 1000
>> shot. The rest will go out in the urine, but this is no index that you
>> don't need more shots. It only means that mother nature doesn't know
>> about vitamin shots or pills, and didn't give you the kidney resorbtion
>> equipment to deal with big doses. The same kind of thing happens to
>> some extent with all water soluable vitamins. Finding them in the urine
>> after a megadose means absolutely nothing about whether or not they are
>> increasing body pools. To know they aren't, you really have to do
>> careful balance studies, or else (cheaper) give the vitamin for a
>> couple of weeks to be sure that the body has been given the chance to
>> be "topped off."
>>
>>                                           Steve Harris, M.D.
>
>
>
>
>Dr. Harris,
>
>Let me make sure I understand you,  Are you saying that say we needed
>1000mg of "reserve" of vitiamin X in the body, and we currently have
>200, that we would need to take 1000mg for 5 days before the body had
>compleatly filled its reserve?
>
>Christine




Yep.  In the case of B-12, it takes 6 to 10 shots over that many weeks
to put the reserve back.   Then you go to maintainance at one shot a
month.

Other vitamins (and minerals!) are similar, though the schedules are
not so well worked out.  In scurvy experiments, for instance, it takes
weeks or re-supplementation for the body pool to top out.  At high
doses of re-supplementation, people spill vitamin C in the urine all
that time.  That doesn't mean they aren't still storing it.

BTW, if you eat NO vitamin C, it still takes at least a month (usually
more) for scurvy to show up.  Water soluable vitamins are stored better
than we usually give them credit for.  This is one reason why slow
release preparations and multiple daily doses of these vitamins are so
silly.  Your body does better than that.

                                         Steve Harris, M.D.

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: Vitamin Supplements
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,misc.fitness.weights,misc.health.alternative,
	misc.fitness.misc,sci.bio.food-science

In <eiGk+HAsZxwzEwFF@upthorpe.demon.co.uk> Oz <Oz@upthorpe.demon.co.uk>
writes:
s.

>In general the body doesn't have a habit of excreting potentially useful
>products unless they have risen to toxic levels.


   That's completely untrue, and ignores the way the kidney functions.
The body excretes EVERYTHING water soluable into the filtrate that will
become the urine, and then resorbs back out stuff it wants.
Unfortunately, the resorption equipment maxes out at certain levels,
not because the body doesn't need the stuff, but because it never
expects to see such high levels at any one momment.  Max vitamin
retension takes multiple doses over many days.

                                         Steve Harris, M.D.

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: Vitamin Supplements
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,misc.fitness.weights,misc.health.alternative,
	misc.fitness.misc,sci.bio.food-science

In <33C46E63.5049@netcom.ca> Tom Matthews <tmatth@netcom.ca> writes:
>
>Steven B. Harris wrote:
>
>> BTW, if you eat NO vitamin C, it still takes at least a month (usually
>> more) for scurvy to show up. Water soluable vitamins are stored better
>> than we usually give them credit for. This is one reason why slow
>> release preparations and multiple daily doses of these vitamins are so
>> silly. Your body does better than that.
>
>I understand what you are trying to say, but I wonder if it is totally
>consistent with your previous explanation of the mechanism of maximum
>and saturable uptake (very excellent, BTW).
>Wouldn't multiple or time releases preparations keep some nutrients
>constantly available while the saturated uptake mechanisms had time to
>get recycled (surely that is happening constantly)? Thus, leading to
>highest possible daily uptake.
>
>--Tom
>Tom Matthews



  This might be true during the repletion phase of a bad deficiency,
but not otherwise.  And you pay for doing it more often, for if every
meal you eat has really high doses of vitamins in it, and your gut has
really high doses of all vitamins in it ALL the time, you are surely
going to downregulate gut vitamin receptors eventually (making your
rather dependent on supplements, and causing you to get less out of
what you do take).  And if you keep blood levels of every water soluble
vitamin super high ALL the time, you're going to do the same to cell
receptors too, I suspect (though can't prove this last).

   Seems to me that (unless you're repleting a terrible deficiency, as
you point out, or you're very ill or under stress, such as a severe
injury or surgery) the best "maintainance stratagy" for water solubles
might be to saturate the plasma once briefly, every so often, and offer
the body some time in between to equilibrate and adjust levels to where
it likes them.  A once daily schedule for this seems most convenient in
terms of compliance and memory, but for all I know, it might be
healthier to do this even less often.  Twice a week?   Just on
weekends?  This is an unexplored area in nutrition, for sure.

                                           Steve