Table of Contents
Evidence-based nutritional references
Obviously, you would like to know the nutritional information you receive is factual and correct.
You may actually read a reference or two from an article. You think; here’s the information and supporting references so it must be true. After all, these are evidence-based nutritional references.
This basic assumption was much truer in the past than it is today. Unfortunately, many articles in today’s peer-reviewed scientific journals are misleading, deceitful, or in some instances, of questionable truthfulness. One may use the favorite term pseudoscience.
Unfortunately, once an article such as this is published, many other authors will “cite” the article, which tends to give the untruthful article even more credibility. This is in spite of the fact that the original article was not truthful in the first place.
This is most obvious when researching published articles detracting Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM’s).
The point is this. If you would like to discredit something, there is more than a sufficient amount of “published” pseudoscience articles in “well respected” peer-reviewed journals available to do so.
How do we choose our articles for reference?
This was a major dilemma when I first started. It seemed I could find hundreds of published articles contradicting one another. Finally perplexed, I decided to choose reference articles based on three criteria that include:
- Articles from the past
- Articles from combined sciences
- Articles from peer-reviewed science journals around the world
These criteria help reduce my subjectivity and bias. Allow me to explain.
Articles from the past
Albeit numerous advancements (technological and research) have been achieved in the past 100 years, I peruse articles from the pre-1970 era. The primary reason is scientists in the past seem much more integrous.
They searched, unbiased, for the truth.
Today, you don’t know who is paying for the research intended to reach a “predetermined” conclusion. The hair analysis controversy is an excellent example. Sadly, you must always follow the money and the credibility of the controlling factions. Remember, we have become an extremely lucrative “treatment-based” society as opposed to a “cure-based” or “prevent-based” society as in the past.
Articles from combined sciences
Scientific “protectionism” affects nearly every science. For example, neuroscience disregards nutrition, cancer disregards nutrition, and so on. They simply refuse to share information between the sciences for a common goal of the good.
As such, when researching nutrition it is important to research articles (including articles of the past) from soil and plant sciences as well as many other sciences. After all, what applies to soil science and plant science ultimately applies to animal and human nutrition.
In this research, you must look for the common factors and fundamentals of applied nutrition. This is basis of nutrient interrelationships.
For example, soil science clearly revealed copper has an intimate relationship with zinc and iron. It also revealed, to grow healthy plants, the “ratios” between each of these minerals was extremely important to produce healthy plants and in turn, healthy animals and humans. Of course, the ratios do change depending on the species of plants but the “ratio” remains a fundamental of nutrition.
If you enjoy gardening or plants, you are very familiar with the NPK ratios and other nutrients required to grow a healthy plant. As you know, nutrients and ratios depend on the particular species.
As I research articles from different sciences (e.g., agriculture, neuroscience, cardiology, psychiatry/psychology, etc.), I always focus on the nutrients. What role does that particular nutrient(s) play? What happens if that nutrient is deficient or excessive? By using any nutrient as a key word, you can skim through many more articles in a short amount of time.
Articles from peer-reviewed science journals around the world
Nutritional science is continually conducted worldwide. In fact, it is surprising the countries involved in nutritional research that you wouldn’t think would be doing such research. These countries do not have corporations, institutions, or associations attempting to control the outcome of the science.
Keep in mind, most of these countries depend on nutrition for health – not the most expensive healthcare system in the world. To me, this fact alone tends to lend much more credibility to their research.
In all fairness, the majority of our scientists are creditable, trustworthy, and seek the truth in this complex science. The limited few (pseudoscientists) make it difficult to tell truth from falsehood.
So, why so many contradictions involving evidence-based nutritional references?
The primary flaw of evidence-based nutritional references, around the world, is actually quite simple.
Let me explain.
In all of the tens and hundreds of thousands of research articles I have read or perused, not one paper or article has revealed or documented a properly structured research trial or study. This is not just for nutrition but pharmaceutical as well due to drug/nutrient interactions.
There are three major components for animal and human nutritional studies that seem to completely excluded or recognized by the researchers that includes:
- Nutrient interrelationships
- Nutrient transporters
- Current biochemistry of the test subjects
Nutrient interrelationships clearly reveal that every nutrient has at least 15, 20, or more direct interrelationships with other nutrients and even more through indirect nutrient interrelationships. Many of these relationships serve as cofactor relationships (e.g., calcium requires vitamin D as a cofactor). Numerous other nutrients have direct synergistic/antagonistic and cofactor relationships with calcium.
Nutrient transporters (a five-year rabbit hole) are beyond complex. However, it requires a nutrient transporter to transport nutrients into the bloodstream and even more transporters to transport a nutrient into the cell! Remember, we live and die at the cell level. Here is a link to give you an idea of the complexity of nutrient transporters. https://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/biological-membranes-and-membrane-transport-processes/#slc
Current biochemistry documentation of each test subject is absolutely vital for the validity of the outcome of the research. As you see from the previous two, regardless of the nutrient you are researching, if the test subject does not have a sufficient level of all cofactors or transporters required by the nutrient, the result will be the nutrient was ineffective.
If the test subject has a sufficient level of the cofactors and transporters required by the test nutrient, the nutrient has a greater potential to be deemed effective due to the availability of the required cofactors and transporters.
In this properly structured research study, one would expect test subjects would be split in the results due to cofactor and transport deficiencies, however, the researchers are now able to compare the database that would reveal the cofactor and transport factors between the two groups to confirm the results.
Of course, if there is a deficiency of cofactors and/or transporters for the investigated nutrient, it simply will not work!
The bottom line is that numerous nutritional analyses (amino acids, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, microbiome, and stomach acid) must be performed to reveal the current state of nutrient cofactors and transporters to perform a well-designed and structured research study worthy of publication.
Knowing the current biochemistry may easily contribute to greater positive or negative outcomes and greatly reduce the contradictions. Remember your biochemistry (complete nutritional status) is unique to you – Biochemical Individuality!
Note: The stomach acid is unequivocally vital for digestion of all nutrients consumed orally.
Conclusion
In the end, we try to combine these criteria for our evidence-based nutritional references. As you may notice, we do use many “recent” articles in our references because people always want the “latest” information. Keep in mind, even though these articles may be more recent, they do have commonalities or fundamentals with articles of the past.
Like you, we seek the truth and we do our best to provide articles that reflect the truth.
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