back
10 comments
The body makes its own creatine.

How do we know that's not enough and needs to be supplemented?

There are several substances that are made in the human body, but apparently in lower quantities than necessary.

These include at least choline, creatine and taurine, and also vitamin K2 (which is made in humans by conversion from vitamin K1, which is abundant in vegetables, but with a low efficiency). Vitamin A is also made with a low efficiency from carotene, so a vegan who does not supplement it needs to eat something like a big carrot every day.

It is not known with certainty which are the optimum daily intakes for such substances. All that is known for sure is that their concentration in the blood of vegans (who do not take supplements) is lower than in the blood of non-vegans and that there are studies like this, which suggest that the higher amounts are beneficial.

Because I eat mostly vegan food, I supplement it with these substances. As long as the amount of supplements is small (especially for choline, where both too low and too high daily intakes are known to be harmful), in the worst case they are worthless, but in the best case they improve your health.

Do you eat the same amount of pasture raised red meat as your ancestors did 5000 years ago?
No, because I want to live _much_ longer and already live longer than the average human from that era.

That's like suggesting not to use hygiene products to avoid allergies, but die younger. (We have such an example at the finnish-russian border: the russian side of locals uses less chemicals for their hygiene and has fewer allergies, the finnish side lives longer.)

Well, yeah, the majority of people back then died around the age of 30 because they were out hunting all day and got infections and died from lack of medical care. The average human from that era did not die from red meat consumption. Red meat is the most nutrient dense food you can eat and studies saying otherwise or saying that they increase your body acidity or lead to worse outcomes have been consistently disproven.
My understanding of the average age of a human being 30s-40s is that the average was skewed downwards heavily due to high infant/child mortality rates
AFAIK at birth the average life expectancy was even slightly lower (30-35). At 15y it was about an extra 30-40y.

Whatever the exact numbers: definitely skewed, like you said.

Not just mice this time:

> The findings, based on experiments in mice and human cells [...]

"May". So many "mays" when it comes to food and supplements ... Sigh.