Symptoms Your Body Is Lacking VITAL Nutrients

Hello, health champions. Today, I'm going to talk about some of the top signs, symptoms, and reasons you may be lacking vital nutrients. And in addition to listing the signs and symptoms, we're going to go through the categories of body function that would be affected. And we're also going to do a deep dive on some of the reasons that we may be deficient in nutrients. So, number one is related to energy production. So, if you have fatigue and low energy, that could be that you'll low in iron, because iron is necessary for the body to assemble hemoglobin, which is the oxygen carrying protein in the body. But then we also need B12, as well as some other B vitamins, to assemble, to finish up and mature red blood cells. And of course, the red blood cells contain the hemoglobin that carried the oxygen. So, the purpose of breathing and taking in air is to take oxygen in. So, we absorb it through the lungs, and then it gets carried by the hemoglobin in the red blood cells. And the purpose is to take it to the tissues to deliver that oxygen. But then once the cells get the oxygen, now we also need magnesium and an enzyme called CoQ10 to finish making energy, to utilize that oxygen and make the final version of energy called ATP or a dynasine triphosphate. So, this is the only form of energy the body can actually use. So, everything that you eat goes through this process to ultimately become ATP, so your cells can use it. Another sign or symptom could be if you have weakness and decreased coordination. This also relates to energy production, and we need vitamin B1, B12, vitamin E, magnesium, and potassium for muscles and nerve signals to work properly. So, there's another form of energy metabolism in the nerve cells and in the muscles. And for nerve signaling, we need these nutrients, and then we need sodium, magnesium, and potassium for muscle contractions. Category number two is structural tissues, so if you have hair loss or thinning hair, that could be that you're low in vitamin B7, iron, vitamin D, essential fatty acids, and also essential amino acids, because all of these go into structural components of hair. So, for some people, hair loss could be that they're missing these nutrients, and for most people who are men who are losing hair, that's an hereditary pattern. And in my case, of course, I was blessed with a perfect head that didn't need covering with hair. Structural tissue could also affect brittle or ridged nails, and here it would be very similar, B7, iron, and then calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C. And it could also affect wound healing, so if you have poor wound healing, it could be that you're low in vitamin A, C, E, and also in essential amino acids. And of course, we eat protein, we break them down into amino acids that we can reassemble them into the specific proteins and tissues that our body is required. And when it comes to structural tissue, zinc is a requirement for everyone of these functions. Another category is skin and mucosa. And here we're going to break it up on two slides because there's so much we could have dry skin or eczema. If we are low in essential fatty acids, the omega-3s, if we're low in zinc, vitamin A, D, and E. Because all these nutrients help maintain a skin barrier, and that barrier in turn helps to retain moisture, so it promotes hydration to have this healthy skin barrier. And these nutrients also help control inflammation. So if you don't have enough, you could have excess inflammation resulting in various skin conditions. If you have cracks at the corner of your mouth, that could be that you're low in vitamin B2, B3, B6, iron, and zinc. And if you're low in those nutrients, you may not be able to repair that mucosal tissue properly. And the cracks could also be a function of a reduced immune system. So part three of skin and mucosa could involve dandruff or flaky scalp. And here it might be that you're low in B6, zinc, selenium, and essential fatty acids. So those essential fatty acids show up everywhere in relation to skin and membranes. And if you're low in those nutrients, that could affect your sebum production. And sebum is a waxy substance on your skin made from your hair follicles. And that helps protect against pathogens, but also helps has some moisture properties for the skin. And if you don't have enough of that, that could also start affecting your inflammation. Number four could be reduced immune function. So if you find that you have frequent infections like everything that comes around, you get it, then that could be that you're low in vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, iron, and or essential amino acids. Because all of those are necessary for your white blood cells to function. That's your cell-based immunity. Also, they're necessary for immune signaling as well as barrier integrity. So barriers are super important. You have your skin, you have your gut-associated lymph tissue inside your gut. You have the lining of your lungs. And that first barrier is to keep stuff out. Number five has to do with bones and muscles. And if you have bone pain and/or fractures, that could be that you're low in vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and essential amino acids. Of course, all of those are the components of bone matrix. And a lot of people they know about vitamin D and calcium, but few people think about the fact that bone is mostly protein. It's mineralized protein. And you could also suffer from muscle cramps if you're low in any of the major four electrolytes, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, as well as vitamin D, which of course is actually a hormone, but it's super important. And a lot of people are super low in that. And all of these are necessary for the proper contraction and relaxation of muscle. Number six, it could also affect your nervous system. So if you have something like numbness and tingling, especially if it's hands and feet, then it could be that you're low in B vitamins, B1, B6, B12, vitamin E, magnesium, and cholesterol. Because all these nutrients are involved in something called myelination and signal transmission. So you have your nerve cells to transmit electrical signals. But then the myelin is a waxy covering around that nerve fiber that improves the conductivity. So in order for us to send these signals properly and securely and quickly, we need this myelination to be complete. And without enough cholesterol and without these nutrients, then there may be some compromise to that. And we could have the numbness and tingling, the neuropathy as a result. But before we jump to conclusions on these specific nutrients, we want to remember in this case that there's a differential diagnosis, meaning we need to keep other causes in mind. And the most common cause of neuropathy is insulin resistance, where high blood sugar level causes a swelling of the tissues around that nerve. So in your nervous system, there's a central nervous system and a peripheral nervous system. So this was an example of peripheral nerve problems. But we could also have central nervous system problems. And depression and mood swings, mood changes could happen. And here the nutrients we're looking for are vitamin D, B6, B9, magnesium, zinc, and of course, essential fatty acids. So there's many things that need to work. And these nutrients are critical for all of the following. So neurotransmitter production, these little signaling molecules between the nerve cells, the cell membrane integrity, that's where we need the essential fatty acids. So when all of this is working, now we have proper nerve signaling and proper mood regulation. And if we don't have these nutrients, then any of these things can happen. So a lot of you are probably thinking by now that, oh my god, I have all of that. I'm deficient in nutrients. And I don't want you to go crazy and start worrying. But at the same time, I want you to be aware that most problems people have today are probably related to nutrient deficiencies. And there are some big reasons I want to get to know you. into and I want to talk about what I call the triple whammy of nutrient deficiencies. And the first of the triple whammy is called processed foods that depending on where you look and whose numbers you use anywhere from 58 to 73% of the calories consumed are from ultra processed foods. And if anything happened when I did a few Google searches related to ultra processed foods, the number one thing, the number one problem that came up was they said it caused weight gain. And that is true. Eating ultra processed foods will cause weight gain. But my question is, is weight gain really the problem? Is that really what we're going to focus on? Is that the biggest issue here? And I would rather ask if it causes weight gain, then why does it do that? What's the mechanism by which it causes weight gain? So it turns out there's actually two causes, insulin resistance and nutrient depletion that we both get from processed foods. So if you eat processed foods, which is high in sugar and starch, now you're going to raise blood sugar a lot, which means that you have to produce a lot of insulin on a regular basis. And that makes you insulin resistance. And if you become insulin resistant, you have chronically high levels of insulin. And insulin is a storage hormone. That means you eat something, you raise the blood sugar, the insulin brings it back down and then it stores the excess. So you become really good at storing the excess at the cost of being really bad at retrieving that stored energy. And if you can't retrieve it, then you get hungrier and you're going to have a tendency to overeat. But nutrient depletion will also cause weight gain. And here's how that works. Your body is pretty smart in knowing what it wants from food. So when you go to eat something, the body knows that it's supposed to get fuel, it's supposed to get replacement parts and it's supposed to get little nutrients, little catalysts called vitamins and minerals so that you can process this fuel and these building blocks. And if you eat whole food, then you get both of these. If you get processed foods, now you get all the fuel, but you only get a portion of the building blocks and the catalysts, the vitamins and minerals. So if you eat processed foods, now you get full for a very short time. But the body soon realizes that hey, I only got half the package. You need to eat more so that I can get the building blocks and the vitamins and the minerals also. And then there's part two of the triple whammy and that's called soil depletion. And here's the way that works. If you think about an acre of forests somewhere that has been untouched for thousands of years. Now every tree growing up, every plant growing up, when it dies, it decays and it goes back to the soil. All the nutrients, all the minerals, everything that was there, it's still on that acre of land. All the animals that live there, all the bacteria that live there, they consume certain things and they return it to the soil. But with modern farming, it doesn't work like that. So first of all, we have something called monocropping. That means that we don't grow a thousand different things. We usually grow one thing on that field. And next year we grow the same thing. There are large areas of the country where they've never grown anything but corn. So that tends to pull certain nutrients out of the soil specific to that crop. So those specific nutrients get pulled out more and more every year. But not only that, we also don't return anything to that earth. We remove the food from that acreage from that soil, never to return. We transport it away to someplace else. So we pull more and more nutrients out and we don't put a whole lot back. So after a few years, we need to put something back called synthetic fertilizers known as NPK, which stands for nitrogen phosphorus and potassium. Because those are the three most important nutrients for plants and for soil. And if we didn't put those back, we wouldn't have anything grow. So those are sufficient for something to grow. Now the problem is we're only putting back three nutrients. But the plants have 17 nutrients that are required. And three of those it gets from the air, it gets water, which has hydrogen and oxygen, and it captures carbon in the form of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And then of course it gets light to drive the photosynthesis. But there's still 14 nutrients that are essential to that plant. It's not just humans that have essential nutrients. Plants have essential nutrients. So when something becomes deficient, it's not just for us, it's for the plants primarily. So every year we remove the crops and we put three nutrients back, which means that every year there are 11 nutrients that get more and more depleted. So now we end up with deficient plants. They're not as strong, they're not as healthy as they used to be. And as a result, their immune system suffers. Yes, you heard me right. Plants have immune systems also. They can be resistant to drought, they can be resistant to pests. So now we have less strength, we have worsened immune system in the plant, weaker plants. So now we need to help them defend themselves against pests, so we add pesticides. But those pests don't help the plant, they just keep the pests away. The plants still keep getting weaker. So this is like medication for the plants, if you will. And then there's one more factor here called erosion that very aggressive farming practices weakens the soil and a lot of that soil blows away and washes away. And most of the nutrients that the plants are looking for is in the very top layer in the top soil. And as we're losing top soil, as the top soil gets thinner and thinner, there are less and less nutrients in the soil. And with less nutrients in the soil and with less top soil, we're also going to see a reduction in the microbiome in the soil. So just like we have a microbiome in our gut, the soil has a microbiome as well. The soil is only as healthy as the number of bacteria and microorganisms in the soil. They bring that soil to life. So here's the problem now though, that we create kind of a vicious cycle. Because if we have less nutrients in the top soil, then now the plants become even more deficient. It works backwards also. And if the plants are more deficient, if they can't defend themselves, now we're going to need to put in even more pesticides. You see, pesticides weren't really an issue. Pests were not a problem when we had healthy soil. When the plants were healthy, they could defend themselves. It's only after we started monocropping and making the soils weaker and the plants weaker that we need pesticides. And now those pesticides are going to further kill off some of those microorganisms in the soil so that we get less and less life in that soil. And those microorganisms, their job is to help the plant absorb the nutrients from the soil and fix it in the root system and make use of those nutrients. So now we get even more deficient plants and the cycle goes on and on and on. So I hope you can see how important this is, that if we don't take care of the soils, then our food quality is going to degenerate and deteriorate generation by generation. So there's more to it to buy organic than just to avoid a few pesticides. It's about sustainable farming. So to the extent that you can afford it, I would strongly encourage that you get as much as possible of organic food and you figure out how it's grown and that you support sustainable farming. And then there's the third part of the triple whammy. And that is that we have more stress and more pollution than ever before. And I don't have to ask, I think, if you feel like you have more stress now than ever before. I think that's kind of self-evident. But also the pollution is more than we have ever had. Even though we're learning to clean up the environment to some degree, there are so many chemicals. And even if we take them out the pollution out of the air, we haven't necessarily learned to take the pollution out of the food. And the more stress and the more pollution we have, the more you increase your needs for vital nutrients. Because the more you put a stress on the body, when you're going to process through stress, that's a high demand state that makes your body require more nutrients. When you're going to break down toxins, your immune system and your liver are going to neutralize pollution and chemicals and toxins, that's hard work. So the more of that stuff you have, the more nutrients you will need. So believe it or not, but there are 279 million different chemicals documented in some sort of registry. And that's sort of irrelevant because there's many of them that are more or less theoretical, but there are 350,000 chemicals in active commercial use. And out of those 350,000, 86,000 are classified as toxic. And out of those 86,000, there are over 40,000 of those toxic ones that are in active use. Furthermore, there are over 10,000 different chemicals that are permitted that they're allowed to use in food. Now those 10,000 are not necessarily toxic, but I bet you a large proportion of them are. And one example of how prevalent this exposure is that in a test, they found 3,601 chemicals from food contact materials that they detected in human blood and in breast milk. So food contact materials means that there's something that we use to package food or to store food or to cook food, utensils, cookware, etc. Over 3,000 chemicals were detected. And that's just from the food contact. So we don't really have any idea how many, but on a daily basis, we probably are getting thousands and thousands of different ones. And the problem is that when they determine safety of these, they test them one at a time. So they give a little mouse a certain dose and when 1% of the mice die, then they call that a lethal dose one. And then they cut back some amount from that that they consider safe. But what happens if we have thousands or tens of thousands of these different chemicals, then it's not part per million anymore. It's parts per thousand. And now it starts making a difference. So again, we just need to get smart and try to be aware and limit our exposure as best we can. You can never eliminate it completely, but if you can reduce it by 80%, you've come a long way. So let's look at some of the micronutrients in food. Since 1900, we've noticed that calcium, iron, vitamin A and magnesium, as just a few examples, have decreased by about one-third since the 1900s. And this is why it's so important that we get back to organic and sustainable farming and that we put the nutrients back in the soil that we take out of it. So just as a very rough example here. Let me show you that what we used to get from food 100 years ago was, let's call it 100%. Just for comparison. And then what we used to need was matched by that. And I'm not saying that everyone got exactly 100%. But I just want to compare to what has changed. So now we actually need a whole lot more because we have more stress and more pollution. We have a higher demand on the body than we used to. But we are not getting as much. Now if you eat processed foods, that's of course you're the one to blame. But even if you eat the best food you can, the nutrients are just not there. So we're not getting nearly as much as we need. So now there is a significant deficiency. And this would account for why so many people are experiencing nutritional deficiencies today. Number seven is blood issues. So if you have fatigue, low energy, pale skin. Now it could be iron B12 B9 vitamin C and copper. Because like we mentioned before related to energy production, we need this function. We need this oxygen delivery system with red blood cells to bring the oxygen to the tissues. And if you have pale skin, that's because you don't have enough red blood cells and enough hemoglobin to give you that healthy pink color to the skin. But it could work the other way also because you could get something called hyperpigmentation or discoloration or some form of uneven color. Because a lot of these same nutrients also help regulate the copper vitamin C. It affects melanin, which is the colored pigment in the skin. And also B12 and B9 affect pigmentation. So it could be that we don't have enough to make red blood cells, but it could also be that we don't have enough to regulate our pigmentation on our coloring properly. Number eight is vision problems. And one aspect of this is reduced night vision, night blindness that could relate to vitamin A, vitamin E, zinc and DHA. So some of these vitamins are more specific, but DHA affects every cell membrane in the body, but especially the eye because it's so concentrated there. So DHA deserves its own mention here that if you're low in DHA, you could get what's called dry eye syndrome where you don't produce enough tears. If you're low in DHA, it could cause retinal degeneration as well as macular degeneration. So these are two very devastating vision problems that often happened later in life with people that you can go completely blind if this process is allowed to continue. And it could also affect the quality of your vision such as blurry vision. And here's an astounding number to me that out of the polyunsaturated fatty acids in the photoreceptor. So those are photosensitive cells and in the retina, the back of your eye. And there's a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids there, but 60% of those are DHA. So it's a nutrient we need in very small amounts, a few hundred milligrams a day. And yet it is so critically important. Number nine, you could suffer from reduced appetite or nausea. And if you're low in zinc, magnesium, vitamin B1 or B3, it could be that these affect the taste, the digestion, and your appetite regulating hormones. So I want to mention whole food nutrients. How does nature package nutrients? Because so often we think that well, I can just take this multivitamin supplement. There's these things that have a hundred percent of everything that I need in one little pill. I wish it was that easy. Because there's thousands of different pieces and components in food. And it creates a whole package. And the package is what makes the difference. One of my favorite analogies is a clock. And for those of you who don't know this is what clocks used to look like. They used to be mechanical. They had hundreds of different pieces of crystals and screws and springs and cog wheels. And if they were put together just right, then they could keep time to within a few seconds per year even. But here's the big question that we want to ask about this clock. Which piece is it that tells the time? And if we ask the question like that, you realize how ridiculous it is because it's not one piece, it's all the pieces together. If you take a single piece out of this clock, it's not going to work. It's going to be completely dead. All the other pieces are going to be useless. And I'm not saying that food is going to be useless if we take one piece out. But I am saying that nature has had millions of years to put food together. We have evolved parallel with food. It is perfect for us. The nutrients in there are packaged and balanced so that they fit our body. And we can't just take one little piece out of the food and call it vitamin C and mass produce it and think that it's going to do the same thing that it originally did in the food. Any less than we can take a cog wheel out and mass produce that and toss them in a big heap and think that that's going to tell the time. So when it comes to whole food nutrition, there's one company that I trust more than any other in terms of providing a foundation. And that's called standard process. This product is called Catalan. And it's by far my favorite. If I'm going to use a multivitamin, multineutrition supplement in the clinic, this is going to be the one. And I think everyone really should have this as a foundation. It was developed in 1929 to fill in the gaps in the nutrition back then. And this was almost 100 years ago when people ate way, way, way better than they do today. But they had started eating some sugar and some white flour. So in this product, you're going to find food concentrates. They have not extracted anything. They've just taken food and concentrated it. The most critical components of it. So you're not going to find any megasosis of anything. You're not going to find anything synthetic. And if you read the label, it's a little confusing on it looks like there's virtually nothing in there. But that's the whole point that we're missing. That we think that we can extract these nutrients one by one and mass produce them synthetically and get the same thing. So even though the numbers are much lower, what you're getting is a whole food product. And it's kind of funny. Because back when this was first developed, they didn't have names for all the vitamins yet. They had vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, because that's how they started naming them. But they didn't know a whole bunch of them. And yet, every time that they have discovered a new vitamin, or the name of a new vitamin, they've gone back into Catalan and checked. And every single vitamin and nutrient ever discovered has been found to be in Catalan. So this is the multivitamin that I'm taking. And I'll put a link down below if you want to check it out. And category number 10 is high turnover tissues. So every cell in your body has a wear and tear process. Every tissue breaks down and rebuilds. So the high turnover tissues have higher nutrient dependencies, if you will. So one example is your gut lining that replaces itself every two to five days, you build a new gut lining. And some of the nutrients necessary are zinc, glutamine, amino acid, B vitamins, especially B9 and also iron. And the gut lining is one of the most important protective barriers in your body. It's the barrier that determines the difference between what comes into your body and what doesn't, because every piece of food that you put in, it's not really inside your body yet. It is being very meticulously selected and accepted, molecule by molecule from all the food that you eat. And the gut lining is the structure that does that. Another high turnover tissue is your cornea. That's the protective layer on your eye. And it encounters all the particles and all the air, all day long, and then your eyelids blink and wipe across it. So you need to replace that pretty quick. And every seven to 10 days, you build a new one. And the nutrients needed would be vitamin A, vitamin C, and essential fatty acids. And another organ with a high turnover is the pancreas, especially the beta cells that make your insulin. It turns over with a great deal of variety from different people, but in days to months, you replace those cells over and over. And some of the nutrients that's needed are zinc, magnesium, and antioxidants. And again, I'll put a link down below if you want to check out Catalyn. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications, so you never miss a life-saving video.