After I first determined to experiment with the Carnivore Food plan, I had some issues.
I used to be going from Keto to Carnivore and nervous in regards to the lack of fiber and the elimination of many “healthy” plant-based antioxidants. I used to be inquisitive about its associations with most cancers and correlations with illness. I puzzled about what a carnivore’s carbon footprint should seem like.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C is a strong antioxidant and Linus Pauling, one in every of my favourite scientists in historical past, believed it was the answer to all illnesses of civilization. Along with vitamin E it reduces lipid peroxidation. It’s a cofactor in lots of enzymatic reactions – together with these within the making of collagen and carnitine.
However what I used to be most involved about was that insufficient vitamin C can lead to scurvy.
Scurvy
Vitamin C is crucial within the synthesis of collagen. Many animals can synthesize vitamin C out of glucose. However people in addition to primates like monkeys and apes misplaced this capacity about 60 million years in the past. We lack the enzyme (L-gulonolactone oxidase – GULO) that’s required within the final step within the synthesis of Vitamin C from glucose. [r]
Due to this, we should eat our vitamin C or threat the results of scurvy – fatigue, weak point, gum illness, poor wound therapeutic, and probably demise from an infection or bleeding.
Evolution
Wanting by the lens of evolution has influenced my vitamin views as a lot as wanting by the lens of microscopes. Evolution doesn’t have a tendency to only drop issues as a result of they’re now not helpful. It selects for benefits.
However what’s the benefit of not synthesizing an important vitamin?
Uric Acid
In our evolutionary historical past, we additionally loss the flexibility to interrupt down uric acid. And there’s a placing parallel between the lack of the flexibility to synthesize vitamin C and the lack of the flexibility to interrupt down uric acid.
Uric acid is a significant antioxidant, stronger than Vitamin C.
Dropping the flexibility to interrupt down uric acid resulted in larger ranges of uric acid in primates. These excessive ranges are thought to elucidate the comparatively lengthy lifespans of apes.
It’s solely potential, if not going, that elevated uric acid took over most of the antioxidant capabilities of vitamin C.
Glucose-Ascorbate Antagonism Concept (GAA Concept)
Once we take a look at animals that make their very own vitamin C, we discover they make much less of it when carbohydrates are low.
Which is fascinating – low carbohydrates would point out a decrease vitamin C consumption from the food plan and presumably the next must make it endogenously.
But we see the other.
The extra carbohydrates/glucose an animal eats, the extra vitamin C it will get from its meals, AND the extra it makes endogenously.
This means that extra vitamin C is required in a glucose-based metabolism.
It additionally means that Vitamin C necessities could also be much less in low-carbohydrate circumstances. [r]
This is smart although.
Glucose and vitamin C look very related. There molecules are practically an identical. They even use the identical pathways for absorption into cells. Due to this they immediately compete with one another for uptake into cells. And glucose wins out preferentially.
Orange Juice
Because of this consuming orange juice doesn’t make sense (a minimum of for vitamin C functions). It might have numerous vitamin C, nevertheless it’s excessive sugar content material blocks that vitamin C from getting used.
That is additionally why diabetics with excessive blood sugar have strikingly related signs which are seen with scurvy. They’re vitamin C poor despite the fact that they could be getting “adequate” consumption from their food plan or dietary supplements. The glucose blocks out the vitamin C.
Actually, the advantage of vitamin C in illness might not have something to do with its antioxidant properties. Slightly, excessive dose vitamin C might generally compensate for the glucose overload and insulin resistance that’s attribute of most of the illnesses of recent man.
Linus Pauling was on to one thing after-all.
Meat, Vitamin C, and Scurvy
Our meals labeling would lead us to consider that meat doesn’t comprise vitamin C. But it surely does.
And within the absence of carbohydrates far much less vitamin c is required. It doesn’t should continually compete with glucose for uptake.
The quantity of vitamin C to stop scurvy is simply 10 mg/day within the context of a excessive carb food plan.
In a low/no carb food plan, even much less is required.
On the Carnivore Food plan, the meat content material plus the absence of carbs creates an atmosphere that doesn’t lead to scurvy.
Vitamin C’s position as a cofactor in hydroxylation reactions (transferring a hydroxl group to the amino acids lysine and proline), is what helps make the constructing blocks of collagen. However meat comes “pre-packaged” with hydroxylysine and hydroxyproline – additional bypassing a lot of the requirement for vitamin C.
So despite the fact that the quantity of dietary vitamin C consumed on a meat-based food plan could also be decrease in comparison with that of a plant-based diets with vegetables and fruit, the previous has a decrease want for vitamin C with larger bioavailability.
Antioxidant Properties
“Properly if we don’t want Vitamin C to stop scurvy on a meat-based food plan, certainly we want its antioxidant properties, proper?“
Properly, no.
Endogenously synthesized uric acid and glutathione (pure human antioxidants) are rather more highly effective and take over a lot of the roles that vitamin C would play. Plus, in a low carb food plan these powerhouses are up-regulated.
In essence, we “turn on” extra of our strongest antioxidants. As well as glutathione and uric acid spare vitamin C by recycling it.
So Do People Want Vitamin C? – “vitamin c beef”
Yep we do.
However how a lot is solely depending on the context of 1’s food plan. If you happen to eat a excessive carb food plan, you want much more vitamin C to compete with these carbs for uptake.
Opposite to well-liked perception, meat does comprise vitamin C, and within the context of a low/no carb food plan just like the Carnivore Food plan, little or no vitamin C is definitely wanted to stop scurvy. This atmosphere additionally up-regulates our naturally produced antioxidants. It’s probably the lack of endogenously synthesized vitamin C was not detrimental to our hominid ancestors however moderately conferred a aggressive benefit (maybe from the uptick of the likes of uric acid and glutathione) that coincides with our exceptional capacity to recycle the vitamin c.
Nevertheless, a mismatch, the “discordance theory,” between our present food plan and ancestral physiology is probably going the reason for vitamin C deficiencies and their affiliation with illness.
As is seen time-and-again in analysis, the medical manifestation (vitamin C deficiency for instance) is the consequence, not the trigger, that may solely be understood within the correct context.
If you happen to’d prefer to study extra about micronutrients and avoiding deficiencies, and how one can make a meat-based / carnivore food plan work, I’d extremely suggest watching the Meat Well being Masterclass:
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