Re: upping selenium dosage

The key is to find the balance thats specifically suited to you, your doable food intake and your location. Different parts of the country get food from various regions and the source of the food often varies by season.

While I do agree that ideally our nutrients should come from food I personally think its nearly impossible today to get everything we need from food alone. There is a two fold reason behind this line of thought. One is that we are exposed to more toxins today than ever before and toxins rob the body of nutrients either directly or indirectly. Secondly so many of our foods come from land that has been farmed for decades if not longer, the crucial nutrients needed for healthy plants and animals has largely been depleted which is why farmers need to turn to pesticides which of course just exacerbates our toxin exposure.

With the above in mind lets look at a couple scenarios:

B12 for example requires strong stomach acid to properly get from animal protein sources. There are all sorts of gene abnormalities that even if proper B12 levels are acheived from food the body has problems fully processing it. Then add to the fact heavy metals have a tendancy to collect on the Blood brain barrier and cobalamin in turn attaches to these heavy metals which in turn helps the kidneys fluch them out of the body BUT it also means you loos the cobalamin. Someone with poor digestion, gene abnormalities and high heavy metal levels would never be able to efficiently;y process enough B12 from food alone and even if they could it would likely result in them having to eat a LOT more food than they need resulting in obesity and other issues.

Another example would be stuff like Vit C. Extensive anecdotal research has shown >5grams a day of ascorbic acid can effectively reverse arteriosclerosis (when combined with proline/lysine). There are about 65mg of vit C in an orange so eating 100 oranges a day really isnt practical nor healthy since those 100 oranges would accompany about 6500 calories.

Iodine itself would be another example. Most people here push 100mg a day or more, good luck getting that from food alone. Once again the main reason we need so much is because of toxins.