B Vitamins

Neurological Stuff is listed in the Intro of the health site in question. It used to be in the sidebar and there may be remarks somewhere that still say that.

The brain requires B vitamins. They are an essential part of treating neurological issues and probably a ridiculously high percentage of people aren't really getting enough. 

They are water soluble, so people can sweat them out if it's hot or they are running a fever or working physically hard. Plus, studies show that produce has steadily declined in nutritional value in recent decades due to overuse of chemical fertilizers which provide certain "macros" so to speak.

Macros really means carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Fats can contain certain vitamins, like A, E, D and K, because they are fat soluble, but carbs and proteins aren't per se vitamins and other micronutrients.

In the plant world, you have an equivalent phenomenon where you can grow more and faster crops if you provide certain basics in abundance, but the resulting produce will NOT be as nutritious as produce grown more organically.

For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements like rock flour for micronutrients.

So there's a global nutritional crisis and that's probably one of several contributing factors to the obesity epidemic. We are also too reliant on cars and our built environment has been whored out to our insane relationship to cars and city planners largely no longer perform their historic public health function of designing the built environment to help people get adequate amounts of walking in on a daily basis.

Urban planning is outside the scope of this site which is written on the assumption that my audience is people DIYing problems their doctor, government, family etc. make FROWNIE FACES at them for complaining about instead of meaningfully trying to HELP them because our for profit medical system means you need to have a problem they can IDENTIFY in fifteen minutes and PRESCRIBE you a drug for it or fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

These conditions include but are not limited to sex hormone syndromes currently called "trans" by planet Earth and hopefully in a hundred years they will be going "Wow, what MORONS!"

But I'm not holding my breath because WOW, WHAT MORONS! We are FIGHTING in government spaces about where you are allowed to take a piss instead of making individual bathrooms the standard and saying "We're done having this stupid argument," so good luck with PROGRESS. I'm not counting on THAT happening.

Anyway, we've also POISONED our planet with a bunch of brand spanking new chemicals in the past hundred years or so and they are everywhere. And that's pertinent to health.

Now, in reality, you mostly don't get B vitamins from our horrible tasteless produce. You mostly get them from meat and seafood and that includes non-animal seafood, like seaweed. 

A vegan on Reddit gave me a list of vegan sources of various B vitamins and I have never gotten around to verifying that information or checking out how that measures up in quantity and bioavailability to the sources typically listed as "good sources" anytime I try to look stuff up online. 

If you are vegan or vegetarian, you may wish to research that personally and see how much you need to eat of those foods to actually meet your needs. My concern is that even if those are, in fact, all sources of those B vitamins, they may be insufficient quantities for adequate nutrition.

Omega 3 is another important nutrient that typically boils down to "eat seafood!" as the recommendation and I'm allergic. Flax seed is frequently recommended as a vegetarian option. And I've seen information suggesting that may not really be a great alternative.

My go to is walnuts and I have been on the lookout for alternatives because I have a genetic disorder misprocessing fats and I'm always looking to up my game on healthy fats to repair my utterly useless piece of garbage physiology, so I've also seen greens mentioned and one person I talked to online said something like "Well, yes, BUT you need like six cups a DAY every day to get enough."

So I'm concerned that if you are vegan, even if the list I was generously given is accurate, you may still have challenges getting enough B vitamins. 

And that's before accounting for if you have some unidentified CONDITION -- such as a sex hormone syndrome -- you may fundamentally need more or have some quirk of physiology creating absorption issues or something.

If you are merely vegetarian, eggs and dairy may be extremely helpful in getting what you need. Mushrooms are a source of some B vitamins. I'm not a fan. If you are, that's potentially useful information.

Why am I DRONING on and on and on about this? Because I think B vitamin deficiencies are probably RAMPANT in almost ALL people. 

We have an obesity epidemic. We have a rise of diagnoses like OCD, ADHD and ASD. We suddenly have trans stuff everywhere.

The body can make cholesterol from B5 and we vilify the consumption of cholesterol. And all the hormones I'm researching start with cholesterol as a precursor AND also the brain is the highest cholesterol organ in the body and builds 95 percent of it in house starting with B5.

Whatever is wrong with you -- ADHD, ASD, sex hormone syndrome under the trans umbrella -- I would bet money that a factor is you aren't getting enough B vitamins.

So above is an overview of me trying to make the case that you probably aren't getting enough. Here's why you should feel fairly comfortable experimenting on yourself with B vitamins to DIY whatever problem you have:

It's difficult for most people to poison themselves with B vitamins because you can just urinate out the excess. That doesn't mean it's harmless to overdo it. My understanding is it can cause kidney stones and I have had some jerk on the Internet point me to some edge case where some people can be poisoned.

I have an orphan disease. Rest assured, I'm ABUNDANTLY familiar with the concept that SOME people will be exceptions to ANY rule.

But GENERALLY speaking, for MOST earthbound humans, it's DIFFICULT to seriously mess yourself up taking B vitamins no matter how stupid and reckless you are. It's CHALLENGING in MOST cases to take so much B vitamins that a physician will be screaming in your face at some point in the future about what an idiot you are because you overdid the B vitamins.

Ideally, you should learn the symptoms of deficiency for specific B vitamins and take extra of those specific B vitamins as needed and figure out what you need to include in your diet as staple foods to keep yourself not obviously deficient. For more information on that, please read the entire site for the link given at the very start of this piece:

https://atypicalcysticfibrosis.blogspot.com/

But in addition to the above stuff, I have reason to believe prisoners, at risk youth, kids in juvenile hall, and special ed kids (including gifted kids) probably need more B vitamins for whatever underlying neurological issue is helping to make them a giant pain in the ass for their fellow humans, especially if you trend vegetarian or semi vegetarian or -- heaven forbid -- vegan.

I'm not against being vegan, but I believe the virulently hateful anti vegan reddit full of former vegans loudly complaining that veganism RUINED their health is full of substantial evidence that the world is full of ignorant people who don't know anything about nutrition and being vegan doesn't automatically make people wiser in that regard.

If you eat a vegetarian diet, you should have zero problem getting adequate protein, especially if you know anything about protein combining AKA complementary proteins in foods. TLDR: The right ratio of legumes to grains adds up to more total usable protein per meal because it gives you the building blocks for protein in a more complete fashion. 

It's more complicated than that, but most traditional vegetarian diets closely follow the right ratios of legumes to grains and protein shouldn't be a big issue even if you are vegan unless you have some kind of condition interfering somehow.

Guess what people on the Reddit in question commonly complain about? Yup: "Vegan diets don't provide adequate protein and IT RUINED MY HEALTH!!! Go eat MEAT, STUPID!"

Speaking of stupid, maybe read a book once in a while about nutrition if you value your health, especially if you want to radically alter your diet for extreme political beliefs about saving the planet by what you choose to put in your mouth.

Footnote 

This post introduces the tag 100 as an attempt to start covering basics about human physiology without pretending human physiology can be meaningfully separated from context. 

Why 100? Because the 101 tag already exists and is something else and I want this to be the first tag in the list