Dandruff or scalp irritation? Try BLOO.
@sneedful Can you link to him recommending these ratios? Is this recent?
Just the other day I watched a video on him recommending 100-200 micro(u)grams of K2/day, which would be about 1mg/week.
As well, I saw a vid of him recommending 20 IU of vitamin E/day. I guess that's closer at 140 IU/week.
There's a wide range of recommendations out there, and maybe what's best for muscle growth isn't the best for health, despite muscle being very important (especially in the elderly).
Let's assume we're talking about adults (primarily males) that regularly do resistance training / lift weights.
From the bodybuilding side of things, here's a few data points to consider:
From what I've heard and understood from the Peat world side of things, here's a few points:
So there's some info from different perspectives. I think the 'mean recommendation' to get solid results while erring on the side of safety is probably something like 1.6-1.8g/kg/day. This isn't even discussing the primary sources that go into most people's bodybuilding diets, which I reckon are chicken breast, whey, and some eggs and red meat mixed in.
What do you guys think, any more info/research suggesting that extra protein is wasted past a certain point, or even harmful? To be honest I really haven't seen any solid research to indicate that very high (>1g/lb) protein diets are harmful in humans, unless we are talking about pure keto or other silliness which neglects critical nutrients.
I'm curious what you guys think are ideal ratios, and safe quantities. Specifically we're talking A, D, E, K(2).
For example, @haidut 's estroban is as follows:
Vitamin A - 6,000 IU
Vitamin D - 2,000 IU
Vitamin E - 200 IU
Vitamin K2 (MK-4) - 2mg
So something like 30 : 10 : 1, at 2mg K2
And since fat solubles build up, are we sure that the amounts above are safe? For example, the A is 2x the recommended 3000 IU per day. But then there's the other vitamins "balancing it out". Also, is that amount of D on the low side? Ditto for E and K2 - though I've never seen any guidelines for K2.
So as a starting point, are these optimal and safe amounts? Or what might one change? Assuming for an average adult male let's say.
@Jakeandpace why not provide the link or reference for us? If you don't mind 
Odd that nobody's mentioned it, especially after seeing your username, but...
How about salt?
Decreases stress, and helps retain fluid which could be issue if waking to urinate. I've had similar issues whereby my caffeine intake, sweating from exercise, and 'healthy' eating probably left me salt-depleted. Waking up around that time, especially to urinate, has been a common issue for me. But then by chance one evening I had some salted bread thing and wow I didn't sleep so well for a year it felt like. The pattern became more clear with some experimentation.
(Someone mentioned baking soda which is an equivalently good call I guess.)
Peat on Salt: https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/salt.shtml
Edit - another minor thing I do which may help, is to take any supplements earlier in the day. I notice those can disrupt sleep sometimes.
OP, I'd say the golden staples, especially for a beginner, are going to be something like resistance weight training 3x a week, and getting your daily step count up to 10k.
You can do these things gradually to reduce cortisol, but also don't be so afraid of it. Your body will adapt and recover if you're not an idiot. Weight training can start as 3 lifts, such as a push, a pull, and a leg exercise, done as 1 hard set towards failure after a warm-up set of each. That will be like 10-15 minutes in the gym, and honestly will give you 50% of the results as a "full" workout. Super time efficient. Then you can add additional sets, a fourth exercise, etc, as your body adapts. Whatever you work up to, I'd recommend capping your weight sessions at 40-60mins, longer than that and you're probably being time-inefficient or doing too much.
Same with walking or even jogging. These activities are completely fine and you don't need to worry about cortisol at all if you build up gradually based on what your body can handle. Start with 10 minutes of something every other day, then 15 mins, etc.
Use your sleep, energy levels, attentiveness, and body composition to gauge your cortisol response. Don't be afraid of short-term stress, it's chronic stress (e.g. for under-sleeping) that will mess you up. If anything, short bouts of acute stress are actually really good for your overall system ('hormesis').
I watched the whole vid, was intrigued from the first few mins when he described a very intuitive and somewhat Peat-related approach: lots of carbs, lower stress, high agency lifestyle. He then goes into his staple meal being red meat and rice, plus unlimited fruit, which seems like a pretty solid way to run one's diet.
But it also made me think about how just being active every day is such a huge factor in one's body composition. This guy, like many YT fitness influencers, don't have "real" and sedentary jobs, including stressful commutes. They just live a "more natural" life, are on their feet way more, always moving, don't have low-grade stress associated with constant use of Microsoft Office products (lol!).
I've noticed this effect pretty pronounced in myself. I'm an office worker by day with side business ambitions I work on during evenings and weekends when possible, so it's a lot of 'modern day office work'. I also do intense weight training 3x a week and a few bouts of cardio via martial arts, so I'm in reasonable shape - strong with slightly visible abs and ~15% bodyfat.
But when I'm not working, not having an alarm clock, for extended periods of time, my physique just takes on that extra ~25% of quality that's hard to describe - everything feels and looks tighter, more abs visible while at same body weight, energy levels and lifts are maybe 10% better automatically, etc. I tolerate any and all foods way better too. I really get the sense that if I focused on living life this way for more than a few weeks on vacation here or there, I could be making these dumb "here's my life as a fitness guy" videos lol. Just being on my feet walking some European city on vacation for a few days does incredible things compared to standard north American life, and people like Bill live closer to the former than the latter everyday.
Not meant to brag, but rather to say that I believe most anyone could quickly and continuously improve their physique and physical well-being if they make appropriate trade-offs in life. And I'm sure those of us stuck in the corporate North American grind can continue to find and apply principles to improve our health and fitness too.
@Insomniac Interesting... I remember seeing posts on the old RP forum that the pyridoxine HCL form is fine, even worked in some study for a positive effect at 100mg, but @haidut and others would recommend P5P anyways for the conversion efficiency (only 10% would be needed for equivalent dosage).
Do we have any sources besides Asprey on facebook showing that pyridoxine is problematic?
@DavidPS Yeah I saw that about salt water, how about baking soda? Similar idea? I've started trying it, feels soothing, and my understanding is that after meals/drinks we want to counter the acidity, so something basic like baking soda should help.
Another one is "oil pulling" (weird name), but it's basically swishing around coconut oil in one's mouth for a while. Another good Peat-y substance so I'll give it a try.
Has anyone had this and been able to make positive progress reversing (not just halting) the issue? (Didn't find anything on search for this site.)
What would make sense to do besides switching to a softer toothbrush?
Hopefully we can put together some info that'll be helpful for others as well.
Cheers
@Serotoninskeptic Can you expand on that?
People from the old RP Forum take all kinds of supplements (check out Haidut's store for instance). Why would a multivitamin be worse than taking XYZ other supplement?
For convenience and to get away from swallowing 10+ pills everyday which may or may not be necessary... I'm wondering about multivitamins.
Are they useful to support good health and give nutrients from a Peat-inspired perspective?
I've seen long-term studies (observation I guess, so grain of salt) saying no benefits.
One positive factor is that they seem to have a lot of things in lower doses, something Peat generally endorsed. For example, I read he'd only recommend in the 10s of milligrams of B vitamins (i.e. not these crazy B50 or B100 formulations), and up to 2K IU vitamin D (multis tend to have 400-800 IU from what I'm seeing, so a decent supplement to some somelight).
What say you, any multivitamin takers here? Recommended brands? Fillers/additives/ingredients to watch out for?
Seems like a great supplement: anti-estrogen, anti-prolactin, helps counteract PUFA to some degree, seems to feel pretty decent for me lately. However, higher doses I noticed can cause some extra bleeding, e.g. from a small scratch, brushing gums a bit hard, etc.
So how about something like 100 iu daily, would that be safe? Mostly I'm interested in the anti-PUFA effects, because it's hard to avoid dietary PUFA especially if you eat out a couple of times per week.
Thoughts on vitamin E safety?
Interesting that no one has specifically called out (just) D3 yet. I recall it being a top supp by people like Haidut and Danny Roddy (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Vitamin E is fantastic too but I don't know about daily - I think it's great on a day where you eat out some not-so-great food that may have PUFA, and/or maybe as a weekly therapy.
@b1 Interesting, that's a pretty low dose. I hear ppl talk about 1-15 milligrams (mg), which can be expensive or hard to get.
I switched recently to trying a D3+Mk7 hybrid but I think I prefer Mk4 as well. I hope Mk7 doesnt do anything funny to the heart...
@b1 Do you have any preference on the type of K2, i.e. Mk4, Mk7? What amount?
I'm wondering what people value as their most important daily supplement (vitamin, mineral, hormone, etc). For your choice, why?
(Focusing on something you'd want to take daily, not something you might take acutely based on a short-term issue).
@LucH Hi there thanks for the comprehensive response! I am still working to digest this. Two quick questions in the meantime -
I actually have a full genetics panel, what genes/mutations should I look for, and at what values, to determine if I have some methylation issues?
And secondly, do you have any further practical recommendations regarding my supplement usage? I agree with most others that "less is more" and I will be experimenting to see if I can do well with lower doses of B6.
Btw, prolactin is probably an issue for sure, I had minor childhood gyno, maybe even still a little bit now as an adult though much less so. I notice that I feel flabby on bloated in the torso region specifically after sexual activity, but reliably I can pop a B6 afterwards and reverse it.
@Loulou thanks for your comment. One consideration is the type of B6 - my understanding from reading the old RP forum is that P5P - not the form I take - is absorbed about 10x more than pyrodoxine HCL, so it's possible if he's referring the P5P at 10mg, that there is some equivalence to my 100mg.
Background: early 30s male, physically active (weightlifting), fairly athletic build. Main issues experienced periodically have to do with general fatigue and malaise, bloating, puffiness (face, torso), and related to that would be water retention.
Now I've experimented with pretty much all over-the-counter and RP-discussed supplements over the years, many of them I've purposely tried on their own 1 day at a time, to really see if I can feel and notice the effects.
But I gotta say, nothing does the trick like vitamin B6. In particular, I take 100mg pyrodixine HCL (the generic/cheap version). It literally fixes any and all issues that I get. For example, if I take it before a workout, there's very little fatigue during and afterwards. The big one for me is water retention and bloating - B6 consistently reduces these symptoms unlike anything else I've tried.
OH - it also lowers my blood pressure consistently. On any day where I am overworked from the gym or general life stress, I can pop a few 100mg's and go from 135ish back down to near perfect 120/80. Finally, B6 also just gives me more energy to engage with the world; to take on projects that I'd previously shelved, communicate more with others when I'm feeling more introverted, etc.
I'm at a point where I've stopped taking any other supplements recently because it seems any and all benefits I'm getting are from B6. Maybe a multi to round out some other bases. But I've tried so many other things, all the fat solubles, zinc and magnesium, high dose B1, B3, etc. Interestingly when I take other stuff, I get less of B6's benefits.
My questions are:
What exactly is B6 doing for someone like me? It consistently reduces stress and "puffiness", seriously I can look like 2 different people a few hours apart (water retention I'm guessing).
Is it safe to take 100mg+ pyrodoxine HCL a day, sometimes more?
What kind of things can interfere with B6's positive actions for me? I've tried the "kitchen sink" approach of taking all the good "Peat inspired" supplements I've read about over the years: fat solubles, niacinamide, certain minerals, etc, but have noticed neutral to negative effects with them.
Interested in any other discussion to do with B6 as well, positive or negative. What has been the experience for others?
Cheers