The possibility of psychedelics being an accidental replacement for proper nutrition

[RhythmSpring]

I've been iron-deficient / anemic since I was about 18. But I was vegetarian / vegan throughout 18-21, then just mostly pescatarian until I was 26 ish. I never properly addressed it until recently: by eating foods rich in heme-iron.

I was introduced to Salvia when I was 18 as well. I got a lot of grounded-in-reality feelings from the afterglow. So I kept using it.

Lately I wonder if I've used psychedelics to give me something that simple nutrition could have given me, as I was *not* taking good care of myself.

But then I think, "Well, I could also say, 'I've used food restriction / indulgences to cover up a psychedelic (or spiritual) deficiency.'" Indeed, emotional eating has been a big demon in my life.

I guess one must balance their diet AND their spirituality apart from each other. Because it becomes a chicken-and-egg problem if you try to discern what caused what.

Always listen to your body.

And always listen to your soul.

But if you adopt strict dietary guidelines to address a spiritual matter; or do psychedelics to make up for physical lack of iron, amino acids, vitamin b 12, etc. (which gives one a feeling of ungroundedness, anxiety, poor constitution), you can wrap yourself in a physical/spiritual tangle that can be very hard to get out of.

Your thoughts?

 

[fathomlessness]

The way I intepretated what you wrote is that nutrition deficiency caused your mind to lack in certain areas (spiritual included). When you took psychedelics they took your out of feeling like that temporarily.

When we are nutrition deficient our brains do not function optimally, we don't have enough recources to make regular brain activity function correctly. Taking psychedelics boost that degraded brain state to make it seem as if the brain is functioning healthier when in reality it is actually being boosted. This is speaking from a neurological stand point made very simple.

I too am in the same boat as you and have to take supplementation too (iron&b12 among others). But psychs are never an alternative to actual nutrition, ever. If that were true, I wouldn't eat food at all but just eat bark from the tree, lol.

 

[3rdI]

Steak and Magic for the win

 

[RhythmSpring]

Steak and Magic for the win

Exactly this.

Plus, my magic doesn't seem as effective if I haven't eaten my steak.

 

[Anamnesia]

According to a guy called Loren Lockman (you can find his channel on youtube), enough vitamin B-12 is manufactured as a byproduct of the bacteria that live on your tongue to supply your daily needs. I hardly believe this but it makes sense when you realize that the only reason people need any kind of supplementation whatsoever is as a consequence of having a body that is inefficient. If I have to take a gram of Vitamin V-12 everyday I'm only furthering the inefficiency of the body to process this vitamin. The solution is to increase the efficiency of the body to use the vitamin B-12 being naturally produced within the body, not to take more of the same via extraneous methods.

Take the case of protein, about 70% of the protein in spirulina is bioavailable versus the mere 20% bioavailable in beefsteak. Nearly none of the calcium in dairy products are actually assimilable by the body. Our bodies are not designed to consume animal products.

It's obvious which food source is best for the body when we concerned with optimizing efficiency, or bioassimilability. I've become excited about the notion of doing a very long fast of at least a few weeks in order to reset the body's efficiency.

If you read a book called Return to the Brain of Eden by Tony Wright and Graham Gynn you learn that during the period in which the human brain size exploded at an exponential rate our diet consisted of fruits and simple greens. He maintains this was the lost paradise we enjoyed before we fell into history, which is the story basically of the discordance that occurred between the left and right hemispheres of the brain via introduction of steroids into the diets by meats, compromising the positive feedback loop which evolution had created between the biochemistry in fruits, the uterine environment, lengthened juvenile period permitting longer development for the brain, and the proper functioning of the pineal gland. There's a great deal more to it than that - check out the book if interested.

The reason I'm saying all this is is because there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that because you are a vegan you must therefore supplement with Vitamin B-12 or anything else.

The body is infinitely intelligent; it is a perfect microcosm, a reflection of the whole universe. It's a great deal smarter than we in our mental projections are!

 

[jamie]

^most of what is written in that post is theory, and not fact. Most of it is not well supported either, in my opinion.

It's a risk for vegans to not supplement B12. I wish I had. You don't want to mess with the nervous system. Just take some vitamins.

 

[JustATourist]

As a vegan you absolutely need to take a daily or weekly B-12 supplement otherwise you are going to become deficient. Same with vitamin D if you are not getting enough sunlight ( Diet, sunlight, and 25-hydroxy vitamin D in healthy children and adults. )

250 micrograms of cyanocobalamin (vitamin B-12) a day. It's cheap, easy and efficient. It's also the best way to get the vitamin since it doesn't have the "baggage" of animal products (cholesterol and saturated fat which increase your LDL cholesterol, your chances of getting heart disease etc.).

Dietary lipids and blood cholesterol: quantitative meta-analysis of metabolic ward studies.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the quantitative importance of dietary fatty acids and dietary cholesterol to blood concentrations of total, low density lipoprotein, and high density lipoprotein cholesterol. DESIGN: Meta-analysis of metabolic ward studies of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Facts and principles learned at the 39th Annual Williamsburg Conference on Heart Disease

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Optimal low-density lipoprotein is 50 to 70 mg/dl: lower is better and physiologically normal - PubMed

The normal low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol range is 50 to 70 mg/dl for native hunter-gatherers, healthy human neonates, free-living primates, and other wild mammals (all of whom do not develop atherosclerosis). Randomized trial data suggest atherosclerosis progression and coronary...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Vegetarian diet and cholesterol and triglycerides levels - PubMed

Vegetarian diet was associated to lower levels of TG, TC and LDL as compared to the diet of omnivores.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19661406699

If is a fact that if you don't supplement properly as a vegan you will become B-12 deficient:

http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v64/n9/abs/ejcn2010142a.html

Be careful of the pseudo-science you see on many youtube channels, a plant based diet has many health benefits only IF supplemented properly, don't trust any online "guru" telling you otherwise.

I suggest you go to the doctor and get tested for B-12 as soon as possible, it takes several years to really develop a serious B-12 deficiency but don't wait.



Regarding your first post:
Agree with fathomlessness :thumb_up:
No psychedelic can cure a nutritional deficiency. B-12 and Vitamin D deficiencies have been associated with depressive symptoms ( http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/92/2/330.short ), and other foods rich in antioxidants like blueberries for example are protective against depressive symptoms. Food can impact your everyday mood which is likely to have an effect on your psychedelic experiences.
That's the only connection between psychs and nutrition I can think of.

 

[jamie]

B12 does not = cyanocobolamin necessarily. I have been told methylcobolamin is superior to be supplementing. B12 is cobolamin.

I feel better after LSD. LSD is an anti inflammatory and I have an inflammatory disease and so do many other people with nutrient deficiencies. It does not mean I am filling in some missing gap in the wake of malnutrition.

 

[dreamer042]

Be careful of the pseudo-science you see on many youtube channels, a plant based diet has many health benefits only IF supplemented properly, don't trust any online "guru" telling you otherwise.

This ^

It's really not as difficult or complex as the guru's trying to sell you their products want you to think it is. There are 24 essential vitamins and minerals. If you are hitting at least the minimum recommended daily intake of these, that's really all the dietary information you need to maintain adequate nutrition no matter what particular dietary lifestyle you adhere to.

I highly recommend the above linked site (examine.com) as a reliable source of nutritional information. Obviously, approach the articles with skepticism and never take nutritional information at face value without doing your own independent research. The reason I recommend the above site is that they provide plenty of citations, making it very simple to perform said follow up research.

Regarding all this ancestral diet stuff, the left in the dark/return to the brain of eden theory, the primal/paleo thing, what humans are "meant" to eat, and all this. Let's not forget that the average human life expectancy was about 30 years at best up until the last few centuries. We are incredibly fortunate to have access to high grade vitamins/supplements/food extracts, juicers/blenders, supermarkets full of produce from all around the world (many of your great-grandparents didn't have access to things like mangoes and bananas at all, let alone the incredible [and affordable] abundance we take for granted today). With such an abundance of nutritional sources readily available, it's rather silly not to take advantage of em.

Grow some of your own food, even if it's just a kitchen herb garden, a jar of sprouts, or some salad greens in your windowsill. Research the edibles growing wild around you and eat the weeds. Support your local farmers and farmers markets. Do your best to avoid supporting factory farming. And don't be so damn hard on yourself and on others, being a shining example of conscious consumption is always moar effective than demeaning and judging others.

Eat well my friends. 8)

 

[JustATourist]

B12 does not = cyanocobolamin necessarily. I have been told methylcobolamin is superior to be supplementing. B12 is cobolamin.

Pretty much all the studies on B-12 supplementation are done with cyanocobalamin, not methylcobalamin, and it has been shown to work. They usually take people with deficiencies and after oral cyanocobalamin supplements they are cured.

Example:

Oral Cyanocobalamin Supplementation in Older People With Vitamin B12 Deficiency

Background Supplementation with high doses of oral cobalamin is as effective as cobalamin administered by intramuscular injection to correct plasma markers of vitamin B12 deficiency, but the effects of lower oral doses of cobalamin on such markers are uncertain.Methods We conducted a...

jamanetwork.com