Dietary Reference Intake

That was also my observation in people who would maybe get like brain fog from carbohydrates or a lot of blood sugar swings, taking some thiamine could actually reverse that.

And it's very interesting because there is a therapeutic dose of thiamine that I will use that's way beyond the RDA.

So the RDA might be like milligrams where we're using mega doses of thiamine.

There are a few different types of thiamine.

There's straight up thiamine, there's injectable thiamine, there's silbutiamine, which tends to be more brain active.

And what are the best dietary sources? I know pork is one of them.

The tricky thing, again, it's like the

RDA of thiamine and what you would get from foods is going to be like 1.2 milligrams per day, right? For men.

And that is what we today consider a sufficiency.

but we're not really only interested in sufficiency we want to look at what might be optimal because during times of stress and during times of infection your body requires more so let's just kind of double it and say that optimal is probably somewhere between 150 to 200 especially when your body has an increased need But when they make those recommendations of vitamin C, the RDA, the recommended daily allowance, and they say it should be 75 to 90 milligrams, what is it that they're recommending? It's 90 milligrams of what? is it the vitamin C or is it ascorbic acid and I know that you did your research you looked it up and the dictionary says they're the same thing well we're going to take it a little bit further and we're going to show you that they're not the same thing and this is a huge part of the problem and the confusion vitamin c does have ascorbic acid but it is not just ascorbic acid vitamin c is a complex it's a functional unit and it consists of several different components it has something called ascorbigen and bioflavonoid complexes and they have multiple coordinating roles in the overall function and coordination of the vitamin c complex Then we have something called tyrosinase which is an enzyme and this is a form of organic copper.

It has a role of trace mineral activator and it is the thing that actually stimulates and makes the white blood cells get going.

So that is the immune system portion of this.

Although remember, that one has to go through the extra step just to become NR.

So how do you actually put this all together? How would you even know how much to take? Well, the RDA for vitamin B3 is 16 milligrams.

Now, that number, as all the RDAs, was based on the minimum needed to prevent full-blown disease, in this case, pellagra, not the threshold you need to optimize cellular function and NAD levels.

It is the floor.

It's not the ceiling.

So when you see RDA levels, keep that in mind.

Those are the floor.

They're never the ceiling.

And essentially, we need a stronger protein stimulus to achieve the same amount of muscle building.

And so the RDA for protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Of course, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

And what a lot of people don't realize is in North America, in the United States and Canada, we don't have a separate RDA for seniors, but they do in a lot of countries.

Australia, all the Nordic countries, several European countries have higher recommended intakes for seniors.

And most of the expert consensus groups recommend one to 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram for seniors with higher amounts needed for those with chronic diseases or illnesses.

We want to meet our recommended intakes or maybe slightly more.

We want to maintain a healthy vitamin D level.