 Why are nutrients so important? This is something people love talking about, oh, this food is so good for you, yet no one ever seems to explain or emphasize the severity and necessity of nutrients in our bodies. In fact, they are the most crucial thing to all life on this planet. When we talk about nutrients, we mean vitamins, minerals, elements, and fatty acids. The main discrepancy here is that the forms of nutrients from plant foods are not available to humans due to our digestive capabilities. So when we talk about nutrients, we're referring to the animal forms of these nutrients. We've discussed this many times in the past. This is why my health philosophy ties in with consuming large amounts of high-quality animal foods. Check out yesterday's video if you want a more in-depth explanation. About 10 Healthiest Foods The overarching explanation for why nutrients are so important is gene expression. Gene expression requires certain nutrients to occur, and our genes are literally how every single thing functions in our body, how all of our molecules work. All of the vitamins that we are going to discuss today are involved in regulating genes to some degree, DNA, cells through differentiation and proliferation, the altering and creation of cells. There are so many functions for these vitamins, and we are really just trying to cover what is commonly known. There is a surprising lack of research on vitamins in general, and we can categorize it into two general fields of knowledge. One, mechanistic data showing actual processes in the body, such as vitamin A is a precursor to all gene expression. That would be a mechanism. Two, associations with the vitamin that are shown in studies. So you might find a study that says, hey, people that have high vitamin A consumption have lower rates of heart disease. Now a lack of nutrients causes dysfunction in the body, which is essentially the root cause of every single problem that can happen. The other contributing factor is inflammation from sugar, vegetable oils and unhealthy food. So if we're able to increase the nutrient density of our diet through quality animal foods and remove all inflammatory factors in the diet, we shouldn't be getting chronic disease. Before we actually jump into specific vitamins, keep in mind, everything in nature is synergistic. Yes, there are synergistic vitamins, but you need to be getting all of the minerals, all of the elements, all of the fatty acids with the vitamins in order to function optimally. There are certain amounts of each of these substances that we need to consume and all of them have to be consumed to be in optimal health. So I might mention that the fat-soluble vitamins A, D3 and K2 are synergistic with each other and the B vitamins and vitamin C and vitamin E have some synergistic antioxidant properties, but reality is everything works together and we need to get all of them to some degree, but the focus today will be on vitamins themselves. Remember guys, modern conventional wisdom, what we've been told our entire lives tends to be false. So you might hear a lot about vitamin B12, you might hear a lot about vitamin D, but there are vitamins and things that you've never heard of that are just as important if not more important than popular nutrients. So starting with vitamin A, it is a precursor to all gene expression as we mentioned earlier. So literally every gene that is being expressed, every function that is occurring in the body requires vitamin A. This is why the consumption of liver is emphasized on the carnivore diet or really just for nutrient density in general as liver like beef liver, chicken liver is where animals store vitamin A in large amounts. Human store vitamin A in large amounts in our livers by eating the livers of other animals, we are able to get that high vitamin A intake and it's incredibly important. Not only is it a precursor to all gene expression, it's necessary for skin and mucosal cells which relates to the immune system. Every single part of our body on the inside and out requires vitamin A to some degree and these things might seem really simple and general but it's literally involved in every single cell in our body. Vitamin A is crucial for embryonic development and it has been shown to be a direct gene regulator of the production of growth hormone and red blood cells. It is the most overlooked vitamin in its importance. People think you can convert the plant form carotene into the animal form of vitamin A retinol but that is not true. I have a video, plant versus animal vitamins that you can watch to understand those different versions. Vitamin A is also required for iron metabolism. So for you vegans out there that look like a walking corpse, you need to consume animal foods for retinol to absorb iron efficiently. And remember guys there is a lack of research on vitamins in general so I can probably scour through hundreds of research papers and just list things that vitamin A is associated with but we want to be brief here and just get a general understanding of each vitamin. Vitamin D3 and there is vitamin D2 the plant form but humans synthesize vitamin D3 the animal form directly from the sunlight and it is contained in some animal foods. Most people do recognize that vitamin D3 is needed for the utilization of calcium in the bones, teeth and organs. I have discussed how calcium is dangerous, I have discussed how vitamin D3 plays a role in reversing arterial calcification aka an element of heart disease so the importance of this can actually be life and death. In regards to gene regulation, vitamin D3 has been shown to be involved in cell growth and differentiation which means how cells are created as well as how cells turn into different cells. And it is also involved in genes regulating cytokine production which is an immune cell but high amounts of vitamin D3 interestingly enough become immunosuppressive so enough vitamin D3 to be optimal is great for your immune system and too much vitamin D3 is actually immunosuppressive and can harm you. It's been associated with increased brain development as well as height but keep in mind the vitamin synergy that we mentioned earlier. You need vitamin D3 to utilize vitamin A which is important in embryonic development and you also need vitamin K2 so I have seen studies showing that babies born in the summer months or sunnier times of the year have higher IQ, height, more educational attainment it's very apparent vitamin D3 is something we need to be getting in large amounts. It's also very important for energy metabolism there isn't a lot of information readily out there on this but most people lacking energy is usually due to a vitamin D3 deficiency and then we have vitamin K2 and although vitamin D3 is very important for calcium metabolism calcium metabolism is vitamin K2's primary function. You have vitamin K1 which is the plant form which is not too active in the body and then you have vitamin K2 in several forms, MK4 is active in the bloodstream and the organs and soft tissues and MK7 is more active in the bones. It reverses and inhibits calcification through the activation of matrix gloprotein so vitamin K2 activates matrix gloprotein and in studies it has been shown to suppress cancer genes as well as be beneficial in insulin resistance so a lot of these vitamins when consumed show improvements in people with chronic disease like diabetes and that's probably because people that have chronic disease are deficient in every single vitamin and regardless of which one they consume they will probably see some type of improvement because their diets are such crap. If you want to learn more about K2 and D3 I have a video you should tan naked as well as the reversal of calcification. We mentioned that vitamin A is probably the most overlooked vitamin but reality is all vitamins are overlooked. B vitamins in particular are just underestimated so everyone thinks that if they eat a little bit of meat they're getting enough vitamin B12 but there are so many processes that all B vitamins are involved with and we have a list of individual things that the derivatives of B vitamins are associated with but all B vitamins are involved in energy metabolism the conversion of macronutrients, carbohydrates, fat and protein into energy obviously preventing tiredness and fatigue, the function of the nervous system, cognitive, psychological and mental function, the maintenance of hair, skin, nails and bones, normal blood cell formation, amino acid synthesis and my dad had a really bad B12 deficiency and he's having all these mental issues, isn't functioning properly and when you look at his diet he was eating pancakes with an egg for breakfast, ham on wheat bread for lunch and pasta for dinner. The amount of meat that we consume on a standard American diet isn't really adequate for all of these functions that our body needs. You need to consume at least 30-35% of your calories from quality animal foods to get enough of the B vitamins to be in reasonable health. In addition to those overarching B vitamin functions there are three more processes that are the most important thing that we are going to discuss today arguably. Methylation which is when a methyl group is added to DNA. This is changing how DNA acts without changing the composition of the DNA itself. This is similar to gene expression, this regulates genes in the body and is involved in every single cell in the body. We have the folate cycle which metabolizes gene components such as amino acids and nucleic acids so the folate cycle is creating building blocks of other processes in the body, all of our DNA, things to regulate genes. Then we have the antioxidant glutathione, the master antioxidant that repairs DNA and all of the cells in your body. Changing the antioxidant capacities of vitamin C and vitamin E to glutathione is literally a joke. Yes we do need vitamin C and vitamin E in fairly small amounts but there is a reason every time I get a headache and then I eat a steak that's high in B vitamins my headache goes away. Methylation is also involved in the detoxification of hormones, chemicals and heavy metals. Things that occur in our modern life, yes detox is a real thing but pooping six times a day on the vegan diet is not detox. Methylation is involved with actual detox. Methylation is also involved in the balancing of brain chemistry and as we said the repair of cells damaged by free radicals. Now if we look at the B vitamins individually they do have fairly specific roles in addition to these overarching functions. We have B1 thiamine as well as B3 thiamine pyrophosphate which is what thiamine turns into in the body they do the same thing. But thiamine is involved in the mitochondria in the cell you know the powerhouse the energy system of the cell every single cell in the body. It's crucial to heart function but really just every cell function in general. We have vitamin B2 riboflavin which is involved in the metabolism of the macronutrients fats, carbohydrates and protein it helps remove toxins from the body as well as drugs and it is crucial for iron metabolism also involved in the creation of glutathione the master antioxidant. We have vitamin B5 pentothetic acid it is a precursor to acetyl coenzyme A very crucial for energy metabolism it is also shown to be a precursor for the gene expression of various steroid hormones vitamin D and neurotransmitters. Vitamin B6 pyrodoxine is required for over 100 enzyme reactions in the body and enzymes are regulated by genes they are a very complicated function of what's going on in our body because there are so many different enzymes and each of them do different things you guys might be more familiar with like digestive enzymes like lipase that digests fat you have protease which digests protein but there are many enzymes in our body and they all do different things. Pyrodoxine is also crucial for the release of glucose from stored glycogen in the body it's involved in the synthesis of heme therefore plays a role in optimal oxygen metabolism and is involved in the glutathione plus collagen cycles. Thomas DeLauer did a video the other day selling some collagen powder and there have been many people that advocate collagen consumption but without vitamin B6 and also vitamin C your body can't utilize collagen so I'm assuming these supplements aren't really adding vitamin B6 but vitamin B6 consumed from foods like liver or shellfish is the best thing for your skin health for collagen for antioxidant capacity not taking collagen powder. Vitamin B7 biotin is mainly known for being a precursor to the carboxylase enzyme which is involved with CO2 metabolism this ties back to energy metabolism of primarily non-carbohydrate sources so in order to utilize protein and fat effectively for energy in our body biotin is key we have vitamin B9 folate as we spoke about the folate cycle earlier it is most important for creating the gene components the molecules that our body needs those amino acids and those nucleic acids so this is also something that needs to be mentioned in the context of you know glutathione and collagen creation and we have vitamin B12 cobalamin and there's several forms of B12 that have different functions in the body it is a cofactor for B9 in the methylation cycle and crucial for converting homocysteine into methionine we see vegans and vegetarians with high homocysteine levels regardless of the supplementing of vitamin B12 and high homocysteine levels are what cause oxidative stress in the bloodstream eventually leading to stroke methyl group DNA activity this is what we were mentioning earlier with the methylation cycle methylation is the adding of a methyl group to DNA so it has gene expression activity moving on to vitamin C the first thing we have is collagen synthesis and collagen composes every tissue in our body so it's very important that's why people that get scurvy you know their teeth start falling out their skin starts turning black it's a horrible horrible disease the thing is the amount of vitamin C that we actually need is very minimal it's just that increasing carbohydrate consumption in the diet creates a higher demand for vitamin C but the vitamin C RDA is dozens to hundreds of times higher than what we actually need on a daily basis and most people get far too much vitamin C a lot of questions can be answered in nature you know is there an easy way to obtain large amounts of certain vitamins in nature yes vitamin C is contained in raw meat in liver in certain animal tissues like adrenal glands in decent amounts but not the amounts we've been told we have to consume so that's something to keep in mind if you can't get a nutrient in nature I mean this is something like calcium that video I did up calcium is dangerous explains this but if a nutrient seems almost impossible to obtain in a large amount in nature there's most likely something incorrect about the RDA what we've been told by the government to consume every day vitamin C's role in the immune system is with immune cell maturation and vitamin C's main role is its antioxidant capacity in protecting certain cell components the issue I have with vitamin C is people think it's really important for your immune system but vitamin A vitamin D3 way more important you take cod liver oil every day which has vitamin A and D3 you will really get sick then we have vitamin E which serves as an antioxidant for the fat in cells and has also been shown to regulate gene expression in T cells which are immune cells so as with vitamin C the amount of vitamin E required in our bodies is very low and not only is the amount of vitamin C and vitamin E in our bodies met with a very low amount consuming more of them isn't better now when you consume more vitamin C it can actually cause issues when you consume more vitamin E than what naturally occurs in animal fat and things like eggs fish you generally run into issues so I'm saying that these vitamins vitamin C and E have a low requirement but they also have a low ceiling you don't want to over consume these in unnatural ways more is not better you know more vitamin E will actually oxidize in your body you know more vitamin C will cause you know more issues with cells and create cell dysfunction in some capacity this is really all you need to know about vitamins for the most part but as we said earlier there are minerals elements and fatty acids involved in all of these processes as well and there are a lot of links between these vitamins and even more synergy that we forgot to mention whether it's just me not researching long enough or a lack of readily available data you know one example is that zinc is required for all vitamin A metabolism so without zinc you can't use vitamin A properly you know without magnesium you can't utilize vitamin D3 you know without sodium and potassium things can't transfer across the cell so I will touch on you know minerals and elements in a video I will do another video on fatty acids as well covering the omega fatty acids and then I think I will even do a video on the nutrients that are not categorized you have choline you have carnitine and any other un-categorized nutrients that you guys know about if you could please put them in the comments below it's hard for me to think of those off the top of my head but thank you guys for joining me today I went through my previous videos on vitamins and I've never really explained it in depth to this degree and I've also had a difficult time finding this information online so I like to think I'm somewhere near the top of the list in my understanding of these vitamins and why this is really the core of what we need to be optimally healthy and if you obtain all of these vitamins you're likely going to also be obtaining the minerals elements and fatty acids your body needs it's not super complicated to you know obtain all of these things in your diet you really just have to eat high-quality animal foods you know our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't look at a nutrient database every time they were eating a meal thank you guys again for joining me if you could please like the video subscribe and hit that bell icon recently we've launched frankies free-range meat providing you with high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price we've recently added bone marrow to the website we will be adding grass-fed butter this week and hopefully fish and wagyu in the near future as well so if you want some of these vitamins go to frankiesfreerangemeat.com check it out a bunch of high quality grass-fed meat organs raw cheese anything you need to be an optimal version of yourself you can also go to frankiesnaturals.com where we sell minimal ingredient minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products like frankies ball grease for vitamin d3 so if you're lacking a little bit in the vitamin d3 department go to frankiesnaturals.com buy my moisturizing cream you will not regret it enjoy the rest of your day guys