Will Estes says, "Calcium sulfate is commonly used as a plant food."
Calcium sulfate is commonly used as a plant food? "There does not appear to be a supplement
manufacturer making a calcium sulfate supplement for humans. Is this form of calcium beneficial for
human nutrition? We have magnesium sulfate, which below levels of bowel tolerance is a source of
both magnesium and sulfate. Is there some reason why calcium attached to sulfate would not absorb
as well as alternate forms of calcium, such as calcium glycinate or calcium citrate?"
Will follows up, "If I have low sulfate levels and there is some reason to believe I am not
converting sulfite to sulfate efficiently, so I'm trying to find dietary sources for sulfate,
I might also try to use zinc sulfate as my primary zinc supplement.
Sorry, calcium sulfate is used as a supplement for plants, not a food."
Okay. I'm going to pull up some notes that I have related to this subject.
Hopefully I can pull them up very quickly. Okay.
So first of all, if you're not converting sulfite to sulfate, that should be a
molybdenum deficiency. If it's not a molybdenum deficiency it's probably a gut microbiota problem.
Could be a sulfite oxidase enzyme deficiency, of course, but I think it would be much more common
that you have sulfate metabolizing bacteria in the intestines, then that you have a sulfite oxidase
genetic deficiency. Although, you can never rule out a modest impairment in that enzyme,
that would not be diagnosed with anything. So, it can't be ruled out. But I do you think it's going
to be much more common that someone has a sulfur intolerance that's driven by gut microbiota.
And in that case, I think you want to be very careful about the bioavailability of sulfate
salts that you use, because undigestible sulfate salts will worsen
the overgrowth of sulfate-metabolizing bacteria in the intestines and make them worse.
And so, I did do a little bit of research on this, and for example,
glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate I think are very bad forms of sulfate to use
because they do have relatively poor absorption and do alter the gut microbiota
in favor of sulfate-metabolizing bacteria. I can't comment on the bioavailability of calcium sulfate.
I don't know what its bioavailability would be. It is the case that sodium sulfate, and potassium
sulfate, and any salt of a Group 1 elements in the periodic table, is going to completely ionize
in any water solution, and that's not necessarily true of other salts.
So, I don't know what the ionization rate of magnesium sulfate
or calcium sulfate is. And if you're specifically trying to get sulfate, especially if you're
worried about a gut microbiota, I do think that sodium sulfate, potassium sulfate orally, and....
sulfur amino acids to support transsulfuration, orally would be the best things to do.
Now, in terms of finding sources, that's a little difficult. So,
I do think that some of these things... From what I recall, I don't think you can get a food-grade
supplement of any of these things, but I do think that you can get... Well, what I think you can
get, is food-grade products that are meant to be used as food additives, and I'm not sure I would
trust those as being totally pure. And so, I just find it unfortunate that you can't get those. But
I don't know, I have no idea why. It's probably just, no one has found a marketable reason for it.
And so, I do know that, medically, you can get sodium sulfate because they use it medically
for certain uses. So, I'm sure you could get it prescribed and maybe get a compounding
pharmacy to make it or something like that, but I don't think you can just buy it on a website.
And so, just thinking through the easily available options, I think you want to pound
the sulfur amino acid pathway because that's the best-absorbed thing
that you can get your hands on that has high absorption and will generate sulfate.
And so, NAC, for example, or just animal protein. And then, if you're really trying to get around
a gut problem, you could find someone to have you compound an infusion of sulfur amino acids.
Okay. So then, Will follows up and says, "How could my microbiome metabolize sulfate
in my blood?" No, I'm not saying that, it can metabolize sulfate in your food.
Then he says, "Sulfur amino acids go through sulfite before sulfate,
which is my problem I'm trying to work around." Agreed, but I'm not... So,
molybdenum should increase your tolerance for that, and if it's not, then I think it might be a
microbiome problem. If it is a microbiome problem, then higher dose molybdenum might help because
molybdenum does shut down gut microbiota metabolism of sulfur into sulfite and
hydrogen sulfide. And so, higher dose molybdenum than you've tried, might theoretically help
your tolerance of sulfur amino acids. But other than that, I don't know what to do.
You can take Epsom salt baths, but the evidence on the sulfate-specific absorption of them isn't good
so I have no idea how to characterize that dose. You can take magnesium sulfate to bowel tolerance.
But, there's nothing else to do that I know of, except try to find some doctor who has access
to some medical-grade sodium sulfate. Other than that, I think the available options are not very
good in terms of chondroitin and glucosamine. So I think it's, magnesium sulfate to bowel
tolerance. Sulfur amino acids, try using higher dose molybdenum to increase tolerance of them.
Better identifying a potential microbiome issue in the gut, so if you have desulfovibrio,
for example, present in the gut microbiome. So Will adds, "What kind of molybdenum doses
would shut down biome conversion?" I don't know. I mean, I know that in vitro, molybdenum
in the culture medium, will shut down sulfur metabolism in a sulfur-metabolizing bacterium.
And so, presumably, you want molybdenum higher than gut absorption to reach the colon that is
basically compensating for amino acids that are going to reach the colon unmetabolized.
So I would start with 500 micrograms and titrate up to the tolerable upper intake level
on molybdenum. So, I forgot what that is off the top of my head... Oh, one second.
Here we go. Two milligrams per day is the upper limit for molybdenum supplementation.
Two milligrams per day. So, I would say experiment
with 500 micrograms to two milligrams and see if that increases tolerance. That's about
all I can come up with, short of finding someone that can get their hands on medical-grade sodium
sulfate. I know it exists because it's used to detoxify barium and stuff like that.
So, hope that helps, Will. Thank you for your question.