[Bruce:] So, anyway, I called this idea "triage" because on the battlefield, it's a French
word.
The docs used to divide the people up into three groups, those who are wounded so badly
that they couldn't do anything about it, and they go to one side, and those are gonna get
better anyway, whether they treat them or not, and then those where it pays to treat
them because you can make a difference.
Well, somebody said I should call that biage, not triage.
But anyway, I used that word...
So one of the things we found is, I looked into literature, put in the...Google is wonderful.
Now you put in the 30 vitamins and minerals.
You need 30 different substances to run your metabolism.
They're co-factors for enzymes mostly, and if you don't get any one, you die.
But the criteria for calling something a vitamin is that the mice die or people die or get
scurvy or beriberi or some horrible disease.
But when I asked about DNA damage, lots of deficiencies cause that.
And I kept on wondering, "Why is nature doing that?
Why is it breaking your chromosomes or damaging your DNA when you don't get enough?"
And some of the literature, some of the studies we did.
And one day, it hit me, and this theory came into my head.
It's just what nature wants because through all of evolution, animals have been running
out of vitamins and minerals.
You need 30 different ones, and there are about 15 minerals, and you're getting them
from the soil.
The plants take them up out of the soil.
You need magnesium.
You need calcium.
You need iron.
You need zinc.
Anyway, there are all these that are involved in metabolism.
Zinc is in 2000 enzymes that have zinc fingers or otherwise need zinc.
And magnesium's in 500 enzymes or so.
Every DNA repair enzyme has magnesium in it.
And it's also in the bones, and calcium.
So we need these substances.
Anyway, what I postulated is, since the minerals aren't spread evenly through the world, the
red soils with a lot of iron, and in the soils with very little iron.
The selenium, too much selenium is a poison, and too little selenium is a poison.
This selenium is necessary for 25 enzymes or so, as a co-factor.
And so in Europe, the patches of too much selenium and too little selenium.
In China, there's a disease called Keshan syndrome, where people get heart disease and
other bad things.
This is the poison by too much selenium, but there are also areas where they don't get
enough selenium.
So each one of these vitamins has been studied very extensively.
And so what I postulated, just as an idea that came to my head, is that when you get
a little low on any vitamin or mineral, it's in nature's benefit to ration it.
And so the way it rations it, where would you expect if you don't have an enough selenium
or vitamin K or magnesium or whatever?
What's nature gonna do?
Well, it's gonna put it into those proteins that say they have 25 selenium proteins or
16 vitamin K-dependent proteins.
It's gonna put it into those proteins that are essential for survival because what nature
wants you to do is survive and reproduce.
That's strong selection.
And living to 90, nature really doesn't care about you.
You're past your reproductive age anyway.
So there's not much selection for that.
So the enzymes that are keeping you having a long lifespan, and those are the enzymes
like DNA repair enzymes, that DNA damage is insidious and it accumulates through your
lifespan and increases your risk of getting cancer all the time.
Or one of the vitamin K enzymes is blood clotting.
And if you cut yourself and you didn't have blood clotting, you'd just bleed to death.
And that happens often enough that it's an essential protein where one of the vitamin
K proteins prevents calcification of the arteries.
They're all calcium-binding proteins, vitamin K proteins.
And if you don't have that protein, you slowly accumulate atherosclerotic plaques, calcification
of the arteries.
And that will eventually lead to heart disease, but it takes 10 years or so.
So basically what nature's doing is trading long-term health for short-term health.
And it wants short-term survival.
And it made perfect sense, and evolutionary biologists discuss that concept in other ways,
not in the biochemistry.
So, anyway, I wrote a theoretical paper saying, "Hey, this is an interesting theory and has
a lot of implication for human nutrition."
And then later, Joyce McCann in my lab, she came into my office one day and said, "I'm
a little skeptical of your triage theory.
I think there's a better way to attack it."
I said, "Joyce, what do you wanna do?
Go to it."
She's a really smart cookie.
And she said, "Well, I'll research one vitamin and one mineral that has been well-studied,
and see is this triage idea that there's a rationing really built in?"
I called it triage.
And I said, "Terrific, Joyce.
Go to it."
So she turned out two beautiful reviews, one on vitamin K and one on selenium.
And they both have the system for rationing so that, for example, in vitamin K, the clotting
proteins get it first, and only after they're satisfied do you prevent calcification of
the arteries or prevent cancer or prevent bone fractures.
All these things are proteins that help in these things, but it's all insidious damage
that you get that's a long-term consequence.
In fact, we call those "the disease of aging."
Your brain slowly goes out, and your heart slowly goes out, or your DNA gets damaged,
and you get cancer.
And so she showed it's true for both of these systems, and I think it's gonna be true for
all the vitamins and minerals.