Vitamin D is actually hormone D, and butyric acid is actually vitamin M

 (writing in progress)
 
This Post is partly repetitive, but the topic is worth presenting clearly in several ways. It is not every day that one discovers a new vitamin, or challenges the qualifications of a long-standing vitamin.
 
Vitamin D is actually a hormone, which we can perhaps call hormone D. The conventional view of this substance is misleading.

Hormone D = 'vitamin D' is a steroid-based hormone, like most sex hormones, and operates in concert with the sex hormones. Its behaviour is typical of hormones, i.e.

• mechanistic rather than causal, and
• unlikely to be controlling in any ultimate sense, because it can be made by the body itself.

Hormone D = 'vitamin D' is, admittedly, unusual in having a photosynthesic aspect. However, this does not justify calling it a vitamin, any more than it justifies calling it a hormone. Vitamins are defined by dietary requirement, not electromagnetic requirement.

Because hormone D is – contrary to popular belief - just a hormone, and is made by the body itself, it is illogical to hypothesise, as per the conventional view, that its deficiency ‘causes’ osteoporosis.

It is also questionable to invoke a ‘deficiency in vitamin D'. This is because the substance is produced by the body itself. The hormonal balance in the body can certainly ail. However, can one really be ‘deficient’ in e.g. testosterone, given that the body will make enough testosterone if everything else (including the controlling nutrients and essential acids) are in sufficient supply?

I suggest that ‘deficiency’ is better reserved for the controlling substances that cannot be synthesised in the body, e.g. the true vitamins.
 
I have pointed out, in a previous Post, that ascorbic acid qualifies as a vitamin (C) in humans, because we cannot synthesise this substance, while not qualifying as a vitamin in most other animals, which can synthesise ascorbic acid. So, the same substance can be a vitamin in one species and not another, depending on whether that species can synthesise that substance in its body or not. In the case of the sequence of substances producing the hormone calcitriol, all are made by the human body - and so none qualifies as 'vitamin D'.

Admittedly, butyric acid (like vitamin B12) is complicated by the fact that it can be synthesised by microbes in the gut contents. The human body must absorb its butyric acid and vitamin B12 through the gut wall, and from the gut contents. However, the difference is that the human body cannot synthesise vitamin B12 in its own cells, whereas it can do so in the case of all the substances leading up to, and including, calcitriol.

Thus, vitamin B12 qualifies as a vitamin, whereas 'vitamin D' does not.
 
Now, turning to butyric acid:
 
Butyric acid may qualify as a fatty acid in ruminants and other specialised herbivores, because these animals use it as a source of metabolic energy. However, in the human body it is – unrealised until now - a vitamin.

Just as ascorbic acid is a vitamin (C) for humans, but not for ruminants (which make it in their own cells), so calcitriol (and its serial precursors) is a vitamin (putatively M) for humans, but not for ruminants (the gut fermentations of which produce it in such quantity that is used as as a substitute for glucose, in metabolism).

The realisation that the durian plant (Durio) May offer vitamin M to its dispersers, and that the orangutan (Pongo) is, like humans, potentially deficient in this vitamin, may shed new light on the mutualism between durian and its consumers. Just as citrus offers vitamin C to human dispersers, so durian may offer vitamin M to the orangutan as its disperser.
 
This may allow a re-appraisal of cause and effect in osteoporosis. Although there may be too little hormone D (calcitriol) in the bodies of those suffering from osteoporosis, this is unlikely to be causal. What is more likely to be cause (as opposed to mechanism) is a deficiency of vitamin M. One of the consequences of a deficiency of vitamin M is a hormonal imbalance in which hormone D fails to do its job fully.
 
Do the above realisations help to resolve the apparent paradox in humans, in excessive ultraviolet radiation (leading to skin cancer), simultaneous with insufficient ultraviolet radiation (leading to osteoporosis)?

One objection may be: “but osteoporosis sufferers belong to populations with plenty of access to dairy products, which contain vitamin M; and even the small amount of butterfat consumed by Western women past menopause should surely prevent deficiency of vitamin M”?

Here, it may be important to consider lactose and galactose. If one is (like most of the human species) unable to digest lactose well, then what results is a chronic malady in the colon, in which the milk sugar ferments pathologically. By pathologically, what I mean is that the balance of microbial action and composition is altered in such a way that, even if one is not conscious of gas, discomfort, and maldigestion, the colonic fermentation system is still not able to perform certain healthy functions, such as to produce butyric acid from fibre.

What this may lead to is a tragedy of nutrition in which a person, consuming plenty of reduced-fat dairy products for their calcium content, actually induces a deficiency in the very thing the body needs, which is vitamin M. The deficiency in vitamin M arises because

• butyric acid has been largely removed from the milk along with most of the butterfat, and
• the normal fermentation system in which fibre is converted to butyric acid (particularly by beneficial strains of the botulism bacterium, Clostridium) is disrupted by unhealthy fermentation of lactose.

The result is ironic: people suffer from osteoporosis

• despite consuming the best potential source of vitamin M, namely dairy products, and
• because they have been misled to consume the dairy products in a form calculated to deny them the content of vitamin M.

The best way to consume dairy products is to get rid of the lactose and keep the butterfat, not the other way around as currently advised as per the conventional view. Part of the reason for the confusion is a misplaced focus on calcium.
 
What this means, effectively, is that all the supplementary sources of vitamin M available to humans have to be produced by fermentation, as far as most human individuals are concerned. I am excluding the small proportion of humans who retain the enzymes to digest lactose in adulthood. But most of us have to do what humans do best, i.e. get technological, if we are going to get enough vitamin M in the absence of eating the kinds of tubers that best produce vitamin M by colonic fermentation.

What we have to do is to ferment foods such as apples (to make cider rich in butyric acid), or cabbage (to make sauerkraut rich in butyric acid) or fish (to make bombay duck rich in butyric acid). Even in the case of ruminant milk, we have to ferment this material thoroughly if we are to remove the lactose (which is effectively = indirectly antagonistic to butyric acid in the scheme of things) and enhance the butyric acid (via fermentations that actually culture the right types of Clostridium, so that the final product contains not only the butyric acid indigenous in milk but also extra butyric acid generated by microbes).
 
Although this point is just a tidbit of natural history interest, rather than anything practically important, one of the dietary sources that emerges with new significance is durian. This plant is extremely unusual in being one of the few sources of a food likely to be rich in vitamin M with no fermentation needed. The plant has divined the great apes’ requirement for vitamin M, and supplied it in ready, nicely packaged form.

Whereas the principle involved is familiar in the case of vitamin C (i.e. the plant offers a vitamin in return for the dispersal and sowing of its seeds), the vitamin in question is unusual. This is particularly appropriate for the orangutan, which occupies an odd niche in which it lacks the gross fermentation possessed by the gorilla, but also lacks the omnivory and technical ability of the human. I suggest that it is impossible to understand the ecological strategies of orangutan or durian without recognising butyric acid for what it is: a new vitamin called vitamin M.
 
(writing in progress)

Publicado el julio 28, 2022 11:44 TARDE por milewski