Nutrition is truly my one passion that keeps me curious every day, drives me to learning incessantly, and apply all those learnings to my own life and to those seeking better health and wellness. What I have discovered is nothing less than amazing. And I try and apply that to the individuals who seek me out for their own health and well-being.
I received my PhD in nutrition from the University of California, Davis where I developed new techniques to quantify the absorption of nutrients across the human intestinal wall, and then to trace those nutrients as they were distributed throughout the body, and eventually eliminated in urine and stool. Until that point, researchers did not have a solid, quantitative understanding of ‘nutrient kinetics’ in humans.Â
This was an especially important problem to solve as deficiencies in specific nutrients was tied to a range of health conditions and diseases. I decided to investigate the kinetics of folic acid, an essential vitamin important to human health. Specifically, I studie the importace of folic acid during pregnancy. At the time, researchers were starting to make the connection of low folic acid in the diet to birth defects, known as neural tube defects, or spina bidifa.Â
My PhD research established for the first time highly accurate ways to quantify the absorption of folic acid across the human intestine and then to follow its distribution and delivery to important organs in the body. To do this, I needed to develop a whole new scientific approach. No laboratory instrument at the time could achieve this feat and that held back further advancements in this field.Â
After researching and contacting many experts in the field, I formed a collaboration with astrophysicist (yes!) who were experts at conducting nuclear research. This group of researchers were leaders in their field at the UD Department of Energy – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Thids team had a 10-million volt particle accelerator! The machine was huge. You didn’t walk up to it. You walked inside it. It was about the size of a two tennis courts. And it could what no one else had done before.
Over the course of the following two years, I developed the clinical protocol suitable for this brand new way of studying nutrients. I received the proper approvals and then conducted the first study to accurately trace the movement of nutrients in humans. My first study subject was my dissertation professor, Dr Andy Clifford.Â
The first step was to drink a tiny amount of folic acid. But this was no ordinary folic acid. It was synthesized in a way to possess extra levels of radiocarbon, a radioactive version of carbon. The particle accelerator at Lawrence Livermore allowed me to measure how much of the radiocarbon-labeled folic acid in that first drink made it to the blood, or urine, or any other place I collected samples.Â
The instrument was exceptionally sensitive. In fact, it was the most sensitive instrument ever used in a clinical setting. The immense sensitivity of the instrument allowed me to lower the amount of radiocarbon needed in the test drink. In fact, it was one million times lower than anyone else had ever attempted. This made the test drink (the bolus) as safe as drinking any fluid or consuming any food. Â
I collected blood samples right after my professor drank the radiolabeled fluid. And I continued to collect blood samples for the following six months. That way, I could quantify the distribution pattern in blood for six months after a single bolus dose on day 1. I also collected all of my professor’s urine and stool samples for 30 straight days. Again, I used the particle accelerator to trace the elimination of the bolus dose (the folic acid) in urine and stool to discover the rate at which the body loses this important nutrient.
Once I had all the numbers, I developed a new mathematical method to put all the date together and to interpret the results. It was a new technique called ‘compartment modeling’. I published these results as part of my PhD dissertation. And then this led to several other studies in more individuals along with more publications. I received my PhD degree in 1998. My work opened the door for more of this type of research. Other researchers in my lab then studied vitamin B12, vitamin A, and beta-carotene.Â
My research on folic acid, along with work conducted by other researchers around the world did indeed show a connection between folic acid, pregnancy, and neural tube defects. Public health officials and policy makers were concerned that women of child-bearing age were at risk of delivery infants with this debilitating birth defect. Their solution – to fortify the food supply with folic acid. This would ensure that women were getting the minimum amount of folic acid to have a healthy pregnancy. The decision was made to fortify the flour supply in the US, as well as other countries in Europe and elsewhere.
Did it work? Absolutely! The rate of spina bifida, and other types of neural tube defects, dropped dramatically in the countries that employed food fortification of folic acid. It is now rare to see anyone under the age of 20 with this type of birth defect. That’s because these fortification efforts went into effect a little over 20 years ago.Â
The particle accelerator instrument I described above is called an ‘Accelerator Mass Spectrometry’. There are about 60 of them in the world. And nearly all of them are at government or major university labs. In 2004, six years after earning my dissertation, I bought one of these machines for $2 million dollars. That’s a whole other story I spell out in another article. and led.
