Nutrient Storage: Your Body's Ponzi Scheme

I split my time pretty evenly between being a picture of health and an absolute dumpster fire. I push the bender so far that I end up having a “come to Jesus” moment where I immediately throw my bad habits to the wayside and go to the light. Then, after some time, I let myself have a “cheat day” that very easily spirals into a cheat week or a cheat month.

The False Balance

Before I started researching for my vitamins and minerals article, I believed that these two modes created a sort of physiological balance within myself that I could rely on. My whole-foods + supplements + extreme workout regimes would store themselves in my body in the same way that food is stored for bears in hibernation.

As I covered in the article, when you take in extra nutrients your body will either push them out or store them in your fat. If your body stores too much to handle it triggers hypervitaminosis, a condition where the high levels of vitamins become toxic.

This is where the Ponzi-scheme metaphor comes in: you feel stable as long as there is constant new input, but that feeling is funded by fresh deposits, not by an infinite reserve.

How The Storage Works

The vitamins that get stored into your fat are oil-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). When your body is running low on them, it goes to the fat stores to re-up. This is an evolutionary trait, because for most of human history we haven't had reliable nutrition. When was the last time you got scurvy at the tail-end of a bender? You can thank your body for that.

The amount of time before these stores are depleted varies, both from person to person and from vitamin to vitamin. There are a lot of things that impact this: how many vitamins were stored, how much fat you have, your liver health, your substance abuse habits, stress, genetics are a few examples. Every body is different, and there is no real way to tell when you’ve run out. Deficiency diseases happen later down the line, because before they set on your body is trying absolutely everything it can think of to keep you alive.

In other words, your body can borrow from stored nutrients for a while, but that borrowed runway is finite and the bill always arrives.

Depletion Chart

Here’s a quick chart about depletion of stored vitamins based on a completely normal, healthy, mythological human being, as well as the conditions that accelerate depletion.

*Rough estimates for orientation only. Individual depletion timelines can vary significantly.

Why The Warehouse Strategy Fails

Okay, but let’s say you catch it every time. You have a 6th sense for your body’s storage system and know exactly when to stop texting your bag guy.

Relying on your vitamin warehouse heavily can put you in a shit position. A lot of the conditions that affect the absorption of vitamins and your body’s ability to store nutrients are the ones you are participating in during the off times. Ripping cigs tears through vitamins faster, binge drinking destroys your liver stores, cocaine causes oxidative stress. Every bad decision has a price, and your body can be a vicious debt collector.

Damage Control

Listen, I’m not going to tell you that you need to straighten up and fly right because that would make me a hypocrite. Hell, I’m probably going to be binge drinking and chain-smoking at some skeevy dive bar this weekend. What you need to do is prioritize supporting repair after. Hydrate with electrolytes, eat something with protein, get some vitamins in you (B1, folate, B6, C), and try to get some shut-eye.

In the moment, it may seem like these things don’t matter but they absolutely do. Party smarter, party longer.

Xoxo,
Arielle