Gloucestershire GP on why we’re bigger than ever yet eating less then ever so may need supplementing to stay well and why working in The West Indies brought home the importance of iron to children’s health.
Watch the full chat with Dr Mark Draper below:
Moreton-in-Marsh GP Dr Mark Draper has studied and taught micro-nutrition for more than 40 years. He’s helped design supplements for Cytoplan and lectured fellow professionals on micro-nutrition.
He’s a big fan of taking supplements for many reasons including the typical western diet being nutrient deficient and the quality of our soil having diminished.
But there’s another reason that might not spring to mind considering there’s an obesity epidemic: we’re not consuming enough calories. At least not compared to our ancestors. Or even compared to most people less than a hundred years ago.
“The rationing in the war was based upon a working man needing 2,500 calories. And we’re now requiring something like 1600 to 1800 calories. They would have cycled to work. They would have done manual jobs,” Dr Draper explained.
“They would have lived in cold houses. So central heating would be linked to a reduction in calories because when your house is cold you produce heat. Your body produces heat.”
Dr Draper may be doing his level best to keep the people of the Cotswolds healthy these days, but his belief in the power of supplementing minerals was ignited back in the 1980s when working on the island of Grand Turk in the Caribbean. A programme of giving iron supplements to local school children (which would have included his son, Sport and Life co-founder Teddy) yielded huge health results in the right direction – for the bodies and brains of the kids.
“We started giving the teachers instruction at schools and rolled out this programme to 15,00 school kids. About 50% of the people coming to the clinics in town were school kids. And within six weeks we stopped seeing the school kids in the clinic.
“So I said to the teachers, ‘what have you noticed?’ They said ‘oh they’re much more attentive. They’re learning better.’ I investigated what iron deficiency would do and found that iron was necessary for memory imprinting so the teachers saying they learned much better was to do with iron entering the brain.”
Dr Draper did tests to measure the children’s iron levels post supplementation to check they hadn’t got too much on board and their levels were optimal. But it begs the question, why were the children on the Turks and Caicos Islands iron deficient in the 1980s?
“In The West Indies the iron deficiency in that population was 65%. It would have been because they didn’t have red meat. It would be chicken and fish. Red meat would have to be imported and would have been expensive whereas you’re rearing your own chickens or you’re going out to fish.”
So deficiencies can be down to what a specific community’s diet is. But what about on a big scale, like the UK. Dr Draper has long been concerned about the relatively low levels of selenium in the British diet.
Selenium is a critical trace mineral essential for human health, supporting thyroid function, DNA synthesis, reproduction, and acting as an antioxidant. Unlike iron levels which might be attributed to the type of food you’re eating, selenium levels, according to Dr Draper are dependent on the soil you’re food originated from.
And he believes with a shift in where Britain imports wheat from has had a dangerous and deleterious effect on our selenium levels.
“In the 1960s the average day intake of selenium was 60 micrograms a day and in a British Medical Journal editorial in February 1997 they reported that the average person in the UK was getting 34 micrograms of selenium.
“The main reason for the drop, in the article, was one we were (in the 1960s) importing wheat from Canada. And they think that UK levels dropped from 60 to 45 when we joined the European Common Market and then the Common Agricultural Policy and deep ploughing caused soil depletion and so the levels went from 45 to 34.”
Some countries have attempted to remedy the situation by putting selenium into their soil and this has had positive outcomes – case in point, Finland.
“And so they reduced the incidents of coughs and colds.”
There could be a perception that opting for organic food boosts micronutrient intake. Dr Draper is a fan of organic food but mainly because of what it doesn’t have in it – pollutants – than what it does contain relative to non organic food.
“Organic food would have a third the level of pesticide. It may or may not have more minerals. It depends on the soil that it’s grown in. It may have 20% t0 30% more flavonoids.”
If you’re looking to supplement your diet, Sport and Life readers get 30% off of first purchase from Cytoplan and 10% ongoing. To get the discount code please watch the full chat with Dr Mark Draper above.
For more articles on micro nutrition CLICK HERE to go to the Nutrition Matters website.
