It’s like that split-second you close the door and realise you’ve locked the car with the keys still inside, or the whole reason you rang someone pops back into your head just after you put the phone down. Yes after the opportunity to draw breath over the break I went, ‘Doh! …I forgot to mention manganese!!’ So some of you may already know I am not a super fan of manganese. Well actually, that’s not accurate, I am perhaps just less of a fan than the people who are formulating a lot of our supplements! A place for everything and everything in its place. While this saying is completely foreign to my office, my house, my domestics and the rest of my life, it is a mantra I abide by with all micronutrients. Having enough of each micronutrient is good, having optimal (if we know what that is, which often we don’t) is wonderful but an excess is bad news.
And as I’ve spoken to before, with our increasing use of multi-nutritional formulas and the frequent inclusion of significant amounts Mn somewhere towards the bottom of those long ingredient lists…we very much run this risk with patients who are taking multiple supplements, at which point Manganese can become a serious meddler.
There’s a short list of patients for whom I am particularly conservative regarding their Manganese exposure and near the top of that list is those with Gilbert’s Syndrome. Do you get my ‘Doh!’ moment now? Because at the end of last year I released the Gilbert’s Syndrome: New Goals & Good News Update in Under 30…only to realise after ‘I’d put the phone down’ that I’d left this important one out of the dos and don’ts of managing these patients. So why am I saying no to chronic routine use of Manganese in those with GS? Well here’s the deal…
There are very few micronutrients that rely on bile to leave the body but of course Manganese is one of these – so in cases of reduced bile flow, altered bile composition etc the capacity to excrete and therefore regulate levels of this trace mineral become compromised and a lower toxicity threshold ensues. Same goes for Copper as well of course, but we’re not including this in as large of number of supplements.
That’s why we need to be clear to cap the Mn for these patients as part of being across the cumulative subtotals of all micronutrients. While there is no established Upper Tolerable Limit (UL) set for Mn, adequate intake has been determined as 5mg/d for an adult. I agree, this is probably inadequate for some but I’ve seem individual patient prescriptions with cumulative Mn totals over 20 and 30mg per day! In spite of being generally regarded as having a low acute toxicity profile there is increasing research documenting Mn as a meddler when it comes to thyroid function in particular. So who else is on my watch and wait list for Mn excess? You’ve probably got some ideas…
The latest Update in Under 30 has landed: Gilbert’s – New Goals and Good News and my team has gone all out in producing a brilliant desktop reference to go with this recording that aids better understanding and clear treatment aims for your GS patients.
ideally get the basics and backstory first and purchase all 3 key episodes in
‘A Guide to Gilbert’s Package’