Vitamin-Q (Queuosine) boosts brain and fights cancer

Supplements
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The nutrient pump used by cells to absorb Queuosine, a rare essential nutrient, was finally described in this recent paper: Little known nutrient can boost your brain and fight cancer

The primary source in animals of this essential nutrient is gut bacteria. It is also present in small quantities in plant foods. Loss of gut bacteria that produce Queuosine is believed to result in deficiency and be responsible for certain symptoms of old age.

Unfortunately, Queuosine is a fairly complex molecule that is hard to synthesize or extract from microbes or plants that contain Queuosine in small quantities, so there is no supplement you can buy to boost your Queuosine intake. The average diet includes 18ug per day, while a healthy gut provides over 10x as much.

The best source are plant foods which are listed in this paper (page 5): The Queuine Micronutrient: Charting a Course from Microbe to Man. Wheat germ seems to have the highest content (190 parts per billion!). Coconut water can have an even higher content but only if it is derived from ripe coconuts : the typical coconut water sold in stores is from unripe coconuts and has almost no Queuosine. Plants derive their own Queuosine from bacteria on their roots.

“The lack of Q has been linked to several neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, multiple sclerosis” As mentioned in Nature paper on Vitamin-Q

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#2

Reason #279 not to cut out wheat completely out of you diet.

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#3

Turns out the body’s ability to synthesize L-Tyrosine depends on Queuosine : Mice raised in a sterile environment (hence presumably no gut bacteria) and whose diet was kept free of Queuosine for several weeks to deplete the body stores of Queuosine and then fed a diet also deficient in L-Tyrosine died after 18 days showing signs of severe brain impairment.

L-Tyrosine is not normally considered an essential amino acid, but in the absence of Queuosine it effectively becomes an essential amino acid. L-Tyrosine is a precursor of Dopamine and Norepinephrine.

Conclusion : Supplementing L-Tyrosine may be a good insurance policy against Queuosine deficiency caused by Gut Disbiosis. Queuosine deficiency compromises Tyrosine production

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