Supplements may carry higher deuterium than their natural-form equivalents, but let's do some math. Imagine you take dozen pills daily, maximally enriched. How does that compare to drinking eight glasses of tap water?
- Two liters of tap water is ~2,000 grams
- Water is ~11% hydrogen by weight
= ~220 grams of hydrogen
- Twelve large 1,000 mg pills is ~12 grams
- ~8% hydrogen by weight*
= ~1 gram of hydrogen
Tap water delivers over 200 times more deuterium than the pills do. The supplement load is a rounding error against basic hydration.
Also, I'm not a chemist, but looking at this through a logical lens. The claim that seed oils or synthetic vitamins carry deuterium concentrations higher than seawater (~156 ppm) doesn't make sense to me. Ocean water is Earth's natural ceiling for deuterium concentration, and my understanding is that going above it requires deliberate processes – like the centrifuges used to produce heavy water for nuclear reactors. It's hard to see how a supplement factory could accidentally run that process.
The industrial inputs blamed for the enrichment — like hexane — are derived from fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas), which come from ancient biological matter. These should reflect the deuterium contentration of the biological processes that formed them, which is most likely to be *depleting*. Even so, worst case is still just ~156 ppm, like seawater.
Heavily-deuterated hexane does exist, but it used for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and is *very* expensive – about $100k a gallon – vs $4-6 per gallon of industrial hexane.
So while I may not advocate for taking lots of supplements, I don't think the deuterium is a problem to lose any sleep over (especially if you're already taking melatonin to help with your sleep!)
https://t.co/pesyZnnU2v
* 8% by weight is rounding up by a fair margin of the hydrogen in the supplements mentioned in the quoted post.
>be Palmer Luckey
>born 1992, Long Beach, California
>homeschooled by mom, dad's a car salesman
>build railguns, Tesla coils, lasers in the garage as a teenager
>electrocute yourself, burn a gray spot into your own vision cleaning a laser
>no regrets
>start college courses at 14
>build a six-monitor gaming rig worth tens of thousands of dollars
>collect 43 VR headsets by the time you're 18
>largest private collection in the world
2009:
>found ModRetro Forums at 17
>turn old game consoles into portable units for fun
>work part-time at USC's Mixed Reality Lab designing VR for veterans with PTSD
2012:
>build the Oculus Rift prototype in your parents' garage at 19
>drop out of college
>John Carmack (Doom creator) demos your headset at E3
>Gabe Newell endorses it
>launch Kickstarter asking for $250K
>raise $2.4 million
2014:
>Mark Zuckerberg shows up
>Facebook acquires Oculus for $2 billion
>you're 21 years old
>Forbes estimates your net worth at $700 million
>described as "the face of virtual reality"
2016:
>donate $10K to a pro-Trump group
>post anti-Hillary memes on Reddit under a pseudonym
>get exposed
>game developers boycott Oculus
>Facebook pressures you to publicly endorse Gary Johnson instead
>refuse
2017:
>get fired from your own company
>Zuckerberg won't say why
>negotiate $100 million+ payout for wrongful termination
>immediately found Anduril Industries
>name it after Aragorn's sword from Lord of the Rings
>partner with Peter Thiel
>start building autonomous weapons and AI defense systems
2020-2024:
>win $1 billion contract with U.S. Special Operations Command
>drones deployed to Ukraine
>revenue doubles to $1 billion
>take over Microsoft's $22 billion military headset contract
>Pentagon can't stop writing you checks
2022:
>build a VR headset that literally kills you if you die in-game
>inspired by Sword Art Online
>three explosive charges aimed at your forehead
>call it "office art"
>"it won't be the last"
2025:
>Anduril valued at $30.5 billion
>announce plans to build Arsenal-1
>5 million square foot weapons factory in Ohio
>autonomous fighter jets, missiles, torpedoes
>China sanctions you personally
>net worth hits $3.5 billion
>pay yourself $100K salary
>still wearing Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops to Pentagon meetings
>own a submarine, helicopters, and a PT boat
>keep one of the world's largest video game collections underground
>married a woman who sews historically accurate Tudor costumes
>won first place at Texas Renaissance Festival dressed as Henry VIII
>Sword Art Online author drew your wedding gift
from garage tinkerer to youngest self-made billionaire to America's most important defense contractor
all while looking like he's headed to a beach party