Mega-Dosing Creates Bottlenecks
More isn't better when your cells can only process so much.
The Turnstile Problem
Imagine a stadium with turnstiles. Each turnstile can process 10 people per minute. No matter how large the crowd outside, no matter how much they push, the flow rate stays the same.
Your metabolic enzymes work the same way. They're rate-limited. Flooding them with more substrate doesn't speed them up. It just creates a crowd.
The Numbers
of metabolic branch points are surrounded by rate-limiting enzymes
variation in enzyme efficiency due to MTHFR alone
rare functional variants affecting nutrient metabolism per person
What Happens When You Overwhelm the System
Oxidative Stress Response
Mitochondria become overloaded with substrate. Electron transport chain backs up. Reactive oxygen species leak out and damage cellular components.
Metabolic Traffic Jams
When the forward path is blocked, metabolites move backward against normal flow. This decreases overall throughput, not increases it.
Cofactor Depletion
Processing excess substrate uses up cofactors (B vitamins, magnesium, zinc) faster than they can be replenished, creating new deficiencies.
The Hidden Factor: Toxic Burden
Heavy metals don't just sit in your tissues. They bind to enzyme active sites, reducing functional enzyme availability. Mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium all compete for the same binding sites your nutrients need.
This means your actual processing capacity may be far lower than your genetics would suggest. And modern populations carry generational toxic burden that affects cellular baseline function before you even start supplementing.
The Theory
Conventional supplementation fails because it ignores cellular capacity limitations.
The solution isn't more nutrients pushed harder. It's gradual, sequential rebuilding that matches supplementation to current cellular capacity rather than overwhelming already-compromised systems.