One of the criticisms made against the low vitamin A diet theory in Jay Feldman’s and Mike Fave’s 2024 hit-piece videos was that the diet was not working fast enough.
I addressed that criticism by explaining:
- Firstly, we don’t really know how long it should take to recover from vA toxicity damage because it has never been done before on a wide scale.
- More importantly, since everyone is coming into this with vastly different dietary histories, ages and backgrounds it is impossible for there to be a standard recovery timeframe.
- Lastly, what is documented in the literature is that the damage caused by vA toxicity is often permanent.
However, Jay and Mike are partially correct too. Yes, it is often taking too long, or worse. As I explained in my Tackling the Detox Setback blog post:
Of course, it would be fantastic if most people could take on this diet and just reliably see their health slowly improve. Then, regardless of how long their health recovery takes, the low vA diet would be far more acceptable. Although a slow steady recovery has been the experience for many people, it’s too unpredictable and too random.
The Good News
The low vA diet is indeed working for a lot of people. About this time last year I had received a bit of a flurry of very positive progress reports. I was getting a new report about once a week, and from people from all over the world, saying that they were making great progress in recovering their health. This year I’m still getting such reports, but the pace has slowed down to maybe one every two or three weeks. So, there’s no doubt that the low vA diet works for some people. Although these progress reports are great, I think the overall success rate is still far too low.
The Bad News
Over the last few years I’ve become aware of cases of people on the low vA diet, and although they may have had some initial success, where their progress quickly stalled. For some people their health then took a major step backwards. In my opinion that’s completely unacceptable. For this project to be a success most people need to experience a positive result.
Something that’s bothered me for a long time now is that early on in this low vA diet project I had two of my friends, and of my vintage, join me in this experiment. They both made great progress and sailed through in recovering their health without any setbacks. So, what are the differences between us old guys and these other people who have had a bad result? Well, one of the key differences is that some of these other people have been taking certain supplements and we weren’t. Additionally, I think these other people might have taken in some very bad advice too.
I’ve had several reports of people suffering severe setbacks in their health almost immediately after taking lactoferrin. One person reported that it had setback his progress by two years. I can’t help but wonder how many of the people who have had their progress stall have also been taking lactoferrin? Lactoferrin promotes rapid bile dumping and that’s pretty much the last thing we want to do when we are sick. And not knowing who has compromised or partially occluded bile ducts there’s no way of knowing who’s going to have a bad response. So, in my opinion taking lactoferrin and such is all risk with very little upside. Clearly, in some cases supplements are indeed ruining the low vA diet.
I think that by not taking lactoferrin and going slow and steady is far safer and probably going to be more successful in the long run.
Bob’s case
A few months ago, I received an email inquiry from a young man (age 30ish) who had been diagnosed with Ulcerative colitis. He’s on medications and said his overall health is just getting worse and worse. Bob (not his real name) came across this YT video from another young man who reported making very good progress in recovering from his own Ulcerative colitis using a low vA diet.
Anyway, Bob started reading more about the low vA diet and came across a report of a child who’d been harmed while on the diet. Bob stated: “I’m already really sick, I can’t risk getting sicker” and was looking for assurance that he wouldn’t. Of course, I can’t give such assurances.
Very sadly, Bob decided that the low vA diet was not for him and was going to stick with conventional treatments (which often ends with the removal of the colon). I say very sadly because there are other case reports in the carnivore diet crowd where people have recovered from Crohn’s / colitis, so I think the probability of the low vA diet working for Bob was quite high.
A few years ago, someone reported that there was a parent who had a child on a low vA diet and they suffered a setback in their health. I think that report was on my forum, but I’m not sure where I had read it. However, there was also some comment (either on my forum or by email) that they may have been taking lactoferrin too. I haven’t tried verifying that report, but I think it is possible as I’ve heard that there are hundreds of people taking lactoferrin. Either way, I think this might be the case report that Bob was referring to. If that’s true (and I don’t know that it is), then yes some of these god damn supplements are going to ruin the reputation of the low vA diet.
Calcium deficiency and bad advice
Back in 2021 in my Seven-Year Update blog post I highlighted the concern about the low calcium intake on the low vA diet. To address that concern for myself I started drinking mineral water. Moreover, up until 2024 I had been drinking spring water (and even our tap water) with a calcium content of about 300 mg/L. So, I was getting about 500 mg of calcium per day just from water. Meaning that water was my primary source of calcium and other minerals including magnesium and potassium. Of course, I was also getting some calcium etc. from beans too. I seem to have done OK with that combined amount.
Making a bad situation worse
We already know that a vA toxicity condition depletes the calcium in the bones. Very unfortunately there have been some folks strongly advising people to exclusively use reverse osmosis or distilled water. In the context of an already low calcium diet this is very bad advice because these two processes remove all the minerals from the water and result in the water being slightly acidic as well. Therefore, drinking these waters will force your body to pull even more calcium from the bones to maintain a proper pH level. So, this “expert” advice is pretty much a prescription for disaster. Of course, one could re-mineralize the water with supplements but why take on the risk of bone loss, added costs and why make it so complicated?
Can this bad situation be made any worse? Sure, it can! Just start taking yet another acidic supplement such as nicotinic acid.
Completely aside from the added risk of more calcium depletion I’ve had several reports now from people running into the classic symptoms of nicotinic acid toxicity. Specifically, two people have reported developing dry skin and eczema like rashes. Another person has reported developing a dry scalp and dandruff. I fully expect in a year or so we’ll start seeing a lot more reports such as these.
Once again, some of these god damn supplements have the potential to ruin your health and the reputation of the low vA diet.
Hope Tipton additionally highlighted the risk of low calcium and also the associated risk of nicotinic acid and shared her concern in this guest author blog post: Nicotinic Acid: Good or Bad?.
Shortly after Hope published her post, another person, who’s progress on a low vA diet had seriously stalled for multiple years, emailed me saying that they had recently started supplementing with calcium and had made an almost immediate and huge improvement in their health. So, yes, there’s no question that some people have been running into a calcium deficiency.
Now, am I completely 100% against taking nicotinic acid? No, I’m not. There’s potentially some benefit to it. But you really need to do the risk / benefit analysis on it. As with any supplement you first need to be very, very sure that you truly need it. Then you need to be especially sure that it’s not going to cause you harm in both the short and long term. For me, personally, the potential for harm from long term nicotinic acid use (such as dry skin, heart attacks and strokes) just far outweighs the possible benefits. Also messing with the body’s lipid metabolism is just a very bad idea IMO. Please use your own critical thinking and decide what’s right for you.
Now, correspondingly you should be very sure that you are getting adequate amounts of the essential minerals including calcium, magnesium and potassium. The foods common in a low vA diet are probably not going to provide enough therefore some form of supplementation is likely needed. Fortunately, these mineral supplements are very inexpensive and available everywhere. I think drinking mineral water is a pretty good strategy, but you’ll probably need another source as well. In the short term you could even just use something like TUMS (calcium) or Rolaids (calcium and magnesium).
Censorship and suppression of the negative results
What happens when things go wrong with taking supplements? Well one thing is that many people are not going to want to publicly admit they’ve made a mistake and thus they’ll self-censor. Some other people might not want to speak up out of fear of making someone, or someone’s program, look bad. I also know that there’s imposed suppression of negative results and the threat of being kicked out of certain programs and forums for speaking out.
As I’ve mentioned in several blog posts I am completely opposed to censorship and covering up or manipulating the facts. Rather I think we should highlight and discuss the failures as much as we do any success story. Only by being open and honest can we determine what and why things are sometimes going wrong. Rather than being afraid of making a supplement “look bad”, if it is bad then you have an obligation to speak up and share that information. And if someone threatens to kick you out of their program or forum for doing so then that is a huge and clear sign that it’s not worth being a part of. BTW, this kind of censorship and threat of being kicked out of the group is one of the hallmarks of a scam or cult operation. Just saying…
Not speaking up and not sharing the facts can indeed ruin the reputation of the low vA diet.
Beware the “Experts”
As I’ve stated multiple times before, people need to be extremely careful in taking anyone’s advice and or supplements and especially so when that advice comes from someone who’s primary motive is to take the hard-earned money out of your bank account and put it into theirs.
A recent prime example of this is all the self appointed “experts” on YT, including multiple MDs, pushing liver as a “super food” and of course some of them selling their liver pills. That advice has been an absolute disaster for so many people. In addition to the case reports I wrote about in my recent Eating liver and cancer blog post, I’ve since received even more reports from people who were eating liver and are now dealing with cancer.
As I stated in my eBook, we’d all be vastly better off if we never heard a single word from the so-called “Health and Nutrition Experts”!