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A Best Practices Diet
@are it’s certainly not that simple. Previous liver damage and/or dysbiosis could be a factor preventing detox. You sound to have done incredibly well sticking to a strict diet. I couldn’t do it. Sorry it hasn’t worked well for you.
Quote from Arena on April 29, 2021, 9:35 amQuote from salt on April 28, 2021, 2:30 amQuote from ggenereux on April 27, 2021, 12:31 pmHi @r-2
Agreed, going to abs zero is not needed, and just too much trouble.
No, I’m not changing my opinion at all. I just don’t think my personal diet is ideal, and was hoping we might be coming to an understanding of what’s better. I continue to be concerned about the slow progress and the setbacks people are reporting. Then there’s the concern about arsenic in rice, etc. And why are people on the carnivore diet not experiencing this same level of setbacks?
I’m actually at close to 6.5 years now, and I’m still sticking to a near zero intake (as possible).
RE: Do you think you are starting to have health issues ? No, not at all. I’m actually still seeing small improvements in skin condition. Overall, my sense of health and well-being is very good, and maybe still improving a bit too.
RE: Do you still believe Vitamin A is toxic? Yes, absolutely. More importantly, I believe that it has no “vitamin” properties at all. I’m still very committed to proving that point, but it will probably have to wait until we get through the COVID crisis.
Almost zero people are following your particular diet, and almost zero people are consuming as little VA as you are, so I would come to the exact opposite conclusion as you are doing now. The people who aren't having any progress are eating a much wider variety of food, with a lot more VA.
@salt I find your conclusions here a bit provoking honestly! I’ve basically followed a super strict diet for 12 months, basically zero VA for most of the time, yet zero progress. You are talking about people that have issues way different from your own, yet you are a 100% extrapolating from your own experience that when you yourself eat no carotenoids you feel better and that people should «stricten up». Maybe it is not that simple! Also, progress doesn’t necessarily mean no detox symptoms. Even Grant had detox symptoms.
So what were you eating exactly on your super strict diet?
I definintely agree that progress doesn't mean not having detox symtpoms. If anything I think the opposite thing, not having detox symptoms and yet improving at the same time, is very rare. Most people seem to get detox symptoms when they're detoxing VA. But it's not really detox if you're just feeling like shit all the time and not getting better. That's not detox.
Quote from Arena on April 29, 2021, 11:30 am@salt Grants diet: black beans, white rice, lean beef and one tsp of olive oil. I’m sure that is strict enough.
Please explain how some cannot be in a constant detox state if the body is constantly dumping VA. I’m so tired of blatant statements like this on this forum. Can’t we be just a tiny bit humble!
Ok, that is a very strict diet. You are in a tiny minority though, I don't think I've heard of anyone else on this forum that has done that specific diet for any extended period of time. It's also different from the diet you said you were eating in your own progress report thread. Personally I don't get any improvement if I eat bananas or apples, the only fruit that is low enough in VA for me to keep detoxing is raisins. I would also definitely avoid any kind of seed, mushrooms, and sprouts.
I just don't think that's how detox symptoms work. Based on my own experience and the experience of experienced detox practitioners. It's supposed to be cyclical, with noticable improvement after each cycle. If you have no standard for defining detox symptoms, you have no way to tell apart detox symptoms from malnutrition, allergic reactions, or just reactions from unhealthy foods. I don't think it's any more presumptious to say what is and what isn't detox symptom compared to going with a blanket approach and saying just about any negative experience is just detox. In fact I think that's dangerous because then you can end up in a worsening spiral of health where you just get sicker and sicker but you think "it's just detox, good health is just around the corner". Many vegans fall into this trap and end up with sarcopenia, cognitive problems, hypothyroidism etc.
If anyone has been on a near-zero VA diet for a year without seeing any improvement then obviously there is more to it in that particular case. I think most people on this forum and in Garret's community have not even ever tried going ultra-low with their VA intake, but that might not apply to you.
@are @salt In general, I would agree that if you don't have improvements of any kind, you are probably using the wrong approach for your health problems. However, my own improvements have come with a whole slough of new issues, and it can be very difficult to tell whether you are doing so much of the right thing that it's making you feel bad, or just doing the wrong thing. This has been the trickiest part of healing myself, and it's one of the reasons I advocated for using metrics and strict record-keeping to help judge your progress. At this point, I think it's quite possible that the diet I'm on is supplying enough nutrients to keep me in a constant state of dumping, although it's still possible to see little ups and downs.
@are Have you seen any improvements at all despite some symptoms persisting or worsening? For me, my energy and sleep have improved dramatically over time, but I keep getting all kinds of skin problems coming and going that are distressing. Most of it seems to be related to dryness. My Heart Rate Variability and Resting Heart Rate have gradually worsened, which I interpret to mean my body is stressed out, but I think it's stressed because I am constantly dumping Vitamin A out my ass. If I hadn't noticed improvements in energy, sleep, and respiratory rate, I probably would have abandoned my plan by now.
The low A for starting out hasn't been too much hardship for me so far. I have been doing this for 2 months. I have had a few detox bad reactions but they were not long lasting, maybe a night or a day or two.
The big thing was the diary. Before Low A I was eating and drinking a lot of dairy and wasn't aware that I was getting double dosing of synthetic A and D along with the synthetic A and D in the multivitamins. Also the big leafy salads and veges I had to quit but I didn't mind that. It makes things simple when fixing my meals.
The meat, and the rice I usually eat. Raisins, and oats as well. I did have to include beans which I rarely ate before. I needed a compromise on the dairy. Rather than eliminate all dairy, I use organic heavy cream, and or organic sour cream (2 Tbs per day if I eat them). I do not have any issues with food allergies such as wheat or dairy so maybe this is why it isn't causing me serious reactions of detoxing. Also, I experiment with other grains such as barley, and rye and other types of dry beans other than black beans. It really is a work in progress. If something doesn't work, try something else.
There is a danger in my opinion with the Herxheimer reaction (the die off) with too much harmful toxins permeating in the cells from doing too much too fast. So I am going slow. I guess the diet should tailor to the individual. I am sure my diet would not work for most others.
Quote from Arena on April 29, 2021, 9:50 pm@salt obviously you are way more knowledgeable than myself, and I’ve several times taken your advice to heart, and I will definitely continue to do so, all I’m saying is that your statements sometimes contradict what other people are saying on this forum, and for retards like myself, this is confusing. I think we should be carerul with the certainty in which we express stuff, that goes for a lot of users on this forum, because health is freaking important! As for my diet, of course I’ve not eaten *that* strict all the time, but I’ve had months where this has been my diet without symptoms improving. Now, this might be because my symptoms are quite severe already, and things take time... or that I’m on the wrong path. Also, if I came across as hateful towards you before, I apologize, that was not my intention!
@wavygravygadzooks Maybe sleep has gotten better for me, but I was already in good physical shape before because of a lot of exercise, so it has basically been my eye and scalp issues that has been the symptoms to look out for. My skin has been acting up since the beginning with eczema on my hands, and for 6 months now super dry skin on the face. I very much agree with your metric based approach! Diet question: Are you not worried that the animal fat contains a lot of VA, though?
I don't think you're retarded and obviously nobody other than yourself can better know how your experiment has been, what you have eaten and how you have reacted to those foods. I did not mean for my criticism to come across as a personal attack or anything like that at all, I just genuinly feel like that for at least for some people they are not having any progress because they're eating too much VA. I think it's insane to tell people they can eat butter or cream or certain whole grains and certain legumes and expect them to do better, and I know for myself that even just apples and pears will stop my progress so I figure probably at least one other person is probably as sensitive as I am.
I have personally gone on and off this diet for quite a bit, tried to make VA "work", with all kinds of supplements and dietary interventions. In the past I have excluded other things like calcium and vitamin D but later on I found out these were not toxic, it was just me reacting to them, and I was able to stop having those negative reactions by changing up my diet. So I figured it was maybe the same case with VA, but nothing I ever did ever changed how I reacted to VA to any significant degree so eventually I had to give up that whole endeavor. What I wanted to say is that the last time I went back to eating zero VA from a diet containing quite a lot of it, it only took me about 5 days until I started having serious detox symtpoms, serious flu-like symptoms, and it only took me about 3 weeks before I could confidently say that I felt better and had made significant improvements in my health. But yeah we are all different, if you've done a super strict low VA diet and it didn't help you then you might have some kind of problem with the detoxification systems, or maybe your problem doesn't have anything to do with VA at all, or maybe there is some other mystery factor that none of us have considered.
I know your question about fat was not directed at me but I can't help but chime in and say that yes animal fat does have some VA, enought to cause trouble for me normally, however I did do a short experiment on a ketogenic diet and I was having severe detox despite eating plenty of cows fat so I definitely think you can detox VA white eating plenty of tallow/ruminant fat, especially if in ketosis. I think maybe ketosis can increase VA tolerance and maybe even increase the excretion of it. But I don't know. Maybe I'm completely wrong, just theorizing. I think indeed wavygravygadzooks has more experience with Vitamin A in the context of a high fat diet.
@are Yes, animal fat does have some Vitamin A in it, but the measurements I've seen suggest that it is a very small amount. Garrett Smith had posted an article that measured the Vitamin A content of subcutaneous fat, marrow, liver, and maybe another organ or animal part...I can't seem to find it, but if I recall correctly the fat had the least amount, followed by marrow, and they seemed low enough to not be cause for concern given the small quantities I was eating.
As I said before, almost all of my skin symptoms appeared AFTER starting low vA, and the ones that were already present generally got worse before they got better. These include dry, rough skin on some of my toes and in between my toes; dry skin on one elbow; eyelids that would dry out and crack overnight to the point of bleeding, then become oily during the day; dry nasal passages/sinuses and weird sensations that accompanied that; dry eyes; dry flaky material on my nails; gum inflammation and recession; what I think is onycholysis of my fingernails; and I think I've got more dander coming off my scalp. I've also had a couple sudden appearances of many cherry angiomas, which are probably related to stress from detoxing really hard, but I'm not clear on that yet.
@salt @are Assuming most of my symptoms are a result of Vitamin A toxicity, my symptoms history clearly shows that intake of Vitamin A does not immediately result in skin symptoms in myself. It was the removal of Vitamin A that brought them on, and it seems the harder I'm detoxing, the more the skin symptoms change (some of them get better while different ones appear). When @are talks about reacting to beef, that sounds very much like the detox pattern I've had eating meat...the more lean meat I eat, the worse my detox seems to get.
I'm still not sure how fat factors in to all of this, whether the fat itself might be promoting detox, or if it's the absence of carbs and fiber that might be having an effect. I actually just came across part of a thesis (https://pure.rug.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/4727423/06_c6.pdf) that discusses how the presence of Vitamin A in the liver downregulates bile acid production via the FXR and RXR. This made me wonder if there were few enough bile acids to cause problems with fat absorption, since the mechanism is presumably there to limit Vitamin A absorption by minimizing the presence of bile acids in the small intestine. I'm definitely absorbing fat from my diet, otherwise I would've wasted away by now, but I wonder if it's necessary to keep fat intake moderately low to avoid fat malabsorption problems?
I am now at 2.5yrs low VA. Improvements come slowly, sleep and skin are the two I follow. I have a feeling full body sunbathing this summer is going to make a huge difference, skin is in a much much better place now. Still can't sleep through the night, but sleep is very refreshing now, wake up feeling good, not like death.
Staples: Lean beef, rice, beans(black, blackeyed, white kidney), potato, whole wheat, egg white, mushroom, maple syrup
Occasional: coffee, coconut milk, coconut ice cream, apple, strawberry, banana, lemonade, green grapes, potato chips
@ggenereux2014 Hi Grant,
You've mentioned in several places that carnivore dieters appear to avoid a detox setback. Where are you getting information on carnivore dieters and Vitamin A toxicity? Does it come from your past surveys? Or personal communication? Or are you extrapolating from the general experiences of carnivore dieters whether they exhibit overt signs of Vitamin A toxicity or not?
Between your site and Garrett Smith's, I've only found a few people that are trying to do a carnivore version of low Vitamin A and I would very much like to discuss the experience that anyone else has had! I've persisted despite nasty GI symptoms, and I constantly worry that I am doing more harm to myself than I should be. It would be great to compare notes with anyone else trying this approach.
Or, if you were able to summarize your knowledge of what happens when others have tried using a carnivore approach for Vitamin A problems, that would be very helpful to hear as well.
Thanks.