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A Best Practices Diet
My source of information is a small varied dataset; a few people that I know personally, some others are anecdotal, and from following some of the carnivore diet success stories online. There’s almost no mention of the big detox setback like what we see here. Some people do mention getting the “KETO flu”, but that condition only appears to last a few weeks. If the detox setback is happening in the carnivore community, no one appears to be talking about it.
But, strangely, not everyone here is hitting the detox setback either.
There’s one guy I’ve been keeping in touch with via email, ( I don’t think he’s here on this forum). He started out on a low vA diet about three years ago trying to recover his health from accutane damage. In his first year he made some progress, but it was very slow / moderate. He then shifted to an all carnivore diet and seemed to make better progress with no mention of a detox setback.
Then there’s a few guys I know from my own social circle. Same vintage of myself; age 55-60.
One guy has been low vA for about 3 years now, and he’s not had any detox setback. He’s now fully recovered from long term IBD. Similarly for the other two; no detox setback..
Another guy I know who started doing Keto, with moderate success; then he dropped spinach and other Keto recommended greens; did better and has now gone full carnivore; he seems to be doing really well; once again no detox setback.
Anyways, I see the detox setback cycle as a huge challenge for this low vA diet. It’s not quite a show stopper; but it’s a very serious problem. I don’t think people should just try to struggle through it; as there’s probably a lot of inflammation damage going on at that stage.
However, with so many people on the carnivore diet now eating organ meats I’m really concerned that a lot of them will slowly get sick and that could derail that movement. I think it would be very tragic because the outside detractors of the carnivore diet will wrongly blame the meat in the diet as the reason for the failures.
I don’t know if this helps, but when I was really sick I had nasty GI issues too. After starting the low vA diet it took about 4 months to fully resolve. I’ve never had any regression since then. So, I think the GI tract can heal quite fast and completely.
My current musing would have me wonder if one of the worst things we might do is take a mixture of fat and carotenes and put it in the microwave. (a blasting-hot pizza oven might be similarly bad). (or saucey BBQ). It's funny to think how addicted I am to pizza-like food. It has been said that we are often addicted to our poisons.
A best practice diet.
For Hypervitaminosis A as a public health concern to reach mass awareness I think it's best to just focus on what foods lead to it rather than trying to promote a dietary blueprint to follow. Avoiding vit A containing supplements, vit A fortified foods, liver, high fat dairy and high carotenoid fruits and vegetables is the essential knowledge needed to begin to reverse Hypervitaminosis A. A fruit and vegetable chart that lists safe and unsafe fruits and vegetables for Hypervitaminosis A would be helpful.
Look at this forum, almost every single person has a different opinion on what an ideal diet entails. Rather than force people to shift their beliefs on diet if you show them directly what specific foods are creating a problem the understanding of Hypervitaminosis A as an epidemic will be far more likely to be widely accepted. The message must be very clear, the evidence must be simply and clearly presented and the treatment protocol presented should be as easy to understand and follow as possible.
Quote from Arena on June 1, 2021, 3:26 am@ggenereux2014 Just curious regarding your diet here, I'm trying to reason how much rice you eat. If you eat maybe half a pound of bison a day, that would maybe be around 300 calories, right? And then you eat maybe half a cup of beans a day - on average - meaning 100 calories? And some olive oil, let's add 100 calories. You mention you eat around 1500 calories a day, does that mean you eat around 1000 calories worth of rice a day, i.e. almost 300 grams of rice a day?
Hi @are,
I've recently started tracking my daily food intake more closely. I am at about 1500 kcals /day and some days even a bit lower.
I'm not super consistent with the ratios. In general it's about 12 oz of Bison/Beef, 1 cup of rice (measured dry), so that's ~ 3 cups cooked. But, I often don't eat it all the cooked rice either; usually ~ 75% of it. I have maybe 200 ml of black beans / day, and yes I still have a bit of olive oil most days too. I do have a bit of honey in my black coffee.
This amount of calories must be a very close match to my daily needs because I'm not gaining nor losing weight. I should probably try to lose about 4-5 lbs, so I might drop down to 1200 kcals /day soon.
@ggenereux2014 that's crazy low calorie intake that is not healthy at all. Unless you are bedridden.. It seems like your metabolism is slowing down a lot.. I would love to see your full blood work not just vit A serum... Read this amazing study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment they were starving to death on 1560kcal diet. That is how healthy metabolism works... I know they were younger, but still under 1500kcal it's starvation diet for adult male..
When you said you can bench 225 lbs, is that one rep or how many?
Also, could you please provide feedback on your hair? Have any thinning areas fully thickened? Did you have any areas that were close to bald? I haven't seen any progress on that front for myself.
@ggenereux2014, could you measure your body's typical temperature? If you are at 98.5 F (37 C) or so, I would think you have a healthy metabolism typical of people in North America before World War II.
Quote from Jiří on June 1, 2021, 7:38 am@ggenereux2014 that's crazy low calorie intake that is not healthy at all. Unless you are bedridden.. It seems like your metabolism is slowing down a lot.. I would love to see your full blood work not just vit A serum... Read this amazing study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment they were starving to death on 1560kcal diet. That is how healthy metabolism works... I know they were younger, but still under 1500kcal it's starvation diet for adult male..
I know that 1500 kcals sounds low, but there's no way I need more. I'm not hungry during the day, and I still cycle ~ 10 km/day.
Quote from tim on June 1, 2021, 7:52 amWhen you said you can bench 225 lbs, is that one rep or how many?
Also, could you please provide feedback on your hair? Have any thinning areas fully thickened? Did you have any areas that were close to bald? I haven't seen any progress on that front for myself.
I can do about 5-7 reps at 225lbs. Depends on the day.
I'd say my hair is still very slooowly filling back in. I had a classic male bald spot on the top-back. It's still thin, but not shinny bald anymore.
Quote from Retinoicon on June 1, 2021, 8:06 am
@ggenereux2014, could you measure your body's typical temperature? If you are at 98.5 F (37 C) or so, I would think you have a healthy metabolism typical of people in North America before World War II.
It's usually about 36.5 C