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A common deterioration one year after starting a low-vitamin A diet?
I was recently reading survey's results and came across this graph from a survey that shows how improvement on a low-vitamin A diet correlates with the month on the diet and people have a sharp deterioration a year after starting the diet. It's similar to my story when I was on a diet and at first I saw improvements, and then a year later I had psychosis. Maybe vitamin A is really a vitamin, and when it runs out after a year, people start having problems again, and at first the diet helps because it excludes some other toxins from food (just a guess)? What thoughts does anyone have?
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@daniil I think that many people didn't even have any vit A toxicity in a first place..
Like in my case I was great example of vit A toxicity. I mean I was eating and taking every food high in vit A or supplement that you can think off for at least a decade including small dose accutane cycle.
So when I started low vit A diet after many years of pounding it. I experienced detox symptoms instantly basically. First 6 months were crazy. After that the detox symptoms were coming and going in cycles like one week nothing another week crazy detox and over time those detox cycles were less and less frequent and I think within first couple of years I fixed vit A toxicity for the most part. But I had no desire to eat vit A foods. I kept eating low vit A diet.
But yeah I don't think vit A is just a toxin that has no use in our body..
1/2026 = 37 months of depleting vitamin A.
11/2022 = Symptoms were acute retinol poisoning drove me to avoiding vitamin A. After 2 weeks I tried eating a vitamin A food and the already horrific pain increased beyond what I can grok again. After that test of the idea, I am all good with avoiding and depleting vitamin A.
12/2022 = I found Grant on Judy Cho's youtube interview. Then I found Garrett. Then I found Steve who went through the same symptoms 6 months before me.
4/2023 = pain mostly gone. Sleep and all other symptoms improved to point of functionality again. Been improving since. Been experimenting all along. Had a few ups and downs. Nothing like the pain and damage 11/2022.
12/2025 = worked 12 plus hour shifts outside in snow removal all night into next day a few times. Felt good and strong. Outperformed the guys I work with. Even threw in a few free jobs at the end for old friends. Nice to have short recovery times and low to no soreness afterward again. I may not be a kid anymore. Fine with that when I see and hear how sore some kids are.
Good luck convincing me that retinols constitute anything near the definition of a nutrient.
Short form answer: My progress still goes on at 7 years, a very slow uphill line, and I thank my lucky stars to be here.
Long form answer:
In April I will have been on a medium-low vitamin-a diet for seven years. Like Jiri, I do wonder if some people who come here aren't actually high VA, but I really believe I was. My diet was absurdly high in vitamin A and I think I began life in the uterus of a vitamin A-overloaded mother. Some interesting childhood problems were travel sickness (inner ear issues), and my teeth came in late and crooked. My brothers had childhood auto-immune issues. I marvel at the fact, though, that the human body will do it's best to thrive even if overloaded. I was athletic, a good student, reasonably attractive, fertile and basically fine for most of my life. Except for the suffering that no doctor could explain. Chronic vomiting, migraines, rosacea/acne and other things. I arrived here at age 55--that is a long life of suffering.
After 1.5 years I stopped having migraines and vomiting attacks. As I remember, I had a short honeymoon period here on lowered-VA (very short, like a week) and then began symptoms that were bizarre (some that might have been called psychosis, including a bug-crawling effect across my rosacea).
Unlike many here, including Grant, I eat a varied diet. I eat mostly everything. (gluten, pork, dairy, alcohol, coffee and other things people here have dropped). I don't take supplements. Truly all I have done is lowered my VA. (note: I gave up fried foods and sodas 30 years ago).
And even now, at almost seven years, I still go through times in which I still think I'm detoxing or have a night in which my food choices didn't agree. I'm still kind of a delicate flower, LOL. My facial skin still erupts in a pimple here and there but the rosacea is so much better-- nothing had ever touched it before.
I'm probably lucky that the vitamin A amounts in my body didn't kill me (like polar explorers and other WAPF'ers). I think I will take some of my vitamin A to the grave.
I think I have actual damage that may never heal. Gosh, I've probably been overloaded for my entire life--some of my DEVELOPMENT is wrong. But I continue to have slow progress in all areas.
I don't expect that I'm going to feel perfect (for one thing, vitamin A isn't the only problem in the world), and I've realized that aiming for perfection is counter-productive.
I don't think vitamin-A overload treatment is complicated (don't eat a lot of vitamin A!), weird (lots of vitamins and minerals can get overloaded!), or woo (carotenes are a plant chemical made by plants for plants...and like many plant chemicals... the poison is in the DOSE!).
I sometimes think that my (staunch? hard-headed?) refusal to cover up symptoms might be why I'm still alive. If I'd been taking anti-diarrhea, anti-acne and anti-allergen drugs for 55 years I might have gotten in the way of detox that was beneficial. However, by the time I arrived here, after 55 years, I had become quite desperate emotionally. In a way, I've become phobic about suffering. But something is only a phobia if it is unreasonable fear, and I think I've had enough suffering for one life.
Detox sucks and it could explain a lot of the "deterioration" people feel. Maybe an idea is to try to find the sweet spot between stringent and no progress.
Is some of the deterioration from a need for vitamin A? Perhaps another reason not to be stringent.
Anyhoo... I do go on and on, don't I?
I suggest reviewing the science on how much vit a is stored, no way any adult will run out in a yr. I mean Grant is living proof!
@janelle525 I think how fast you run out depends on many factors like your metabolic rate and we know Grant has extremely slow metabolism. Consuming 1500kcal for adult male is crazy low.
Just to give you idea how low it is
Daily calorie rations in Nazi concentration camps were extremely low and varied by camp, year, and prisoner category, but historians have reconstructed approximate averages.
Typical daily calorie intake
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1940–1942: ~1,300–1,700 kcal/day
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1943–1944: ~700–1,200 kcal/day
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Late war (1944–1945): often 500–800 kcal/day, sometimes even less
By comparison
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A sedentary adult male needs ~2,000–2,400 kcal/day
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Camp prisoners were forced into heavy physical labor, often needing 3,000+ kcal/day
Example (Auschwitz, adult male labor prisoner)
Approximate daily ration:
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Black bread (~300 g): 600–700 kcal
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Watery soup (potato/turnip): 200–300 kcal
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Margarine or sausage (small): 100–200 kcal
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Occasional extras (rare): <100 kcal
➡️ Total: usually 900–1,300 kcal/day
That shows how slow his metabolism is if he is not losing weight and is not hungry on so little calorie intake.. It means that his body will use all micronutrients very slowly. It also means that any detox of anything will be extremely slow. I wish he would do hair testing. He must be crazy slow oxidizer..
I used to be a fan of high metabolic rate and higher calories....Ray Peat much? Until I nearly killed myself 'pushing metabolism'. And we know that Ray Peat on his higher metabolic rate diet didn't live any longer than most people nowadays. So why does it even matter then? Do I agree with a zero vitamin A diet and low calories? No, I do not. I do applaud his effort to prove his theory though. He's using his body as a science experiment. He should have gone blind at the level of vit A in his blood by now. I usually eat only 1500-1700 calories but I'm 5'2 124 lbs and mostly sedentary.
@joe2
I am glad that you have succeeded on a low-vitamin A diet. But the caveat is that while many succeed on a low-vitamin A diet, many do not succeed. Even Grant himself admits that the success rate on the diet is still low. You're also forgetting about Vinero and Victor users who had eye problems on this diet and had to stop. And the fact that I had a psychosis.
P.S. Today was my first working day for a long time, and I also cleaned snow. It turns out my health is better than I thought. I can stand for a long time if it's at least a bit dynamic load rather than static, but just stand like a post for more than an hour I'm hard.
@janelle525 the problem with the Grant is that I claim that the Grant may be a person who does not need vitamin A for genetic reasons, as well as some other people on this forum.
@janelle525 the goal shouldn't be pushing metabolism higher artificially with hormones and stuff or lowering it with restricting calories. The goal should be balance.
Nutritiona balancing is working exactly with this concept where you see on the hair test if you are in fast, slow or optimal metabolic rate.
That's why it is so valuable tool. No blood test will show you that..
Btw I think Ray Peat died when he was 86yo. That is pretty good and for sure above average if you ask me. But that doesn't mean everyone should do what he did. We all have different needs, but in general like I said. If I had to choose and I couldn't choose the balance which is exactly in the middle of slow and fast oxidizer. I would choose littler faster than optimal metabolism that's for sure. Because slower metabolism will give you more issues much faster.. I am experiencing it with my life long thyroid issues. Not fun at all.. That is also one of the reasons why I ended up with vit A toxicity. People with slow metabolism can handle much smaller amount of vit A. That comes for all things. YOu get easily toxic in heavy metals etc.. You get easily atherosclerosis and heart disease etc..
So I am the opposite of Ray Peat and I don't think I will make it to even 60. Let alone 86...
Quote from Jiří on January 9, 2026, 12:21 pm@janelle525 the goal shouldn't be pushing metabolism higher artificially with hormones and stuff or lowering it with restricting calories. The goal should be balance.
Nutritiona balancing is working exactly with this concept where you see on the hair test if you are in fast, slow or optimal metabolic rate.
That's why it is so valuable tool. No blood test will show you that..
Btw I think Ray Peat died when he was 86yo. That is pretty good and for sure above average if you ask me. But that doesn't mean everyone should do what he did. We all have different needs, but in general like I said. If I had to choose and I couldn't choose the balance which is exactly in the middle of slow and fast oxidizer. I would choose littler faster than optimal metabolism that's for sure. Because slower metabolism will give you more issues much faster.. I am experiencing it with my life long thyroid issues. Not fun at all.. That is also one of the reasons why I ended up with vit A toxicity. People with slow metabolism can handle much smaller amount of vit A. That comes for all things. YOu get easily toxic in heavy metals etc.. You get easily atherosclerosis and heart disease etc..
So I am the opposite of Ray Peat and I don't think I will make it to even 60. Let alone 86...
You are so hard on yourself! Are you a perfectionist?
Both my grandma and grandpa made it to 88 and 90, and one grandpa made it to 96 fully functional, zero dieting other than the 90 yr old had type 2 diabetes and restricted carbs for many yrs, but not in his later yrs when he didn't care anymore. So I apparently have good genes in that regard! No cancer at all on either side of my family too. I don't think diet matters as much as we think it does. And yet here I am still afraid to do higher vitamin A because of my history with butter, liver, and vitamin A supps... when I got psoriasis. Which by the way didn't clear at all on any kind of diet. Still have yet to try gluten free though.