I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Antidote?
Antidote? What is the possibility that LA/ALA are antidotes for VA?
There is no shortage of reading regarding PUFAs. There are a number of posts on here noting personal experiences with PUFAs. As with most things, I think the devil is in the details.
Here is the thing, in the original study (that started the science to establish the essentiality of w6) by Burr and Burr in 1929, they use the same basic diet used in most of the early studies.
Casien, sucrose, salt mixture, yeast, lard, they also include what is termed Fraction AD.
I was having a hard time wrapping my head around this because the mice did fine on this diet. Whereas in the original studies Grant provided, that was suppose to prove VA deficiency even without the fraction AD, the mice did not survive. This study, on the otherhand includes, casien, lard AND VA (fraction AD). Again, the mice do fine.
I thought maybe the vitamin D was providing some protection? and then I noticed it specifically states,
"The casein thus prepared has not been injured by exposure to
alkali (3) or high temperature (maximum temperature is the boiling point of ether)."
Did this make the difference?
Okay, so now they eliminate the Lard factor and within 2-3 months the mice start to get "diseased." (I question VA toxicity)
This "diseased state" (by eliminating the fats) sounds similar to what Grant described in his books, namely CKD as well as:
"Hair loss on the backs of my legs, a bit weird maybe, maybe
normal, too. I have no idea why"
"Hair on my head is fast becoming thinner"
"Elbows are becoming somewhat inflamed with what looks like
psoriasis"
"Developing some redness on my face and around my nose and
mouth. I have no idea what this is. I think my neighbors might
assume I’ve started drinking because of the inflamed face"
"my body more or less explodes into a full body
rash. My face is becoming more inflamed. Insane things happen
to my lips. They're huge, swollen with deep cracks and fissures.
My entire face then turns into thick burning red leather. It’s
incredibly painful."
Description of the New Disease (per the study, with the exclusion of the lard).
an abnormal, scaly condition of the skin is observed between the 70th and the 90th day of life. Later the tip of the tail may become inflamed and swollen, and the whole tail soon is heavily scaled and ridged.
Hemorrhagic spots may arise in the skin throughout the entire length of
the tail. The swelling of the tip may gradually be replaced by a
true necrosis, resulting in the loss of 1 to 3 cm. of the tail. The
hind feet become red and somewhat swollen at times, in some cases
with large scales over the dorsal surfaces. The hair on the back of
the body becomes filled with dandruff. There is a tendency to lose
the hair, especially about the face, back, and throat. Sores often
appear on the skin.
The skin of the face especially seems to become sore at times and
the irritation causes the animal to rub the face continually with
his fore feet...
...Excepting the skin and tail lesions, the most marked and uniform
pathology is observed in the urinary tract and the kidney. There
seems little doubt that this is an important factor in the death of
the animal. Some animals have died without the development of
visible lesions in the gross external appearance of the kidney and
without the appearance of blood or protein in the urine. But it
seems likely that the renal disorder may prove to be an important
and fairly constant result of the dietary fat deficiency...
...In two of the older and more severe cases all four feet have become swollen
and in one case the toes of the hind feet have developed sores and ring lesions
apparently similar to those of the tail.
Curing the Disease.
In one of the earlier experiments six females, which had developed tail lesions, and had ceased growing, were changed from
Diet 550 B to Diet 560 B. Renewed growth was observed at
once and the tail and feet of every animal became smooth and
glossy. The emaciated animals soon were well covered with fat.
It was thought that much of the gain in weight was due simply to
storage of ingested fat.
A new experiment was then tried with the much smaller dose of
lard, 10 drops daily. Four animals were chosen which were in
very bad condition and could not have lived much longer. Their
mates were already dead and these were the survivors from a total
of 16 animals. The remarkable effect of this small addition of fat
is shown in Chart 7. An immediate change in metabolism is
indicated. These emaciated animals, which are from 40 to 60 gm.
underweight, begin to grow and for a period of several weeks show
a gain of about 2 gm. per day. The skin and tail become smooth
and after 10 weeks complete cures are realized. The animals become normally
fat and are in general good health. The cure is as
spectacular as those cures produced by the well known vitamins.
Similar cures have recently been made with even smaller doses of
fat.
What is cool about the research that Burr and Burr did was that they went on to investigate specifically which fatty acid in the lard provided the benefits (obviously, since this is about w6 LA). Here is a summary of their findings. (uploaded image at end)
They are really interesting studies and provide a bit of insight, despite the fact that at the time they lacked knowledge of other nutrient factors that we now have the hindsight of knowing about. Here are the links.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925820782815
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925820789295
I have much more to say about PUFAs...To be cont...
Uploaded files:
Interesting. Lard contains 50 mgs of choline per 100 grams. Not as high as beef tallow or goose fat. Choline is one of the rescue agents in a patent. It only takes tiny amounts in the water supply of mice to rescue them from 13 trans retinoic acid poisoning.
I would say the disappearance of lard is one of the ways (if not THE way) we most diverge from old-fashioned eating. Before things like crisco and other cheap veg fats, everyone in most of Europe ate lard. It was the fat in all pastries, it was in everyone's pantry to use for frying (thus we called the food closet "the larder").
I'm sure other pig-growing societies were also the same. (such as those in Asia)
I think that even in countries where olive or coconut oil were easy to get, people still ate lard.
Strangely enough, several members of my family don't tolerate lard. I do sometimes wonder if it always follows that bad symptoms are a sign that we shouldn't eat something. hahaha. But really.
I've always been interested in the milk cure, which was a diet of free-range skimmed milk given to sick people like TB patients along with other things like fresh air and sunshine. But why would it be skim? (the ALA would be in the butter, right?)
I was curious if the skim milk would have had choline, and found this explanation of what is in human milk. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/3/381. So, if human milk has choline in both the fat and the water soluble parts, then I suppose that cow milk does too.
Taking out the butter fat would give people a break from the VA in the milk, I suppose.
I think, over time, as the patient got better, other foods were given (if I remember properly bread and apples were first foods), and that the fat portion of the milk was also added back. It was believed that the milk cure went fastest if you took skim to start.
So interesting, @pattycake! 😃 Of the members here, I would guess @tim-2 eats the most lard.
Here are some more quotes from “On the Nature and Role of the Fatty Acids Essential in Nutrition” PDF you linked above that stood out to me:
“The results with butter are of particular importance since the butter adds appreciable amounts of vitamins A and E to the diet without improving the animals’ condition.”
*-*-*-*
“Butter and coconut oil are the chief table fats and beef fat is probably equally poor as a source of unsaturated acids. It is possible that our high carbohydrate and protein diets, carrying very little of the unsaturated oils, are contributing factors to poor health.
“The addition of egg yolk and cod liver oil to diets may often improve the patient because of the fatty acid rather than the vitamin content.
“For example, cures of anemia with cod liver oil have been reported and it has been shown that there is a relation between experimental anemia and the unsaturated fatty acids of the blood plasma (44, 45).
“The prevalence of dry skins and abnormal kidneys may be directly attributable to improper fat intake. The nerve tissue, kidneys and other organs contain several unsaturated acids. If the liver is limited in its ability to produce these acids, they should be plentifully supplied through the diet.”
*-*-*-*
“...there is the much earlier work of McCollum, Halpin, and Drescher (40) which was concerned with the phospholipids of hen’s eggs and is therefore of even more vital interest. The production of egg yolk by hens is another case of long continued and rapid lipoid synthesis. The above workers showed that when hens are maintained on a low fat ration the iodine number of the phospholipid falls from a normal of 63 to 34, while for the ordinary fats it falls from 64 to 52. The phospholipids are more seriously affected than the ordinary fats, and again it would seem that another warm blooded animal is definitely limited in its ability to synthesize highly unsaturated fatty acids.”
*-*-*-*
“It is evident that vitamin E does not affect the well being of the females on the fat-free diet sufficiently to improve ovulation.
“It should be pointed out here that in the study of the effects of the well known vitamins carried in cod liver oil and wheat germ oil the results may be confused by the use of the whole oil rather than just the non-saponifiable fraction. 3 drops daily of cod liver oil or of wheat germ oil will cure badly diseased animals when these animals are suffering from a lack of essential fatty acids. Many of the ordinary diets used in nutrition may be deficient in this respect.
“Although Fraction E has no effect on ovulation, curative oils cause an immediate resumption of ovulation in those females in which ovulation has ceased. The figures cited above show that in less than 50 per cent of that special group was ovulation regular. About half of these animals had not ovulated at all. The animals which are not ovulating at all provide fine material for testing the effect of fats on ovulation. Four examples are given in Table V. Those animals which received 5 drops daily of corn oil, olive oil, or linseed oil ovulated within 5 days after the dose was begun; i.e., vaginal smear changes were resumed as quickly as though they were castrated females receiving a daily injection of ovarian hormone.
“On the other hand, the coconut oil, which is not a curative oil, did not cause the resumption of ovulation.
“It is an almost invariable rule that every animal which is receiving a curative oil and has resumed growth also ovulates normally (a cycle every 4 to 6 days). We need not interpret this as meaning that these oils contain a fatty acid specific for ovulation.
“Ovulation may be considered as dependent upon the general well being of the animal, a function which suffers when the animal is in poor condition or its metabolism is low. The added oils so improve the animal as a whole that normal ovulation is resumed.
“But much work indicates that the ovarian hormone is a lipoid and certainly its method of extraction shows it to be closely associated with the cell lipoids. Furthermore, the resumption of ovulation is so rapid that growth has hardly begun. Because of these facts, as well as the effects of fat upon the male (see Table VII), we are inclined to the view that the synthesis of ovarian hormone ceases when fatty acids are eliminated from the diet because the fatty acids are closely associated with the hormone.”
*-*-*-*
Personal experience: I did quite poorly on a low-PUFA diet. Patricia Kane and Brian Peskin helped me understand why, but I didn’t realize that a deficiency of omega 6 could’ve caused ovulation to stop... 😐 Yikes.
I look forward to your further posts on this subject!
Yikes! Not cod liver oil! That's how I got here!
I do think it is a very human thing to store up and eat nuts, at them to your baked goods, have them as snacks...
@lil-chick They’re saying folks like the people at the WAPF have potentially made an incorrect assumption insofar as why someone might improve on cod liver oil.
“The addition of egg yolk and cod liver oil to diets may often improve the patient because of the fatty acid rather than the vitamin content.”
If the context is a fatty acid deficiency, other researchers may have mistakenly attributed recovery of the patient to the vitamins in the cod liver oil, when actually it was the essential fatty acids the oil contains. They demonstrate this by feeding oils without vitamins A and D.
Brian Peskin would say cod liver oil is one of the worst sources of essential fatty acids, as it has been linked to melanoma cancer. I am not suggesting anyone take cod liver oil.
I just though it was fascinating that the Burrs point out the typical diet at the time was low in EFAs...Makes me wonder if maybe Weston A. Price didn’t recognize the kids he was feeding were deficient in EFA initially?
ETA: “ON THE NATURE AND ROLE OF THE FATTY ACIDS ESSENTIAL IN NUTRITION.” by George O. Burr and
Mildred M. Burr was published in 1930. Price published his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, in 1939.
It makes sense that someone somewhere must have had some good results from cod liver oil, I suppose.
Reminds me of the budwig protocol, one of many supposed panacea diets. Flaxseed and quark cheese (pretty similar to cottage cheese).
Yes, clearly the cure for vitamin a toxicity is to swallow the egg yolks, drink the milk, force down the liver, and ingest as much seed oil as possible.