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Are Supplements Ruining the Low Vitamin A diet?
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”!
Well said! Liver supplements being sold by carnivore influencers is a good example of what is also happening in the low vit A community. I like Dr Anthony Chaffee for a good example of a carnivore influencer. He states every time he does a video that all you need is meat and water and if you are having anything else that is probably why things aren't working for you. I think his attitude is a good rule of thumb. When in doubt leave it out is going to be my rule of thumb. I did take LYL supplements. Lactoferrin,minerals niacin mag lotion. I stopped all that about a month ago. I took alot of supplements in the past and I know now I wasted alot of money and harmed myself taking turmeric for example. I don't want to fall in another supplement money trap. I need to save my money for my grass fed beef anyhow.
Before I came across the low vitamin A books, my mindset to vaccine injury /vitamin A toxicity (?) was ‘what do I need to take more of to get better’. We are constantly warned about the dangers of deficiency in society but there is little knowledge on what to do about toxicity (when I asked a gp and consultant gastroenterologist how to get vitamin A out of the body, they said they did not know). When desperate, I watched videos by influencers about how to heal - many suggested vitamin D, ivermectin, methylene blue, injecting vitamin c, iron infusions, probiotics to help microbiome, Ayurvedic medicine, hydroxychloroquine, choline, augmented NAC, quercetin etc. i was desperate but also extremely sick which I think stopped my trying everything as the consequences of getting it wrong were just too great and could have long term consequences. I regret getting an iron infusion, reading the comments on this blog and I didn’t feel that it helped me. The only thing I’m undecided on is b12 as it stopped a year of diarreah but I wonder whether I should have just let the body try to keep on removing the poison through 6 months of vomiting every day and a year of dioreah. I did take vitamin D about a year after the vaccine and I don’t feel that it helped me (being fat soluble, it may have even slowed down progress). I’ve been on the low vitamin A diet for a few months now so it may be too early to tell but I have stopped all vitamins and don’t seem to miss them. Diet has been the biggest factor in (albeit slow) improvement. Vitamins may serve a purpose in limited circumstances but at this stage I think less is more, the whole medical/pharma/vitamin industry industry has been too corrupted so it is very difficult to try and figure out what you need when you are sick (and likely brain damaged from the vaccine). I am now reading that a lot of things that YouTubers suggest would have made my symptoms worse so I am glad I never tried them. The low vitamin A diet has been backed up by theory, practical reality, anecdotal evidence and political understanding.
Supplements are an arm of the chemical industry octopus and we have all been conditioned to believe that addition and not reduction is the answer. It is great for GDP. Downstream horrible health consequences are great for GDP. The alternative health "community" is captured and I don't think it has been a force for good in my life (Almost 40 yrs. old).
My personal experience with supplements is limited but included colloidal silver - I was a believer in Robert Becker's work - until coming to realize that adding highly conductive metal to your body is a bad idea. My other supplement was raw apricot seeds - I was a believer in E.G. Griffin's "World Without Cancer" while now I see that his expose of Rockefeller medicine coupled with unquestioning acceptance of "vitamins" was incoherent (thanks Grant!). His was another advocacy of addition and not reduction.
Misleading us is an industry.
God provided supplements such as sunshine, seasons, exercise, mosquitoes and leeches. He doesn't charge. We are conditioned to buy things in order to solve problems. How's about sitting under a fig tree: "He does nothing and everything is accomplished". We need more of that.
Will respond more after my 4th reading. Meanwhile, feels good knowing before I got to this article an old friend and former LYL member who is working through some tough times in Greece sent me this article before I knew it was posted. Thank you C.
I think we need to reach way down into our cellar memory to a time when we had more testosterone as a group, and say
"I don't need some a-hole telling me what to put in my mouth."
Grant's idea educates us that we can reject food influence, even going all the way back to first grade.
"Eat-the-rainbow-- What a crock!"
My thought is, and you can reject it because that is your right: You don't Eat-Yourself-Well!
You just eat. Calories. Low toxin = good.
Supplements didn't get your DNA here. (what is really in them? would we like it if we knew how they were made?)
I like that Grant made a case against RO water. Although people did have rain barrels in the olden days. That would be the closest thing to RO, I think. And rainwater wouldn't have been completely devoid... it would have come through dust and pollens etc.
Now, you may end up with a serious problem for instance, you may have an infection.
Then you may need to take medicine, say, a germ killer... for a short time.
That isn't eating, it is medicating.
Medicines are dual edged swords, and in order to be powerful enough to help, they can also harm.
Maybe this issue is... it is tough/scary to rely on the body to cure itself. (Just given time and basic inputs.)
There is an old saying that the real job of a physician is to entertain the patient until the body cures itself.
As I said in another thread, maybe concentrate more on generating feel-good hormones, instead of purchasing supplements.
There are lists of activities like that online. Maybe that is the best way to be our own physicians.
Now everyone come in for a group hug LOL.
Nice post Grant! I agree on the niacin. Unless you have a medical condition you are managing I just don't see a reason to supplement it.
The calcium thing is interesting. When I cut out a lot of dairy and started eating more beans, beef and rice my periods got way way worse. Really heavy and I've been considering it was calcium. Not sure about huge boluses of calcium which could disrupt normal pH levels in the body. The body tries very hard to keep it extremely stable, but that's a stress if it's a big amount.
Quote from Janelle525 on August 26, 2025, 7:21 amNice post Grant! I agree on the niacin. Unless you have a medical condition you are managing I just don't see a reason to supplement it.
The calcium thing is interesting. When I cut out a lot of dairy and started eating more beans, beef and rice my periods got way way worse. Really heavy and I've been considering it was calcium. Not sure about huge boluses of calcium which could disrupt normal pH levels in the body. The body tries very hard to keep it extremely stable, but that's a stress if it's a big amount.
That pH is the first issue I noticed that arises in most of us on calciumconnection. Variety of binders we get the calcium with adjust that. Seems like citrates are the easiest. Ironic since is seems like calcium citrate repletes calcium the least since it takes calcium to buffer our system's citric acid. Lil g has made the other earliest mistake of recommending oxalate bound calcium food sources first. Not sure when or how he is going to rectify that. He has already blocked the few people who warned him about it.