I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Excellent post and thread. Thank you @lil-chick
and
Another for what it is worth:
Back in the 1990's when I had my first and worst antibiotic induced cachexia, it took me a year to find a trustworthy doc who had first hand similar experience and success. After working a few ideas that first year, I was reading all I could and felt like some blood test some where would show some imbalance or toxin or something that would clarify everything and show us the way. Doc tried to explain that this is not how things work. Blood tests are not some comprehensive all knowing proven and established science that just shows us everything we need to know. I would not have it. I demanded blood tests and plunked down a wad of cash. I demanded, "spend this and do all the blood tests you think might have anything to do with anything. Let's just try this."
Took a while but after a few more appointments with the skinny wrecked guy, they relented and lined up tests. This was 10 years before I was a phlebotomist. I knew a few things medical from previous work and medical family. So very experienced nurse came in with test tubes and needle. Sets me up with rubber strap and then sticks big easy vein. My veins are the easiest stick on planet. She loads the tube onto the needle hub. Shocked. Nothing. Not a drop. Tries again. Nothing.
Tries other arm. Equally good vein. Nothing. Stares at my arm and empty tube. Already tested her tubes to make sure vacuum seal was good. About to pull the needle on her third stick and give up. I stop her. Tell her wait. I start crushing and rolling rubber ball in my hand. Black sludge oozes out with each hard squeeze. I pushed out 5 tubes that way. Took forever. Like 1 minute per tube. Between vacuum in tubes and blood pressure normal tube is filled in 3 to 5 seconds. I know phlebotomists who can fill 5 tubes, shake them out and have them in their rack, labeled and notes completed in under 30 seconds.
Completely grossed her out. Took 5 minutes to fill 5 tubes with black sludge.
My Dad taught me when I was a kid going with him on his client visits to docs how to find veins and see flow. Pump a fist. Watch veins fill. Pick a full long one. Elbow side base of the forearm is best for me. Index finger on it to close the vein close to the wrist. Run the thumb up the rest of the vein toward the elbow to clear the blood out. Valve near the elbow will prevent backflow (if it is not impaired causing varicose vein). Release index finger off vein and watch vein refill from the wrist toward the valve at the elbow. That is how fast blood is flowing through veins.
When I did that to show Mary, the nurse, her eyes bugged. It was moving so slow. It really was black sludge.
Curious @jiri
Is there a reason or need to condescend and criticize coming and going? Last I checked people around here are grateful for you input as I am about getting new sources of silicic acid. The complaints I read from you in last week or so are about people here not knowing enough because they do not have your decades of study and experimentation. Then complaints about bringing up topics that are old and already discussed here. As if further questions or theories are inappropriate since topic was already discussed and conclusions already reached.
Then a few of us started reading backward into old threads. I thought it best to try to catch up on topics already disccused. Then I got a comment about how I am really jumping around? If I was a 30 year old kid and this was all a new experience to me, I might feel embarrassed into silence and just say yes sir, my mistake, I will try not to anger you again. Instead I sit back and think, hm, I wonder if there is a reason why this guy is determined to object no matter what is written. I mean whether or not I agree with the guy seems to not matter. I know I am not throwing ad hominems. I am quite sure I am not being nasty nor angry because well let's face it I am that nice a guy. And now the latest complaint is that people are getting all "conspiracy" around here and it is degrading your experience?
So what gives man? What is it you expect when your keyboard puts these comments out?
Quote from Joe2 on September 11, 2025, 7:47 pm
@jaj aka Jenney Jones . Argued out a few concepts with Jenny on this blog a long time ago. Now I am finding out from third hand quotes on a blow twice removed what the basis from some of those complaints were about. Curious how she is doing today and what she is onto now. Last I heard she was all about salicylates and believed vA was a misunderstood nutrient.
I think Jenny and Danil are kind of the same in that they stopped inputing VA and had worse problems. I think looking at their cases we see how one of the biggest questions we face here at this site is: Is vitamin A deficiency just retox? And perhaps a related question is "should sleeping dogs be allowed to lie". Maybe your idea of slow changes is best.
Salicylates are medicine. Dual-edged sword there. The other night my son cooked for us and put mint in the salad. Strangely enough, I had less gas than usual. Sometimes I get a real urge for mint. It left a taste in my mouth for hours. I'm betting I don't detox from it very fast. (along with many things). I've spoken before about the site "Plant Poisons and Rotten Things". I don't think it exists anymore. Emma ran it, and I tried her version of low toxin diet, it was kind of the precursor for me to accepting Grant's idea. It helped my rosacea but I left the site because something was missing. It didn't help enough. She never knew that VA was the big grand daddy of them all, though... I wish I could contact her. Her work was based on the FAILSAFE diet out of Australia that avoids salicylates and amines and other things.
I walked through my neighbors garden past the basil and it smelled WONDERFUL, basil is closely related to mint and I'm sure high in Sal's. Certain plant poisons smell wonderful to me, including lemon. (IIRC, Grant once posted about the plant poison in things that smell like lemon, Limonene).
I'm going through the "retox" lil chick mentioned. Thus far my experience of it has been much more tame than those I have read from many others, but I didn't start in ill health to begin with (at least not that I was aware of). So retox for me has so far been prodigious hunger (which is slowly receding) some itching at night and intermittent fatigue. And in the midst of these minor complaints, an imperturbable calm and good humor, flourishing skin (mine wasn't bad to begin with) increasing strength, vivid dreams, excellent cognition and recall, and more than I'll list here.
The question of whether it is best to let sleeping dogs lie is a good one and I might be content with that had I not experienced that surge of well-being some two months in, which lasted several weeks. I'm convinced that this state coincided with a circulating level of retinol at or near 0. It couldn't last and it didn't. Whether the pain is worth the prize is up to each of us to decide. It's worth it to me.
The closest I came to this 0 retinol state in my adult life was last fall, when I was eating sirloin steaks and baked potatoes once a day, drenched in butter (and I mean swimming in it). That is the true value of butter; it mops up retinol better than any other fat and puts it back in the liver. I personally don't want it in my liver any more. I like this quote from Grant best of all:
Of course, I don’t have some deep hatred for vitamin A. It would be silly to harbor hatred towards inanimate molecules. But, I will do whatever I can to keep expelling every last bit of this vile, poisonous, disgusting, reprehensible and scheming little yellow serial killer from my body.
- Grant Genereux, 2020
Always loved mint. Spearmint gum last 55 years. Mint in yards and gardens. Learned 45 years ago that mint is excellent on cramps. After married learned that it is an old cope for menstrual cramps. Carried a tea bag on blood drives. 97% coworkers female, most much younger in first or second job. Never needed more than half a cup of tea. Kids were excited first time they tried it. Big deal for them so they were grateful to my wife.
Absotively agree on the reason and logic of kaizen. Absotively disagree on Jenny and Danil. Convinced they are both the same as all of us. Have never seen anyone yet who did not suffer some kind of backlash when they stopped or slowed down intake of vA. We all go through it. Number of factors on how bad it gets and how long it lasts.
Probably single biggest factor is how bad off we are to begin with. At my worst on 11/22/2022, screaming agony is best way to phrase it. WAPF diet of last 40 years finally overflowed my liver. Ready or not all the retinoids and every other toxin previously stored were coming out and all at once. Unable to eat more than a couple ounces of beef a day for a week, pain held steady. Eating any more of my 70% fat 30% protein at around 2500 calories daily plain old hurt. Started losing weight that I could not afford to lose.
During second week, tried a bite of beef liver. Horrific increase in pain level that I thought was impossible to pass. Set me to drilling down on all I could dig up on all possible related issues. Went through a number of possible diagnoses with 3 docs. Kept reading. Liver got me considering hypervitaminosis A. Eventually worked through a few folk until I found Grant's interview with Judy Cho. When I got to Garrett I learned about isotretinoin induced sacroiliitis.
Point of all that old man story time:
I got no duration paradox whiplash. I think it was because I was already past the point of experiencing withdrawal. My liver was already overflowing causing the maximum amount of pain and damage. Taking in more toxin could not stop, slow down nor delay the liver kicking out, detoxing more retinoids and toxins. It is the same process with chemotherapy. What relief chemo gives cancer victims is that chemo is poison. While taking it in, the liver stops detoxing and feeding the tumors more toxins to store that were previously stored in the liver. Sooner or later the liver overflows with toxins including chemo and the previous cancer growth starts up again and much more so.
Duration paradox is what we experience when we start taking in a toxin to stop our liver from kicking out the toxins that were causing our symptoms. It is the drug like effect we get during the honeymoon phase of duration paradox. It only works if the liver has more room to store more toxins. Liver can only detox or intox. Not both at the same time. That is why drinking a beer the next morning shuts down the pain of hangover. The liver stops dumping out aldehydes while it takes in more alcohol from the beer. Hence hair of the dog who bit you. It does not matter if the toxin / drug / nutrient taken in is the same as what the liver was kicking out. Any toxin will shut down detox. What does matter is if the liver has any more room.
So for someone like me or Grant or any of the other old guys who seemed to have missed out on the pleasures of detox setbacks the theory runs that we were all already overflowing. We were already in the worst of our own detox setback. The only thing we could have done to make it worse was to eat more poison that the liver would immediately kick out along with everything else that was coming out. A bite of liver is all it took for me. Ramped my screaming agony up a notch in less than a minute.
So our symptoms are all different. Everyone. All of us. We all have different symptom pictures. There are some similarities. But our genetics, our history, everything is so different, the odds of our symptoms matching much is low. What we do share is a liver that is working to pull toxins in from blood before tissue damage results. It then breaks the toxins down and kicks them out hopefully into the colon and hopefully out the anus. Deficiencies get caused by using up nutrients required to make detoxification binding agents. Unbound retinoic acid burns through what it hits. Hard to bind retinoic acid without the zinc, proteins and other nutrient needed to make Retinol Binding Protein, RBP. When nutrients get restored, and RBP gets produced, liver ramps up detox into colon and hopefully colon is not so damaged that it still works as fast or faster than the liver dumps toxins to get them out before they are reabsorbed and recirculated causing more and worse symptoms.
So I had to start eating apples and oatmeal along with my beef to get my fiber intake up slowly and my calories up. Charcoal helped bind up toxins in colon and magnesium oxide helped to keep colon working fast enough to get them out.
Now the details on how to get toxin intake down low enough to let liver kick out toxins and colon happy enough to carry them out faster than the liver kicks them in, well that is the question. And the answer for that question is way different for every one of us. We all share some commonalities. And we are all way different. Like vegans have a much harder time recovering than beef eaters do. Guessing that has to do with zinc, taurine and other aminos needed for RBP. But if beef is hard to eat, what other nutrients are deficient that makes digesting beef difficult? That is where SOME supplements can help.
My criterion is that if supplements give relief, this is good AS LONG AS the supplements are not a permanent thing. If zinc supplements help, then wean off them as soon as possible and rely on beef or bison or dark meat chicken or........
We each need to do our own experiments. There is no set way to get best results. There is a good way to experiment to find what gives best results. Guessing that is kaizen.
Quote from ItsMe on September 12, 2025, 11:29 pm"That is the true value of butter; it mops up retinol better than any other fat and puts it back in the liver."
I'm confused, what do you exactly mean by this? Isn't the point to get it out of the liver?
Butter has VA (combination of retinol and beta carotene).
It has these things but sends them to the liver, along with whatever you eat with it, is my understanding. Someone can correct me if I'm off-base.
Quote from ItsMe on September 13, 2025, 7:59 amQuote from Joseph on September 13, 2025, 7:44 amQuote from ItsMe on September 12, 2025, 11:29 pm"That is the true value of butter; it mops up retinol better than any other fat and puts it back in the liver."
I'm confused, what do you exactly mean by this? Isn't the point to get it out of the liver?
Butter has VA (combination of retinol and beta carotene).
It has these things but sends them to the liver, along with whatever you eat with it, is my understanding. Someone can correct me if I'm off-base.
I'm probably a dummie, but doesn't VA go to the liver anyway? regardless of butter.
I'm just confused....why would you want it stored in the liver? When I read from people here trying to get it out of the liver.
I was treating butter as a food group unto itself before I ever heard of Grant Genereux. If your liver has more room, taking in butter is protective as it sends retinol to the safest place in the body - the liver. I want it out of my liver now; I gave away my butter 5 months ago.
I added 60#of butter to our burn barrel after my liver overflowed with retinoids. It probably does help liver to sequester retinoids faster. Any fat intake will do that. That is only going to provide symptom relief as long as the liver has room to store more. Once overflowing I bet, taking in butter will only increase symptoms resultant when retinoids overflow out of liver. That was my experience. I tested it often enough after I learned about Grant. Doubt I will willingly test it again. Russian Roulette comes to mind. The butter in this meal might not hurt now. It may hurt later.
Guess it all depends on how fast retinoids are coming in the mouth and exiting out through the colon and kidneys.