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Andrew's Progress Log
@jiri - I've been thinking more about my hormone levels, and how iron overload is causing very high total test, high SHBG, average free test, but high estradiol and high prolactin - horrible combination.
And obviously thinking about giving blood. I will start this soon.
I have been eating c. 50:50 beef and chicken over the past several weeks, but just got very concerned with the amount of vA in chicken fat! I usually eat chicken thighs, which could apparently be quite high vA due to the feed! I do go organic, but still...
There is an American manufacturer (I am in UK) who claims that 1oz of chicken provides 15% of the RDA! If I were to eat 300g, that's approx 10 oz, that's 150% of the RDA! Perhaps I am not as low as I thought I was being...
I may have to go back to 100% beef / lamb ... but this won't be helping my iron levels. I know @ggenereux2014 posted some info around a chicken farmer / producer in North America, and how high their feed concentration of vA was ... maybe this is not such a good meat to eat.
@andrew2 when I cook chicken thighs I basically boil all my meat on the pan with water. I wait until the fat melts from the meat and I poor the water into the sink. I add new water and basically rinse any excess of fat of the meat. Then Poor the water from rinsing out again put new water and cook it like that. There is not much fat or I just buy and cook turkey/chicken breasts. As fitness guy you should know this how popular chicken/turkey breast is in the fitness industry because it has basically no fat in it.. Especially if you bake it or cook it and not use the water.. Meat from baking is more juicy and tastier. Meat from boiling is for really hardcore guys who don't mind that bland flavor with no fat left. 🙂 So You don't have to boil the thighs. Just bake them in the oven.. There is hardly any fat let alone vit A.. Trust me small amount if vit A from chicken thighs will not stop your vit A detox if the rest of your diet is low in vit A...
BEFORE PHOTOS - Vitiligo
In taking these photos: I used a handheld dark-light torch, in a room with closed curtains, to try to show evidence of patches of my vitiligo. Apologies for these pictures / the picture quality - I know my skin looks gross, and it's pretty unflattering for my tummy - not pleasant to look at.
I am naturally quite pale even pre-vitiligo, and my vitiligo pattern is such that I have virtually zero pigment on my arms and legs anymore, but almost complete pigment retained on my torso from the belt-line upwards (barring a couple of patches on each shoulder blade). This makes it quite tricky to take decent photographs, but I have done my best. I also have very noticeable vitiligo patches on my genitals - but will not upload pictures for obvious reasons.
I find the condition deeply distressing still to this day (had it for 13 years). I was always told it was "auto-immune" and just one of those things - but I never really bought that line. I knew there was something else going wrong, not just blind (bad) luck ... a nutrient deficiency, another disease "under the hood", an infection, who knows ... I didn't for one moment think that it could be a poisoning though - that is, until reading Grant's books.
Grant mentions these in passing in chapters 16 and 23 of ETFOH, and in a bit more detail in chapter 5 of PFP.
Grant also mentioned that many young people in Africa now are taking high dose accutane specifically in the hopes of inducing vitiligo into their skin, so that they can become "white". This was news to me, and also very tragic ... after some more searching, I found this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6077457/
TL;DR - vitiligo (AND significant thyroid autoimmunity - both of which I have in droves) was induced after a 3 month course of Accutane. Accutane users are at an increased risk of all autoimmune diseases, including vitiligo.
All very interesting. I believe Grant's view is that vitiligo is probably unlikely to improve / cure itself even if the vA toxicity is fully resolved, because the melanocytes have already been destroyed. However, I am a little more positive on this (but only a little).
I have successfully re-pigmented some very small spots (c. 5-10mm) with daily use of a hand-held UVB lamp over the course of a few weeks - a well-documented way to *somewhat* reverse vitiligo. However, I do not believe this to be a practical long-term solution due to the need for repeated treatments of low-level burning yourself, ad infinitum, to stop the progression (like trying to scoop water back upstream).
Nevertheless, I have no doubt in my mind that *some* improvement is possible... whether the melanocytes are just dormant / suppressed, or if they actually destroyed by vA but the body is able to make new ones ... I am not sure. But I did also see this study, which adds additional hope:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897595/
Summary: 16 patients were given extremely high dose vitD daily for 6 months. Many of them saw significant reversals in vitiligo over that time (check the photos - AMAZING).
Whilst I wouldn't recommend vitD supplementation at this level (or any tbh), this was very interesting to me. My hypothesis as to why it worked is that: vitD competes with vitA in the body. Taking such massive quantities of vitD may have blocked the vitA (already at toxic levels in the patients' bodies) from doing the damage it would normally do, and the vitiligo successfully reversed in some patients. Tbh, I would highly advise against supplementing vitD in these kinds of quantities (or any kind of quantity), but that's what I think the mechanism might be - perhaps full resolution of vA toxicity may help to resolve vitiligo also.
I am not holding out much hope. But again, I thought I should upload these photos as "before" evidence. It would be crazy cool to see re-pigmentation over time, and would may provide hope for others.
That'll do it for the before photos - thanks all for bearing with me on this.
NOTES: Last photo - red lines are to indicate the vitiligo delineation. The green lines are areas where I have white body hairs - quite difficult to see in the dark-light pictures, and it's strange that only some of the hairs went white...
Uploaded files:
Addendum to the vitiligo photos above - the attached photo here is to show the white hairs on that left side of the picture that I highlighted in green pen (right side of my body). As I say, weird that only some of the hairs on the de-pigmented skin went white... also notice the completely de-pigmented hand.
Uploaded files:
I got some white spots on my body too that I have had as long as I remember.....already as a kid. I am now 47. And I am so much in the sun and turn nicely tanned but my white spots always stay white, and the hair on them is white. But I have read that vitiligo is reverseable, at least there are people who have reversed it.
I think my spots are forever though, because they probably was from birth. I wonder now if they are from vitamin A toxicity too....maybe in the womb or as a small kid.....
@andrew2 I once knew a woman who was eating mainly cheese pies and spinach pies. When she turned 48 years old she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and put on Levothyrox. Within 3 months she started to be covered in vitiligo patches. An old pharmacist made an ointment and after a couple of years all vitiligo had disappeared. I do not know what was in the ointment it was a secret. The pharmacist was about 75 years old in 1985. The ingredients must have been low tech. And that lady with the vitiligo is now dead. At least I know first hand that it is possible for vitiligo patches to disappear. Also she kept her diet of cheese and spinach to the end (colon cancer).
Hi @ourania-
Thanks so much for this. Yes I have definitely heard of tinctures helping to reverse the condition - although I haven't seen much evidence of it myself. Still though, I do sort of view it as a "scooping water back up stream" - if possible, I would rather eliminate the problem at the source, rather than try to mitigate / reverse it topically - but thank you, that's super interesting, I'll look into this further...
Also yes, very interesting about the link / co-existence of vitiligo and hypothyroidism - I think it's very common that one goes with the other (like me!). But as we know from Grant's books "auto-immunity" is most probably just a poisoning.
I have also heard that vitiligo may be to do with copper, B9, and / or B12 issues - I know I am low in serum folate on my latest blood tests, but I think it is more complex than just "supplement this or that vitamin or mineral" -> I think a pathway required to make melanin is being disrupted / damaged.
Based on the vA toxicity theory, it seems that the vA / retinoic acid is literally burning away the melanin cells it gets into - brutal. As mentioned, Grant discusses this briefly in his books in the places mentioned above.
@Inger - I'm really sad to hear that. I know some people with vitiligo whom it doesn't bother much - but it has been a big bother to me. And if it is reversible for one person, I don't see why it wouldn't be reversible for all. I remember seeing a youtube video AGES AGO of a black girl on the news who had vitiligo from a very young age - some people just get the condition much sooner than others. I was 19.
Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za6nv-CK4xQ
Still, I am not expecting improvements - just documenting evidence here. In THEORY, this could improve over time as vA becomes depleted, but it could take a long time. I thought I would upload the 'before' evidence just to "throw it all out there" and see what improves.
To add, I remember saying to myself in 2010 - "there must be a cure for this, how can no one have figured this out yet?? One day, I am going to find the cure, and I'm going to share it with the world."
I never did find the cure to this day hahaha - and I had to put this out my mind a little bit and just try to cope with it. But maybe, just maybe, Grant has found the cure already. Let's see.
@andrew2, it did bother me a bit but thankfully its in places that you normally dont see except if I am naked (down at my belly bottom and it almost looks like a sheep or a rabbit..haha so I just think it is my white rabbit-thats what an ex boyfriend of mine said very sweetly anyway 😉 ) , and two smaller spots on my back 😉
I am so curious if it will disappear at some point tho! This is the first time I go low vitamin A in my whole life. I am at 1,5 years now.
My spots have remained the same as long as I remember... Did yours appear all of a sudden or gradually increased?
