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Bruce's Progress Report
Quote from lil chick on July 4, 2026, 7:51 amJust stopping the progress of the destruction is, itself, a worthy effort.
Another reason some people do not get well is that this ain't the only problem in town!
Both of these are so true. Stopping the destruction is probably the best thing anyone can do besides the detox. I am feeling better each day, but I do keep having relapses when I go too low. That said, I am hopeful that my levels will keep dropping and I will get better and better.
Wishing this for everyone else also.
Quote from Bruce on July 2, 2026, 10:11 amLab Test Update: July 2, 2026
I had my serum retinol re-run the other day, which was about 30 days from my previous level on first of June 2026.
According to goodlabs.com (via Quest Diagnostics) I’ve dropped from 74 mcg/dl (Out of Range) to 59 mcg/dl (In Range, but highest end of normal), so I’m definitely trending in the right direction, at least from retinol bloodwork.
Hoping that since vA blood retinol levels are dropping, then so are my liver stores?
The guy in that study was shedding 68 grams per day if I recall?
Can you help me with the depletion math in my case?
Disclaimer: this is not medical advice, just my personal opinion.
Regarding the vitamin A depletion, in that paper the subject was shedding about 67,800 µg RAE/day ≈ 68 mg/day from his liver.
Your pattern of serum retinol first elevating, and then decreasing, matches what was in the study. So that's a good sign.
However, if we want to get into detailed estimates about how much vitamin A is in your liver over time, I think that would be difficult by just looking at serum retinol. In the study, they actually did liver biopsies, and they measured many other values as well, like RBP (retinol biding protein), albumin, bilirubin, etc.
It would be cool at some point to develop a mathematical model that might be able to help us project/estimate vitamin A recovery, but I'm not aware of anyone who has such a model right now.
Hope that helps.
I wonder how many people are doing the low vitamin A diet as Grant did? There is a lot of discussion around different vitamins, supplements and biodiversity of gut type products - we each come with a different set of poisonings and issues so that’s not to say these things don’t help people but it is hard to determine if there are other factors at play the more elements we introduce. Having tried a range of things before I came across low vitamin A, I have found nothing else has helped as effectively. It’s a long hard slog, not much money to be made in it from practitioners/ alternative medicine providers and requires a lot of willpower in social contexts.
Quote from Tanveen on July 26, 2026, 2:01 am...Having tried a range of things before I came across low vitamin A, I have found nothing else has helped as effectively. It’s a long hard slog...and requires a lot of willpower in social contexts...
This, this and this! And sometimes we do have to re-visit other things that helped in the past.
Lately I seem to be re-learning that I have particular issues with sugar. I think that is why the WAPF seemed to help me at first. At that same time I read "Sugar Blues". Some of the WAPF adherents would say things like "even a teaspoon can mess you up for the day" (although low sugar isn't a tenet followed by all WAPFers). I took sugar out of my family's diet and one of my kids found it easier to concentrate in school. I stopped keeling over in the garden.
I think I loosened up when I came here, thinking that, hey, sugar has no vitamin A! And I let sugar back into my life. And maybe a person who isn't as damaged by vitamin A might be more OK with sugar. But yeah, that is my little mini update, and I think it shows that we all have side problems that complicate how fast or slow recovery happens.
For the record, I actually don't have a huge sweet tooth. But sometimes when you are looking for calories that aren't high in vitamin A, sugary things can be a siren song...
Updated labs:
June 1 - 74 mcg/dl
July 1 - 59 mcg/dl
Aug 1 - 56 mcg/dl
Previous 30-day diet that included a daily average of 159 mcg vA (where 83 mcg daily was from retinol … cheese is dangerous and so hard for me to completely cut loose 😔).
Tracking via cronometer.