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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
For what it is worth i also have terrible BCO1 Major and Minor genes and cannot convert the beta-carotine.
I thought Oxolates might be the issue too, and bought some 100% cocoa powder to test the theory, I decided against it in the end and cant remember why exactly.
The easiest way to test the Oxolate dumping is to reintroduce small amounts of oxolate and tritrate it up until the diarrhea stops. This is how Elliot treats diarrhea caused by oxolate dumping in his clients.
Hello all,
Today is my first day as a forum member. I learned about VA toxicity last Monday 3/28/22 and had my first low VA meal that night. I then finished Grant's first book in two days and have so many questions. I read this entire thread today and have some questions for things specifically raised here. Please excuse that some of these topics may have been discussed many months ago. OK- here goes with my questions:
@wavygravygadzooks, I thought coconut oil was not good because it binds unhelpfully to serum retinoic acid? I thought I read this in the first book, but I have terrible brain fog and am also a newbie here.
On your list of fats- what do you think about commercially available lard or drippings from cooking a steak?
@lil-chick and @ourania, I hate the eye millia! I have it only on my left side. They start under the eye and migrate to the outer edge of facial tissue near the outer corner of the eye. I’ve tried every cream from Ophthalmologists and Dermatologists- nothing makes a difference.
@ourania, what brand/source of clostridium butyricum did you use?
I am about to start a higher Thiamine- Biotin-Mg program. The Biotin is also supposed to help my MS too.
What were your symptoms with the expedited VA detox due to Biotin?
@lil-chick, how do you make the Apple Cider Vinegar Drink?
Is there an optimal time of day to drink this? An optimal frequency?
PS- I think bandaids are Great! I get stuck on them- as an accident prone person. I like your sassy posts!
@davidw, what are some examples of resistant starches? I am currently eating brown rice, kidney beans and hamburger cooked with onion as a mix. I have been on this for almost 1 week.
Also, I am interested in the Recipe for Wilbur’s Fiber Smoothie.
What brand/source are your bile salts?
@andrei, What are your source of fats following Grant’s initial diet? I agree- I would not want to follow a slow, prolonged detox- I want to get through this- get VA out!
Thank you to everyone for your posts and your experience. I have so much to learn! If you want to know my recent past medical history it is in my profile.
Take care, I look forward to your replies!
@grace hello and welcome to the forum! Your name is so beautiful --
Since you are so new to the forum, I will say some basic things. First, since these posts have accumulated over time, many people have tried things that did work, or did not, but we may or may not have heard back from them. It is good that you are asking questions.
I see that you, like so many "starting at the gate" (as in a race!), want to "finish" the VA detox quickly. The problem is, as Dr. Garrett Smith says, it is a poison on the way in, and also on the way out, of the body. So the task is to detox at a steady pace that does not lead to detox symptoms impairing your life. Grant felt better quickly, but he was not healed right away -- The body takes time to generate new, replacement cells. Please know that you can feel better (though not completely well) as you are healing.
You say you are eating hamburger, beans, and rice. Are you feeling good with these? That is a good sign. I have been eating beans (many different kinds of legumes) with meat (almost always ground beef, but sometimes chicken) for all my 3 meals a day for at least 2 years now, and am doing well on that.
Keep us posted!
Welcome.
First off, please be aware that most everything you read here and on Garrett's website is a supposition. Some suppositions are better backed by evidence than others, but they are nonetheless suppositions that most likely have not been tested rigorously by the scientific method. This includes Grant's hypothesis that his kidney problems were due to Vitamin A toxicity (I personally continue to wonder if they were more likely from oxalates, which his healing diet incidentally removed along with Vitamin A), and it most certainly includes the extremely questionable proposition that Vitamin A is not a vitamin and is in fact pure poison. That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate all of the digging that Grant has done into the literature, and the way he has shared his own n=1 experiment, but in the end it pretty much all boils down to an hypothesis that has not been rigorously tested with sufficient statistical power.
Having said that, my biggest personal concern with coconut oil is that it came from a plant, and therefore contains a variety of xenobiotic plant compounds like phenols and salicylates that are a drag on the human body.
When it comes to fat, I would (1) steer completely clear of extracted PUFAs, (2) minimize extracted MUFAs (e.g. olive oil, avocado oil) but not necessarily avoid small amounts of whole foods that contain them (olives, avocado), (3) predominantly eat animal fat, and (4) prioritize ruminant fat (beef, bison, lamb) over that of monogastric animals (pork, chicken). I would DEFINITELY consume the drippings from cooked meat because there are a lot of necessary vitamins and minerals that leach into the drippings.
Because most nutritional science is complete crap, the best way of determining an optimal human diet comes from anthropology, evolutionary biology, and comparative anatomy. These sources of evidence all overwhelmingly indicate that humans are best adapted to a diet of animal meat and fat, and there should be VERY VERY FEW exceptions to that rule in modern humans. Therefore, I think there is a strong argument to be made that eating a low Vitamin A diet that is comprised entirely of skeletal meat and fat from healthy animals (primarily ruminants) is the optimal and most natural way to eliminate toxicity, symptoms be damned.
If you want to try to mitigate symptoms by eating a bunch of fiber and plant crap, I can hardly blame you, as my own symptoms have been absolutely devastating. However, my personal supposition (which is based on the multi-faceted argument that everyone should be eating a "carnivore" diet that limits consumption of most organ meats) is that these things that "mask" detox symptoms are not just bandaids, but are harmful in their own right. You may not notice the harm in the short-term because it's often an insidious process of accumulation, but guaranteed your body is suffering from it to some degree.
Hi Guys! Wow, that was a very good post @wavygravygadzooks. I liked a lot of things about it. I'm glad that you are holding the bar of evidence high. And I totally agree that it seems oxalates are a nasty plant poison that is low in Grant's diet. Hubs had an oxalate kidney stone (just prior to us finding Grant), (which hasn't recurred yet) so it could be part of our issue. Unlike you, though, I eat a trad mix of macro nutrients (meat and carb is my mantra when figuring what to eat. veggies/fruits are more like a compliment/condiment/garnish).
I've found that I have foot cramps after potato chips, (and another WAPFer told me he did too). I have thought to myself that it was perhaps just basic electrolytes but I don't notice the issue after indulging in salty pretzels. One of the differences between the two snacks is probably oxalates. The bad fats too.
There are all sorts of other poisons in foods. I used to follow a site called "plant poisons and rotten stuff" (which utilized a diet called failsafe out of a hospital in Australia (a diet that reduces many varied food chemicals) I wouldn't say the diet that resulted was too different from Grant's. Very restrictive, very bland. (they don't realize the baddy that carotenes are)
I want to point out that I think that cod liver oil (CLO) has slowly poisoned a lot of people, and I don't think that it has oxalates. So that might give us some evidence that VA is bad. But there is more in CLO and FCLO (fermented CLO) than VA. However it *is* very high in VA. Rancidity problems are part of the CLO problem I'm sure.
Thanks for the nice compliment @grace (about my sassy posts!). And thanks for pulling me over to this interesting convo!
I've been meaning to update my status, I'm getting close to 3 years now, and I've been on the slow boat. Verrrrry slow. As I've said, it appears to me that my acute signs of poisoning tapered off during the first year. (the vomiting for example). I still have lots of problems. (shrugs) I do think real damage happens!
About the eyes, I think it helps to clean the eyes very well a few times a day, I really think they are constantly detoxing.
The basic vinegar drink is a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of honey in a tall glass of water. I don't take it very often. I don't do anything like a tablespoon of honey in it (don't like honey) I use much less. I will make myself a vinegar drink in summer sometimes when I feel my electrolytes are low from heavy sweating. Sometimes I also drink pickle juice.
I get real strong urges for vinegar often and often eat pickles to satisfy them (rather than vinegar drinks). I also make my own salad dressing and put it over whitish veggies.
@lil-chick The basic premise that high vitamin A in liver results in toxicity has been verified in animal experiments. For example, take some liver oil and there is toxicity. Remove the vitamin A only from the liver oil and there will be no toxicity. Grant wasn't eating liver or liver oil, so that wouldn't apply to his story specifically.
Thanks for the recipe- wooza that is a lot of honey. I tried a large tumbler with 6 drops of sucralose and 1 teaspoon (little T) of ACV. I do not like vinegars. I have difficulty enjoying my own meal if someone at the table is using malt vinegar on his/her meal. However… the ACV drink did grow on me.
I would estimate it was about 16oz of iced water- but the ACV is still quite dominant.
This is supposed to help the liver function better? Or the GI tract? Either way I could see doing 1 (small) t. ACV drink once a week.
Your question on diet tolerance- today is Day 7- last Monday I started with the pm meal. The brown rice, home cooked kidney beans and onions with 80/20 hamburger was working great. I needed salt and cooked the rice with some oil (mainly because I started with baking the rice- I’ve since pulled out the rice cooker).
I was actually looking forward to each meal- this AM was no different but about 20 minutes after I knew I was going to vomit- I’ve had GI N/V issues for the past 7 months so just going w/o N/V x 7 days and looking forward to a meal (even the same meal) was progress.
I don’t know why I V today- but it was every last bit of breakfast and the vitamins I took with it. My only recent changes have been to attempt to decrease Rx meds processed through the liver and yesterday included the last of my antacids- last Omeprazole (I was down to 1 a day and Sunday night did not even take it once). I have not had heartburn so I’m not quite sure this is it.
Likely this was a fluke but for the rest of today I switched to brown rice and hamburger/onion only (have yet to cook it). I had been “eliminating” my meals with the consistency but not color of guacamole w/in 3 hours of eating- hence the decision to drop the beans for a bit of bowel rest.
This gave me the excuse to finish the sugar free Angel Food Cake that was left in the fridge-I found AFC on a list of “allowed” foods from the gal @wavygravygadzooks said was a Garret follower. It was here from before I started diet. Sprite and AFC… about as bland a diet I could come up with in the late afternoon with no energy…
How has the rest of your digestion been, after food makes it through your stomach? Do you get much gas/bloating? I read through your profile description and it seems odd to me that your stomach would have so many problems without your small or large intestines also having problems.
You seem to have quite the complicated health history, I'm sorry to hear of your woes.
Have you tried just eating lean-ish meat for a couple days to see how you feel on that?
When I first removed Vitamin A from my diet, I went through about a week or two of nausea where I was mainly limited to eating lean meat. Since then, I hardly ever experience nausea despite having chronic diarrhea. Above all, I seem to crave fatty meat, even when I malabsorb fat from overeating it. I've experimented several times with limiting fat and getting calories from white rice, but I never really feel satiated without some fat. I can't help but conclude that, far more often than not, a carnivore diet is the answer.
I believe all this was brought on by years of “healthy eating” and extensive VA supplementation. The keto diet with its high amount of VA foods- citrus, avocado and coconut, including coconut oil pushed me over the edge from a chronic VA state to an acute VA state- this affected my skin, mucous membranes and especially my stomach with the red irritated lining.
This experience lead me to ask about which oils are low in VA. I believe I read in Grant’s first book about how Coconut Oil is a kind of maladaptive RBP that does not really solve anything and can make things worse in the serum in the presence of VA. So I was very shocked to see it as #1 on your list after ruminate fats- oh and thanks for explaining ruminate vs single stomach animals.
I often meet people in person (prior to C19) who disclose personal struggles and health struggles. I think I have ‘one of those faces’. But my impairments can be obvious in some respects too. My standard response to sympathy in these instances is “Well, everyone has something- I’m sure you don’t want mine and I’m sure I don’t want yours.” Said with a smile. I get a lot of head nodding over that one!
I have been on the brown rice, beans (first black but then realized they are the highest for VA- I’m frankly surprised Grant chooses them) and sautéed 80/20 beef and 1 white onion for 7 days. I had some stinky gas on day 4 and 5, otherwise no gas or very minimal and w/o odor. I do seem to pass my meals in their entirety in a “guacamole” type consistency- lil-chick coined this term for consistency recently. It is medium to slightly dark brown.
The beans are digested but it all seems to pass awfully quickly. I eat twice a day- same thing happens after both meals. When I vomited this morning (not entirely unexpected but disappointing) I made up a new mix of just brown rice and the beef onion mixture. This one will naturally have a larger % of protein because I used the same amount of the other two.
so my current mix is made of:
2# 80/20 beef, 1 white onion
4 cups dry brown rice- rice cooker, made c some oil, drippings in the future
4 cups dry beans (50% kidney, 50% pinto)
so the one I made today had no beans. I will use this until finished and return to the above or maybe start alternating before the full switch.