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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
its true we cant believe everything on the internet, so many half truths and lies.....
Also, genetics play a big role in aging too. My sisters husbands grandma is 88, eats a normal healthy diet, omnivorous, also sweets at times, drinks wine too.. and she looks fabulous.. she works full time still, and she is like fountain of youth..loves to dance and party.. its crazy!
Quote from Inger on April 5, 2023, 6:32 amits true we cant believe everything on the internet, so many half truths and lies.....
Also, genetics play a big role in aging too. My sisters husbands grandma is 88, eats a normal healthy diet, omnivorous, also sweets at times, drinks wine too.. and she looks fabulous.. she works full time still, and she is like fountain of youth..loves to dance and party.. its crazy!
I agree, my Grandpa died at 96 though I think he would have lived another 5 yrs but family moved in and took over the house he built with his own hands and he developed throat cancer soon after and would say things like 'welp they don't want me around anymore'. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself up until then. Had no special diet, loved coffee, dried fruit, drank well water, worked in his shop building things. I know someone who was still going out dancing with his girlfriend at 98! He ate very little and what he did eat was garbage.
oh yes, thats amazing! I have a feeling aging well has a lot to do with psyche too, and trauma.. and joy, and love.. so many things.
So sad what happened to your grandpa 🙁 Must be nothing worse that when old people get run over by greedy relatives...
When you are happy and joyful you also dont destroy your body with too much of a bad thing, you listen to it better. Avoiding medication is also huge i think. Once you start go down that road with medication for illness instead of lifestyle changes, it usually only goes worse...
Back on carnivore, Paul Mason is one of the most well-read commentators on carnivore and carnivore-adjacent diets. He has a lot of interesting thoughts on cholesterol topics and other stuff in this interview of him by Shawn Baker. He particularly gets into why carnivore suffering from diseases might also want to cut out dairy, eggs, fish, pork and poultry.
https://podcast.revero.com/this-is-the-1-threat-to-your-health-dr-shawn-baker-dr-paul-mason
Awesome interview.
Anyone still defending dairy needs to listen to this ASAP. Dairy once again showing to be one of, if not the strongest dietary links to autoimmune disease.
Some info for the egg folks to look out for as well.
Just thought i would post some updates on my progress relating to BAM, carnivore and vitamin A for those interested. I still eat a strict carnivore diet, I did a strict low Vitamin A carnivore diet for 18 months and didn't see any real improvement. I was able to mostly mitigate the BAM by eating very high protein and eliminating salt but whenever I went back to higher fat intake the BAM would return. My dry scalp and forehead and Keratosis Pilaris also got much worse during the low vitamin A period. During this period it was also the only time in the 7 years i have been keto/carnivore that i got ill (colds, covid, cold sores, sore throats etc). For various reasons i reintroduced liver and eggs, i also started taking daily cod liver oil. Now my digestion is fantastic, i can eat tonnes of fat with no issues (the only time i have issues is if i am traveling and don't take the cod liver oil). My skin is probably the best its ever been in my life and i never get ill again.
Wow, thanks for sharing. It is good to hear the experiences of folks who do the opposite of what is recommended on this site. I have been on muscle meat only (very rare instances of eating heart) for three years. I don't think I can go back to my days of cod liver oil given there is some much debate about rancidity and issues with PUFAs in general. But maybe beef or lamb liver or kidney once a week is something I could try to see if I notice improvements. Or maybe I should just stick muscle meat only out for another year before going back. Life is complicated. 🙂
Quote from Shaun on April 10, 2024, 9:33 amJust thought i would post some updates on my progress relating to BAM, carnivore and vitamin A for those interested. I still eat a strict carnivore diet, I did a strict low Vitamin A carnivore diet for 18 months and didn't see any real improvement. I was able to mostly mitigate the BAM by eating very high protein and eliminating salt but whenever I went back to higher fat intake the BAM would return. My dry scalp and forehead and Keratosis Pilaris also got much worse during the low vitamin A period. During this period it was also the only time in the 7 years i have been keto/carnivore that i got ill (colds, covid, cold sores, sore throats etc). For various reasons i reintroduced liver and eggs, i also started taking daily cod liver oil. Now my digestion is fantastic, i can eat tonnes of fat with no issues (the only time i have issues is if i am traveling and don't take the cod liver oil). My skin is probably the best its ever been in my life and i never get ill again.
Wavy here (now going by Tricky). I've been meaning to reply to this ever since I returned to the forum. You are the person on here who seems to have a symptom pattern that most closely matches my own. I recently posted a 4-year low VA update: https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/wavy-gravy-tricky-turkey-4-year-update/
Based on my experiences, I'm very worried you may be just postponing a necessary VA elimination process by eating more of it. I'm still experiencing what appears to be bile acid diarrhea, but the severity has diminished considerably in the past year or two. Instead of profuse watery diarrhea, I now get just slightly loose (Bristol Scale 5) stools most of the time on strict muscle meat + fat carnivore, although they can still burn on exit quite a bit. I often wind up with normal (Bristol Scale 4) stool or even tend toward constipation when I deviate from strict carnivore by testing out other foods and supplements just to see what happens.
The reason I think you may be making yourself worse in the long run is that I've tried reintroducing VA in the form of butter and eggs a few times now for maybe 7 to 10 days in a row, then stopping. I haven't been able to bring myself to experiment with liver, cod liver oil, or supplemental retinol, but with the smaller amounts of VA from 3-4 Tbsp of butter in a day, or 3 eggs in a day, it seems like my GI symptoms temporarily improve much like you've reported. However, when I STOP eating the butter or the eggs, I seem to get a sudden resurgence of watery diarrhea that gradually diminishes back to the loose BS5 stools that seem to be my baseline on carnivore now.
Have you tried completely stopping your VA intake for even just a few days in a row to see what would happen?
I suspect there is something messed up with our FXR / FGF19 cascade that regulates bile acid production, and by ingesting VA the FXR receptors in the intestines are being activated, which shuts down the excessive bile acid production we're otherwise experiencing. But as soon as we stop ingesting VA, the lack of intestinal FXR activation results in excessive bile acid production again. And it's not so much malabsorption of bile acids as it is a normal percentage of bile acids being reabsorbed from a much larger volume of output into the intestines.
I still have internal debates about whether all the other symptoms we've been experiencing are an unavoidable part of getting stored VA out, or whether they are related to the excess bile acid production in a manner that is independent of getting stored VA out. If they are independent, I wonder if it is possible to eat a small amount of VA to activate intestinal FXR, but not so much that it prevents your body from gradually reducing its stores. Considering how long it takes to get VA out and how difficult it is to measure that progress with lab tests, you'd be playing a very longterm betting game by continuing to take in more VA every day.
AndrewB seems to think he and his followers/clients are accomplishing a net elimination of VA despite eating small numbers of eggs routinely, but I seriously question this based on my experience. They might be seeing improvement in symptoms because they've stopped the elimination of VA stores (under the assumption that they truly have VA toxicity from excess stores), or they might be seeing improvement because they don't actually have VA toxicity from excess stores and instead are solving a different problem that has been wrongly attributed to excess VA, or VA in general (that group seems keen to blame a form of VA called anhydroretinol for certain symptoms and is hypothesizing that some people may simultaneously have VA toxicity and deficiency due to the wrong forms being present).
Would love to hear how these ideas resonate with your experience.
Yes life is complicated, as Jeremy says above. I regret taking cod liver oil (CLO), but I suspect there might be some sort of short-term benefit from CLO or no one would have ever gone to the trouble of inventing it. I used to use A and D ointment which was based on CLO and it works exactly like antibiotic ointment. (Lanolin 15.5% Petrolatum 53.4% Cod liver oil (contains vitamin A & vitamin D), fragrance, light mineral oil, microcystalline wax, paraffin). Is that one of the reasons retinoid drugs help acne? Because VA an antibiotic? In the olden days, before antibiotics were invented, I can see how CLO might have been important.
A person tempted to take CLO might want to read the story of Dr Ron (who sold fermented CLO) to hear how he died from heart problems which he himself blamed on high intake of CLO. He realized his mistake before he died but he only lived a few more years. I think he also said that Dr. Price only ever suggested that one take tiny amounts.
I think it is important not to have too much VA at one time so that the VA is NOT shuttled to storage and instead shuttled OUT. I think many people overload their detox capabilities several times a day and that is how they get toxic. I think one of the benefits of carnivore (when it comes to toxicity) is that it often goes along with a more regulated eating habit. Many carnivores eat only 2 meals a day or even 1 large meal a day. Perhaps any "Stoic" diet would also have a similar effect. A yogi eating small amounts of yogurt and lentils at the top of the Himalayas. A peasant in old England nibbling small amounts of whole-grain bread dipped in soured milk.
A person eating a huge breakfast of toast and butter, eggs and cheese, coffee and cream AND cod liver oil on top of it might end up storing away some VA. Which may cause problems later if the burden grows large. A person who wakes up and has a small steak and a tiny dose of CLO and hot water might be able to manage to detox from it no problem. (even the rancidity?)
Now, a person who doesn't want to take supplements could decide to take a child-sized portion of young purple liver (once a week?) away from any other food. There is a Multiple Sclerosis doc who suggests a weekly tiny dose of liver and seems to have good results from her clients. At least with the whole-food liver there are some other nutrients there and no rancidity or questionable supplement-manufacturing methods.
Personally, cod liver oil is at the top of my regret list. There are much tastier ways to get VA if that is your intent! 🙂
Wavy said: "I'm very worried you may be just postponing a necessary VA elimination process by eating more of it."
As a slow-boater I think it is a good idea to keep track of your litany of mysterious symptoms and make sure they are, at the very least, getting better year-by-year and not worse year-by-year. I'm happy with my "glacier pace" of change toward the better.
He sounds happy with his health and he seems to think the ultra low-VA diet made him feel bad. If he gets 30 young-years of health and ends up sick in his sixties or seventies because of VA, will he wish he ruined 5 young years to gain healthy old-age years?
On the other hand, it is possible that sometimes people who end up here weren't VA-toxic in the first place.
Obviously the best-case scenario would be if Shaun has 30 great years of health AND a healthy old age too. It's hard to tell from what he wrote if his diet is high VA or just medium or what.