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chickadee's rough start, and hopeful recovery
The PUFAs thing is a big deal in the online health space right now. I can't sort out who is right and who is wrong but I have been listening to stuff from Tucker Goodrich and others for many years on the evils of PUFAs and I have avoided them since 2016.
I appreciate your comments and this dialogue very much. There is a lot of information out there! I looked up Eric Levinson on Yelp to see what people have to say about him. They either love him or hate him, ha. I was considering working with him, and I am grateful for your feedback and perspectives, @jaj, @mmb3664, @wavygravygadzooks, @jeremy. Overall, I think he has some interesting information, but what I noticed about his attitude is that he is still bitter about his Accutane experience. I don't judge him for that. I also have bitterness and resentment about my health and how I continue to suffer due to medical treatment.
One thing I was especially appreciative of as I started to read Extinguishing the Fires of Hell is Grant's transparency that this low/no vitamin A diet is an invitation to a sort of informed experiment, for those of us who wish to participate. I am not appreciative of our government's willingness to make the bodies of human beings into test subjects, since there is no transparency or informed consent.
In his multi-part documentary How Then Should We Live, Francis Shaeffer illustrates how society trends without a strong reference point of belief. In his investigation about science, he says, "Things which are good in themselves can lead to an increasing loss of humanness. For modern man, there is no boundary line between what he should do and what he should not do, and this leaves him with what he can do. Any moral ought is only what is sociologically accepted at the moment. Now as a Christian, I have a reference point in the Bible." For me personally, my reference point is also the Bible, through the Spirit of God who dwells in me and leads me in truth. I am not sure if I am a presuppositionalist as Schaeffer is. However, I do agree that for our lawmakers, the reference point varies wildly. Moral ambiguities in our laws thus prevail because there is no single reference point since society, big corporations, etc. have become the major influencers.
Something like mass vitamin A supplementation, perhaps it is considered good by some, and evil by others. Perhaps it is not a vitamin at all. Is the scientific method the best way to accurately determine whether all of the citizens of a country should be included in an uninformed experiment? Can the scientific method have results that are reliably produced, captured, and repeated when our bodies are the test subjects?
I enjoyed reading @daniil's thread about foods in the Bible. While I may not agree with some of the theological points discussed, I believe that God has given man wisdom about His creation (albeit fallen) through His Spirit to those who wish to listen. I remember that many poisonous and venomous things in nature are brightly colored: frogs, plants, snakes, etc. We know that these are often warning signs that these creatures must be avoided. Yet, for the last 30(?) years, we have been admonished to eat the rainbow. Pretty sure it was presented as "Eat five a day" when I was a kid.
It causes me to pause and reflect deeply within myself. Do I actually want to eat brightly colored food? Do my tastebuds and viscera truly desire to ingest and absorb these beautifully colored fruits and vegetables? I remember throughout the years, beholding a collection of freshly harvested vegetables: pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, etc. and thinking to myself, if I only knew what to do with them! I had this thought many times, as someone who enjoys food preparation. And I tried. And I ate.
Right now, I have a free range chicken (from a local guy) cooking in the oven. I genuinely don't know what else sits well with me. Yet when I eat poultry alone, I feel like it sits like a rock in my stomach. It's possible I have low stomach acid. I took digestive enzymes with betaine HCl and/or digestive bitters for many months. I stopped taking them a couple months post-Covid, as I was feeling completely exhausted after meals and my naturopath suggested that may be why.
I don't enjoy being a test subject, except in my own self-informed experiments. So I am my own guinea pig. At least then I am the scientist, and my own standard of ethics applies. As much as I am tired of being sick, I am more tired of being analyzed for my biometric data by doctors, departments of public health, and other research facilities. "Try this and see what happens." Report our data to them, is what we do. And what else can we do? Aren't we dependent on their expertise, their dispensing of medicine, their technology and interventions?
Is it worth participating in their experiments for the interventions? I remember when I heard that Bob Marley died because he refused an amputation due to his religious beliefs. I thought it was extremely sad and silly. And to be clear, this is not my religious belief. I do not I believe in neglecting medical treatment, nor do I believe in on-demand faith healing. But I can understand why he made the decision he did.
Every time we participate in diagnostic testing, etc., we become part of the data set. And how do those procedures affect our bodies? I was suffering an intense IBS flare-up years ago and went in for a CT scan with a barium swallow and IV contrast. My health suffered greatly during that scan, and now I have barium poisoning and can't tolerate IV contrast. I'm too sick now to do the chelating heavy metal cleanse that my naturopath has prescribed. And some doctors believe that heavy metal poisoning is not real.
It seems that every belief for which we can produce scientific evidence, there exists an opposing belief for which scientific evidence can also be produced. We can call it science, but it is still belief at the end of the day. In my opinion, it is not very different from religion.
@chickadee If you are still interested in potentially working with Eric, I could give you more details about my experience using his personal coaching (cost, format, my rating of "helpfulness", etc.) if you would find it useful in making a decision. I will reiterate, however, that I worked with him over a year ago, so I do not know how any of his coaching or recommendations have changed based on new information or feedback he has received.
You might enjoy listening to Bret Weinstein on his Darkhorse Podcast. He is an excellent evolutionary biologist who often discusses the philosophy of science and religion. He is not religious himself, but sees the utility in religion in light of its adaptive qualities that got humans to where we are today. He recently had a very lengthy discussion with a theologian of sorts. I haven't listened to Jordan Peterson as much as Bret, but I know Jordan has discussed religion quite a lot as well and he is always worth listening to.
I'm an atheist. I used to absolutely bash religious ideas when I was younger because they made no logical sense to me as a scientific person. However, as I've listened to and read people like Richard Dawkins and Bret Weinstein, I've realized that religion is just another tool in the toolbag that enabled humans to take over the world. We seem to have an innate craving for something that religion fills for some people. I also understand now that religion can be the only way that some people see enough light in their challenging lives to maintain the desire to go on living and be productive, and that I am extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunities I've had in life and not had to rely on faith to get me through the day.
In that discussion I linked to, Bret touches on the idea that science is a belief system that might be compared with religion. In a sense, you do have to "believe" in science, but only because you have to "believe" in anything in order to make sense of the world around you. All we have is our senses and our mind to tell us what is real and what is not. To do anything in life, you have to operate on the assumption that there exists some consistent and shared reality in which we all live. Once you accept that there is a common and consistent reality, the scientific method is then the best tool we have for objectively understanding that reality. The existence of a creator is a hypothesis just like any other hypothesis used to explain reality as we know it. The existence of a creator is not yet disprovable, but it violates the concept of parsimony, which says that, for a given explanatory power, the model with the fewest variables is most likely the closest to truth. Invoking a creator essentially adds a lot of variables to the model without contributing any additional explanatory power. It just leads to further complications, such as where that creator came from, the nature of its existence, and its interactions with the universe as we know it.
Science is not perfect, but it is the best tool we currently have for understanding the world around us so that we can affect that world to our benefit, and hopefully to the benefit of everything that shares that world with us. This Covid pandemic has really wrecked the concept of science, and people did not understand it well even before the pandemic. The philosophy of science is sound, but the way science is financed, published, and interpreted has caused huge problems. The layperson treats science as static and scientific knowledge as infallible, when the scientific process is actually fluid and scientific knowledge is constantly undergoing refinement. Textbooks are a biased encapsulation of scientific knowledge at a given moment in time. There is rarely 100% consensus.
Oh yeah, comments on other things in your post...
The "morals" in the Bible are as arbitrary as any in the modern day, or even more so because they were written by a much smaller number of people. Flawed though our modern systems may be, at least there is often a democratic attempt to collectively discuss what is right and wrong and vote to arrive at decisions.
I've previously written about why it's wrong to compare brightly colored prey animals to brightly colored plant parts. Many of the foods to which you're referring are fruits or flowers, and plants use bright colors to signal to particular animals when those fruits are ready for consumption (so that the seeds of that plant can be successfully spread) and when those flowers are ready for pollinators to visit (so that the gametes of that plant can be successfully spread). More often than not, brightly colored plant parts are intended to be eaten or visited...it is the color green that usually means "don't eat!"
I think you need zinc to produce stomach acid, and detoxification seems to be a heavy draw on zinc stores. Have you tried supplementing with zinc to see if that helps anything?
Quote from mmb3664 on May 5, 2022, 10:05 am@chickadee If you are still interested in potentially working with Eric, I could give you more details about my experience using his personal coaching (cost, format, my rating of "helpfulness", etc.) if you would find it useful in making a decision. I will reiterate, however, that I worked with him over a year ago, so I do not know how any of his coaching or recommendations have changed based on new information or feedback he has received.
@mmb3664 thanks for your offer! The thing with Levinson and others like him is that the pricing structure can be vague, which were several of the complaints on Yelp. I'd almost rather pay an hourly fee than start a "program," if that makes sense. Even then, it is tough to pay out of pocket when we don't know what the results will be. But I am open to going outside of the healthcare / insurance system for answers. Feel free to share your experience with him if you'd like
@wavygravygadzooks I appreciate your perspective and the discussion about the similarities between science and religion as frameworks of belief. I don't believe one is exclusive of the other.
As I go through this journey of recovering my body, my skepticism of what is called the scientific method is in the forefront right now. I'm a big fan of the natural sciences. I have always been interested in chemistry, though I didn't study past Chem I in college. I am planning to start a free Physiology course online in the coming weeks.
Recovery can mean many things. One of my favorite definitions is taking something back. And that's what I want to do with my body. For some reason experiments on humans are called studies. Supplementation of cereal is called fortification. I read 1984 by George Orwell in high school... There is so much Newspeak in our society that it shocks me when I'm able to hear it.
In one of his books, Grant touched on something I've been saying for the past year about the use of the phrase "side effects." I think we should look at a treatment for the total effect, rather than grouping the effects into desirable and undesirable categories, marketing the former, and listing the latter as secondary occurrences.
Though the scientific method has declared itself to be objective, some of us don't see it that way. Some of us don't see the existence of a Creator as a hypothesis, but as an undeniable reality. If anyone were to be objective, in my opinion, it would be the Creator, and not His creatures inside His creation. In fact, I see the practice of the scientific method much like journalism, where the biases of the experimenter inform every step of the process: asking a question, forming a hypothesis, designing a procedure, recording and interpreting of results.
There is no way for the experimenter to escape his own biases. And what happens is that some of these experiments must be halted because so many people die. (That's only when some scrupulous experimenters / lawyers are in the mix.) Many times, the experiments carry forward, and aren't even labelled experiments. I mean, we focus a lot on vitamin A here, but none of us really know the ramifications of the mass supplementation of breakfast cereals and other staple foods with any of the dozens of vitamins our bodies have been bombarded with, for decades.
Interestingly, you have illustrated Francis Shaffer's points perfectly: When we base our guiding principles on results obtained by the scientific method and the consensus of society, our target is always moving.
I don't believe that all brightly colored plants or animals are poisonous as a rule. For example, the corral snake is venomous, but the king snake is not. However, even if we didn't have this clever meme, if we are truly in touch with the innate knowledge given to us, then I think many of us would instinctively know to avoid the corral snake due to the arrangement of the colors.
My point is that we have been programmed to desire and devour brightly colored fruits and vegetables, but some of our instincts may in fact tell us to avoid them. There is the example of black grapes versus poisonous pokeberries. They have a similar hue, but the pokeberries have a shininess to them.
I personally don't trust my food instincts, because I've been programmed since birth. And because I am in a store shopping, not out foraging for food. But correctly identifying what is healthy for my body is a skill I would like to build. In the meantime, I keep a food log and track my reactions the best I can. Again, I am limited by my own biases.
I am grateful for Grant's work exploring the theory of Vitamin A toxicity, and for his transparency of not necessarily having all the answers for everyone. To me, his approach is much more refreshing than these Internet doctors, coaches, etc. who seem to have answers for everyone: "take vitamin C and D, take quercetin and zinc, take massive doses of vitamin A..." All based on scientific experiments or their own theories, but they are not usually as transparent as Grant.
I believe that the human body has many variables that cannot be easily controlled. I would rather collaborate as both experimenter and test subject, rather than be told what to do, even by (especially by) an expert in the field.
Good question about zinc. I attached my hair minerals test from October last year. Probably a little different now, but it shows my basic pattern. Looks like zinc is pretty good...
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I've only ever seen my own single hair test that I just had done, but it's interesting that both your calcium and magnesium are high, and your phosphorous is off the charts...what does that supposedly mean?
I don't know if I trust hair tests to tell us much, except that we have toxic metals in our bodies. I really don't know what test is useful though. I want to trust Spectracell's MNT, but there are a few things that have shown up on mine that don't seem to make much sense. Spectracell seems like the most widely regarded among the alternative practitioners I've seen.
Scarlet king snakes are a case of Batesian mimicry - they imitate the pattern of the coral snake in order to take advantage of the fact that predators avoid the coral snake. By not generating poison, they save energy/resources for other purposes, while theoretically still getting the same protection as the coral snake.
You make it sound as though allowing a shift in moral standards is a bad thing... What if, through advances in science, we come to understand that certain behaviors that we used to consider virtuous, in fact lead to suffering on some level that was not previously recognized. Shouldn't we be plastic in our ability to change accordingly? Not to mention, certain classes of people were treated very differently in biblical times...are we to believe that the standards of people living in times of widespread slavery or forced marriage, among so many other things, are really the standards we should live by today? Our environment is changing so quickly in the modern era, as is our culture, and we are being forced into new situations that demand an adaptive moral response. This same concept is at the core of the problem with religion today - it is a mode of thinking that worked to the human advantage thousands of years ago, but is arguably counterproductive in the modern environment.
Belief in an omnipotent creator is the ultimate bias...you are dismissing any other possibility right out of the gate, without a shred of proof (hence, the need for faith), and by ignoring whatever evidence may exist to the contrary you are shutting down any discussion of alternatives and therefore essentially forcing your worldview on everyone, whether they agree or not. Among religious groups, this is the type of conviction that leads to wars. Though I've become more sympathetic to people of faith, I still don't understand how such people don't see the absurdity of claiming that everyone who believes in a different god is wrong, but that their god is the true god...or why such people see Greek and Roman mythology for the tales they are, but then steadfastly insist that their beliefs are somehow different from that mythology.
Religion has historically led to factions that lack unification and incite conflict. Scientists may not agree with one another, but at least they are all unified under the philosophy of the scientific method and aiming for a common goal - a better understanding of our shared reality that enables informed decisions to be made.
I'm not trying to be derisive here BTW, I'm just speaking plainly. Maybe you can help me understand why you think the way you do.
@ chickadee welcome, I hope you find the things that work for you, results are worth it. There is so much good advice here, and everyone's tolerance is individual. We all have a different approach to the same goal, recovery. You will know when it happens the difference is that profound. Some have a rough start, others hit speed bumps several months into detox.
@wavygravygadzooks I have come to follow a close to carnivore diet after nearly 3 years of trial and error keeping careful food symptom logs. When I started failing, Tucker Goodrich's story was a tremendous help, and Anthony Chaffee's videos, Judy Cho is great. Becoming nearly carnivore got me back on track when after the first year I started having worse autoimmune flareups.
@chickadee there's interesting info about uric acid in a series of videos on Low Carb Down Under by prof. Richard Johnson 3 part video series Nature Wants Us To Be Fat" A lot of info about blood sugar control. I almost didn't watch it because of the title. I'm not a scientist cannot speak with any accuracy to confirm or disprove his findings, just find them true for me, I track blood sugar as well.
I think there's a lot of value in a short term carnivore diet even 30 days. @wavygravygadzooks I think it was in Garret Smith's videos where it came up that carnivore "masks symptoms," as your liver will become more toxic, from carnivore. Contrary to what he says carnivore is all that keeps me feeling well. Adding beans is a path to misery. Trying to keep an open mind as to what I previously thought was impossible really helped, plus this discussion group and the other sources @wavygravygadzooks mentioned . Grant has also made mention of carnivores having fewer setbacks,when he has taken surveys.
Sorry you can't tolerate beef, hope you dont have Lyme. I will be close to carnivore probably forever, so many issues have improved. Basic low A, with beans and fruit was a start, turned rough after about 8 months. I seriously have come to believe there's validity in removing plant foods, grains beans, vegetables, starches, nightshades, fruit.. for a short time at least, and adding them one at a time, if you don't start feeling better soon.
I'm glad you're finding your way back to health! I heard second hand about Smith's video where he claimed that carnivore masks symptoms. I wrote at least one post on this forum addressing how that claim is completely idiotic. I didn't watch the video (I can't stand Smith...I watched a number of his videos a couple years ago until I realized all he was doing was ad libbing BS), but someone here linked to a document Smith was using to support his claim. Smith was basically using a tiny snippet from an old book where the author was describing how not eating plants was healing people, and how they could tell when people were cheating on the all meat diet because their symptoms would worsen. What Smith is completely ignoring is that people who have developed an immune response to plants don't just fix that immune response over night. It could take years, or maybe it will never go away. Instead of acknowledging that plants can and do cause long-term immune problems due to xenobiotic compounds that have no place in the human body, he seems to be arguing that reactions to plants are a sign of toxicity, and if you don't stop reacting to plants, then you must still be toxic. Everything with Smith is Vitamin A toxicity and cholestasis...the guy is unhinged from reality.
There is very good reason for you to feel best on a carnivore-ish diet. If you continue to feel good on it, then there's no good reason to stop in my opinion. Keep it on the up and up!