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Chris Masterjohn Reversed His Allergies with B Vitamin Supplementation
What ultimately improved your sleep, @puddleduck?
Quote from puddleduck on May 25, 2023, 1:30 pmAh, I’m not on Facebook. Thank you so much, @andrew-b! 😁 She sounds amazing! I’ve only just skimmed her latest post, but I’m hooked.
Chris mentions using melatonin... When I had severe insomnia while toxic in vitamin A and oxalates, melatonin did absolutely nothing to help. If anything, made my brain feel much worse. So I didn’t take it long. All the naturopathic doctors were baffled. Well, Ms. Arthur has an explanation:
http://weakthereforestrong.com/melatonin-and-mental-decline/
Wow! My mother and I were just talking about sleep and melatonin! She said, which is kind of funny, "I take it for sleep sometimes, but it doesn't seem to help. Maybe you should take it!"
I once had a very bad time using St John's wort to help sleep. It gave me very scary dreams.
Sometimes I feel like we here are (and others in our family trees) are always having reverse reactions from the rest of the world.
@lil-chick It sure does feel that way, eh? 😅 I didn’t like St. John’s wort, either! Wasn’t helpful, just agitating somehow... Valerian was kinda the same, as I recall. None of the amino acid therapies helped my clinical depression or insomnia one bit either.
Quote from Hermes on May 25, 2023, 1:57 pmWhat ultimately improved your sleep, @puddleduck?
Caloric abundance! I recovered from anorexia in 2014 on 3,500 to 5,000 calories daily, utilizing a method based upon the findings of Ancel Key's "Minnesota Starvation Experiment." 🙂 It cured my insomnia pretty much immediately. For the first four months I slept almost the entire time I wasn't eating. (It also cured my clinical depression and mania within the first year, without any supplements or medications.)
A caloric deficit impairs sleep. It has been nearly a decade since I chose recovery, but even so if I consume less than 2,500 calories in one day, I will be unable to fall asleep as easily as usual. My average caloric intake these days is 3,000 daily (more if I'm active).
Thanks for posting this @puddleduck. I do an hours work a day so had popped on here for a quick catch up 😀
Meri sent it me yesterday and I was pleased. Chris Masterjohn has known about vA toxicity for at least 4 years since the Garrett Smith article saying he was vA toxic, that really riled him and his followers. The tone was rather ‘I’m clever and you are an idiot’ so I’m not surprised it annoyed him (I actually edited the first draught and that was even worse!!). So it’s rather a coincidence that Meri contacts him with her theories and suddenly he’s understanding blocked metabolism hmmm 🤔
Anyway, she doesn’t mind how he’s got there. She just wants the information out there so he stops poisoning people with vA suggestions, as he’s got a large following. She’s a lovely person.
Yes he is largely saying that NAD deficiency is a big issue. This is central to my thinking too. And Meri and AlexM. I think that once mitochondria (energy production) becomes sub standard everything gets worse. NAD can’t be recycled efficiently and we rely on workarounds which have side effects.
I think of it in terms of the cell danger response which is Robert Naviaux’s brilliant work. He says that when stressors (biological, chemical, physical and psychological) get too much for cells, the ancient cell danger response (CDR) is switched on in the mitochondria. If the mitochondria is producing the CDR then it can’t produce cellular energy which is its other job. Can’t do two things at once. This is why calming down the CDR by removing enough stressors to let the cell feel safe is a game changer. What are the two main ways to address CDR? Nervous system calming and phosphatidylcholine.
Of course genetics are important too (well I’m a geneticist haha) but I’ve had to grudgingly admit that epigenetics outweighs genetics for all but the most penetrant mutations (the ones that disable vital proteins completely). However, genetic weaknesses can ‘shine a light’ to where particular issues might be and Chris Masterjohn has had significant success with addressing his own weaknesses.
I suspect that accumulation of the aldehyde form of vA - retinal or retinaldehyde - is in fact one of the worst offenders in poor health (A2E - see Meri work; depletion of B1/6/9; triggering of heme issues) rather than retinyl esters, although neither is good. And I suspect that a retinoic acid dump (due to NAD fluctuation) is more significant than retinoic acid deficiency (otherwise why would Grant be so well). But it’s a start that Chris Masterjohn is seeing this issue now and will hopefully lead to further understanding and better recommendations for his following. And he does do some good research so maybe we might learn something new here too. 😀
Edit: I no longer think that going very low vA is safe for some people. Too strong a detox of vA and maybe an oxalate issue too. Combining low vA with low choline and high vC is really NOT safe. I tried that one. Adequate choline is essential imo. Declining mitochondrial health is not the aim of a detox. If stress is high then this will be a major issue too. I think the detox setback cycle could be a decline in mitochondrial health, resulting in NAD scarcity. We want to do this detox without ruining mitochondria. We have the knowledge now. No one needs to suffer.
Quote from puddleduck on May 25, 2023, 4:49 pmQuote from Hermes on May 25, 2023, 1:57 pmWhat ultimately improved your sleep, @puddleduck?
Caloric abundance! I recovered from anorexia in 2014 on 3,500 to 5,000 calories daily, utilizing a method based upon the findings of Ancel Key's "Minnesota Starvation Experiment." 🙂 It cured my insomnia pretty much immediately. For the first four months I slept almost the entire time I wasn't eating. (It also cured my clinical depression and mania within the first year, without any supplements or medications.)
A caloric deficit impairs sleep. It has been nearly a decade since I chose recovery, but even so if I consume less than 2,500 calories in one day, I will be unable to fall asleep as easily as usual. My average caloric intake these days is 3,000 daily (more if I'm active).
@puddleduck, what foods did you eat mostly on that high caloric diet? Was it high carb or high fat or how did you do it? Thats really interesting that too little calories cause insomnia....
I am a little lost somehow with how much and what to eat since my many years of carnivoriuos eating... and as I have gained some fat (and muscles I think too) since stopping all stimulants and doing the bean protocol.. I am not sure what to really focus on for calories...
There is so much food for thought in Jenny's post above. For one: How can we increase the body's ability to make NAD+? How can we support its recycling? For one, not being stressed, and two, eating enough phophatidylcholine helps reduce CDR, as she said. But what about supplements like niacin, niacinamide, NMN, NR? I've tried NMN before, it really gives an energy boost, but it disturbs my sleep. And what about NAD+ infusions, which are all the rage among Hollywood actors because it is supposed to be the anti-aging remedy? I looked into it, damn, it's expensive, expect to pay through the nose 🙂 What are the poor men's hacks here, are there any? So many questions. It's not the idea here that you, Jenny, have to answer all of them. Feel free to, if you have the energy to do so, and maybe someone else can chime in, maybe AlexM? Anyway, I'm thinking out loud here.
Which brings me to the idea of NAD+ fluctuations and their relationship to retinoic acid dumps. So often I wake up at night to go to the bathroom to pass stools. Sometimes I stay up until I've had three bowel movements and then I can go back to sleep. I am assuming that this is somehow related to the elimination of VA. Does NAD+ go down at night? Or does it go up? And maybe it's a good idea to induce bile release before bed, for example with coffee enemas.
@christian This is a good blog by Meri Arthur on Vitamin A metabolism. These are the various ways it can be affected. There are many more.
- Oxalate
- vitamin C (excess from supplements)
- Glycine
- Miralax or other PEG products
- Thiamine deficiency
- B6 deficiency
- Iron deficiency
- Zinc deficiency
- H2 Receptor antagonists
- High dose melatonin
- Gut dysbiosis
- Acetaldehyde (and alcohol)
The long list of vitamin A metabolism killers. – Weak Therefore Strong
There's Jenny's thread as well: NAD deficiency - is this a major issue for vA toxicity/detox? - Discussion | Ideas, Concepts, and Observations (ggenereux.blog)
Thanks @christian. I think there is lots to think about for all of us with vA knowledge. @el has come up with an idea about intermittent fasting (see NAD+ thread). Grant didn’t run short of NAD+ and understanding why would be really helpful I think. The worry I have about supplements is the ‘NADPH steal’ work from Bob Miller. If we have NOX upregulation (caused by excess glutamate, oxalates, homocysteine etc etc) then adding NAD can be adding petrol to the fire. It could work well for some people but I’m very wary as I’m in a ‘precarious’ state. The other factor is causing a retinoic acid dump. This is going to be really bad if liver detox pathways (CYP, glucoronidation etc) are slow and the vA gets trapped in the retinoic acid form, unable to exit body. Stuck between a rock and a hard place! I don’t have the answers, just a lot of questions!!