I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Condensed Rehash of Wavy Gravy Responses to Common VA Forum Topics
Quote from ggenereux on September 6, 2024, 6:23 amI noticed in your 4 year update that you had taken Lactoferrin.
I've now had about 5 reports from other people who have taken lactoferrin and have been completely messed up by it.
And I mean like seriously messed up, they've all reported very quickly seeing a complete reversal of their progress and ending up worse off than when they started. Also, I've had a few updates now, ~ 2 years after their first report, and these people have still not recovered from it.
People need to be exceedingly careful with supplements, and IMO lactoferrin is a huge risk for little gain, if any.
Thanks for the information about lactoferrin. I haven't found a good reason why it would be a good supplement. There was a forum person who used quite a bit when she was eating only meat. I guess the idea was to reduce iron.
Quote from ggenereux on September 6, 2024, 6:23 amI noticed in your 4 year update that you had taken Lactoferrin.
I've now had about 5 reports from other people who have taken lactoferrin and have been completely messed up by it.
And I mean like seriously messed up, they've all reported very quickly seeing a complete reversal of their progress and ending up worse off than when they started. Also, I've had a few updates now, ~ 2 years after their first report, and these people have still not recovered from it.
People need to be exceedingly careful with supplements, and IMO lactoferrin is a huge risk for little gain, if any.
Thanks for reaching out after all that has transpired and not immediately banning me again.
I can't say what happened to others, but in my case I don't have much reason to suspect the lactoferrin caused any lasting problems. I started using it well into my low VA diet (approximately 1 year in), I only used 1 bottle of LifeExtension's apolactoferrin spread out over several months, and I was taking less than 1 capsule of it per day (300 mg of "Bioferrin" from bovine whey containing 95% Apolactoferrin). I was experiencing wicked diarrhea on a daily basis before, during, and after that time frame, and I didn't notice any clear changes in other symptoms that would be associated with the lactoferrin.
However, I do suspect that the lactoferrin temporarily worsened my diarrhea. Based on my record keeping, I was getting more urgent watery diarrhea that contained a yellow pigment within 24-48 hours of taking lactoferrin, although it wasn't 100% consistent (nothing has been though). When I looked for reasons that might be the case, I found at least one report of increased fecal bile acids in association with lactoferrin administration. I think the most likely direct cause of my diarrhea on a low VA diet has been bile acid malabsorption (which I suspect is secondary to complications of retinoid toxicity), and the potential for lactoferrin to increase bile acids is in line with what appears to be worsening bile acid diarrhea when I took it. It's unclear to me what the mechanism is though.
Despite the long list of supplements I've tried (or maybe because I've tried so many without clear benefits), I wholeheartedly agree that people should be very cautious using them. The lack of regulatory oversight (not that regulatory oversight guarantees anything good...lol), the often unnatural forms they come in, and the almost unavoidable supraphysiological doses are all major reasons for caution with supplements.
@ggenereux2014 I tried taking lactoferrin one month into my low vitamin A diet. It was before I found this website and was getting most of my information from the low vitA influencers on Twitter/X. At first I did not notice much, but after a week I started to get brutal insomnia. It took me another few weeks to trace the insomnia back to the lactoferrin supplement. I was going 2-3 nights with 0 sleep by the end of it. Unfortunately my skin condition has been pretty bad after those first few months. Whether this is related to the lactoferrin Im not sure.
Maybe I should highlight the fact that I was taking spore-based probiotics off and on both before and during my first couple years of a low VA diet. There are data indicating these can resolve GI symptoms in some people, but it's unclear to me how long they might persist in the gut and whether their persistence can cause problems in the longterm. The MegasporeBiotic product I took in particular contains a Bacillus strain that is advertised to produce beta-carotene and other carotenoids:
"B. indicus HU36 is a novel, carotenoid-producing probiotic strain. Isolated from humans, HU36 produces high levels of carotenoids, like lycopene, astaxanthin, beta-carotene, and lutein at the site of absorption."
My suspicion is that the amounts produced are biologically insignificant in most people and that this is primarily marketing hype, but I really don't know. It's possible that this and/or other strains I've taken are associated with my ongoing problems, although between a predominantly plant-free diet and taking anti-microbials early on I would think their numbers in my intestines would be minimal at this point.
Lactoferrin is sometimes used in GI protocols. Is it possible these folks who had bad experiences taking lactoferrin were also taking probiotics or other products targeting the intestines that could have caused or exacerbated the symptoms attributed to lactoferrin?
Quote from Tricky on September 4, 2024, 5:46 amIs VA just pure poison?
It’s actually very simple to answer this with a high degree of certainty without arguing the details of published research on VA. The answer lies in basic evolutionary principles.
Biological evolution results in the adaption of organisms to their environment in a manner that optimizes fitness. This happens through differential survival and reproduction. The genes and physiological traits of individuals that reproduce most successfully tend to persist through time, whereas the genes and traits associated with less successful reproduction tend to disappear.
If VA is nothing but a poison, you would expect organisms to evolve mechanisms of avoiding its absorption and enhancing its elimination because those that do should survive and reproduce at a higher rate, on average. That’s not what we see.
While there are various reasons why a single species may not evolve such adaptations (due to inherent physiological limitations and/or evolutionary trade-offs), you would not expect a taxonomically diverse set of species to:
(1) actively convert precursors (carotenoids) to retinoids
(2) absorb those retinoids through the intestines
(3) store those retinoids in large quantities
(4) conserve those retinoids for long periods of time
(5) continuously circulate those retinoids in the blood stream
(6) uptake those retinoids into cells, or
(7) have specialized carriers and enzymatic processes associated with those retinoids throughout the body, feedback mechanisms regulating their metabolism, and actively maintain storage amounts between upper and lower thresholds so as to avoid both toxicity and deficiency …
UNLESS those retinoids served a very important physiological purpose (e.g., enabled vision and contributed to cell differentiation). The fact that a taxonomically diverse set of species DO actively convert, absorb, store, conserve, circulate, uptake, and involve retinoids in routine physiological processes clearly indicates their utility in the bodies of animals. Even if that utility is very narrow (e.g., if all it did was enable a single aspect of vision), it is apparently so critical that a variety of species have evolved to store large quantities of it despite potential risk to themselves from excess (toxicity is clearly a very real threat).
To all those who want to dismiss this high level assessment of the issue as "just theory", evolutionary biology actually provides the most useful framework for approaching questions of "why" in biological systems. Read on to understand why your arguments from published "facts" and personal observation pale in comparison.
If VA isn’t pure poison and we do in fact need it, then why hasn’t Grant gone blind?
After 10 years of actively avoiding it, Grant still has VA regularly circulating in his blood. Hasn’t anybody noticed that no matter how hard he tries, Grant can’t get his serum levels below 0.1 umol/L, even when regularly donating blood? Despite his reportedly excellent health, Grant just can’t quite seem to get rid of that last little tiny itty bit of this “poison”. The most parsimonious reason is that his body is actively conserving VA because it is critical for vision, among other things.
Grant’s night vision problems from eating something as innocuous as onion powder suggest that he barely has enough VA to maintain that aspect of vision, thanks to small amounts of VA and critical amounts of zinc found in the meat he’s eating on a daily basis. I would wager that the vision problems would quickly return in the absence of that meat consumption. It’s likely Grant has not suffered more symptoms of deficiency because he’s an older man (not actively reproducing) living at high latitude (less sun exposure) eating minimal amounts of xenobiotic plant compounds on his “prison food” diet of meat, rice, and some beans.
The fact that VA is useful in small amounts does not preclude its being harmful in larger amounts.
It’s quite clear that excess VA can be extremely detrimental and that a large fraction of the population is taking in excessive amounts. Grant’s self-experiment is valuable in establishing a lower threshold of intake for maintaining good health in men of his age and genetics living in a northern environment. Optimal VA intake is going to be highly context dependent (sex, age, environment, lifestyle/diet), but clearly it is much less than we are all being advised to consume through mainstream guidance. Getting this message heard and accepted by a broader audience would be a lot easier if the people spreading the message did so with consistently sound scientific reasoning rather than “Vitamin A is a poison!” zealotry accompanied by obvious failures of logic (e.g., "I’ve proved Vitamin A is non-essential even though it’s still circulating in my blood every day").
Is VA solely responsible for autoimmune conditions and a wide variety of disease states?
The obvious answer is no, it is not the cause of autoimmunity and other diseases. Just look at people like Paul Saladino, who fixed his eczema on a diet very high in VA from liver and other organs. However, given all the damage that has been observed in association with the use of retinoid pharmaceuticals, it is equally obvious that excess VA can contribute to and exacerbate a wide variety of disease states, and in some instances it may indeed be the primary cause. Reality is complex, fight the temptation to make it black and white.
So-called “Toxic Bile Theory” and enterohepatic circulation
Bile is comprised of numerous distinct components, including bile salts (bile acids conjugated with taurine or glycine), metabolic waste products (conjugated with glucuronic acid), and xenobiotic compounds (plant toxins, environmental toxins/pollutants, and pharmaceuticals, which are also conjugated with glucuronic acid).
Enterohepatic circulation is the process by which certain components of the bile return to the liver following their reabsorption in the intestines, typically in the small intestine.
Approximately 95% of bile acids/salts (not 95% of all components of bile, as is commonly misstated) undergo enterohepatic circulation via the ileum because they are a limited resource, are critical for absorption of dietary fats and fat-soluble vitamins, and can be harmful in large amounts in the colon. On the other hand, reabsorption of metabolic waste and xenobiotics found in bile is almost universally disadvantageous, which is why their reuptake is minimized through the process of glucuronidation.
Bile acids may pose a threat to the body when they are dysregulated (e.g., in cholestasis, reflux, or ileal malabsorption), but they are still critical to health. I see no evidence that reabsorption of bile acids results in the reabsorption of xenobiotic compounds or metabolic waste products; bile acids do not appear to bind to these substances. To the contrary, bile acids help to minimize the presence of undesirable bacteria in the intestines that do facilitate the reabsorption of xenobiotics and metabolic waste by way of deconjugation and the action of beta-glucuronidase enzymes. The literature describes enterohepatic circulation of xenobiotics and metabolic waste in sick humans undergoing treatment with pharmaceuticals, most likely due to compromised gut biomes. This is not to say it isn’t possible for unwanted substances to be reabsorbed in healthy intestines, but it is likely the exception rather than the rule. Evolutionarily speaking, if reabsorption of bile acids was detrimental, you would expect to find minimal rates of reabsorption in healthy humans and animals rather than the nearly complete reabsorption that actually occurs.
Garrett Smith’s so-called “Toxic Bile Theory” is one of many pseudoscientific fallacies his followers buy into (often literally). Binding bile acids lowers cholesterol levels, which is usually unnecessary and contraindicated because cholesterol is widely needed by the body for things like hormone production. Binding bile acids in itself doesn’t fix bile acid dysregulation. To fix bile acid dysregulation, you first need bile to flow through the liver and gallbladder properly, and then you need proper gut function. This is probably best accomplished by adopting a plant-free “lion” diet high in animal fat and devoid of offensive plant compounds, although in instances of true cholestasis additional therapeutic support may be needed.
As someone who, by all appearances, has suffered from both VA toxicity and bile acid diarrhea for the past 4 years, I can tell you first hand that binding bile with fiber and other natural binders tends to make things worse (for me), not better. I haven’t tried pharmaceutical binders like cholestyramine, but based on user reports it is trading one problem (diarrhea) for another (nausea, constipation, bloating, nutrient deficiencies, etc.).
The scientific method, interpreting published science, and limitations on extrapolation
I’m a professional biologist who’s published manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and served as a peer-reviewer for others’ manuscripts. Here are a few things I've learned about interpreting and using scientific publications that most people don't seem to grasp.
First and foremost, one cannot extrapolate the results of a study beyond the population in which that study was conducted. If the study was conducted on cells in vitro, the results do not necessarily apply to cells in an organism. If the study was conducted on rats, the results do not necessarily apply to humans. If the study was conducted on women, the results do not necessarily apply to men. If the study was conducted on 40-year-olds, the results do not necessarily apply to people of any other age. If the study was conducted on only 20 people, the results do not necessarily apply to the billions of other humans walking this planet. If the study was conducted on people in 2024, it does not necessarily apply to people living thousands of years ago. If it’s a self-experiment of one person, the results might seem interesting but cannot be extrapolated to anyone else.
Second, the particular methods of data collection and analysis are absolutely critical to understanding the validity and applicability of the results. Despite having conducted and published research, I do not possess the expert knowledge to properly judge the validity of experimental methods and statistical analyses in most peer-reviewed publications. Due to the nature of specialization in the sciences, no one scientist is capable of properly assessing the wide variety of published research findings that exist today. If career scientists don’t possess that ability, then in all likelihood neither do you or any of the “gurus” you may be following. By all means, hypothesize away and come up with your own ideas based on what you read, those ideas may turn out to be valuable to yourself and others; just understand that your attempts to validate those ideas scientifically by using published literature and personal observation is severely hindered by your lack of understanding of inferential statistics and its application to scientific methodology (there’s a reason biometricians exist and are depended on by a large number of research scientists).
Third, replication is everything in science. If the outcomes of a study have not been replicated multiple times, they are really only a short step above conjecture. The reason is that, statistically speaking, it is likely based on chance alone to get an outcome from one study that is not replicable in identical studies (fun illustration of this - https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/882:_Significant). Furthermore, authors tend to do just about anything to get published, which often means abandoning strict a priori hypothesis testing and instead performing unplanned statistical tests and data manipulation until they find a “significant” result, which likely only exists in that particular data set by chance. Due to lack of funding and interest, replication studies are rare. This has led to the melee of contradictory findings and conclusions that enable any incautious person to proclaim just about anything about nutrition and have a study to “prove” it (it doesn’t prove anything except their ignorance).
Fourth, the process of peer-review and selectivity by journal editors is highly subject to the whims of egos, grudges, politics, personal taste, and just about every other weakness of the human psyche. A lot of good research doesn’t see the light of day, and a lot of poor studies get way more attention than they deserve.
Distinguishing detox pains (progress) from further wrongdoings (regress)
Based on my experience, the process of getting stored excesses of VA out of the body has the potential to worsen symptoms before there is general improvement. It can be very difficult to distinguish between (1) the largely unavoidable pains of eliminating harmful substances versus (2) mistakenly making yourself worse by choosing the wrong diet/lifestyle. In the same vein, it can be difficult to distinguish between (1) alleviation of symptoms due to actual resolution of the underlying condition versus (2) alleviation of symptoms due to postponing dealing with the underlying condition. This is why it is important to occasionally make temporary changes to your diet to see whether there is a sudden response to adding or removing foods/supplements. For example, if you think eggs are helping you, make sure you stop consuming them every now and then to check for responses by the body.
Good points that a lot of people here don't even consider, it's easier for them to believe its only a toxin because it fits with their experience of health improvements from going Low Vit A and it is also what Grant believes (the person who introduced them to all of this).
Also your issue regarding carbs/veg I think your microbiome is just very messed up, I find savoury oats, sourdough bread, potatoes, chickpeas just as tasty on their own as I do meat. I do much better on carbs, animal protein and a bit of fat than I do on just meat and fat. I do think if you started liver flushes or coffee enemas then you would resolve your issues around other foods like starches and veg. Janelle could only start eating beans after she had been doing coffee enemas when before that she couldn't tolerate them.
https://youtu.be/JiKg819oaB4?t=166 - Saw this recently and made me think of what you said in your post, watch from 2:48
Also biomesight is a good and affordable gut test and you can run the results through microbiomeprescription.com which thoroughly analyses your data/results and references to studies and gives you lots of suggestions how to remodel your microbiome to a better state. But I am sure it will highlight some major issues for you.
The guy in the video is hilarious. Coffee enemas made me copper toxic, but I did three a day for months. Probably liver flushes would be more beneficial in my case. I suspect I don't make enough bile. But even malic acid keeps me awake, as does apple juice and sour grape juice, which is an alternative suggested by Andreas Moritz. At the moment I'm working on improving my sleep. Vitamin B5 in much higher doses, up to 500 mg, makes a difference. Same with TMG. But I definitely want to try liver flushes, I think they're super beneficial. So many amazing reports. And again, this guy sounds super cool, indicator of good health. Thanks for posting.
That's interesting do you have proof it was the coffee? I have never heard of that before.
I have done liver flushes and I just got super nauseous as if my body was trying to digest the oil instead of causing a flush as one time nothing even came out.
Quote from Hermes on September 9, 2024, 9:54 amThe guy in the video is hilarious. Coffee enemas made me copper toxic, but I did three a day for months. Probably liver flushes would be more beneficial in my case. I suspect I don't make enough bile. But even malic acid keeps me awake, as does apple juice and sour grape juice, which is an alternative suggested by Andreas Moritz. At the moment I'm working on improving my sleep. Vitamin B5 in much higher doses, up to 500 mg, makes a difference. Same with TMG. But I definitely want to try liver flushes, I think they're super beneficial. So many amazing reports. And again, this guy sounds super cool, indicator of good health. Thanks for posting.
What? Coffee barely even has any copper in it, 0.002mg of copper per cup which is the same as nothing, so if you are saying it made you copper toxic then it would be moving your stored copper out of the liver. What made you conclude that it made you copper toxic? I do remember at the beginning you were saying they were helping you a lot but I guess that stopped.
Yeah he is a funny guy but he doesn't really seem to have a clue much of what he is doing, he's constantly switching from diet to diet.
Quote from *** on September 4, 2024, 6:31 pmHuge black pill to swallow seeing people welcoming back and engaging this bad actor.
Is VA solely responsible for autoimmune conditions and a wide variety of disease states?
The obvious answer is no, it is not the cause of autoimmunity and other diseases. Just look at people like Paul Saladino, who fixed his eczema on a diet very high in VA from liver and other organs.
You wrote a lot of grandiose verbiage about science like usual yet like usual you show little concern for a high standard of evidence when it suits you.
Internet influencers should be assumed to be actors, frauds and deceivers because they normally are. One should never involve them in arguments about important health topics. We don't even have evidence that Saladino follows the diet he espouses.
Vitamin A, when consumed and stored in excess, is absolutely a cause of autoimmunity. I know that due to understanding the physiological chain of events that take place in Hypervitaminosis A.
Like @jiri has pointed out what is far more guaranteed about Saladino than the diet he consumes is that he is outside surfing each day depleting his vitamin A. Anyone that has spent time in a subtropical location swimming in the sea each day will tell you how amazing they felt. He's living the life grifting off of people like you that buy his special tallow.
Reposting this for the record so any sane person can see what has transpired:
I rejoined the forum just before it was scheduled to end to share my honest experience on a strict low Vitamin A diet after 4 years, as well as provide a summary of my honest thoughts on commonly debated VA-related topics. As before, I spent a significant amount of time chronicling and reporting my observations. I did not attempt to stir up old debates by tagging anyone or naming forum users when I started my two threads, and I had no intention of starting another feud with my antagonizer. However, said person immediately greeted my return with provoking and mischaracterizing statements like the one quoted at the top of this post and implied that I and others following my chosen diet have been “brainwashed by carnitardism” [see list of publications here for an introduction to why my diet is a more defensible choice than those that have been normalized in modern society and peddled by said person].
Said person also incorrectly leapt to the conclusion that I was going to post pictures of them and they subsequently accused me without evidence of having pictures of them stored on my computer. I do not and never did have any such images on my computer and I had no intention of posting pictures of said person. Furthermore, the only images containing this person that are accessible to me are ones that this person posted themselves on public internet spaces. I don't know said person’s real name, I don't care what their real name is, and I never intended or attempted to find and reveal their identity.
Prior to my rejoining this forum, said person complained about people on the Ray Peat forum making fun of images of them. I suggest this and other factors have made said person upset and caused them to lash out. I suggest said person stop posting images of themselves in public spaces if they are concerned about those images being reposted elsewhere, take a deep breath, and improve their state of mind by adopting aforementioned evolutionarily indicated diet that promotes a state of zen (https://zerocarbzen.com/).
Quote from Alex on September 9, 2024, 9:41 amQuote from Tricky on September 4, 2024, 5:46 amIs VA just pure poison?
It’s actually very simple to answer this with a high degree of certainty without arguing the details of published research on VA. The answer lies in basic evolutionary principles.
Biological evolution results in the adaption of organisms to their environment in a manner that optimizes fitness. This happens through differential survival and reproduction. The genes and physiological traits of individuals that reproduce most successfully tend to persist through time, whereas the genes and traits associated with less successful reproduction tend to disappear.
If VA is nothing but a poison, you would expect organisms to evolve mechanisms of avoiding its absorption and enhancing its elimination because those that do should survive and reproduce at a higher rate, on average. That’s not what we see.
While there are various reasons why a single species may not evolve such adaptations (due to inherent physiological limitations and/or evolutionary trade-offs), you would not expect a taxonomically diverse set of species to:
(1) actively convert precursors (carotenoids) to retinoids
(2) absorb those retinoids through the intestines
(3) store those retinoids in large quantities
(4) conserve those retinoids for long periods of time
(5) continuously circulate those retinoids in the blood stream
(6) uptake those retinoids into cells, or
(7) have specialized carriers and enzymatic processes associated with those retinoids throughout the body, feedback mechanisms regulating their metabolism, and actively maintain storage amounts between upper and lower thresholds so as to avoid both toxicity and deficiency …
UNLESS those retinoids served a very important physiological purpose (e.g., enabled vision and contributed to cell differentiation). The fact that a taxonomically diverse set of species DO actively convert, absorb, store, conserve, circulate, uptake, and involve retinoids in routine physiological processes clearly indicates their utility in the bodies of animals. Even if that utility is very narrow (e.g., if all it did was enable a single aspect of vision), it is apparently so critical that a variety of species have evolved to store large quantities of it despite potential risk to themselves from excess (toxicity is clearly a very real threat).
To all those who want to dismiss this high level assessment of the issue as "just theory", evolutionary biology actually provides the most useful framework for approaching questions of "why" in biological systems. Read on to understand why your arguments from published "facts" and personal observation pale in comparison.
If VA isn’t pure poison and we do in fact need it, then why hasn’t Grant gone blind?
After 10 years of actively avoiding it, Grant still has VA regularly circulating in his blood. Hasn’t anybody noticed that no matter how hard he tries, Grant can’t get his serum levels below 0.1 umol/L, even when regularly donating blood? Despite his reportedly excellent health, Grant just can’t quite seem to get rid of that last little tiny itty bit of this “poison”. The most parsimonious reason is that his body is actively conserving VA because it is critical for vision, among other things.
Grant’s night vision problems from eating something as innocuous as onion powder suggest that he barely has enough VA to maintain that aspect of vision, thanks to small amounts of VA and critical amounts of zinc found in the meat he’s eating on a daily basis. I would wager that the vision problems would quickly return in the absence of that meat consumption. It’s likely Grant has not suffered more symptoms of deficiency because he’s an older man (not actively reproducing) living at high latitude (less sun exposure) eating minimal amounts of xenobiotic plant compounds on his “prison food” diet of meat, rice, and some beans.
The fact that VA is useful in small amounts does not preclude its being harmful in larger amounts.
It’s quite clear that excess VA can be extremely detrimental and that a large fraction of the population is taking in excessive amounts. Grant’s self-experiment is valuable in establishing a lower threshold of intake for maintaining good health in men of his age and genetics living in a northern environment. Optimal VA intake is going to be highly context dependent (sex, age, environment, lifestyle/diet), but clearly it is much less than we are all being advised to consume through mainstream guidance. Getting this message heard and accepted by a broader audience would be a lot easier if the people spreading the message did so with consistently sound scientific reasoning rather than “Vitamin A is a poison!” zealotry accompanied by obvious failures of logic (e.g., "I’ve proved Vitamin A is non-essential even though it’s still circulating in my blood every day").
Is VA solely responsible for autoimmune conditions and a wide variety of disease states?
The obvious answer is no, it is not the cause of autoimmunity and other diseases. Just look at people like Paul Saladino, who fixed his eczema on a diet very high in VA from liver and other organs. However, given all the damage that has been observed in association with the use of retinoid pharmaceuticals, it is equally obvious that excess VA can contribute to and exacerbate a wide variety of disease states, and in some instances it may indeed be the primary cause. Reality is complex, fight the temptation to make it black and white.
So-called “Toxic Bile Theory” and enterohepatic circulation
Bile is comprised of numerous distinct components, including bile salts (bile acids conjugated with taurine or glycine), metabolic waste products (conjugated with glucuronic acid), and xenobiotic compounds (plant toxins, environmental toxins/pollutants, and pharmaceuticals, which are also conjugated with glucuronic acid).
Enterohepatic circulation is the process by which certain components of the bile return to the liver following their reabsorption in the intestines, typically in the small intestine.
Approximately 95% of bile acids/salts (not 95% of all components of bile, as is commonly misstated) undergo enterohepatic circulation via the ileum because they are a limited resource, are critical for absorption of dietary fats and fat-soluble vitamins, and can be harmful in large amounts in the colon. On the other hand, reabsorption of metabolic waste and xenobiotics found in bile is almost universally disadvantageous, which is why their reuptake is minimized through the process of glucuronidation.
Bile acids may pose a threat to the body when they are dysregulated (e.g., in cholestasis, reflux, or ileal malabsorption), but they are still critical to health. I see no evidence that reabsorption of bile acids results in the reabsorption of xenobiotic compounds or metabolic waste products; bile acids do not appear to bind to these substances. To the contrary, bile acids help to minimize the presence of undesirable bacteria in the intestines that do facilitate the reabsorption of xenobiotics and metabolic waste by way of deconjugation and the action of beta-glucuronidase enzymes. The literature describes enterohepatic circulation of xenobiotics and metabolic waste in sick humans undergoing treatment with pharmaceuticals, most likely due to compromised gut biomes. This is not to say it isn’t possible for unwanted substances to be reabsorbed in healthy intestines, but it is likely the exception rather than the rule. Evolutionarily speaking, if reabsorption of bile acids was detrimental, you would expect to find minimal rates of reabsorption in healthy humans and animals rather than the nearly complete reabsorption that actually occurs.
Garrett Smith’s so-called “Toxic Bile Theory” is one of many pseudoscientific fallacies his followers buy into (often literally). Binding bile acids lowers cholesterol levels, which is usually unnecessary and contraindicated because cholesterol is widely needed by the body for things like hormone production. Binding bile acids in itself doesn’t fix bile acid dysregulation. To fix bile acid dysregulation, you first need bile to flow through the liver and gallbladder properly, and then you need proper gut function. This is probably best accomplished by adopting a plant-free “lion” diet high in animal fat and devoid of offensive plant compounds, although in instances of true cholestasis additional therapeutic support may be needed.
As someone who, by all appearances, has suffered from both VA toxicity and bile acid diarrhea for the past 4 years, I can tell you first hand that binding bile with fiber and other natural binders tends to make things worse (for me), not better. I haven’t tried pharmaceutical binders like cholestyramine, but based on user reports it is trading one problem (diarrhea) for another (nausea, constipation, bloating, nutrient deficiencies, etc.).
The scientific method, interpreting published science, and limitations on extrapolation
I’m a professional biologist who’s published manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and served as a peer-reviewer for others’ manuscripts. Here are a few things I've learned about interpreting and using scientific publications that most people don't seem to grasp.
First and foremost, one cannot extrapolate the results of a study beyond the population in which that study was conducted. If the study was conducted on cells in vitro, the results do not necessarily apply to cells in an organism. If the study was conducted on rats, the results do not necessarily apply to humans. If the study was conducted on women, the results do not necessarily apply to men. If the study was conducted on 40-year-olds, the results do not necessarily apply to people of any other age. If the study was conducted on only 20 people, the results do not necessarily apply to the billions of other humans walking this planet. If the study was conducted on people in 2024, it does not necessarily apply to people living thousands of years ago. If it’s a self-experiment of one person, the results might seem interesting but cannot be extrapolated to anyone else.
Second, the particular methods of data collection and analysis are absolutely critical to understanding the validity and applicability of the results. Despite having conducted and published research, I do not possess the expert knowledge to properly judge the validity of experimental methods and statistical analyses in most peer-reviewed publications. Due to the nature of specialization in the sciences, no one scientist is capable of properly assessing the wide variety of published research findings that exist today. If career scientists don’t possess that ability, then in all likelihood neither do you or any of the “gurus” you may be following. By all means, hypothesize away and come up with your own ideas based on what you read, those ideas may turn out to be valuable to yourself and others; just understand that your attempts to validate those ideas scientifically by using published literature and personal observation is severely hindered by your lack of understanding of inferential statistics and its application to scientific methodology (there’s a reason biometricians exist and are depended on by a large number of research scientists).
Third, replication is everything in science. If the outcomes of a study have not been replicated multiple times, they are really only a short step above conjecture. The reason is that, statistically speaking, it is likely based on chance alone to get an outcome from one study that is not replicable in identical studies (fun illustration of this - https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/882:_Significant). Furthermore, authors tend to do just about anything to get published, which often means abandoning strict a priori hypothesis testing and instead performing unplanned statistical tests and data manipulation until they find a “significant” result, which likely only exists in that particular data set by chance. Due to lack of funding and interest, replication studies are rare. This has led to the melee of contradictory findings and conclusions that enable any incautious person to proclaim just about anything about nutrition and have a study to “prove” it (it doesn’t prove anything except their ignorance).
Fourth, the process of peer-review and selectivity by journal editors is highly subject to the whims of egos, grudges, politics, personal taste, and just about every other weakness of the human psyche. A lot of good research doesn’t see the light of day, and a lot of poor studies get way more attention than they deserve.
Distinguishing detox pains (progress) from further wrongdoings (regress)
Based on my experience, the process of getting stored excesses of VA out of the body has the potential to worsen symptoms before there is general improvement. It can be very difficult to distinguish between (1) the largely unavoidable pains of eliminating harmful substances versus (2) mistakenly making yourself worse by choosing the wrong diet/lifestyle. In the same vein, it can be difficult to distinguish between (1) alleviation of symptoms due to actual resolution of the underlying condition versus (2) alleviation of symptoms due to postponing dealing with the underlying condition. This is why it is important to occasionally make temporary changes to your diet to see whether there is a sudden response to adding or removing foods/supplements. For example, if you think eggs are helping you, make sure you stop consuming them every now and then to check for responses by the body.
Good points that a lot of people here don't even consider, it's easier for them to believe its only a toxin because it fits with their experience of health improvements from going Low Vit A and it is also what Grant believes (the person who introduced them to all of this).
Also your issue regarding carbs/veg I think your microbiome is just very messed up, I find savoury oats, sourdough bread, potatoes, chickpeas just as tasty on their own as I do meat. I do much better on carbs, animal protein and a bit of fat than I do on just meat and fat. I do think if you started liver flushes or coffee enemas then you would resolve your issues around other foods like starches and veg. Janelle could only start eating beans after she had been doing coffee enemas when before that she couldn't tolerate them.
https://youtu.be/JiKg819oaB4?t=166 - Saw this recently and made me think of what you said in your post, watch from 2:48
Also biomesight is a good and affordable gut test and you can run the results through microbiomeprescription.com which thoroughly analyses your data/results and references to studies and gives you lots of suggestions how to remodel your microbiome to a better state. But I am sure it will highlight some major issues for you.
Thanks but no thanks on the coffee enemas. I've tried a wide variety of top down approaches to resolving GI issues and none of them worked entirely. I choose not to shoot toxic compounds backwards up a tube that evolved as a one-way route for excretion of waste, but I understand that approach has its place in the world of medicine.
Supposing I were to do a microbiome analysis and actually believed the results had any useful bearing on my condition (I don't), and supposing the results suggested I did have something "wrong" with my microbiome (I wouldn't assume this), it still wouldn't explain the root cause of an imbalance. As I've made clear in my other posts, I think there is something about the process of eliminating excess Vitamin A that is wreaking havoc on my intestines. I've indicated that eating more VA seems to reduce my symptoms temporarily, and I've suggested this has to do with FXR activation in the intestines and subsequent downregulation of bile acid production. Given my history of clearly excessive VA consumption, and the dramatic shift in symptoms I experienced after removing VA from my diet that were in line with VA toxicity, I've deduced that the reduction in symptoms associated with increased VA intake is just postponing the process of getting the remaining excess out. The experience of another user (shaun) seems to be in line with this idea.
I'm glad you're happy with your results from doing coffee enemas and HTMA and taking supplements that include VA, but I have many disagreements about the conclusions you've drawn from all this. I've said so before and our debates didn't seem productive, so I'll just thank you for your suggestion here and not go into all of that again.