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Daniil log
Yeh, I gave up onions, garlic, leeks and all too. I used to eat them to the point of having a force field around myself. Vampires and men, women and children with noses avoided me. Dogs and cats loved me. But yeh, that was a lot of gas. And they all have a sinus drying effect longer term that gets annoying.
All the same when I thought about it I realized onions are an accessory. No survival special forces military person running through combat environs is worried about whether or not he gets onions into his maw. If I have to walk 300 miles in the next 14 days, onions are low on my list of what to fill my pack with. Dried beef, a grain, water and salt will be there though.
Sharing my thoughts on this:
RE: Namely, I found out that it turns out we only know 1-5% of what food consists of!
Yes, I agree with that. Likewise, I think medical science currently understands only ~ 1% of how the human body really works, and the root cause of chronic disease.
RE: People on this forum can blame on Vitamin A, when in fact, perhaps the culprit is completely different.
I agree. The vA elimination diet also removes many other potential and hidden toxins, and therefore those toxins may have been the cause of, or contributed to, their chronic diseases. I now think that food sourced niacin contributed to my eczema. However, I still believe that vA is one of the most common and most important causal toxins.
Clearly we still have a long way to go in fully understanding all of this as the success rate with a low vA diet is still too low.
Figured I would weigh in since I have spent the last 8 years trying almost every diet/protocol to address health issues. While I agree there is still a lot we do not know, the wave of decentralized health in the last 10 years has shed light on a lot of possible toxins contributing to chronic disease. I still agree with Grants original statement from ebooks that it does not make sense for the body to be randomly attacking itself due to genetics alone. The exponential growth in autoimmune conditions is likely being driven by multiple factors.
Having spent time in the Paleo, GAPs, keto, carnivore, low oxalate, ray peat, CIRS, lyme and now low vitamin A communities I have come across countless success stories as well as many failures. I think its fair to say that there may be unknown toxins influencing these outcomes, but that doesn't mean the toxins we are aware of don't contribute to chronic disease. We have pretty clear studies showing how various toxins like lectins, oxalates, retinoic acid, heavy metals etc impact the immune system. It seems plausible that those who did not see success on a low vitamin A diet were likely dealing with a different toxin(s) contributing to the disease state. I know from my history of high vitamin A intake through fortified foods, accutane and frequent liver consumption that my health issues are strongly correlated with Hypervitaminosis A. There certainly could be other unknown toxins impacting my health, but I don't see that as reason to abandon my current diet entirely. Having just finished 1.5 years on the diet I can say I have seen solid progress in most of my health issues, something I was unable to achieve with all of the stated diets/protocols above. My main health issue(skin disease) has been the slowest to heal with little progress to speak of as of now. Its possible this issue is not directly caused by vitamin A toxicity and I will continue to keep an open mind to alternative ways to heal my skin.
It would be great if science could find a way to accurately diagnosis what is causing specific autoimmune conditions, but I'm skeptical of this being a reality anytime soon. I think our best option in the near future is to have people continue experimenting with various diet/lifestyle changes and see what has success.
Griffin. I am responding to your comment. Studies show the harm of oxalates and other things. The problem is that medical science generally does not recognize the harm of the toxins you listed above, except for people with certain conditions (like gluten in celiac disease) or in concentrations not found in food. Official medicine is based mainly on large-scale studies of people, and now I understand why. You can't rely on in vitro studies because, as I mentioned in another thread, 90% of drugs successfully tested in vitro and on animals fail in humans. And how can they fail when we don't know anything yet? As I mentioned again, a successful weight loss drug in vitro can, for example, block an important liver enzyme, and this will be critical for the body, and science may not even suspect the existence of this enzyme yet. The authors of these theories (about the dangers of lectins and other things) are very likely to mislead people. Otherwise, If large-scale human studies showed the harm of lectins, science would have proven the harm and we would have already heard about the harm of lectins from every corner. Now I understand that science has good reasons to do what it does, and the authors of these theories with a probability of 90% mislead people, and they do not know a number of facts. And in most cases, it helps people simply by the placebo effect or random actions with food.
As for the plausibility of the official theory of autoimmunity. I'll tell you what I think about it now. If you are a religious person... According to religions, karma exists in one form or another, and this does not fit (yet) with science, because science recognizes other causes of diseases. But. If science proved the fact that human well-being is harmful, it could unite science and religion in this matter. The theory of autoimmunity is just such a theory. There is a vicious circle here - either we need infections to train the immune system, or the body will attack itself. The person will suffer anyway. The wheel of samsara has closed. (I use terminology from other religions for clarity). And there is only one way out of this vicious circle - religious. There are billions of people in the world who believe in karma. Therefore, the theory of autoimmunity - as a believer, I think this is just the beginning of what science will recognize in the future - that well-being harms people. So if God exists, then this theory must be true (and similar ones), otherwise there is a contradiction with faith in God (and karma).
By the way, science can prove in the future that some of these toxins are actually useful (such as phytic acid, which reduces iron levels).
In general, I will now believe in anything only if you show me several large-scale human studies that do not contradict others, which prove that it is really harmful and worth doing it. But you can't do that.
@ggenereux2014 Why do you think Vinero and Victor's users started having eye problems on a low-vitamin A diet, and did VA-food help? Now I think the explanation is that genetics allows you and some other people to exist without vitamin A.