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Dry eye and DHA
Hi @are thank you for your comment.
The air humidity makes a substantial difference. When I enter a shopping mall where the air is treated, I struggle to keep the eyes open.
At home I also use an air humidifier.
I will try some night goggles, what eye drops do you use?
As I said before, I haven't experienced any benefits from them.
Is your eye condition constant or the severity of it varies?
Hi @are I hope you soon get better. My dry eyes + blepharitis condition has gone. After 2 years on the diet, but I again got an attack of burning eyes last month, which lasted for about ten days. Back to normal now. I think this is due to the onset of winter.
I think there is a seasonality to vA detoxing, something linked to seasonal problems.
As to the sudden onslaught of vA detox and pain in malls, I have noticed this starting years ago. It happened in airports, trains, museums, malls and public places. I think it has no relation to the dryness or humidity of the air, as I use a dehumidifier at home with very good results and I love the dry air. It is I think related to the air desinfectants they pour out in public places. Supposed to kill germs instantly, and what else?
In fact, we just spent 3 hours on a train to visit family last week-end, and the detox pains after that were terrible.
I wish you all the best.
Quote from Mattia on December 8, 2021, 3:25 amHi guys,
I have dry eye but the severity of it fluctuates a lot. Today is the worse and I am barely able to write those words on the screen. Other days it's much better and it doesn't bother me so much.
My condition has probably been caused by accutane use in the past. I also know that it largely depend on the air humidity and by my sleep quality.
I want to take taurine and some fatty acids because they might improve eye health.
Do you know if this supplement from thorne contains vtamin A or not?
https://www.amazon.com/Thorne-Research-Concentrated-Supplement-Certified/dp/B0018CJ17W
Thorne Research, Super EPA, EPA & DHA, 90 Gelcaps
Thank you
In most cases it makes no sense to megadose on any nutrient IMO hence there is no need for any kind of supplementation most of the time. If you include red meat and some fish in your diet then you'll be getting enough taurine and DHA. Sardines are a superfood and along with DHA contain vitamin D, iodine, selenium, calcium and other nutrients.
Quote from pano200 on December 8, 2021, 7:37 amThat’s me that Grant is speaking about. Been on the low VA diet for 3 years 3 months now. History of severe dry eye (had to wear goggles 24/7 or put drops in my eyes every 10-15 minutes).
I think it’s specifically the zinc that mobilized VA from the liver. Zinc seems to be a tricky one, you need it to mobilize some VA so you don’t accumulate it, but excess zinc causes too much mobilization.
Taurine on the other hand is my antidote for both VA and zinc excess. While I was taking my zinc supplement religiously, I tried to taper off taurine and ended up with significant night blindness and dark adaptation issues. I was having night blindness when in low light… parts of my visual field was absent, black holes of nothing. After some thought and chatting with other people I decided to cut out zinc.
After I cut out zinc for a month, I started tapering taurine. I’ve been off taurine for a week now and have zero night blindness and dark adaptation issues.
I definitely think night blindness and dark adaptation issues is caused by VA toxicity and not VA deficiency. As we learned from multiple patients, those who are the sickest usually have low serum VA before starting the low VA diet… and after they start, their serum VA shoots up. Whether it is the body adjusting serum retinol down because there is too much retinyl ester spillover from the liver or a feedback mechanism that the body can’t process VA well anymore, i don’t know. As for people having night blindness and high dose VA “cures” it? That’s where I feel will be the sticking point for a lot of people before they believe VA is a not essential. Introducing high dose VA just puts your body into liver storage mode and takes away VA tox symptoms for awhile. VA is just so counterintuitive.
I would give taurine a shot. Seems like some people react to taurine negatively for some reason, but for me, it helped decrease all my VA toxicity symptoms. It was easy to know when to decrease taurine for me while off of zinc; it caused dry mouth, which was not a Va toxicity symptom for me. So as soon as my mouth started getting dry, i knew it was time to cut my dose. I never experienced taurine mouth dryness the 2+ years I was taking it (prior to cutting out zinc). My taurine dose ranged from 500mg-1000mg twice a day. I also did find that taurine only helps me for about 4-6 hours after taking while I was off of the zinc, so I was taking it 3x a day during that time instead of my usual 2x a day.
My last serum retinol level was 7.7 mcg/dl, so i’m almost depleted.
As for the cadmium, i don’t think that was an issue for me. my hair test showed 0 cadmium.
edit: forgot to add.. it seems like the lower your total body stores of VA, the less supplementation you need. I’m only on probiotics (1-2x a week) and intermittent topical mag. Also intermittent sun/UVB if that counts. That’s it! I used to be on a crap load of things.
Your serum retinol is at 7.7 mcg/dL yet you have extreme eye symptoms that sufferers of Hypervitaminosis A don't even get and you're still blaming it on vitamin A toxicity....
Quote from tim on December 10, 2021, 3:59 amQuote from pano200 on December 8, 2021, 7:37 amThat’s me that Grant is speaking about. Been on the low VA diet for 3 years 3 months now. History of severe dry eye (had to wear goggles 24/7 or put drops in my eyes every 10-15 minutes).
I think it’s specifically the zinc that mobilized VA from the liver. Zinc seems to be a tricky one, you need it to mobilize some VA so you don’t accumulate it, but excess zinc causes too much mobilization.
Taurine on the other hand is my antidote for both VA and zinc excess. While I was taking my zinc supplement religiously, I tried to taper off taurine and ended up with significant night blindness and dark adaptation issues. I was having night blindness when in low light… parts of my visual field was absent, black holes of nothing. After some thought and chatting with other people I decided to cut out zinc.
After I cut out zinc for a month, I started tapering taurine. I’ve been off taurine for a week now and have zero night blindness and dark adaptation issues.
I definitely think night blindness and dark adaptation issues is caused by VA toxicity and not VA deficiency. As we learned from multiple patients, those who are the sickest usually have low serum VA before starting the low VA diet… and after they start, their serum VA shoots up. Whether it is the body adjusting serum retinol down because there is too much retinyl ester spillover from the liver or a feedback mechanism that the body can’t process VA well anymore, i don’t know. As for people having night blindness and high dose VA “cures” it? That’s where I feel will be the sticking point for a lot of people before they believe VA is a not essential. Introducing high dose VA just puts your body into liver storage mode and takes away VA tox symptoms for awhile. VA is just so counterintuitive.
I would give taurine a shot. Seems like some people react to taurine negatively for some reason, but for me, it helped decrease all my VA toxicity symptoms. It was easy to know when to decrease taurine for me while off of zinc; it caused dry mouth, which was not a Va toxicity symptom for me. So as soon as my mouth started getting dry, i knew it was time to cut my dose. I never experienced taurine mouth dryness the 2+ years I was taking it (prior to cutting out zinc). My taurine dose ranged from 500mg-1000mg twice a day. I also did find that taurine only helps me for about 4-6 hours after taking while I was off of the zinc, so I was taking it 3x a day during that time instead of my usual 2x a day.
My last serum retinol level was 7.7 mcg/dl, so i’m almost depleted.
As for the cadmium, i don’t think that was an issue for me. my hair test showed 0 cadmium.
edit: forgot to add.. it seems like the lower your total body stores of VA, the less supplementation you need. I’m only on probiotics (1-2x a week) and intermittent topical mag. Also intermittent sun/UVB if that counts. That’s it! I used to be on a crap load of things.
Your serum retinol is at 7.7 mcg/dL yet you have extreme eye symptoms that sufferers of Hypervitaminosis A don't even get and you're still blaming it on vitamin A toxicity....
yes master. i don’t think you follow my train of thought. not gonna argue. don’t think you fully read all my comments.
you’ve been snarky at my previous posts so i’m not even gonna bother. i won’t be responding to any of your future comments so feel free to type whatever.
unsubscribing to this thread
@are
It's great that pano200 has improved a lot but he's causing new symptoms for himself which are classic symptoms of vitamin A deficiency. There are definitely logical fallacies present, he has clinical deficiency yet is blaming his new symptoms on vitamin A, that's a bad road to be on and someone needed to call this out. He has depleted vitamin A for years and is comparing himself to people with Hypervitaminosis A that do not have high serum retinol due to zinc deficiency or other issues, that is a very problematic comparison.
It's best to have serum retinol levels between about 28 and 38 mcg/dL. Healing from elevated levels of retinoic acid may still need to occur after reaching these levels and perhaps levels of 20 - 30 mcg/dL for a period of time would be optimal to facilitate healing but going under 20 mcg/dL is likely to be counterproductive.
I've been skimming this topic and I want to just throw in my two cents. I have worse night vision than I did before lowering VA.
I have never been ultra-low VA, and each day I do consume some VA, probably enough so that if my eyes really needed some it would be there to work with.
Despite going only lowish, I do feel that I'm making slow progress and life is much less painful -- it's like a miracle really.
At 2.5 years "lower VA" I still feel that my eyes are detoxing each day and that the detox is hard on them. There is a reason the body sticks this bad stuff into deep storage. It's nasty.
I awake each day and have to clean around my eyes. I have little permanent pimple like things around my eyes which I suppose are places where detox has tried or is trying to happen. Detox isn't pretty LOL.
My eyes are more comfortable than they were before-- but they are sure not done. I still don't do well with brightness, flashing, too much sun, too much wind.
I'm older, and I think I've been storing away loads of the bad stuff for my entire life. I sometimes wonder if I will take some of my detox to the grave. But as long as I'm alive, the detox will slowly go on. Detox is damaging, storage is damaging. VA is the worst! 🙂
This Thread, appears to one of the more "important" ones. Along with pano200's thread. Because we are witnessing actual labs along with experiences of people that are going low in VA serum. coupled with Grant's work, we are all sort of crusader's in this, and in Grant's words, this is an experiment. People like Ray Peat, who is and should be considered one of the most helpful and smartest people of our time, would not agree what we are doing. However, he does acknowledge that there is a toxicity that can happen with VA. When reading Pano200's , very interesting to see blood values and trends. Not many people do labs and show them. Obviously for most people getting certain labs is virtually impossible. I had some of the same thoughts when reading about his dry eyes that Tim expressed. If someone is so low in VA, how can we still have issues, even if we dump some , our levels are so low , still in normal ranges. But , we will only know in time. I wish Grant and pano200 and everyone , the very best in health.
@pano200, have you tried Garrett's lactoferrin? In his latest live stream, he mentions how lactoferrin helps support duct health.
I'm understanding more, that your situation is due to damage to the tear ducts and the other intricate parts of the eye, and not a continued assault from the vitamin A in your serum.