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Eggs as part of Vitamin A reduction
Has anyone who's incorporated eggs into their otherwise low Vitamin A diet tried STOPPING egg consumption for, say, 1-2 weeks to see what happens?
If you're not going to experiment with supplemental choline/phosphatidylcholine to isolate that element from everything else in eggs, you should at least try stopping eggs to see how you respond. You're not likely to become choline deficient in 1-2 weeks if you've been consuming large amounts, so if you suddenly feel bad when stopping egg consumption, I'd say that's a good reason to believe that the eggs are halting the process of Vitamin A elimination and that your body has switched to storage mode; the removal of eggs and incoming Vitamin A then triggers detox/elimination which is where most of the symptoms originate.
My symptoms of toxicity primarily appeared only after I'd STOPPED consuming Vitamin A. The pattern I've seen suggests that, unlike acute toxicity from large dose pre-formed Vitamin A intake, chronic toxicity actually manifests with minimal symptoms so long as you continue to take in Vitamin A regularly. It is only the cessation of Vitamin A intake that then brings the majority of the symptoms to the surface, probably as a result of the body expelling Vitamin A from peripheral tissue storage via conversion to retinoic acid, which is highly caustic in comparison to retinol/retinyl esters.
I doubt most people experience true Vitamin A toxicity symptoms until their liver storage is maxed out and can no longer control what is circulating in the blood, resulting in the overflow being stored in peripheral tissues. (I say "true" Vitamin A toxicity symptoms because a lot of people are lumping symptoms of carotenoid consumption together with pre-formed Vitamin A consumption, but carotenoids are NOT Vitamin A. If you react to carotenoids, you may very well have sensitivity to plant compounds separate from (or in addition to) actual Vitamin A toxicity from retinoids, but these are probably two different issues.)
The case study of that old man with Vitamin A toxicity (in his liver) and concurrent protein deficiency showed no systemic symptoms before or after resolving that toxicity. I propose that is because he was toxic in the liver and deficient throughout the rest of his body, due to protein deficiency. Depletion of Vitamin A in his liver did not result in symptoms because that Vitamin A was either eliminated from the body directly via excretory routes without being circulated in the blood, and/or entered circulation properly via RBP's and was delivered in appropriate amounts to peripheral tissues as needed by the body.
Also, the idea I've seen thrown around on these forums that the liver is expelling stored Vitamin A into circulation during detox doesn't make any sense to me. You shouldn't experience symptoms from Vitamin A leaving the liver via excretory routes unless it's getting reabsorbed, and since most people who eat fiber (thinking that it is required to PREVENT Vitamin A reabsorption) say that the fiber makes their symptoms worse, it must follow that either (1) the fiber is causing reabsorption rather than preventing it, or (2) the fiber is encouraging the dumping of Vitamin A from peripheral tissues into the blood which is leading to toxicity symptoms.
I've experimented with different forms of fiber and binders a number of times in the past 3 years and I have to conclude that, based on worsening toxicity symptoms such as headaches and diarrhea, it is somehow encouraging Vitamin A dumping from peripheral tissues (possibly by binding to Vitamin A in the intestines via diffusion through the intestinal wall rather than binding to what's already in the bile). I would also say, based on that, if charcoal or fiber makes you feel better, you very well may not be dealing with Vitamin A toxicity but rather some other problem.
I increased the eggs to 3-4 a day for 9 months and my digestion felt much better plus one other major indicator I'd healed something from decades ago. That to me seemed like I'd replenished my choline. For various reasons such as delivery problems and eating habits I reduced the eggs to about 2.5 eggs a day for the next 5 months. None of the bad symptoms returned and the healed things continue to get better. I've begun eating more eggs at times since and I think that generally helps me improve faster. So to people finding the number of eggs that works for you and sticking to it is what I recommend. We've spent so long on this I'm not going to suggest people stop eating eggs to test some theory. Let the scientists do the well controlled experiments and figure it out. I've had days without eating eggs and no problems return.
We have a registered dietician who uses eggs to help her clients with Vitamin A toxicity and monitors clinical results. This is perfectly normal to use eggs to detox with betaine too. Bile flow definitely improves. I have no need to scupper the detox. I want to finish this detox as I approach 4 years. It should never have taken this long. Done right it's much quicker (judging by improved symptoms and old problems healing).
The second stage for me was increasing cruciferous vegetables and other fibre and I reckon my slight SIBO and gut issues are much improved. I can eat loads of brussels sprouts now, broccoli and light green cabbage. I can eat beans and oats without getting headaches or weird cramps. What I am doing works and it's backed up by a registered dietician confirming with herself and her patients. A person with excellent understanding of pathways and interpreting clinical results.
oh god... you should go into politics
I'm in the category that Wavy is talking about, people who perhaps have enough VA in their diet (from eggs, dairy) that they *might* be in storage mode.
I have never actually felt (even back in the bad old days) that I had problems with my liver or even my kidneys. As I've said, I'm the healthiest sick person ever.
Between "poisonings" that is.
Over, and over and over again (back in my high-VA days) my body told me I was poisoning myself. Now that I don't ingest ridiculous amounts of VA, my poisoning episodes have stopped and I'm happy.
It's interesting that "prison food diet" people can't step a foot out of it without symptoms. I do react to many things, which I'm trying to figure out (most recently antibiotics and false sugars) but can eat a wide range of real foods without issue.
I actually do think that extremely slowly, over time, areas outside the liver such as eyes, teeth, skin that maybe were the recipients of excess VA (back during my high VA life) are slowly detoxing. It ain't fast though! But maybe that is good.
Quote from puddleduck on July 18, 2023, 6:45 amAhhh congratulations, @mmc!! 😁🥳 It is absolutely wonderful to read you are feeling so much better (after going through such misery), and have now been able to expand your diet without suffering for it! That’s fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to make an account and post your experience. 🙂 I agree with your last sentence entirely.
Thanks puddleduck, what I have been through these last few years, I would not wish on my worst enemy! I feel like a kid at a candy store when I go to the supermarket - don't know what to eat! I can now eat so many more foods without being incapacitated afterwards.
Quote from Andrew B on July 18, 2023, 7:41 am@mmc Thanks for taking the time to join the forum and report your results. That's great news considering how long you've been doing this and what's been happening. If you still have a gluten intolerance then it's important to find a betaine source like small amounts of quinoa, beetroot or sunflower seeds. The choline from the eggs may be being used in converting to betaine and you might need the choline for digestive system repair and healing the gluten intolerance completely indeed. B1 foods might also help digestive motility and parasympathetic activity eg pork, sunflower seeds, gluten free oats, macadamia nuts and beans.
Thanks Andrew, I'll give these foods a try again, I tried them in the past and reacted severely, hopefully things will be different now. Do you have any experience with avocado? I noticed when I eat avocado I feel great, specifically, increased energy, motivation and great mood. I eat half an avocado every day now and it has helped tremendously!
Quote from Hermes on July 18, 2023, 9:13 amThat's an amazing story to tell! Congratulations on your success and on regaining a zest for life. Stories like these move me and motivate me to keep marching to the beat of the drum. We're outliers here, desperate for change. Thank you for sharing your story.
Thanks Hermes hope your recovery goes well too, I am now convinced there is something magical about the egg, it has the capability to heal and nourish the body. This food has all the nutrients to support life and to not eat it simply based on the Vit A content seems unnatural to me!
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on July 18, 2023, 3:43 pmHas anyone who's incorporated eggs into their otherwise low Vitamin A diet tried STOPPING egg consumption for, say, 1-2 weeks to see what happens?
I stopped for 3 days half way through the 3 months, to see if I was on the right path. Experienced my old symptoms and have not looked back.
Quote from lil chick on July 18, 2023, 1:18 pmQuote from sand on July 18, 2023, 8:33 amChicken and apples are vitamin a foods?
It looks to me like he had chosen the Grant "prison food diet" and whenever he stepped out of it, he felt horrible. At least that is how I'm reading it. Perhaps he can comment.
That's exactly what happened, except I didn't choose this diet. These were the only foods that would give me the least symptoms. I would try to incorporate foods containing Vit A but I would suffer extreme symptoms which would incapacitate me mentally and physically. I would suffer from these symptoms even from minute levels of Vitamin A, 3 tiny sunflower seeds were enough to cause me extreme issues! I seemed to have developed an allergy to Vit A, as I would be sneezing afterwards.
I have searched high and low for solutions, done all sorts of health tests and even went to Peru and drank Ayahuasca. I was hoping as time progressed, I would be able to incorporate vitamin A foods back into the diet. Except that day never came! After 5 years I was sick of it all and was willing to try anything, hence the eggs.
Living on the beef, rice and beans diet has not been ideal, I've felt like I have been in a daze with compromised cognition. I have not been able to work full time or even leave the house much. Didn't have the energy to read books, watch tv, or do anything productive. I would struggle to get up before midday. It's been such a waste.
Now after eggs, it's been a complete shift, I can eat so many more foods now. My cognition has also improved, I've commenced full time work. My motivation is high, I've started writing a book, I go to the gym, play sports and go out for dinners with friends.
If someone told me 3 months ago my life would improve like this, I would not have believed them in a million years. I'm really excited to see my progress in another 6 months or 12 months time!
@mmc Wow, what a turn around in your life ! The eggs would bring better absorption and bile flow. Avocado with some fat might increase bile flow too. The green avocadoes have good B5, Vitamin C and Vitamin E. B5 tends to be a bit lower on the beef and beans diet. I'd definitely say I felt the benefit of more B1 and B5 foods. Many of us tend to think we need some Vitamin C and Vitamin E from food sources. B5 would help you convert food to energy. Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) (healthline.com)
Don't think it was because of the eggs. It's because of the fat. The fat increases the bile. Grant drank oil in his early years. your from what i see zero fat. now the problem
So, in short, you have not tried removing eggs for any length of time. And you refuse to experiment with choline supplements. And you refuse to get your choline from just meat, which contains only trace amounts of Vitamin A. And you do not have hard evidence (bloodwork, liver biopsy) to show that your problems are due to Vitamin A toxicity rather than some problem with plant compounds, which for some reason you insist on reintroducing in large quantities to your diet.
What if your problems primarily stemmed from intestinal permeability due to plant consumption, and the choline in eggs helped to heal that rather than a problem with Vitamin A? If you don’t actually have problems with retinoids, you may be mistakenly advising people who do have problems with excess retinoids to continue eating them. There are people here who say that eggs are problematic for them, so clearly they're not a free ride to health for anyone and everyone and you seem to be downplaying that aspect. Additionally, the level of egg consumption (and source of eggs…mutant chickens raised on mutant feed) you are proposing is highly unnatural in terms of the human body’s evolutionary environment. In that regard, it also makes a lot more sense to get your choline from meat.
The response from @mmc is the kind of thing I am concerned about…I find it hard to believe that removing eggs for just a few days puts the body in an immediate nutrient deficit that causes someone’s original symptoms to return (although @mmc seems to be making the mistake I mentioned in my previous post of calling carotenoids Vitamin A, which they are NOT, so maybe @mmc is also suffering from a plant-based illness and not retinoid toxicity…getting a reaction from 3 sunflower seeds sounds like an immune response to plant compounds).
Some of the responses Grant has given recently regarding how he was diagnosed with kidney disease also make me further question whether he actually had retinoid toxicity and whether his relatively rapid recovery from a diagnosis of sure death was due to the removal of plant compounds. I still believe that plant compounds are a much bigger culprit for a lot of these symptoms in most people than retinoids, there is way more evidence and logic for that being the case.
I do love me some fried eggs and I would be very happy to see solid evidence that they do indeed improve outcomes in people with Vitamin A toxicity, but your anecdotes and stubborn refusal to do anything remotely close to scientific experimentation leaves me questioning the veracity of your claims.
@jessica2
First, the fact that retinol is so readily absorbed, stored, distributed, and associated with a variety of highly important bodily functions in so many different animals indicates that it is a nutrient and is only a “toxin” when it’s not properly regulated. Its absorption and storage in the body therefore has a very different evolutionary and physiological explanation than the absorption and storage of environmental toxins which serve no beneficial biological purpose.
No, the body typically doesn’t attempt to store toxins (when it recognizes them as toxins) when it has the ability to eliminate them; as you suggested, that wouldn’t make much sense. But the fact that long-term storage of toxins exists at all is obvious proof that the body is often unable to eliminate certain toxins as fast as they come in. It’s not like it wants to store that shit, lol, it’s just the least harmful thing it can do with it considering the situation.
I can’t recall personally reading anything that clearly showed excessive retinol storage in peripheral tissue, but the symptoms attributed to chronic retinoid toxicity are associated with a lot of different fatty tissues around the body, including the central nervous system. Where else do you propose excess dietary retinol goes in the body after it’s absorbed? The liver appears to take in all it can possibly store and sacrifices its integrity in the process, but eventually it gets overwhelmed. The body appears to prioritize keeping levels in the blood below a certain threshold, so it really doesn’t want excess there. You need all your vital organs to work properly so you don’t die, so the body doesn’t want to send the excess retinol there…where else can it go? Considering that retinol is fat soluble, and we know that lots of environmental toxins wind up getting stored in adipose tissue, it makes the most sense to me that overflowing retinol winds up in fatty tissues least likely to cause immediate damage to the body, or it inadvertently winds up in more important fatty tissue (the nervous system) because the body has lost control of its distribution and its lipophilic chemistry makes it likely to wind up in fatty tissue.
I am in no way suggesting that someone with moderate or low levels of retinyl esters in the liver (and who doesn’t have a history of systemic retinoid toxicity) is at immediate risk of problems from the Vitamin A in eggs, dairy, or even liver in moderate amounts. But someone with a history of systemic retinoid toxicity ought to be very cautious about consistently consuming (as @andrew-b is recommending) any more unnecessary retinol or beta-carotene until they have been well clear of toxicity symptoms for a while, otherwise it seems they’re at risk of stored retinol amounts silently creeping back upward, particularly if I am correct in saying that most symptoms of chronic, slowly accumulating toxicity via regular intake appear in the peripheral tissues only after you stop consuming retinol for a decent stretch of time. This is why I would highly suggest anybody doing this eggspermiment take breaks from eggs for a week here and there and assess how the body reacts to a more complete absence of Vitamin A intake.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on July 19, 2023, 5:43 pm@jessica2
First, the fact that retinol is so readily absorbed, stored, distributed, and associated with a variety of highly important bodily functions in so many different animals indicates that it is a nutrient and is only a “toxin” when it’s not properly regulated. Its absorption and storage in the body therefore has a very different evolutionary and physiological explanation than the absorption and storage of environmental toxins which serve no beneficial biological purpose.
No, the body typically doesn’t attempt to store toxins (when it recognizes them as toxins) when it has the ability to eliminate them; as you suggested, that wouldn’t make much sense. But the fact that long-term storage of toxins exists at all is obvious proof that the body is often unable to eliminate certain toxins as fast as they come in. It’s not like it wants to store that shit, lol, it’s just the least harmful thing it can do with it considering the situation.
I can’t recall personally reading anything that clearly showed excessive retinol storage in peripheral tissue, but the symptoms attributed to chronic retinoid toxicity are associated with a lot of different fatty tissues around the body, including the central nervous system. Where else do you propose excess dietary retinol goes in the body after it’s absorbed? The liver appears to take in all it can possibly store and sacrifices its integrity in the process, but eventually it gets overwhelmed. The body appears to prioritize keeping levels in the blood below a certain threshold, so it really doesn’t want excess there. You need all your vital organs to work properly so you don’t die, so the body doesn’t want to send the excess retinol there…where else can it go? Considering that retinol is fat soluble, and we know that lots of environmental toxins wind up getting stored in adipose tissue, it makes the most sense to me that overflowing retinol winds up in fatty tissues least likely to cause immediate damage to the body, or it inadvertently winds up in more important fatty tissue (the nervous system) because the body has lost control of its distribution and its lipophilic chemistry makes it likely to wind up in fatty tissue.
I am in no way suggesting that someone with moderate or low levels of retinyl esters in the liver (and who doesn’t have a history of systemic retinoid toxicity) is at immediate risk of problems from the Vitamin A in eggs, dairy, or even liver in moderate amounts. But someone with a history of systemic retinoid toxicity ought to be very cautious about consistently consuming (as @andrew-b is recommending) any more unnecessary retinol or beta-carotene until they have been well clear of toxicity symptoms for a while, otherwise it seems they’re at risk of stored retinol amounts silently creeping back upward, particularly if I am correct in saying that most symptoms of chronic, slowly accumulating toxicity via regular intake appear in the peripheral tissues only after you stop consuming retinol for a decent stretch of time. This is why I would highly suggest anybody doing this eggspermiment take breaks from eggs for a week here and there and assess how the body reacts to a more complete absence of Vitamin A intake.
If VA is a vital nutrient then why can Grant thrive on almost 0 serum VA and negligible VA consumption for a decade?