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Eggs as part of Vitamin A reduction
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on July 21, 2023, 2:18 pm
Well, you are underestimating me. I am a trained scientist. I have a degree in applied science (engineering). I’ve taken advanced courses in physics, chemistry and many in advanced mathematics. I’ve worked in a lab doing material science research. I know the rules of science."
Sometimes it is being immersed in the "standard of thought" that limits people.
How do most scientists think? My dad was literally a rocket scientist. He spoke about a brilliant co-worker who always went all the way back to the origins of things. "What is a rocket? What is a gyro? How does a wing lift?" he would ask, to everyone's chagrin. Hahaha. People immersed in the "standard of thought" want to start at the top of the info-pile. No one wants to go back to the bottom of the info-pile and start over. I'm sure in the conference room, eyes would roll. But still, this guy was the brilliant one.
What are toxins? "Toxic" is a relative term. Pigments are often problematic to animal life, and not just carotenes. The streams around here used to run different dye colors and it took them a while but they eventually realized it was bad for all the living things who had to drink the water. However, most pigments aren't going to kill you in a day. Now, snake-venom, that might kill you in a day. There are slow poisons and fast poisons.
What are plant pigments? Plant pigments evolved *for the plant's benefit*. It isn't toxic to the plant. But it certainly wasn't put there for OUR benefit. One of the things people have realized is that pigments get into cells and color them, like indigo in jeans, or that ketchup stain on the front of your shirt. Hard to wash out, once in. I'm sure that the effect on the cell varies, but I'm betting that most cells would rather not be bothered by infiltrators. Plant pigments might only be a slow poison, but they make up for it by being ubiquitous. I sometimes wonder if there are any healthy plant pigments at all, and all the good things we hear about, say, blueberry or grape pigments are marketing slop.
What is science? Can you call marketing slop science if you are trained and make your salary in a lab? The people that pay your salary have a priority, and it is making money for the stock holders. Not forwarding science. "Science" created in a commercial setting is always suspect.
What is food? Unfortunately the entire food chain is based on plants! So all food is corrupted with pigments (and other plant toxins) to various degrees. You either eat plants or you eat animals who eat plants. I suppose in some respects you could think of the cows you eat as filters, but in other respects they also accumulate toxins. A cow is a giant grass field in a wooly covering. Some low-toxin plant foods might compare favorably to animal foods because of this.
What is vitamin A? It's a slightly changed carotene. For some reason the body would rather cope with that pigment in a slightly changed form. Totally converted milks are white, not yellow. Vitamin A is the non-pigment version of carotene. Why are we elevating a slightly detoxified pigment to a vitamin? My guess is it is a safer version, but I don't think either is good. It's a slightly detoxified pigment. Would "Big Vitamin's" so-called scientists ever allow this demotion? Are they really scientists?
We need another name for the "de-pigmented carotene".
On the subject of eggs, I've recently been forced to free-range my chickens for a while, and boy the yolks are much more orange. My birds are also all aging. On the other hand, I like that they are out living more like natural birds.
Quote from Aleksey on July 21, 2023, 9:17 amQuote from puddleduck on July 21, 2023, 6:59 amEggs made pretty much all my symptoms get worse, including chronic fatigue dysautonomia, and brought on mood issues (irritability, hypomania, anxiety, frequent crying meltdowns) I don’t normally have to deal with anymore. Atlantic herring and mussels do, too. Butter and cheese do, too. Same reaction, different foods with different choline levels. It’s dose-dependent, duration-dependent, and I believe it’s the vitamin A.
Eggs (and possibly phosphatidylcholine supplements) also made some of my symptoms flare up, especially dysautonomia and anxiety. I was able to work around that with 25mg niacinamide per day though. Also, my egg intake is roughly one every other day at the moment. What I learned is that my genetics make me prone to overmethylation and breaking down choline to make betaine to use for methylation can exacerbate the problem, if I understand correctly. Niacinamide can mop up the extra methyl donors and also help with low NAD+. In the meantime I'm working on fixing betaine and folate deficiencies before upping my egg intake. I don't know if your symptoms are rooted in similar issues to my own, but it might be possible and perhaps folate, betaine, and/or niacinamide could be helpful for you as well. I don't know, but my experience seems to suggest there can be a complex interplay between vA toxicity and the depletion of these nutrients, plus potential issues with reintroducing them too quickly, particularly choline.
@aleksey I agree with your statement in bold, which is why I have decided not to eat eggs. But I do appreciate the thoughtful suggestions and hearing your perspective! 🙂
You’re right, we may be similar in that I suspect I’m an over-methylator, too. I’ve read what Chris Masterjohn, Meredith Arthur, Dr. Smith, and several other nutritionists have to say on the methylation and detox enzyme stuff, and it sounds like you and I are thinking along the same lines with regards to emphasizing particular nutrients (yes, even choline), but perhaps we have different goals in mind.
My body needs to be able to trust me. I’ve been a real jerk to it over the years, and forcing it to process a food it was rejecting must’ve triggered some traumatic memories for it, the poor thing. The surface damage from a rash the eggs gave me is still visible on my leg nearly three months later...
It’s temping for me to look for a guide to give me greater confidence as I make this journey, but since we’re all pioneers here anyone who says “this is the way” or “follow me” is only meters ahead of me, and for all I know may lead me into a mud puddle or a thorny thicket. So I’m going to follow Grant’s guideposts my own way.
Regardless, I’m glad niacin supplementation helps you tolerate eggs better, and I hope you achieve the results you’re after! I’ll keep the niacin thing in mind, too, thank you. I don’t believe I’m deficient in any of the B vitamins anymore, though, as I no longer need supplement them. Iron deficiency tends to be my bottleneck area. Eggs inhibit iron absorption.
Please keep us updated when you get the chance. 😎 I’m not a Facebook user either.
@wavygravygadzooks thanks for the reply! I might have been more clear in my thought experiment
I don't see a difference between "critical substance" and "vitamin" in your thought experiment. Either we have identified a role for a critical substance/vitamin in the body or we have not. If we have not identified a role, we cannot conclude that it is a critical substance/vitamin. However, we cannot completely rule out the possibility it has a role that we simply have not yet identified. One reason we might not be able to identify a role is that we lack the ability to detect the presence, or "threshold" amount as you say, of a critical substance/vitamin within a biological process.
Yes, you are right, there is no inherent difference between them! I tried to say that the critical substances are either not known to us, or if known to us, they have a threshold/RDA so low that we cannot set up proper experiments to categorize it a vitamin. Or maybe all the food available to us contains some trace amount of this substance, so a proper experiment is hard to set up. I suspect this is where @ggenereux2014 is coming from. Vitamin A was categorized a vitamin before we had identified a role for the substance, was it not? And the experiments coming up with the RDA/how much VA we need, were very flawed. But I see your point now, I think. You are saying that we have now identified a clear role for VA, hence it is likely a vitamin. If there were no clear role identified for VA, we would have to decategorize it as a vitamin, until better experiments were conducted?
The greater the prevalence and association of a compound with essential bodily processes, the greater the likelihood it is a critical substance/vitamin. This is part of the logic behind retinol being a vitamin...it is found throughout the body in association with essential bodily processes even when there is very little stored in the body. Scientific experiments appear to have elucidated some of the mechanisms of the vitamin. Is every conclusion in every study perfectly accurate? Surely not. Are some of the studies so flawed as to be junk? Quite possibly. Are there a sufficient number of independent experiments that collectively indicate at least one necessary role of Vitamin A in the body? I personally believe there are and that its role in vision is the most robust.
Thanks again, this is a great explanation, I see very clearly where you are coming from now! I think @tim-2 was trying to argue something along the same lines with Grant, where Grant at some point "gave up", because there is no debate in science, only scientific evidence (forgive me if I remember this incorrectly). Personally I think there is debate in science. I love to see physicists argue and debate different topics. And I do think that if we are to convince whomever, academia or the press, that the current knowledge is wrong, then we need debate. Stress-testing ones own beliefs on a forum like this might end up saving millions of lives. Butterfly-effect.
But again, I am most swayed by the evolutionary concept that if a substance is found among a large variety of life forms who do not appear to be uniformly harmed by natural quantities of that substance, there must be some adaptive purpose for that substance being in the body. Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying would probably consider Vitamin A metabolism and functionality to be a highly conserved biological process through a diversity of animal lineages, indicating an adaptive utility for Vitamin A. If we had not yet identified that utility, they would probably invoke the concept of Chesterton's fence, which says that we should not dismiss the possible importance of something that likely exists for a reason simply because we have not yet identified that reason (they talk about this concept a lot with regard to modern medicine, such as the belief that we can safely remove a person's appendix with no ramifications simply because medicine has not yet recognized a function for it in the body...natural selection acts strongly to rid organisms of meaningless costs, so if an organ like the appendix is conserved through time, it must have a utility that justifies the cost of maintaining that tissue).
Ah, this is art! I appreciate you being on this forum!
Hear, hear! I love Brett and Heather’s podcast, btw.
Quote from lil chick on July 23, 2023, 7:31 am
Sometimes it is being immersed in the "standard of thought" that limits people.
How do most scientists think? My dad was literally a rocket scientist. He spoke about a brilliant co-worker who always went all the way back to the origins of things. "What is a rocket? What is a gyro? How does a wing lift?" he would ask, to everyone's chagrin. Hahaha. People immersed in the "standard of thought" want to start at the top of the info-pile. No one wants to go back to the bottom of the info-pile and start over. I'm sure in the conference room, eyes would roll. But still, this guy was the brilliant one.
What are toxins? "Toxic" is a relative term. Pigments are often problematic to animal life, and not just carotenes. The streams around here used to run different dye colors and it took them a while but they eventually realized it was bad for all the living things who had to drink the water. However, most pigments aren't going to kill you in a day. Now, snake-venom, that might kill you in a day. There are slow poisons and fast poisons.
What are plant pigments? Plant pigments evolved *for the plant's benefit*. It isn't toxic to the plant. But it certainly wasn't put there for OUR benefit. One of the things people have realized is that pigments get into cells and color them, like indigo in jeans, or that ketchup stain on the front of your shirt. Hard to wash out, once in. I'm sure that the effect on the cell varies, but I'm betting that most cells would rather not be bothered by infiltrators. Plant pigments might only be a slow poison, but they make up for it by being ubiquitous. I sometimes wonder if there are any healthy plant pigments at all, and all the good things we hear about, say, blueberry or grape pigments are marketing slop.
What is science? Can you call marketing slop science if you are trained and make your salary in a lab? The people that pay your salary have a priority, and it is making money for the stock holders. Not forwarding science. "Science" created in a commercial setting is always suspect.
What is food? Unfortunately the entire food chain is based on plants! So all food is corrupted with pigments (and other plant toxins) to various degrees. You either eat plants or you eat animals who eat plants. I suppose in some respects you could think of the cows you eat as filters, but in other respects they also accumulate toxins. A cow is a giant grass field in a wooly covering. Some low-toxin plant foods might compare favorably to animal foods because of this.
What is vitamin A? It's a slightly changed carotene. For some reason the body would rather cope with that pigment in a slightly changed form. Totally converted milks are white, not yellow. Vitamin A is the non-pigment version of carotene. Why are we elevating a slightly detoxified pigment to a vitamin? My guess is it is a safer version, but I don't think either is good. It's a slightly detoxified pigment. Would "Big Vitamin's" so-called scientists ever allow this demotion? Are they really scientists?
I like this view of carotene. It is best to avoid it or get only small amounts (flavoring). When I had a large garden or bought many vegetables from the local truck farm, it was difficult to find recipes to use the quantities I had on hand. That should have been a clue that consuming large quantities would lead to trouble.
Quote from Eio on July 24, 2023, 2:43 pmQuote from lil chick on July 23, 2023, 7:31 am
...What is vitamin A? It's a slightly changed carotene. For some reason the body would rather cope with that pigment in a slightly changed form. Totally converted milks are white, not yellow. Vitamin A is the non-pigment version of carotene. Why are we elevating a slightly detoxified pigment to a vitamin? My guess is it is a safer version, but I don't think either is good. It's a slightly detoxified pigment. Would "Big Vitamin's" so-called scientists ever allow this demotion? Are they really scientists?
I like this view of carotene. It is best to avoid it or get only small amounts (flavoring). When I had a large garden or bought many vegetables from the local truck farm, it was difficult to find recipes to use the quantities I had on hand. That should have been a clue that consuming large quantities would lead to trouble.
It's true! hahaha, once at the farmer's market a veggie farmer quietly told me: "I actually don't like vegetables!"
One of the great things about a mixed farm is that you can get rid of unwanted vegetables and fruits by feeding them to chickens and pigs etc. And get food you DO want. 😉
So Dr. Smith's war on eggs continues, today on Twitter he claims eggs 'destroy your liver.'
"HeAlTHy things that destroy your liver: Fructose, Liver, Eggs, Dairy, Nightshades"