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Eggs as part of Vitamin A reduction
@jessica2
People can be on a low vitamin A diet for years and still test at the high end of the range for serum retinol.
I've seen liver biopsy data indicating that middle aged people's liver retinyl levels can be higher than average due to having been given cod liver oil decades prior in their youth.
Did you get your serum retinol levels tested when you got your liver enzyme levels tested?
We can't actually know for sure how high our liver retinyl levels are until we have depleted serum retinol down to near deficiency levels.
@jessica2
I agree it is deeply problematic for one to believe vitamin A is not a vitamin. Low levels of retinoic acid can also be teratogenic.
If one is regularly getting serum retinol tested and plans to increase vitamin A intake once they approach deficiency or simply consumes a diet moderately low in vitamin A I don't see a big problem.
Quote from Jessica2 on April 15, 2024, 5:21 am@joe I'm not trolling. Trolling would be if I hadn't tried the low vitamin a diet and totally believed in it at one point.
I did low vitamin A for a year 6 months very strictly it never helped me with anything and it made my liver enzymes rise and it made me gain weight.
Now, I'm sorry it did that for people like you who really believe in it 100%, and I'll tell you something; it's not that I don't believe in it; I don't know, maybe vitamin A is a poison I'm not a scientist and I don't know to be honest. But there's nothing in your testimonial that I believe is a miracle that could not be attributed to just simply stopping your intake of rancid cod liver oil and liver. It's been well known to science for a long time that too much vitamin A is not good for you. You were getting too much with cod liver oil and liver and you quit.
I'm sorry that I don't believe massive amounts of daily fiber and charcoal and wheat and grains and any food that doesn't have vitamin A is a miracle, like sugar too. It's kind of silly to me that refined sugar is bandied about here as okay in moderation. I think that's a ridiculous idea but that's just me and I don't do well on sugar. I know plenty of thin healthy people with moderate intakes of sugar so this is just personally for me a no-go food. I also have somewhat soft teeth and I personally go no sugar to preserve them.
Anyhow I think after all these years of experimentation, and again, this is my opinion, what a person can sensibly do is avoid supplemental and daily high amounts of animal retinol, such as the amounts you get from liver and supplements. Some people are sensitive to beta-carotenes so avoid those if you are. And I think that is about all you can say at this point about the toxicity of vitamin A. I don't think it's wise to shoot for a serum level of zero retinol or to try for a zero retinol/carotenoid diet.
I think kidneys are a confounding factor in Grant's story and I'm constantly amazed by how many people here have stories of low and compromised kidney function, I believe even yourself included. It's possible in this case of low kidney function that the body is not getting rid of toxic by-products of retinol and beta-carotene metabolism. Anyway I'm truly glad you're in better health. And I'm not a troll and I'd appreciate it if you don't call me that thank you.
Why are you on this blog @jessica2? Are you relegating Grant's experience to the same circumstances you write mine off with? As you mentioned with sugar, do you see chronic illness acceptable and acute illness as anomaly? The marketing for sugar and all other toxins in food and pharma industries are sold that way. This is the only explanation I have found for your question on how people are so almost uniformly blind to such obvious problems.
These are serious questions if you are in fact not trolling here. Please explain to me how Grant did not go blind 8 years ago from vitamin A deficiency and die 7 years ago from the same. Are you discounting his experience to zero as you have mine? Are you failing to see that during my last 40 years experimenting in diets that I might have had ups and downs that are best explained with Grant's and Garrett's paradigm?
I appreciate you replying at all here. Surprised and grateful. Thank you. Have a good night.
@jessica2
I felt better within a week of eliminating beta-carotene and vitamin A foods from my diet. I am low vitamin A so I eat a small amount of ice cream and eggs when baked in cookies or something like that. I eliminated all PUFA 3 years before I started the low A eating but never noticed any improvement in health. But the biggest improvements came two years ago when I started eating 1/2 cup of beans 5 times a day per recommendations by Karen Hurd to remove toxins from bile in my gut.
I did take some multi-vitamins prior to 2015 but not daily. I never used cod liver oil or accutane and rarely ate liver (maybe once a year or less). But I ate huge amounts of beta-carotene in peaches, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, greens, etc. for 50 years. I never drank a lot of milk even as a kid because I didn't like it. My skin was an orange/yellow for so long I thought I was just "swarthy" like my father who also ate all that beta-carotene. My mother must have been able to handle the beta-carotene because she never looked yellow.
If you think that Grant had refined seed oil in his diet before he started eating rice, beef and some beans and that is why he has improved, why do you used refined oils?
Quote from Eio on April 16, 2024, 6:23 am@jessica2
I felt better within a week of eliminating beta-carotene and vitamin A foods from my diet. I am low vitamin A so I eat a small amount of ice cream and eggs when baked in cookies or something like that. I eliminated all PUFA 3 years before I started the low A eating but never noticed any improvement in health. But the biggest improvements came two years ago when I started eating 1/2 cup of beans 5 times a day per recommendations by Karen Hurd to remove toxins from bile in my gut.
I did take some multi-vitamins prior to 2015 but not daily. I never used cod liver oil or accutane and rarely ate liver (maybe once a year or less). But I ate huge amounts of beta-carotene in peaches, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, greens, etc. for 50 years. I never drank a lot of milk even as a kid because I didn't like it. My skin was an orange/yellow for so long I thought I was just "swarthy" like my father who also ate all that beta-carotene. My mother must have been able to handle the beta-carotene because she never looked yellow.
If you think that Grant had refined seed oil in his diet before he started eating rice, beef and some beans and that is why he has improved, why do you used refined oils?
Yeah many people tried the low PUFA thing for yrs and yrs with no improvements. I was one of them 4 grams or less of PUFA a day. Fried foods are obviously pretty toxic but I doubt Grant was eating lots of fried food while he was literally dying.
I thought I read that you use evening primrose oil and some other omega-6 types. Maybe I misread that. Those types of oils would be PUFA.
Hi Everyone (especially @jessica2 hi there!)
@jessica2 I'm interested to know why you think your markers got worse and you gained weight. The same is happening to my husband (who has had things like liver and CLO removed, has his wife making lowish VA meals, still eats what he wants once a day (restaurant food), BTW his only dairy is small amounts of butter and he mows through salads like no body's business). Also besides the markers getting worse and the weight gain his diabetes tests are worse. His rosacea has gotten worse rather than better.
Now, for me, I don't have markers to look at, my weight is high-normal for me (112 lbs) and as I've said everything is getting better for me but at the slow pace of glaciers.
So why would this be? Real question that I think needs answering. I DO default to thinking that he is retoxing. But it could be wrong.
Maybe he is poisoned with something ELSE, like the restaurant food, the plastics involved, the fried foods or his blood pressure meds. Maybe stress. He works in a lab with all sorts of "electric smog".
He has a fave saying: "when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail". VA is just one poison in a poisonous world.
Once I read the story of a low carb doc... gosh I can't remember her name! But she believed that her weight gain and then subsequent loss was part of her healing path. She was famous for a while... So, she began skinny and unwell, went low carb, felt better but gained tons of weight and then after a while the body decided to undo the weight gain without effort on her part.
Another idea that comes to me is thyroid.
@lil-chick Yes, I know who you're talking about. She went carnivore and did gain some weight for the first 6 months and then it came off. She talks about it being part of her body's healing phase.