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Eggs as part of Vitamin A reduction
Quote from tim on April 25, 2024, 8:00 amK1 metabolizes into K2 MK4 and other menaquinones.
Last year I did a deep dive on the studies.
What I found was shocking.
The way that K2 deficiency is determined by looking at under carboxylated osteocalcin is problematic.
Last year I realised that the hyped up concerns about vitamin D and K2 deficiencies are based on problematic science and reasoning.
I'm not going to explain it all here but I now don't see as much need to worry about K2 intake (in a balanced omnivorous diet) aka Price's Activator X. K1 may even be enough.
I also see less need to worry about how much UVB is in sunlight. The benefits of getting lots of sunlight are not primarily to do with vitamin D IMO. I think vitamin D deficiency rates are low.
If you look at the two most important foods Price said were emphasized for pregnant women, eggs and fish eggs what are they especially rich in? It's not K2, it's not DHA, it's not iodine or selenium. All these micronutrients add to the nutritional value of these foods but these foods are especially high in choline.
I saw that too about under carboxylated osteocalcin. Yeah I was so indoctrinated about K2 but even still I never felt it was safe to consume excess amounts. It would take me yrs to get through a bottle. I will say that it does make the saliva healthier. I would have less plaque after using it. I am someone that forms tartar easily, the dentist said that could be a good thing that my saliva has enough calcium for repairing enamel. But I had a lot of cavities due to the Ray Peat diet, too much OJ and sugar despite higher vitamin K2 levels.Â
That's interesting you think it could be the choline in the eggs. It makes sense to me.Â
@jessica2 of course there are other mechanisms for gaining weight. You asked what is the cause of so many fat people today and I said the main reasons are calorie excess and inactivity, but that doesn't mean that some people don't get fat from some drug use etc.. I have no idea why you gained 50 lb. But to point at carbs as the main reason is just laughable sorry.. High carb low fat vegans are all skin and bones. What was your fat intake when you gained 50 lb?
Let's say two people embark on a low VA diet and one is stressed and the other isn't. Â Â
I can totally see how your body might relegate detoxification of VA to times without stress, and that stress times are just about more essential things like fighting the dragon. Â Â
Perhaps detox of VA can only happen when the body isn't in flight/fight/freeze mode.  I suppose that is Inger's idea, eh?  And  maybe Jenny too.  And Jiri!
In farming you do see that there is a difference between the young and the old chickens on the inside. Â Â More of the second photo. Â Â Perhaps life is always going to be somewhat stressful, and of course there is going to be VA.
Is visceral fat the storage space for VA that is scheduled to move at a quieter time?
@jessica2, I'm a little confused by your diet timeline: it sounds like your wight gain started while you were eating low carb, just like you do now. Or am I missing something?
Quote from tim on April 24, 2024, 7:26 pmWith liver dysfunction it's common for B vitamin pathways to be affected alongside a whole lot of other physiology.
So say an enzyme involved in thiamine metabolism like transketolase is affected. A deficiency could exist despite a normally sufficient intake of thiamin. Mega doses of thiamine may improve thiamine status while it is being taken but the liver dysfunction and the causes of it will not have been addressed.
Often other deficiencies will be present such as riboflavin, magnesium, choline, folate and B12. Why megadose with just one cofactor?
It makes far more sense to take low dose B complex (without pyridoxine and folic acid) for liver support temporarily, especially if one can't eat foods high in B vitamins like legumes. But even that can cause issues for some. I'm growing increasingly skeptical about even that let alone megadoses of one B vitamin.
People often perceive benefits from supplements that are actually harming them. An example is iodine supplementation. Iodine supplementation often causes so much harm but there are thousands that passionately advocate for it.
Well sure, if you get results, and understand what is going on physiologically, then that is great, and more power to you if you can figure out a supplement plan that imitates lower doses you might get from food, includes as many cofactors as necessary, and addresses a specific problem. If a b complex had solved my or my family member's issues that in this case were addressed by B1, that would have been wonderful, and I don't doubt that some adverse consequence(s) may have been sustained by two months of high dose thiamine (for example). But in the case of high dose thiamine (as opposed to many other things I've tried over the years), it worked, where a b complex never did, and the benefits still remain (indicating long term good effects rather than damage) a year and a half later.
It is a major challenge for me to come up with new tweaks that I haven't tried, which is why I am always slightly on the lookout for people's anecdotes, and when I hear something like, "manganese supplementation often dramatically helps ligament laxity and associated symptoms," my ears perk up. Maybe Chris M is right, and its a terrible idea. But so far, many years of nutritious and balanced eating hasn't helped this issue, some of the associated symptoms are increasingly bad (a teenager should not have collagen issues such that severely diminished gums and early tooth loss is at stake, for example), and I'm looking for anyone else with _proactive_ ideas: what did you try that solved the root cause of this, or offered symptomatic relief in the short and long term _even if mechanisms are poorly understood_? I don't want to damage anything with scattershot supps...AND I am not convinced that doing nothing but eating a balanced diet, which we've tried to do now for nearly five years of low- to now-moderate-vitamin A, is enough.
In the case of B12 supplementation with myself, for entirely other reasons, I don't doubt that absorption and/or processing is not going well - it obviously isn't. But after all these years I also have few remaining ideas, even if I identified "reduced intrinsic factor in the gut due to decades of malnourishment as a vegetarian" or "impaired liver function due to excessive vitamin A and terrible horrible CLO" or anything else as a cause. As @Jessica2 noted, sometimes short term relief is necessary, and it's impossible to know exactly whether ones diet is nutritious enough to cause, in time, enough healing to prevent major damage from occurring right now, from still remaining issues. What nutrients are absent or overabundant in our diets? In the end, we can only hope to approximately guess, plus attempt to steer clear of any major irritants that still negatively impact the system _even if ideally they didn't_ and _even if they are great for most others_, like @Puddleduck has written about in her thread concerning eggs etc.
What do folks think about iodized salt if one can't or doesn't eat seafood or dairy?
Has anyone got specific ideas for what a person should do in the short and longterm for gastro issues and weight gain??
What in the world to do for gum problems not having to do with oral hygiene, plus ligament laxity???
What else, besides avoiding excessive plant toxins and vitamin A and attempting sufficiency in good fats, proteins, carbs/fiber/etc. and B vitamins, can help our livers heal, preferably (especially for our children) well in advance of our old age????
These are some relevant questions, in my personal experience and opinion while reading through this thread. 🙂
@jessica2 and how do you know that you were not eating excess of calories. It takes 200-300kcal extra every day and you will gain weight. You need to realize that mixed diet is highly palatable and it is very easy to eat a lot of food.. High fat/keto is exact opposite. It slows down metabolism and shuts down hunger. That is the main reason why you can easily lose weight on keto. I think your calorie intake was simply too high... I never counted calories directly, but I always knew how much carbs, protein and fat I was eating so I was manipulating my calorie intake by keeping fat lower, protein constant around 2-3g per kg of body weight and I was manipulating carbs to match my needs. It is called carb cycling.. Again you need to realize that human body is designed to move. If you don't use your body, your muscles nothing will work. You will not deplete glycogen in the muscles, you will have horrible insulin sensitivity etc.. If you do what is natural which is be outside and do stuff not sitting all day. You don't have to worry about carbs at all. That's why it worked and is working for so many people who have carb based diet.. If you don't want to move your body than I guess keto diet is better option.. I say it all the time even for people who can't move because they are in hospital or something. For them is lower carb good idea, but that doesn't mean you can eat 1kg of bacon every day. You need to cut calories overall if you don't have any expenditure... The problem is people now like to eat because they are bored and they want to do nothing at the same time.. That is not healthy life style.. Simply move your body=you can eat almost whatever you want..
Quote from Jessica2 on April 25, 2024, 12:24 pm@sarabeth-matilsky that is correct. It did happen on keto after I began cod liver oil again. I had been taking breaks in the times in my life I would have it. I was on a second or third bottle after being off it for a couple years.Â
The bulk of the weight was then. After going low A, I gained at least 10-20 more.Â
Now, Janelle could be right and perhaps the extra weight was keto induced insulin resistance. This is a possibility I consider. I did change my diet thinking that keto was flawed and had possibly caused me liver damage, that the starches would help because they are low A and a source of glucose.Â
But, after the year and a half of eating this new way, albeit I did add dairy and eggs, again, just kept packing on the puffiness and pounds. Was my metabolism so messed up that I had to endure this? I was in extra large sizes for the first time ever in my life. Nothing fit me.
If this is the case, I suppose my current carnivore diet will backfire on me soon and I'll start gaining weight again.Â
I think though, that the cod liver is what messed up my metabolism really really bad. I don't know if its the VA, or the oxidized rancidity of its PUFAs. After a year and a half of weight creep I wondered if I was possibly blaming keto for something a highly refined poison (CLO) had done. Perhaps I gave up too early than anyone here would advise. But there was no way I was going gain more and try to make myself believe this was working for me. I was fat and tired and uncomfortable in my own skin.
I don't have any blood sugar labs from this period unfortunately. It would have been nice to know if I was having issues there. I've read though not searched extensively for data, that CLO can cause insulin resistance and raised blood sugars.Â
I still think it was insulin resistance. @bella was on carnivore for a while and took a class where she learned how to reintroduce carbs, that would probably have to happen in cases like these. She can now eat carbs. Maybe she can share how she figured out macros without causing problems.Â
@Jessica2, feel free to disregard this because I have no studies to back up my ideas, just thinking aloud.
When you say that you were low carb when you began to gain weight, and are still low carb now, it reminds me of when I stopped being vegetarian (that was a good idea!), started GAPS (it was a good idea!), and then kept doing GAPS for many, many years (yes, there were some improvements, but was it a good idea to keep doing it...and doing it...and doing it even when those improvements were no longer forthcoming and then keep going for YEARS more?). I wonder if for a variety of reasons that may never be apparent, OR because of certain things you do know (CLO), your hormones and fat storage got messed up (whose aren't these days??! But then unfortunately some of us gain weight or get super depressed or), and whatever detox happened when you went low A in addition was just not sustainable for your current low-carb approach.
I could be totally wrong that you need more starch (I'm definitely not advocating for shitty processed carbs or even much in the way of added natural sugars), but when I crashed super hard while continuing to be very low carb, and I added starch back in to very good effect, I learned about many other women who had encountered similar problems on low carb diets. Do some of us have a microbiome that just really retains our Forager ancestry? Maybe women really did eat more carbs than men, way back when, anyway. And, maybe it's true that women's thyroid and other hormones also need more starch/carbs. In any case, reading about your annoying trials and tribulations reminded me of this guy:
He had a blog for awhile, and I found his curiosity and non dogmatic approach and theories compelling, even though I wasn't seeking weight loss, not to mention his radical experimentation that yet utilized a whole food rather than pills. I think you're totally on to something with the reminder that it's NOT all calories in/calories out, even though at the same time calories matter hugely, and Steele takes it further by investigating how specifically starch-rich diets composed entirely of potatoes (just temporarily! As a bridge to weight loss and a gradually balanced diet) can jumpstart a person's metabolism in fascinating ways.
Anyway, maybe he's full of BS, but I have always thought as therapeutic protocols go, his is a fascinating one.