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Factors influencing likelihood of developing a choline deficiency on a low vA diet
'it would be more useful to carefully explain how those things changed your symptoms and why you think that represents improved elimination of Vitamin A or not.'
I find your posts are inconsistent. I did what you requested above (albeit before you posted it), and now you say 'you can't say this' and 'you can't say that', because I am making assumptions and can't provide scientific evidence. Well I can say it. This is a forum for exchange of experiences and ideas in the hope that people will learn methods to improve their health. Scientific proof matters to me not one jot, only what works to improve health. If it matters to you, I have no problem with that, but please don't expect me to provide proof. Do you really expect me to not mention that pooping bright yellow is a sign of detoxing vit A through the bowel without providing evidence in the form of a liver biopsy and stool analysis? A little unrealistic I think...
'(one confounding variable in every n=1 experiment is time...if you stop eating Vitamin A, then you would expect Vitamin A levels to decline over time regardless of anything else you do, and therefore any change that is interpreted as improvement could simply be due to additional time passing and not to a particular intervention taken during that time period).'
You don't know the timeframe of what I have been doing, so to suggest the above applies to me is pure speculation. I have kept records, so for your interest (and anyone else):
I've been doing the low vitamin A diet for just over 2 years 9 months now.
3 months ago I started taking 1 teaspoon of sunflower lecithin/day.
2 1/2 months ago I upped the lecithin to 2 teaspoons/day, at this point I thought I was taking the RDA for choline, but then I realised I had miscalculated, as I have written about on another thread here, so...
1 month ago I started consuming 4 whole eggs/day.
I don't think my improvements can be attributed just to a timespan of 3 months of vit A detoxification tagged on to the previous 2 1/2 years of of vit A detoxification. As far as I'm concerned, it's the choline that did it.
'it could be that the yellow is actually bile acid and the additional choline and Vitamin A intake from the eggs has caused your liver to dump bile acid into the colon in an effort to avoid further Vitamin A uptake in the small intestines.'
This really makes no sense to me. The primary route for the liver to detoxify fat soluble toxins is in the bile and out through the bowel. This process may be obstructed by an inflamed bowel that may leak bile toxins back into the bloodstream, or by dysbiosis that may deconjugate the bile toxins. But your suggestion that the liver might dump bile acid into the colon to prevent uptake of vitamin A... I've never heard that one before... where did you get that idea from? Show us your evidence.
'I'll say it once more...you all may be correct about choline and/or eggs, but you are presenting some serious speculation as fact, and you are doing it all over this forum constantly these days.'
Please don't hang this tag on me. Nowhere have I said my posts are fact. I just relate my experiences with some explanations in the hope that this information will be of use to some people. Seems to me there are very little 'facts' in health and nutritional science anyway, because we are all different.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on February 4, 2023, 5:29 pmBart Kay was turned into a newt but muscle meat carnivore cured him...that's a lot more impressive than eggs making you feel better. +1 for carnivore
n=1 back at you @wavygravygadzooks
Quote from Inger on February 5, 2023, 1:59 amQuote from wavygravygadzooks on February 4, 2023, 5:29 pmBart Kay was turned into a newt but muscle meat carnivore cured him...that's a lot more impressive than eggs making you feel better. +1 for carnivore
What is a newt? Sorry, my native language is not English
Haha @inger, a newt is a tiny amphibious animal that looks a bit like a tiny lizard. If it's any help, I'm English and I don't know what @wavygravygadzooks is going on about here either...
Quote from sand on February 4, 2023, 8:40 amQuote from Alastair on February 3, 2023, 3:59 pmQuote from sand on February 3, 2023, 1:03 pmQuote from Audrey on February 3, 2023, 10:36 amQuote from salt on February 3, 2023, 9:39 amQuote from Jessica2 on February 3, 2023, 7:51 am@salt What is the proof anyone here has hypervitaminosis A? The only sure way to tell on that is to have a liver biopsy. A lot of what goes on here is theory, backed by evidence in many cases. You can find many studies on my thread "the many benefits of choline" and "bile research" that estimate as many as 80-90% of people on westernized diets may be deficient in choline. It isn't that uncommon, just as we all believe here that high vitamin a intake is quite common and probably detrimental.
I know for sure that Vitamin A has some very negative effects on me because I've experimented with it, both in isolated forms, and in foods. I've experimented with both single doses and exposure over longer periods of time. I've experimented with multiple forms of preformed retinol, and with both pro-vitamin carotenoids and "not VA" carotenoids.
I find it very strange that a large number of posts on this forum are now about eating eggs and other high VA foods like offal. It would be one thing if the recommendation was to take a choline supplement, kinda like how some people think taurine supplements are very helpful, but it seems like all these choline recommendations are all specifically about eating high VA foods, with seemingly not much supporting evidence other than studies saying choline is good for liver disease, and some people reporting feeling better after eating eggs. Well, if you feel better because you have less detox symptoms then that is not necessarily a good thing, it could just be because you're not detoxing VA as much, or not detoxing it at all, anymore. From my own personal experience I know that VA intake stops some unpleasant detox symptoms very quickly, but over time everything falls apart.
I've had to go super slow with the addition of 1-2 eggs because it has actually increased my detox.
And @audrey how do you know it has increased your detox? How do you measure this supposed increased detox versus negative symptoms due to consuming more VA? Have you got any measurements of this increased detox? Thanks for explaining this to me!
Since you asked @sand, it makes you crap bright yellow. For me now, that's every time I go, before it was some of the time. That's the major advantage I have seen with choline replenishment when detoxing vit A- it increases the detox route through the bowel, which is the route that causes the least toxicity. Last summer I had sores breaking out on my legs and micro blisters on the soles of my feet. That's all gone now with choline replenishment. I'm now up to 4 eggs and 2 teaspoons of lecithin a day. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it...
I'm not knocking _it_, I'm knocking the way this information is being presented. There is just so much speculation being put forward as proven facts, or something of high certainty. It is almost religious. Thanks for eggsplaining this to me, though! Interesting about the crapping bright yellow. I had some of that 9-10 months ago, but it stopped. Anyway, how do you know that you no longer get sores and micro blisters because you are detoxing less, because you are adding VA to your diet through eggs?
I'm eating 600g-1kg of meat per day, so I should be crapping radiating yellow if choline was this hero it is being put forward as, but I'm as brown as can be.
@sand, Forgive me for interpreting the statement 'The eggheads have a higher consciousness,' as knocking the information that people have to give here. Seems rather insulting to me.
'There is just so much speculation being put forward as proven facts, or something of high certainty.' Please don't hang that tag on me, I've never said that my posts are facts.
'Anyway, how do you know that you no longer get sores and micro blisters because you are detoxing less, because you are adding VA to your diet through eggs?' You don't seem to have got the gist of what I said- The frequency of me crapping yellow has increased from some of the time to virtually 100% of the time.
'I'm eating 600g-1kg of meat per day, so I should be crapping radiating yellow if choline was this hero it is being put forward as, but I'm as brown as can be.' That's oversimplifying things @sand. Choline isn't the only nutrient required to detox vit A. First, are you consuming the Recommended Daily Amount of choline? At 550mg/day for an adult male, the RDA can be quite difficult to achieve. I don't know what type of meat you are eating, so perhaps you can work it out and post it on here. The highest food source of choline is egg yolks, followed by liver, which is obviously not an option for vit A detoxification.
Second, vitamin A toxicity depletes various nutrients that are required for it's detoxification, among them B1, B2, Folate, B12 and possibly some other B's, choline and Zinc. A deficiency of any one of these nutrients will slow up the detox process. For me, my hair analysis also shows a depletion of boron and (controversial on here!) copper.
We have one experience in common @sand. I've been detoxing vit A now for just over 2 years 9 months. For the first year or so I was crapping yellow virtually all of the time. Then it slowed down in the second year, and I started to go back on some of the benefits. The last 3 months I have been replenishing choline, firstly with sunflower lecithin, and now 4 eggs/day for the last month. My vit A detox has gone up to full bore again. It makes sense to me that choline deficiency was slowing up my detox, because phosphatidyl choline is a major constituent of bile.
If you were pooping yellow and it's stopped, then there are 2 possibilities: either you have finished detoxing vit A, or something is holding up your detox. I don't know how long you have been detoxing vit A, but since it takes many years to deplete a liver full of vit A, then I think it's more likely something that your detox is being held up. If you are following a carnivore diet, then perhaps you need to introduce fibre to kickstart the detox. Have a think about it about it and post your thoughts on here.
I tend to agree with @salt @sand @wavygravygadzooks and @tobias in some ways.
I think how things are worded is important.
I’m also confused about the obsession with eggs. There’s plenty of choline in meat. Not to mention there is a high concentration of preformed vitamin A in eggs? The villain that this entire theory, blog and forum revolves around.
How hard is it to eat less than half a kilo of lean meat over the course of an entire day?
' just like Grant cannot show that it was the removal of Vitamin A from his diet that led to his improvements due to a pile of confounding factors.'
I've seen you make this statement before on here and I find it rather disturbing.
I have the greatest respect and gratitude for @ggenereux2014 for doing all the background work and putting out the information, free of charge, that has enabled me to regain my health. I am also grateful to @andrew-b for putting out the information that's enabled me to take it one stage further.
We are all guests here, at Grant's expense. So when I see you making that statement dissing Grant's work, I find that disrespectful, to say the least. There are no doubt, differences of opinion on this forum as to whether vit A is a vitamin which is toxic at higher doses, or whether it is just an outright poison. But your statement above, which I see as questioning the validity of Grant's work, just makes me wonder why you are on this forum at all.
I'm still curious to hear what "leakiness" means