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FODMAPS
Hey Grant, hopefully you find this.
First off, huge fan, Ive read your full blog and all 3 books, and Im pretty sure your theory is a major part of the health puzzle. Im equally sure that combining Matt Stones metabolism piece, and vitA together, explain a sizeable majority of our health issues in our society.
Ive been on a low vita diet (ranging from 0-5% RDA, usually closer to 0 unless Im craving a fudgsicle or something) for... maybe 2 months now? I lost track. Initially I had MAJOR improvements in my health, followed by random reversions, followed by improvements followed by reversions. It has taken a while to figure out what is clearly going on:
I do not think my health symptoms (of which I have many) are triggered in large part by vitA.... at least not directly. They actually appear to be triggered by FODMAPS, specifically, garlic powder, onion powder, and apple juice. Theres probably a bunch more foods too, but I only know these 3 for sure because I had been using them in sizeable quantities on and off during my vitA free diet, and once I started isolating them, it became incredibly obvious as most of my health problems reverted considerably in a matter of days. Yet I can eat foods with much more vitA than these foods contain with no discernible symptoms. Gluten/wheat is also fine (thank god), despite having issues with other FODMAP foods. So this diet has helped me find my problem Ive suffered from for years, but kind of by accident and not what I was expecting.
With that said, I wanted your opinion on FODMAPS / IBS and more importantly, how to reverse it. My guess is it has something to do with vitA, perhaps thinning the gut lining similar to crohns? Or damaging the pancreas's ability to produce enzymes to break down these types of carbohydrates? Which wouldnt be surprising considering the very stupid, very high vitA, vegan diet I was on for years before coming across Matt Stone. Do you think if I just stick with both low vitA and low FODMAPs long enough, that would be sufficient? I realize this may be somewhat out of your area of expertise, and is at best, speculative, and I dont think any of your writing addressed FODMAPS, but since vitA seems to be connected to pretty much all health problems at least in part, I thought you may have some thoughts. If not on the solution, then at least on the connection to vitA, if any.
Thanks
I have the same issue! I hope he responds!
Something interesting happened to me while trying a low Vitamin A diet...which I have not continued, bc it was just too restrictive. But, I found out that I'm really sensitive to high sulfur foods, and noticed that while eating the low Vitamin A diet, I would eat less sulfur overall. This has had a great impact on my health overall. I basically was eating a high sulfur diet, broccoli, eggs, nuts, onions, etc. Since then, I've cut down on those and noticed a huge difference in how I feel almost immediately. Also, I found info that said that certain foods can make sulfur problems worse, like bananas bc of the b6 content, and certain fruits(pears, apples, raisin, grapes, nuts) that are high in boron can interfere with sulfur metabolism. I'm not saying everyone should cut these things out, just for me it cleared up a lot of issues. It's almost impossible to avoid sulfur...but cutting back has helped me. And I've been wondering if anyone else noticed something similar to that. Just some food for thought.
Hi zerocool - I think it's a recognised problem for some people - associated with certain SNPs & nutrient deficiencies as far as I can remember. We are all different - what is ok for one person is not ok for another. It's the concept of biochemical individuality.
Hi Zak,
I'm sorry, I have no knowledge or insight into the FODMAPS.
One comment though. When I was starting on my diet I tried including Asian Pears. They have no vit. A. However, I had a very significant negative reaction to them. I attributed that reaction to their relatively high formaldehyde content.
Additionally, alcohol dehydrogenase is used in the biosynthesis and breakdown of both retinol and the detoxification of retinoic acid. It is also used in a very similar reaction to deal with alcohol and formaldehyde too. So, depleting local tissue stores of alcohol dehydrogenase may be a causal factor with the FODMAPS since some of them are high in formaldehyde too?
https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/whatsnew/whatsnew_fa/files/formaldehyde.pdf
Please let me know if you uncover more or other information regarding this. Has your health continued to improve?
Bummer. I did do some research on the food Im eating and the formaldehyde content, it didnt seem to correlate at all with symptoms unfortunately.
My health is remarkably better in the 5-6 months since going vitA free. However, I cant necessarily say its all due to the lack of vitA. Turns out I was mildly lactose intolerant too, and I gave up milk due to the vitA. Also, Ive been doing liver flushes, which I think must be flushing out cholesterol bound vitA. My health improvements stalled until I started doing them 2 weeks after vitA free. And after eliminating the fodmap offenders, many symptoms almost instantly got better too.
However, in the month before I found you and went vitA free I was going rapidly downhill, in large part I think because I was unintentionally making food choices that were very high in vitA. Grapefruit juice (which had 33% beta carotene RDA per cup as a frigging food coloring additive), 2% milk with the garbage water bound retinol, and carrot smoothies, to name the worse offenders.