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Grant's new Diabetes Blog Post
You of course have more real word experience with the 60s than I! I agree with you that carotenoid consumption has gone up but I'm skeptical about retinol intake going up. Butter, CLO and liver consumption was higher back then that it is now from what I've read, at least it was in NZ.
Rates of diabetes have gone through the roof for Maori, Native American and Eskimo populations and their vA intake has gone down significantly from their ancestral diet. The Maori had a very high vA diet, their main plant foods were sweet potato and milk thistle leaves. A staple of their diet was eel which is very high vA. Animal liver consumption was common.
The Irish diet prior to the introduction of the potato didn't just include a lot of dairy, it was dairy based.
If high vA intake was the primary cause of diabetes the human race would have died out long ago.
I don't doubt though that elevated levels of retinoic acid can play a role in the development of diabetes.
@are
I agree that evidence needs to be provided. But it needs to be provided to show that it has increased, not the other way around, the burden of proof lies with those saying it has gone up.
If evidence can be shown that retinol in supplements is being consumed now more than ever and that total vA intake has continuously gone up then I will accept that I'm wrong. I do think carotenoid consumption has gone up as I stated above.
Fish liver oil was a very common supplement in the past, not so much anymore. Fish oil capsules contain no significant vA. Lutein is not vA. People consume much less butter than in the past. Most people these days never consume liver whereas it was more common in the past. There is limited vA food fortification in many countries, these countries are also seeing increased rates of diabetes.
Maybe provitamin A intakes now have resulted in an overall increased intake of vA however:
As I pointed out, Western populations decades ago were already experiencing epidemic levels of Hypervitaminosis A. So it doesn't follow that it is Hypervitaminosis A that is responsible for rapidly increasing rates of diabetes now, why not before?
I'm playing the devil's advocate, it's important to do this to find out the truth.
@tim-2 I think that type 2 diabetes for most people is simply due to excess of calories, obesity, high fructose intake from corn syrup or sugar. High intake of PUFA vegetable oils. Deficiency in key micronutrients like chromium, B vitamins like B1,B2, choline and of course things like stress of modern life style, all kinds of toxins etc. don't help as well.. I think vit A is very low on the list of culprits.. How many people with type 2 diabetes are obese, sedentary people who eat shit, drink, smoke etc..? Maybe even more than 90%?? That alone should tell you why people have type 2 diabetes...
Quote from Orion on August 4, 2020, 12:39 pm@are I think exercise is a really good agitator of VA release, hence feeling bad. But it must be good in the long run, with a low VA diet...
Sweating during exercise or manual labor job under the sun. Will speed up your body, detoxification as well for sure. In comparison with somebody who is sedentary, doesn't move his body, blood, lymph, doesn't sweat etc.. It will be huge difference overtime.. The body is designed to move. Once you sit in front of PC 15 hours a day the body will deteriorate no matter what you eat..
Another thing that impacts the rate at which people become VA toxic is the rate at which they are able to metabolise and excrete it. It's not just the amount coming in but also the amount going out.
The amount of prescription drugs that people are taking. How has that changed since the 60's? Even if the amount of VA in the diet is the same, if people's ability to eliminate it from their bodies has diminished they are still going to become more VA toxic.
Then there is the whole glyphosate issue. If glyphosate impedes our ability to eliminate VA, you have a similar effect to the pharmaceutical drugs.
How has VA in fortified foods changed?
Increase in vaccination schedules?
There are so many factors that play into the accumulation of VA in our bodies.
@rachel I think that most people who have type 2 diabetes have still low vit A diet.. They eat mostly low quality foods where the majority of calories comes from flour, sugar or some type of glucose/fructose syrups and refined vegetable oils.. They don't eat much vegetables, fruits high in vit A let alone animal sources like liver... So I think this "I see vit A behind every health issue there is" thinking is irrational. But I agree with you. I would say it is more related for people who are "trying to eat healthy" like us.. Not obese people with diabetes eating donuts, chips and coca cola...
N=1
Vitamin A toxicity made me fat. I was always a slim girl & younger adult.
When I became very toxic in summer 2018 my fasting blood sugar shot up. (It was a coincidence that I was doing a blood sugar experiment that coincided with me poisoning myself with vA supplements).
My other very vA toxic time 2013-14 was when I was taking an SSRI & got stiff finger joints & decided to supplement with high strength cod liver oil (good plan - not). Put on a shed load of weight. Didn’t feel great. Thought it was the SSRI but probably the combination. Too much vA in & not enough vA out. Don’t know my blood sugar level from this time.
I also think that another thing that has changed is STRESS. I think that this has a massive effect on many things including vA metabolism. At the most basic level when we are in flight or fight our liver detoxification doesn’t work optimally. Many mechanisms going on.
Therefore in conclusion for my N=1 vitamin A toxicity correlates with a move into prediabetes. I increased intake & decreased metabolism so I can’t separate these two factors. I think it’s probably a combination for everyone. A simple equation. We’ve definitely made it much harder to metabolise vitamin A & get it out of the body.
My 2 plans for improved health are reduce stress & reduce vA. I think that these are interlinked & fundamentals. Reducing vA includes reducing sugar, alcohol & increasing fibre.
Quote from Arena on August 5, 2020, 1:31 am@tim-2 great answer, and I agree, it is important to play the devil’s advocate:) I suspected you were doing this, but I was not sure, since you said it so strongly that it has not gone up. Personally, I’m not sure the reasoning provided in this thread that it has not gone up is sufficient evidence for this fact, and I recognize that the same is true for my own naive reasoning, so it would be interesting to see what Grant says about it 🙂
I didn’t intend to imply that vA is the ONLY driver behind the diabetes epidemic, Rather, just that it’s probably the major one. Of course, diabetes, as with so many other diseases, is multifactorial. But, clearly something has gone drastically wrong with human health. So, I was asking people to start tracking the A1C and blood glucose levels to see what happens to it on a low vA diet. Let’s see what happens in the real world.
Also, there’s no question that vA consumption has significantly gone up since the 1960s. It started going up even in the early 1950s.
In the US vA has been supplemented in low fat dairy since the 1970s, and is added to many bread flours and breakfast cereals. In Canada, in addition to adding it to low fat dairy, we’ve fished the once great East Coast Cod fishery to near extinction, and sold the cod livers and cod liver oil to unsuspecting consumers as a “health food”. Fruits and vegetables are no longer seasonal, rather we eat them year round. Then, vA is added to sugar and MSG in many countries of South America, and SouthEast Asia. The WHO is running vA supplementation programs in ~ 100 countries, and promoting the hell out of sweet potato consumption too.
Dr OZ is promoting red palm oil as healthy cooking oil, and telling his huge viewing audience to take a multivitamin daily. Somewhat likewise, for the WAPF and other health influencers. Hoffmann-La Roche has a big factory in China producing RA, obviously someone is consuming that product. So, there’s been a huge uptake in vA worldwide since the 1970s.
People are not supposed to be this sick, and it is completely abnormal in our history for this many people to have chronic diseases. Something is causing it to happen. Then add in the pancreatic stem cell kill off, mitochondria damage and defective proteins vA causes, I think it’s a pretty good bet that vA is a major cause, if not the primary one, of diabetes.
But, we now have an opportunity to find out. If we get enough n=1s, it will add up.
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Dr. Oz annoys me greatly. 😑 AHEM, MOVING ON—awesome post, thanks Grant! 😃 It’s super shareable, so hopefully it will inspire people with diabetes to give this a try.
I wish I had gotten a blood glucose monitor at the start of this process... All I can say anecdotally is that my PCOS symptoms (which apparently can be related to insulin issues) are reversing, and my obesity has already completely reversed at the 1.5 year mark.
In addition to depleting zinc, it’s possible vitamin A toxicity may negatively affect magnesium levels, which is a cofactor of thiamine:
Garrett Smith on Magnesium Depletion by Vitamin A
https://nutritionrestored.com/2020/07/27/magnesium-depleted-by-vitamin-a/
Dr. Lonsdale on Thiamine and Epigenetics
https://www.hormonesmatter.com/thiamine-epigenetics-traveling-enzymes/
Elliot Overton on Diabetes and Thiamine Deficiency
https://youtu.be/m3DopqTz1Q4
It does seem reasonable vitamin A toxicity could be the primary cause of diabetes.
Quote from Jiří on August 5, 2020, 1:17 am@rachel I think that most people who have type 2 diabetes have still low vit A diet.. They eat mostly low quality foods where the majority of calories comes from flour, sugar or some type of glucose/fructose syrups and refined vegetable oils.. They don't eat much vegetables, fruits high in vit A let alone animal sources like liver... So I think this "I see vit A behind every health issue there is" thinking is irrational. But I agree with you. I would say it is more related for people who are "trying to eat healthy" like us.. Not obese people with diabetes eating donuts, chips and coca cola...
In America at least, the standard junk food diet contains vitamin A. Breakfast is almost always retinyl-palmitate-fortified boxed cereal and milk, sometimes with eggs and bacon and toast. Lunch usually contains dairy—a sandwich with cheese, a yogurt cup—and so does supper, which is typically cheap frozen pizza or lasagna, or an easy pasta dish involving cheese or tomato sauce, with ice cream for dessert.
Still, it is pretty telling that my health improved overall when I got obese from eating a no-vegetable, high-calorie diet containing donuts, chips, and soda after a decade of “healthy” whole food eating and strict sugar avoidance. Caloric restriction is harmful and makes it difficult for the body to detoxify itself regardless of the vitamin A intake in the diet, so there’s that factor, too.
But I still eat chips and drink sugared beverages, and have done so while reversing the warning signs of pre-diabetes. Not saying those sorts of junk foods are “good for you” (of course not—and they’re usually contaminated with glyphosate, too), but to me foods high in vitamin A seem way more dangerous.
@puddleduck even with the diet you just described it is not even close to the level of vit A you will get on something like paleo diet...