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How bad is chocolate
On this Vit A detox I seem to get hit like a ton of bricks by the excess retinol floating around where I have extreme symptoms where I can't function at all and it feels like damage is being done to my body.
I also don't feel like eating meat at all when this happens and when i force myself to it doesn't even help, minerals (magnesium, zinc , potassium), binder, soluble fiber also don't help in these situations
The only thing that helps is milk chocolate and I do eat a large amount of it 1-2 100g bars and I instantly feel so much better and relieved and it seems to feel like I excrete vit a in urine and stools from taking the chocolate.
I've read that stearic acid and palmatic acid found in chocolate bind to vitamin a to create retinol esters which are harmful and sends it back to the liver, do you think this is the reason I feel better or do you think it's helping me with excretion. I'm also a skinny guy so I need fat it seems.
My thoughts are also fats provide energy to the mitochondria, and I do suffer from aspergers, so with the excess retinol floating around maybe my mitochondria can't function properly.
When I eat too much chickpeas for the soluble fiber they fatigue me massively and I get bad joint pain. So I need to find some new food options as eating just beans/chickpeas and meat I really feel like death and have 0 energy to do anything.
thanks
I can't figure out what exactly is going on based on what you've provided so far, but I will tell you that my experience has also been that once detox started it seemed like nothing I did would really slow it down. Everything that supposedly "helps detox" just made my symptoms worse. The more meat, B vitamins, and saturated fat I ate, the worse my symptoms were. Binders and fiber just made things more miserable, especially in my GI tract.
Having kept a symptom log throughout my detox, the one thing I might suggest trying if you really do want to slow things down is eating fructose. The chocolate might make you feel better because of the sugar in it (sucrose is half glucose, half fructose). You could experiment with honey and see if it has the same effect.
I personally think that animal fat is more likely to help detox than hinder it.
@alexm Very interesting! Also, one of the things that chocolate does is give you "feel good hormones". I've heard it said that these hormones act as a key in a lock of your immune system.
And magnesium, which also seems to be important.
I eat one or two teaspoons of cocoa a day (in milk). Cocoa doesn't have the fats you are suggesting are helping you, but my nice raw milk would. I look forward to it.
One thing I notice is that when I eat it cocoa it changes the stool color. There are obviously pigments in cocoa--for good or bad.
You can easily google "anti-aging and chocolate" and find all sorts of you know, semi scientific "proof" that chocolate is good for you, but no real explanation hahaha.... They say it is good for the skin, that it is good for the blood vessels. Theobroma Cacao is the botanical name, and theobroma is Greek for "food of the gods".
Ourania has posted (along with others if I remember properly) that a little bit of alcohol will also seem to stop the bad VA symptoms. I agree. Now, in this case I think it's because alcohol is processed on the same pathway. Does it help clear the pathway, or does it just stop detox. I dunno. I feel the same way you do, though, that little bit of alcohol seems to lead to more bad stuff coming out in the urine. Perhaps there is something in chocolate that comes down the same pathway.
Cocoa is always compared with red wine for its supposed anti-oxidant effects. Red wine is another thing I crave. And red berries in general. I can give up orange veggies all day long, but have a hard time passing my raspberry bush.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4335269/
This might be a good article for those of us fluent in study-ese.
"The relevance of theobromine for the beneficial effects of cocoa consumption"
I have had the opposite experience: chocolate has at times (while delicious) caused me to feel so terrible that I now avoid it like the plague. 🙁 I was told that it is very high in copper, plus things that can compound a high-copper state. I don't know if that's why it made me feel terrible...but perhaps you are one of the few who are deficient in copper? Or...I have also heard of people being copper-toxic and having paradoxical reactions (so maybe you ARE high in copper, and the chocolate is actually bad in the long-term but gives a temporary high in the short term?)
Just some thoughts. 🙂 Definitely no answers, sorry!
My reply is my testimony.
Some weeks ago, I was here posting something alike. Some answers I received were not to make me very happy: "my previous carnivore years impaired my carbs metabolism" and other things I don't remember now and I don't think it's worth it to search for them. So I subscribed Dr. G. Smith's LYL network to learn how to diet low vA and get "out the hole I was in" and to my surprise without the sacrifice of eating the same everyday (there are some lists of foods you can eat and others you can not, and the reason why). I found also some information about mineral supplementation and even alternative solutions explained in a pretty understandable way.
Now I recovered my energy and my old father is free from his pain in his legs. I'm eating a very enjoyable diet. My metabolism was not broken, neither yours.
Being addicted to chocolate may be a drug effect from copper toxicity because chocolate is rich in copper. Maybe you have copper toxicity. Go and join LYL network and stop suffering! And the community is fantastic.
Don't pay much attention to those here who seem to know about science: they are here acknowledging they are sick despite they claim to know so much about nutrition. They are lost.
I feel sorry for Grant: a great man whose blog's forum is taken over by some trolls (something I'm glad Dr. Smith will never allow). My gratitude to Grant and Garret; their work has given me back my health and well being.
Thank you all.
If you don't want to eat meats and you crave sugar and things like chocolate it tells me that you are pushing your adrenals too much.. I would say eating chocolate is ok if you are not running into adrenal fatigue. If you have good zinc, protein(meat) intake and you simply like chocolate.. But most people want to eat chocolate becase it gives his body "energy kick" but that copper, stimulants in cocoa and sugar will deplete adrenals more and more.. What most people need to do is relax, keep stress low and eat some good meat with some starches.. In my worst time during adrenal fatigue/copper toxicity I was chocolate maniac..
@javier I've been on the LYL network for a few weeks and followed all the advice on diet and supplements and it hasn't helped me improve on this Vit A detox, the chocolate I use is milk chocolate so it's not that high in copper compared to dark chocolate, I tried most of the fats suggested on the network and they don't work for me, they all just inflame my gallbladder. I only use the milk chocolate when symptoms get t0o much to handle. The Low Vit A diet seems to be causing me a lot of issues itself, eg: iron overload, lack of calcium. And it wrecks havoc on my body where it feels like damage is being done which is concerning.
If it was copper I craved I would be craving cashew nut butter which is high in copper and thats also a fat I tolerate, but since this Vit A detox it smells horrible to me, I also tried it once on the detox and it caused yellow hands and neuropathy, the chocolate doesn't give me yellow hands which is a better sign. I'm certainly not addicted to chocolate.
Milk chocolate works for me because it is fast digesting from the fat combined and sugar, low in fiber so it doesn't get brought much into the gallbladder to inflame it (high fiber fats cause issues like certain nuts), palmatic acids are enhancers of glutathione S-transferase, an important enzyme in the liver, high in saturated fats which help the mitochondria make energy, good source of calcium (the Vit A detox seems to be making me deficient in bioavaliable calcium - My teeth enamel is getting destroyed and hair falls out when I have a certain amount of magnesium which isnt that much, teeth also hurt and become sensitive when I take magnesium) I'm an under type so i need fats, the zinc and iron from the diet and supplements also seem to increase my need for copper and my diet, and yes it probably slows down the detox which seems to be damaging my body massively.
Yes thanks I should keep a diary, but this whole Vit A detox has ruined my month and my health and seems to be doing damage to my body, I want to find a way to return to how I was before I started the detox, where I felt and functioned a lot better but now I don't seem to tolerate many foods than I did before this detox specifically the Vitamin A ones.
I think with the chocolate its more the type of fat, calcium, caffeine, amount of fiber that helps me than the sugar as I have tried fruits and they don't help me much at all with this Vit A detox, in fact a lot of types of fruits and honey seem to be inflammatory to my gallbladder.