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Is Vitamin A a problem?
How do I determine if vitamin A is a problem for me?
I have Hashimoto’s, have had yellowish hue to my skin ever since childhood, especially visible on the palms of my hands when stretched. My diet always included lots of orange and green vegetables. Then I was on a medically supervised meat only diet that included 400g of liver weekly for 5 months. In the end I started to have daily headaches and stopped this diet. The following diet included 1 duck egg yolk daily for about 5 months, alongside some meat and small quantity of vegetables. The area around my eyes turned yellow and I developed xanthelasma. I also have dried nostrils.
I do not have any symptoms mentioned in the context of vitamin A toxicity. My serum blood test for vitamin A is right in the middle of the range. My moods, energy, skin - all normal.
Try it for a week and see if you're seeing some improvements.
Even though, I'm not really low A anymore, I'm not high either. I still have issues, but nothing serious and I'm choosing a milder approach since it's difficult to match this diet with my current life.
I saw many improvements the first time I tried low A. It seemed to lower inflammation and enable healing. It could also be only the carotenoids that cause problems. That's the case for me.
Beata - I think you’d be wise to give it a try like Sonia suggests. Maybe a bit longer though. It took me a few weeks to really notice something going on. The blood test level can remain steady or even higher (according to Dr. Smith) during detox as your body moves it from tissues towards excretion. He says the level falls-off fast once it finally gets to the edge of the cliff, which I’d assume is different, time-wise, for each according to circumstances. I’ve just about hit my one-year mark and am still seeing slow improvements. At 66 years with plenty of high-VA intake for many of them, I’m happy with the results. Patience is the trick and reading others experiences helps a lot since they can vary so much. The guy in the 58 -day protein detox study on another thread didn’t show classic symptoms. Somehow his liver managed to hold what sounds like a relatively massive amount. I was put-off by Dr. Smith last year for some reason but recently watched all of his videos at Nutrition Restored YouTube channel, which include one’s posted prior to his awareness of Grant’s work and the implications of VA toxicity. He has a very reasonable approach to this subject and a few really good tips since he’s exploring ways to make it easier to get through. His DIY (do it yourself) package is pretty inexpensive and might provide enough detail to make it worth having if you don’t feel that you can navigate a detox on your own. I may get one just to have a peek after spending so much time reading about VA on PubMed. Others here on this blog that I respect have recommended it. Hope you find great benefit if you give it a shot.
Here's a testimonial on overcoming Hashimoto's from Dr. Smith's YouTube channel.
I would say that 3 of your symptoms are ones that I associate with high vit A including headaches, yellow skin and dry nostrils (all part of my struggle)
Thank you All for your replies. I have been “playing” with the low vitamin A diet for a few weeks. Cheese seems to be the one item that messes up my cronometer readings. Otherwise, I am good and ready, and planning to log my journey.
@John Fry, I tried to watch Dr. Smith’s videos. I don’t care much for his style with his incessant metaphors. But yes, there is a plenty of good information there.
Aside from being on this forum, I think that rereading Grant’s book would be a nice way to make my attempts successful.
Quote from Beata on September 9, 2019, 7:32 amThank you All for your replies. I have been “playing” with the low vitamin A diet for a few weeks. Cheese seems to be the one item that messes up my cronometer readings. Otherwise, I am good and ready, and planning to log my journey.
@John Fry, I tried to watch Dr. Smith’s videos. I don’t care much for his style with his incessant metaphors. But yes, there is a plenty of good information there.
Aside from being on this forum, I think that rereading Grant’s book would be a nice way to make my attempts successful.
I hear you on the style thing, I think he could do a much better job communicating. My wife won't even watch 5 minutes so she gets the Cliff's Notes from me - ugghhh, but some tips are worth the effort I guess. He'll get better as the clinical results roll in and he's had more time to figure out how to summarize the essentials, hopefully.
One thing Grant's recent post reminded me to do was review a blood test that I had done right around the time I ran across his work. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it since I was head-long into everything he had written. It's called an IgG ELISA Comprehensive Food Sensitivity Assay. They challenge samples of blood with 154 common foods to see which react, using a scale of zero to four. My 3's and 4's included Beef, Barley, Cheese, Cocoa, Egg, Cow's Milk, Mushrooms, Green Pepper, Pork, White Rice, Strawberry, Tuna, Pinto Beans and Wheat. The 1's and 2's list included a lot of things (22 of them), most of which I previously ate occasionally. But there are also plenty of foods that my blood didn't react to, so now that I'm partially-cleared of VA, I'm going to focus on eating only among the ones that are low VA (49 of those) and see if I can feel a difference. I've been eating a fair amount of beef (a +4 antigen for me), so I'm going to start eating lamb instead. I emailed them to see if they'd add bison to the test, since that's my favorite protein source. I'd like to do the test again sometime after most of my VA symptoms have subsided and see how the VA detox influences food sensitivities. I don't know much about the antigen-antibody thing, but it might be something helpful for VA-toxic people when they're trying to figure out their diet. The testing was done by Immuno Laboratories in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I had them run some additional stuff and they came up +4 on Casein, Egg Whites, and Egg Yolks. I guess some people are not positive for both whites and yolks, but some are, according to their printout. Look forward to reading about your progress.
This is all very interesting, John. Thank you for sharing. Please, keep as posted about your results of eating only the foods that you do not react to.
I am in the UK and getting such a test is a procedure! I think that for now I will follow Grant’s protocol and see where it will take me.
Best wishes.