Quote from Ourania on September 23, 2020, 7:31 am

We also had the rage, but did not take inositol.

Quote from puddleduck on September 23, 2020, 5:52 pm

I used to have rage episodes also, but thankfully it was some years ago now.

I realize you asked about the form/dose I was taking on my log, and I never replied, but I think you already have figured it out yourself. 😝 You have a better supplement, too! I just take the Now brand powder (myo-inositol), 3/4 teaspoon daily (2190 mg). I do expect it has helped with my hormones, based on the research on it, but some of the improvements could be due to the dietary factors as well. It’s hard to know for sure!

I think it is wonderful you’re eating so well, btw. 🙂 Everything you’re doing has gotta help (especially if that sleep cycle is improving) given enough time. 👍

Quote from lil chick on September 24, 2020, 5:36 am

Puddleduck mentions her fave online expert, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but I like "the work" which is a little technique by Byron Katie.  You can watch people on youtube go through "the work" with her.  I don't think you should get too attached to it or think of her as an guru or anything.  But the technique allows your brain to let go when it is holding on too tightly.  It helps you breathe a sigh of relief.  At least from the emotional end of psychological things.   It helps you to embrace what is.

Quote from leap7 on September 27, 2020, 3:44 am

@puddleduck I think it definitely could have been from the inositol, but I am not sure. I got rage/irritable when I started taking allithiamine and a b complex vitamin. The rage went away after about a week(?) of taking the vitamins, and the same has happened with inositol I think. 

@lil-chick thank you! That sounds interesting, I will check it out. 

Quote from leap7 on November 20, 2020, 2:27 am

My 10.5 month update. A few things:

I have been having issues with my left wrist since around month 8. I put a lot of weight on my wrists in my training, and started to feel pain in my left wrist to where it became painful to bear weight on it. There have been two times when I felt my wrist "pop" and then I was unable to put weight on it for the rest of the day. I have never really had this happen before, but I have been training more intensely and regularly than I have before, so it could have nothing to do with the diet. I tried eggshell calcium after my wrist "popped" and I think that helped me recover my normal ability to bear weight on my wrist. However, one day, when I was taking eggshell calcium, I felt a bit of strain in my wrists and hands, felt some nerves(?)/muscles pop, and then shortly after noticed bruising near the knuckles of my fingers in both hands. This was really concerning to me. I've never been someone to bruise easily, and I never actually had direct trauma to the outside to my hand. 

I stopped taking eggshell calcium not only because of that incident, but also because when I started regularly taking eggshell calcium, the nosebleeds that came during my period (that I thought were in remission) came back in full force. This makes me think that the calcium was affecting my blood vessels or pressure. So I've stopped taking it. 

I experimented with 0% fat greek yogurt to help with my wrist. I really think it has helped my wrist feel more solid on days when I consume it. However - when I first introduced it, it significantly altered my headspace. I felt very sedated, didn't feel like doing anything productive, and didn't feel like doing things I normally enjoy. Granted, I did eat a lot of dairy those first few days. I think I went through a whole tub in about 2-3 days, for the sake of the experiment. The first day my digestion was fine, but the third day or so the dairy really caught up with me and gave me diarrhea. Since I have felt it help with my wrist, I have been having about a cup around my training days. But I think the effect of even this small amount affects my mental state the day after and even my blood sugar. Also, it seems like people are divided on whether nonfat unfortified dairy has any retinoic acid. If anyone has any more info/experience to share that would be helpful. 

Sleep schedule still not good. I did manage a few days of good sleep (like 11pm - 8am) when I made sure to eat beans for each meal, and made sure to have a lot of nuts. Like Karen Hurd's bean protocol, but I allowed myself to eat fruit. However, I reverted back to my bad sleep schedule despite keeping the same diet. I think I have noticed that B vitamins help my sleep schedule. I also think blood sugar regulation plays a role. Times when I've had a normal sleep schedule were when I was only eating 1200-1500 calories worth of fruit on a raw vegan diet and when the first few months or so of eating a starch free Peat diet. I think I will start an experiment of cutting out fruit and processed sugars. This has always been hard for me in the past because I've always craved sugar. However, I think lemon water helps curb these cravings, so I'll see what I can do. 

Miscellaneous positives:

The accessory nail on my right pinky toe is almost all gone. The one on my left pinky toe is still there though, but it looks better. 

I'm less prone to rage/anger now. However, I do feel that taking B3 and B2 after not having taking both for a while makes me prone to anger. 

Mental stamina has improved. Less days of complete fatigue (unless I'm having dairy). 

Negatives:

So, around month 5 or so I had a sunspot/freckle thing pop up on my nose. I tried to remove it with a wart remover acid and ACV. I left the ACV on overnight with a cotton ball, burned off my skin (on accident), and was left with a small scar. (at least the freckle thing was gone. lol). The scar is still noticeable, and now I believe the same sunspot is growing back! I didn't wear any sunscreen this summer, even when getting sun, so maybe this is all fair game. However, there have been other times when I've not been careful with sunscreen before, and didn't get any sunspots. A few years ago, when I was on the carnivore diet, I went to Hawaii for a week, stayed out in the hottest times of the day with no sunscreen, and didn't even get sunburnt, nonetheless any sunspots. 

Since the last update, I had one menstrual cycle that was my usual 38 days, but this cycle, I had significant spotting around day 30 and am still waiting for my actual period... It's day 39 now. 

Also, does anyone have strong opinions on wisdom teeth removal? I had braces when I was younger and all my teeth are straight but my wisdom teeth are impacted. They only bother me very occasionally. However, I've been wondering if it's my wisdom teeth that are causing all the tension in my jaw... 

Muscle knots still present in my back and jaw. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you don't think I'm too crazy. I really enjoy hearing everyone's thoughts and would really appreciate if anyone had any input/advice. Thanks. 

Quote from leap7 on January 18, 2021, 7:01 am

It's been a year for me on the low vit A diet. 

Things that have improved for me: 

• accessory nail on right pinky toe is pretty much gone. The one on the left is still there but I believe it is smaller than it was before. 
• new hair growth seems sleeker. My old hair looked kind of "fried" despite not putting any heat to it
• mental clarity - more resilient, more ambitious, more creative

Things I still want to improve:

• really messed up sleep schedule
• persistent muscle knots. 
• occasional joint issues (wrist)
• focus issues? 

Some notes: 

I think I might have solved my joint issues by cutting out gluten. I've cut out gluten for a few weeks now and I no longer have issues with my wrist. I also noticed gluten can mess up my sleep (more below)

I also tried out the Transfer Point beta glucan supplements. These pretty much stopped my allergies! I'm really not sure if they're allergies or just colds that I am really prone to. Because beta glucan is supposed to be an immune booster, this makes me think my immune system is messed up. After a few days the beta glucan seemed to fix my sleep schedule, but it only worked once I cut out gluten. I went from falling asleep at 6 am, waking up at 2/3 pm to sleeping around 11pm or 12am and waking at 7 or 8 am. I then went off beta glucan and my allergies came back and my sleep schedule went back to being terrible. I'm now trying to regain that perfect sleep schedule by retaking the beta glucan, but it hasn't come back so far. It feels like sometimes my body is resistant to getting better! This pattern with supplements has happened a few times  for me it seems - for example, my sleep improved for a few day on biotin, but then it returned to being bad despite continuing to supplement. 

As for the muscle knots, the low vit a diet helped me identify that the bulkiness in my jaw is actually from muscle knots. It is only on the low vit a diet that I have been able to release them - they would either release by themselves or with some manual pressure. However, soon after releasing them, they go back to being knotted like after a day or two. So, it seems my body is really prone to making knots in my jaw, and I'm not sure why - perhaps a metabolic issue? I also have persistent knots in my back, but I accept those more because they could be caused by training. I'm thinking about "dry needling" myself with an acupuncture needle to help me release the knots because they'll go weeks without releasing, even with manual pressure. I can't go see a physiotherapist because of complications with covid and everything. Does anyone have any experience doing this? 

As for focus issues, I think I had really good focus as a young kid, but once I got to middle school... things kind of went downhill.. I had really bad focus issues on Ray Peat diet, but also had really bad focus and motivation issues during my initial detox phase in the first few months of low vit a, where I would spend some days essentially doing nothing but lie on my bed and watch tv. I now think lutein had something to do with that, since I was having lentils then. What I mean by focus issues is that I'll do some work for 5 minutes, 10 minutes at most, and then feel a strong urge to just stop and get on my phone. Maybe this is phone addiction, but the idea of setting aside my phone for a few hours is difficult for me, and when I have tried setting my phone aside, I always slip back into old habits. When I "lock away" my phone and brute force myself to focus, I always end up tired and "relapsing" by spending a bunch of time just on my phone doing nothing. So, I'm pretty sure I don't have ADD (maybe) but this inability to focus on work results in a lot of stressful situations, and seems unhealthy. 

Quote from Orion on January 18, 2021, 7:36 am

@leap7 I find foam rolling very very helpful in releasing the knots or tension build-up.  I do it 10-15mins each day, all over the body.  But I guess this would be hard to perform on the jaw.

Quote from leap7 on January 21, 2021, 7:18 pm

@orion I've been thinking about getting a foam roller! I've tried rolling out with tennis balls with no success. 

Quote from leap7 on March 8, 2021, 1:56 am

Major update here. 

In the past week or so I have become convinced to stop this low A diet.

Ailments that I have had for a while since being on the detox: 

- extreme delayed sleep phase disorder (to be fair, I had this before detox too. But the detox really didn't do anything long term to help it)

- Irregular menstrual cycle. I started spotting in between periods which is something that never used to happen to me normally. When I started this detox, the time between my periods started to lengthen. It came about every 42 days, or even later, which is very irregular. 

-The pop up of freckles/dark spots on my face. After puberty these never popped up for me. 

- It's my impression that cuts and wounds, although "healed", healed with more scarring than they would have before the diet. 

- Nails grew thinner and slightly ridged. I originally thought this was okay when I first started, but now realize that they are unhealthily thin. 

- allergies. Every few days. I thought it was a good sign of my immune system being active, but these allergies were relentless, made me suffer, and really decreased my quality of life. 

I tolerated these symptoms, chalked them up to "detox", but these more severe/alarming symptoms popped up recently, like in the past month. 

- haven't had a period for 70 days. I have not gone this long without a period since puberty 

- small white spot on my nail

- TMJ in my right jaw. I have NEVER had TMJ before. TMJ has not gone away yet. It's been like a week. It's so bad that I hear grinding when I open and close my jaw 

- lymph node swollen hard as a rock underneath my jaw

- warts that grew on my knuckles. at first I thought these were calcium deposits -> arthritis, and I freaked out. But now I think that they are these: https://dermnetnz.org/topics/knuckle-pads/ essentially a sign of bad immune function/hypothyroidism/systemic disease. 

- suicidal thoughts, seemingly out of nowhere, would hit me in the middle of the night. Feelings of extreme depression and malaise. 

- my face seemed more red, like low carbers.... 

Please keep in mind I AM ONLY 21. No healthy person of my age should be having these symptoms. 

What I was eating was:

Pretty much daily:

rice

meat - either beef, chicken, fish, turkey, etc

olive oil

Occasional

apple 

nuts

apple juice

banana

beans

cucumber

celery

green beans

dark chocolate

To be completely transparent, I think I broke out with the warts on my hand and the TMJ after having a high vitamin A meal that a family member cooked for a special occasion. It had saffron, shrimp, peas. I had some butter and milk chocolates too. However, it wasn't especially high vitamin A. It was also a period of high stress for me, with a lot going on at school. I was only getting a few hours of sleep a day - this wouldn't have been the case if I had been able to fall asleep at normal hours, though. 

Some of you might think that this is just a detox reaction. However, I do not want to live a life in which having a little cheat meal causes this severe of a reaction. 

Another thing I want to mention: I hear a lot of people saying that detox should be faster for younger people. I'm 21, and I've been on this diet for about a year and 3 months. I think, if vit a detox is a real thing, I should be "detoxed" for the most part by now. Before this, I think I was relatively healthy. I've pretty much always been at a healthy weight. Never diagnosed with any chronic disease/disorders. I think I just developed an eating disorder(?)/diet obsession after going vegetarian and vegan from a young age and always wanting to be skinnier. I was feeling horrible on a Peat diet of a lot of milk and oj and just wanted something else to try, so I came to this low vit a detox diet. I initially thought I noticed some improvement, but long term I don't think it was good for me. 

Now, I'm not super sure what to do.... I tried out having dairy again, and even went out of my way to try a2 milk. However, I still did not tolerate it well. I felt sedated and my stomach reacted. I started drinking some orange juice, which I think I have tolerated quite well. However, I had some tomato salsa and I think that might have made me a bit nauseous? Or I might just have been nauseous because I still can't sleep well at night? Who knows. Wow. I'm really a bit lost right now. If anyone has any suggestions/support, I'd appreciate it. I also hope this post helps someone else...