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lil chick's log
Hi @jaj! Thanks so much for your comment. You are right, I probably have some deficiencies-- I bet I DO have some. I'm really big on red meat. I eat meat at every meal. Absorption could be why--it doesn't matter what you eat if you aren't absorbing. I try to listen to what my body wants, at least. Me and supps have such a horrible relationship--I almost fear them.
If I were to guess what is up with me, I would say that @salt is right--too much cheating impedes your progress.
I should clean up my little addictions (raw milk, bacon, coffee, red wine, the occasional scraping of butter, an egg at breakfast on the weekend). I'm an egg "farmer" for cripes sake, how can I not eat an occasional egg? I don't seem to be able to make myself be strict....haha 🙂 I keep telling everyone who will listen how silly my life is: I grow eggs and veggies and I don't eat eggs and veggies. What's more, hubs is a smart guy-- and he doesn't want to be strict.
I hope the happiness factor kicks in a bit, ;0 In my opinion, happiness matters almost as much as the things discussed on the breath thread.
Totally agree @lil-chick happiness is everything. I don’t think a bit of cheating is a problem. I’m not super strict. I have vastly reduced vA intake but not totally removed it from diet. I have completely given up alcohol though (sadly). My liver enzymes are raised indicating that my liver is working super hard so I don’t feel I can give it anything else to work on. The other thing I’m doing is spreading out my soluble fibre into 6 portions rather than 3. This should help prevent toxic bile recycling.
I’m with you on supplements - after the vA supplement debacle I’m very wary. I only take the minerals & only when I’ve seen evidence of an ongoing deficit. I seem to do a lot better when I’m supplementing zinc but I’m sure eating plenty of red meat is just as good.
If we make this whole thing too stressful (& what causes one person stress is different from another) then we’ll end up stuck in sympathetic mode (flight or fight) rather than in parasympathetic mode (rest & digest) of our autonomic nervous system. We need to be in parasympathetic to detoxify so we need to relax for this detox (easier said than done sometimes!!).
Coffee, egg whites, and egg shells, all have zero VA. Don't let social pressure control what you ingest. I think it's more important to eat in the way you think will be beneficial to you, rather than to convince anyone else about it. If the diet works then they will be convinced by your results rather than by your words. I hear some people go a whole year on Garrett's diet without seeing any improvement, I'd challenge anyone to go on a strict low VA diet for just a month and not feel better.
Vitamin B2 is very yellow and in this case it has nothing to do with carotenoids. B2 gives me unpleasant sideeffects (different from VA sideeffects), I don't take it.
Interesting thoughts about oil pulling and the teeth. A lot of VA leaves through the skin, maybe a lot of it levesu through the thin skin in the mouth/gums.
You're a chicken farmer? I don't know if it's worth the effort but maybe you could separate one or two chickens from a young age and feed them a zero VA diet, and only eat their eggs. Not sure what such a diet would entail but maybe white corn, potatoes, white/black beans, muscle meat. You would know success by the color or the yolk. I'm not sure if this would lower the retinol content of the yolk though, maybe it would just decrease the carotenoid content and not affect the retinol content as much...
Also not sure how much freedom you have to grow your own vegetables, but maybe you could grow things like white carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, parsnips, radish(peeled), white sugarbeet, potatoes, white sweet potatoes etc.
Sounds like a lot of work, to me it sounds easier to just eat the egg whites and let your husband have the yolks
In the last few days I've been reading about how my urinary tract issues might actually be oxalates rather than VA. The "National Vulvodynia Association" does put it out there as a possible cause of trouble in that zone. Hubs has also had some oxalate problems, perhaps our diet has been too high in them over the long term. I'm going to have to be better about certain foods, such as peanut butter.
Are my ureter problems oxalates or VA? Here is my guess.
I have had a bit of relief in the ureter department and it's November. When I put this together with the fact that almost every spring I was getting UTI's... I have decided that my urinary problems are about VA detox that gets increased or decreased due to the amount of sun I'm getting. (and of course other things will affect this too).
Oxalates could be part of it, but my current idea is that my urine is quite polluted with the VA detox sometimes. I suppose that is probably why Grant's kidneys were getting damaged. Kidney damage is part and parcel of the mysterious illness "lupus" which I think I was heading for. (and which is probably just another word for VA overload). One of my blood relations is in kidney failure.
As an aside, I have seen and heard that undertaking a course of strong probiotics can bring on UTI, and I wonder if that is for the same reason: polluted urine.
As another aside, both Hubs and I are experiencing acne right now, and I wonder if the body was having a good old time sending VA to the face for denaturing, and now the darkness of November has put a stop to that.
To do: Even in November there are sunny Noons that we could be taking advantage of! And of course I should be drinking adequate amounts of water to dilute my urine.
Chicken story-- kind of gory!
One of my chickens fell ill and I found her dead body half eaten on a hillside.
Her abdomen was laid open, and I could see that her egg production organs were blocked and that she had been "egg bound". (a fatal condition)
There was a mass the size of my fist that was entirely yolk, and then around her were another 3 or 4 yolks on the ground.
Strangely, the predators and birds had eaten all of her meat, but most of the yolks were just ignored by the wild things.
It is hard when you've spent your entire life thinking that egg yolks are so perfectly nutritous and safe and then realize that perhaps even the little animals in nature know that they have limits and drawbacks.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but I've decided to bring butter back.
My taste buds have always thought butter was the "best" fat (for me). I literally do not like other fats. And I've really, really tried hard to like them. Your needs may be quite different than mine.
No, I'm not going to open the flood gates.
In fact, I remember early on reading a low VA blogger who still ate butter. And there was this post:
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/why-butter-may-be-ok/
quoting the original post: "
This study observed the effects that different fats had on the blood. They compared sunflower oil, olive oil and butter. What's interesting, is that the plasma retinyl esters were quite a lot lower (about 1/3rd) after a butter containing meal, compared to the other fats.
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/132/12/3642/4712096 - "Chylomicron retinyl esters, a marker of intestinally derived particles, exhibited bell-shaped curves with maximum values 2–4 h postprandially and returned to baseline 6–7 h after all test meals (data not shown). CM retinyl ester 0–7 h AUC (mmol·h·L) were higher (P <0.05) after OO (2972 ± 299) and SO (2789 ± 288) meals compared with the BF (1777 ± 327) and no-fat (633 ± 314) meal" "
I don't want to be in a "out of the frying pan into the fire" situation with fats, and I often feel that way with all of the fats I've been trying to use to replace butter. And sometimes I really wonder if I'm going to die before I finish dexox, and if so, I want butter in my life. I need a fat.
I eat butter everyday ( moderation ) and making good progress , but I never followed a very low A diet .
thanks, @naveen, it's nice to know you are making progress.
I find it interesting that I don't like ghee either. Just butter, LOL.
I think I will attempt to start a habit of skimming the fat off the top of the raw milk that I buy, and making butter.
I also think that I will attempt to not ever eat any butter COLD. (as per ayurveda ideas)
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I get curious about makeup, LOL. My skin is just too upset for makeup to look good. Well, I watched a few videos on makeup application this week.
It seems to be a thing for makeup vloggers to show their bare faces before the demonstration, and that takes guts and by no means am I being critical or nasty. I'm just struck by the amount of discoloration on the faces--especially around the eyes.
Now, these are makeup mavens, and I can't help but wonder... Are the pigments in the makeup they slather on daily...absorbing into the skin? I've grown to have a healthy fear of pigments at this stage of the game (all vitamin A begins with plant pigments)
I'm older and VA toxic and I still don't have staining around my eyes like some of these vloggers do