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Livy & son's progress reports
Hi everyone,
I’d like to introduce myself, finally, having lurked for far too long. As an introvert, this is hard for me, but here goes…
First of all I’d like to thank so many of you for all the useful content I’ve discovered on this forum over the years. To avoid filling up this post though, I’ll just name three people who come immediately to mind: Lil Chick, for keeping the forum alive in its darkest days, when almost nobody was posting; Jiri, for your eye-opening content on various nutrients, in particular molybdenum, about which I’d had no clue previously, and Ourania, for your fascinating essays on the importance of Thiamin/B1.
My story:
I am a retired editor living in Cyprus. I first became interested in Vitamin A when my son, who was attending university in Glasgow, developed a complex of health issues around the age of 21, having been previously very fit and healthy. As I searched online for information about these issues, one of which was seborrheic dermatitis, I happened to chance on a post somewhere by someone discussing Grant Genereux’s work and which provided links to his books. After reading the first two, I became convinced that my son had Vitamin A overload, sadly brought on probably by the so-called healthy diet I’d fed him over the years, which included items like spinach, carrots, sweet potatoes, liver and other big ‘offenders’. Learning that people’s livers can ‘fill up’ with stored Vitamin A around the age of 20 or 21, was also very helpful as it made sense of my son’s suddenly developing health issues when he did.
Upon his return from uni, we both started on a much lower Vitamin A diet. I didn’t have many issues but wanted to keep him company. I regretfully ditched Hellman’s Mayonnaise as well, having read the label carefully to discover it was chockful of synthetic Vitamin A. After a few months, my son’s seborrheic dermatitis started to clear up and I'd lost 20 lbs of excess weight I’d carried around for years, which was an unexpected and welcome benefit!
I’ll stop here before rambling on for too much longer. Thanks again to everyone keeping the forum going. It is such an interesting, useful resource. I will post again on my son’s progress (and mine), with more details about his other probably Vitamin A-related conditions.
Welcome to posting! It gets easier. There is a tiny little exhibitionist inside of all of us hahah...
Please do tell us more. Glad you are here. Want to hear more about you both. Has your son read any of this?
Hi Joe,
Thanks so much for your encouragement and support! I’d be glad to share more of my and my son’s journey. To first answer your question, has my son read any of this (Grant’s Vitamin A theories), I’m sorry to say that he is not really an aficionado of alternative health approaches and till recently adhered strongly to the allopathic, Rockefeller-based medical paradigm, with a ‘trust the science’ attitude. I’d often get the rolling eye look when I talked about Grant’s ideas, the subtext being, ‘Here she goes again!’ But he’s a good lad basically and has stuck to the lower Vitamin A diet without too much complaint. Recently also he has become disillusioned with orthodox medicine, following multiple visits to various doctors here in Cyprus who failed repeatedly to either correctly diagnose or advise a course of treatment that actually helped in any way. And a few days ago, he threw out some moisturiser he’d purchased when he realised one of the main ingredient was retinol…
His other issues include(d) bone/joint/muscle pain; cholinergic urticaria (severe hives in response to stress or high temperatures); tinnitus and a chronic anal fissure that fails to heal. To me this indicates 'slow wound healing’. Thankfully the muscular-skeletal pain has almost completely subsided and he is breaking into hives much less often. The gastrointestinal issues that plagued him on his return from uni (nausea and repeated vomiting) are also completely gone. Sadly however the tinnitus roars on unabated and the fissure issue just doesn’t seem to resolve, despite a fissurectomy last December that only seemed to make things worse. He takes boatloads of Magnesium Oxide to be able to even go to the toilet and sometimes the pain afterwards can last for hours.
My possibly Vitamin A-related issues include blurry vision (I’m very aware of the link between the liver and the eyes) and a type of insomnia that includes multiple night awakenings (between 3-6 times a night). As regards the insomnia, it worsens noticeably if I eat any high Vitamin A greens such as cilantro or purslane, which I made the mistake of doing last week. I had an awful bout of insomnia last summer after snacking a bit too enthusiastically on apricot kernel seeds (for the laetrile/B17 content), telling myself that if the Hunza tribe of Asia aren’t affected by its high Vitamin A content, why would I be? (Junkie’s logic?) It took a month for my sleep to return to ‘normal’ (to sleep at all in fact). Lesson learned!
@livy hi thx for nice words. That's great that low vit A is working for you guys. Just make sure that your diet is not too restrictive otherwise you just develop other issues. Avoiding liver, eating a lot of very high beta carotene foods is great. Just make sure you and your son have all the other micronutrients. By eating high vit A for a long time vit K2, vit E gets depleted. Same with zinc, B vitamins, molybdenum probably as well..
After some time I don't think eating some whole eggs, some cheese here and there etc.. would be a problem. They are very nutritious foods and at the end of the day it is about total amount. Eating bite of liver puts you over RDA and that can be a problem over time, but slice of cheese or egg or two is not even close to approaching RDA levels..
Also I often say it is good to not focus just on vit A. There is so many stuff to watch out for in nutrition/health..
Btw I wanted to work during the winter in hotel kitchen on Cyprus.. Would love to spend winter on Cyprus. Hate winter in Czech Rep. hehe. But don't know if they pick me for the job. I gave up working there during he summer. I think I would die in that summer heat hehe. But fall/winter must be amazing there. Also much less people right.. I am also very introverted.. That's why I talk more on the internet heh..
Good on you and your son and ouch. Can relate on the wound healing. Zinc oxide powder mixed with shea butter cream is my go to. Also oral and topical vK2-4 has helped. vK2-4 is especially helpful on bruising and varicosities. Hemorrhoids are varicosities too. Not sure how that could relate to fissures.
Hopefully eating beef helps. Hope you have access to enough. Sounds like he groks the main fact that we have been lied to so many different ways and now you both are studying and learning for yourselves. Nice.
And yes, cilantro is unusually evil. Ever since looking at stuff from Brian Johnson (LiverKing) and Paul Saladino, I trust the Hunza references as much as I trust McDonald's salad bars.
@Joe2 Thanks for the tips on wound healing! We may give those a try. They sound promising. (My son also has hemorrhoids, as well as odd varicosities in his forearms).
Never heard cilantro described as 'unusually evil' before but you may be on to something there. It is supposed to chelate mercury but then leaves it in the body to recirculate from what I've read. And of course its Vitamin A content is way too high, being described as 'particularly rich' in it by AI. 'Rich' is an unfortunate choice of adjective there!