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Luke's Log & Information
Hello, my name is Luke! I recently discovered this site, which led me down the Vitamin A rabbit hole. Since making my first post here (https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/anthropology-appropriate-diets-and-vitamin-a-questions/), I have spent hours consuming content to better understand Vitamin A, its toxicity, and potential mitigation strategies. I've decided to essentially eliminate Vitamin A from my diet. I will track my progress and any health changes here. Additionally, I want to give back as much as possible and plan on posting information I think may benefit others. Through the years, I have healed chronic health conditions and spent thousands of hours researching. I believe that things like environmental toxins (Glyphosate), oxalates, Vitamin A, and chronic nutrient deficiencies are intricately connected.
My Story:
I experienced a host of health problems around 15 years of age that included gastrointestinal, immune, depression, anxiety, cognition, psoriasis, etc. Slowly, I healed many of these pathologies through a variety of interventions and diets. Healing is not a straight line, and it took years of trial and error to slowly move the needle towards robust health.
March 2020-October 2020:
During this time, I was at the pinnacle of health and my health journey. I had eliminated overt exposure to environmental toxins, detoxed halogens, and been through 50+ rounds of chelation. I consumed only organic foods and had eliminated essentially everything from my diet except meat, fruit, butter, and eggs. I was using environmental hormesis (sauna, cold plunge) on a weekly basis. I was using sound therapy, meditation, and a targeted supplement list that I had curtailed and perfected over 10 years. During this time, I had boundless energy, easily gained muscle, woke up with rock hard erections, had excellent cognition, slept wonderfully, and life seemed infinite. At some point between October 2020 - December 2020, I started to watch more from Paul Saladino (carnivoremd) who stressed the importance of a nose-to-tail diet and revered the importance of liver. Prior to this, I consumed exclusively muscle meats along with a homemade bone broth (bone broth I believe is imperative for a strong and robust gut). Additionally, I read Weston A. Price articles like this one (https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/vitamin-a-saga/), and took the absurd claim that indigenous cultures consumed around 50,000 IU of Vitamin A daily at face value instead of investigating it for myself (they most certainly did not).
The Mistake (December 2020-August 2021):
I purchased my first Vitamin A supplement (palmitate, 10,000 IU) December 2020 and began to take it daily (70,000IU/week). I had already been consuming 4 egg yolks a day (245 IU each X 4 = 980 IU daily), and anywhere from 3-4 tablespoons of butter (350 IU per tbs X 3 = 1050 IU daily). Throughout the ensuing months, I began to add liver with increased frequency. After a test returned low ferritin levels, I came upon the work of Morley Robbins and started more rigorously researching ceruloplasmin and the associated biological processes that oversee the metabolization of zinc, copper, and iron. Somehow, I came to the conclusion that I need more copper, which only secured the fact that I needed to consume more and more liver. I don't enjoy the taste of liver, so I would put it in a blender and send it down the hatch raw. I did this perhaps 2-4 times per week with between 3-6 ounces of liver each time. At 15,000 IU per 3 ounces, a conservative estimation of Vitamin A consumption from liver alone per week would be 15,000IU X 3 times per week = 45,000 IU. It was likely much higher than this, but in the beginning months of 2021 I would typically only do liver 1-2 times per week. Overall, monthly Vitamin A consumption was probably around 540,900 IU. From December 2020 - August 2021, I likely consumed around 4,500,000 IU (yes, million), but again this may be conservative.
Symptoms:
With my health in steep decline, I am beyond thankful that I came across this site. Theoretically, I was doing everything correct so for months I have been trying to understand what is happening. Ironically, I thought the decline in health was indicative of the fact I needed to consume more organ meats which only made me more sick. Vitamin A was not even on my radar, and I feel compelled to share this information with any and everyone (I am part of a carnivore community here in Austin, Texas and I have already reached out to numerous friends). Over the months, I have certainly lost muscularity, but it goes beyond that. I believe I have lost bone density as my frame appears smaller and more frail. My skin has a yellowish hue, and I have watched over the months (wondering if it is just age/summer) as pigmentation has gotten continually darker. My hair color has somewhat faded, and one of the most notable physical signs are my eyes which appear more glossy and the whites less white. Neurocognition has been devastated. I feel like I am experiencing my life in third person and experience dissociative phenomena. I am unable to focus, and my social capacity has tanked. To get through work, I have to use excessive amounts of caffeine or dextroamphetamine. This causes added stress because I ultimately wonder if I will be able to hold my job at this rate. My energy and exuberance for physical activity has all but disappeared. Sex drive and appetite has plummeted. The most confusing thing about all of this (and what made me not get more desperate sooner), is that I have not been sick once. Although I feel a general sense of malaise and feel as if I am living in a fog, I have not gotten so much as a cold, which somehow validated to me that what I was doing was working and healthy.
Conclusion:
I am approaching a week Vitamin A free. I will report back here as time continues, and also share information I find useful. From what I can gather hearing the experiences of others, considering the amount of Vitamin A was consuming, my body was extremely resilient against my abusive behaviors. I believe this has to do with the excellent state of my health prior to this dark period in my life. I highly admire all the people posting on this website and Grant for working to get this information out there. I don't think people like Paul Saladino and other sects of the carnivore community realize just how damaging their recommendation can be.
@luke Your stint with mega dosing VA, sounds very similar to me. I did the liver, palmitate, yolks... and add in some accutane. I am approaching 3 yrs on very low VA, my only advice is to be patient, you will have ups and downs, but this path seems to be slowly getting me back normal.
4.5 million IU of vitamin A is really a lot, that is 1.35 million microgram of vitamin A when converted to retinol equivalents. (Though I see the carotenoid conversion factors of IU/RE/RAE to be completely false, the newer the standard the worse they are).
Here is a really simplified guesstimate of your liver concentration of vitamin A, since the liver should be the main storage site for vitamin A. The guesstimate is missing to take into account a probably enlargement of the liver and that you might have excreted or not absorbed some of that immense amount of vitamin A you calculated that you ate. But I am assuming 100% absorption of all retinoids into the liver and no excretion of any retinoids.
Assuming your liver prior to your binge was totally empty of retinyl esters, main liver storage form of retinoids, and your liver was of some average male weight of 1450 gram. That would give you a liver concentration of 931 microgram per gram of liver tissue.
A liver concentration of vitamin A above 286.5 microgram per gram of liver is the definition of Hypervitaminosis A (above 1 micromol per gram of liver).
Take is slow and be careful since this is probably a long way back for you (some years). I started a low vitamin A diet at the start of 2020 and I think I still have a long way to go. Pushing it hard is probably only detrimental.
If you wonder who the main people in the low vitamin A movement, these are the three main ones (that I know of):
Anthony Mawson, Grant Genereux and Dr. Garrett Smith.
Best of luck on your continued health journey!
Man, I am so sorry to hear you plummeted from your hard-fought high point that quickly. I actually pinpointed my own Vitamin A toxicity after starting to follow Paul Saladino and reading his Carnivore Code book, except that I had already been eating and supplementing liver before I came across Paul's work. Shifting to the carnivore diet is what really revealed the problem...I started getting wicked watery diarrhea out of the blue for no apparent reason. I eventually linked it to the removal of liver from my daily diet, and then I dropped eggs and anything else with much Vitamin A, which gradually resulted in more and more diarrhea and yellow liquid in my stool.
I will be very interested to hear if you develop diarrhea as well. From what I've gathered, nobody else here seems to have that problem, but some people on Garrett Smith's site have reported something similar. They blamed it on bile acid malabsorption, due to Garrett Smith's claims, but at least in my own case I'm pretty sure it's unbound retinoic acid that is the primary offender. Those folks all started eating beans, which apparently did stop their diarrhea, but I refused to eat beans myself after everything I learned about plant toxins, fiber, fixing my vestibular problems that resulted from oxalates, and healing my IBS of over a decade by removing plant foods from my diet.
However, after struggling on a low VA version of 99% carnivore for about a year and having chronic, painful diarrhea, I've recently been testing out different fiber sources and probiotics to try to stop the diarrhea. I figure I must have encouraged some pathogenic bacteria that specialize in consuming glucuronides to take hold in my colon, and every time they break down the glucuronidated Vitamin A it gives me gas and painful diarrhea.
You seem very astute and well written, and I look forward to your contributions here.
I should mention that I, too, became intrigued by Morley Robbins' ideas about copper and iron. I came across him recently, well into my attempt to detox Vitamin A, and was searching for missing concepts that might explain my continued problems. Initially, I thought his ideas about ceruloplasmin and excessive iron might explain my ongoing fatigue and other problems, but I've come to think he's just another zealot out there who came up with an idea that happened to help some people, but wound up hurting a lot of others. @jiri is one of those people that got worse after following Morley's protocol.
Paul Saladino is pretty stuck on his organ meats, but at least he seems somewhat adaptable on other fronts, whereas Morley Robbins sounds like a broken record after listening to just a few interviews with him...it's the same exact thing over and over, and he even admits that he oversimplified people's problems to a lack of magnesium at first before he "discovered" copper and ceruloplasmin. We all have a tendency to simplify complex problems in order to make sense of the world, which means we all need to be on the lookout for people around us doing that as well, whether it's Morley and copper, Paul and plants, or the notion that Vitamin A is responsible for everyone's illness because it's "pure poison".
One thing is for sure: if your liver bogged down, for whatever reason, your body is not going to be happy. Plant toxins, excess copper, excess iron, excess Vitamin A...all things that put a drag on your liver.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on August 29, 2021, 2:00 pmMan, I am so sorry to hear you plummeted from your hard-fought high point that quickly. I actually pinpointed my own Vitamin A toxicity after starting to follow Paul Saladino and reading his Carnivore Code book, except that I had already been eating and supplementing liver before I came across Paul's work. Shifting to the carnivore diet is what really revealed the problem...I started getting wicked watery diarrhea out of the blue for no apparent reason. I eventually linked it to the removal of liver from my daily diet, and then I dropped eggs and anything else with much Vitamin A, which gradually resulted in more and more diarrhea and yellow liquid in my stool.
I will be very interested to hear if you develop diarrhea as well. From what I've gathered, nobody else here seems to have that problem, but some people on Garrett Smith's site have reported something similar. They blamed it on bile acid malabsorption, due to Garrett Smith's claims, but at least in my own case I'm pretty sure it's unbound retinoic acid that is the primary offender. Those folks all started eating beans, which apparently did stop their diarrhea, but I refused to eat beans myself after everything I learned about plant toxins, fiber, fixing my vestibular problems that resulted from oxalates, and healing my IBS of over a decade by removing plant foods from my diet.
However, after struggling on a low VA version of 99% carnivore for about a year and having chronic, painful diarrhea, I've recently been testing out different fiber sources and probiotics to try to stop the diarrhea. I figure I must have encouraged some pathogenic bacteria that specialize in consuming glucuronides to take hold in my colon, and every time they break down the glucuronidated Vitamin A it gives me gas and painful diarrhea.
You seem very astute and well written, and I look forward to your contributions here.
I also developed diarrhea when I started low A and had it for the first year of low A. It was like burning orange acid coming out of me. But it resolved on it own.
Thanks for speaking up about the diarrhea, I don't think I've heard your story. Did you find anything that helped with it until it eventually went away on its own?
I seem to have stopped mine in its tracks for now, but I'm not sure which thing is most responsible...fruit (blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, coconut), probiotics (Seed, VSL3), adding zinc supplements, or removing other supplements. I've tried most of them separately without success, but taken all together they did something new this time.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on August 29, 2021, 4:27 pmThanks for speaking up about the diarrhea, I don't think I've heard your story. Did you find anything that helped with it until it eventually went away on its own?
I seem to have stopped mine in its tracks for now, but I'm not sure which thing is most responsible...fruit (blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, coconut), probiotics (Seed, VSL3), adding zinc supplements, or removing other supplements. I've tried most of them separately without success, but taken all together they did something new this time.
Nothing helped. It just needed time. It helped not to think about it too much. I was so happy about the other improvements in health that I was willing to soldier on and let it take its course.
Some of the supplements I found helpful were magnesium and thiamine but they helped my nervous system and state of mind but did not do anything for digestion.
My digestion became better over time and once I started slowly incorporating beans it got even stronger.
I've just counted
15 670 000
I took so much retinol acetate in the form of additives an attempt to cure acne (it didn't help).
Now I think it would be better to take antibiotics (we were scared that they are so harmful, lol)
My parents also gave me multivitamins as a child, this is + 1 500 000
So you're not the only one, don't worry) I'm not upset
P.s. I also took antidepressants, B6 supplements, fish oil. And since childhood, a diet with a lot of sunflower oil and dairy products. I wonder how I stayed alive at all.