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Lutein
Hi Grant,
I found you and Garrett through Judy Cho in December, 2022. I am more confident daily that I had isotretinoin induced sacroiliitis. Doing so much better now. Thank you.
While I was hurt, I binge watched and read your blog, books and Garrett's.
By March, 2023, I slept longer than 15 minute intervals a couple times a night.
By May, 2023, I slept 9 hours stretches and hung up my walker.
By June, 2023 I completed a 19:29 mile.
By November, 2023, I did an 11:27 mile, nose breathing - look out Kipchoge.
Last month, February, 2024, I outran our 5 year old neighbor in a 40 yard dash. Twice.
Two weeks ago I threw a Lacrosse ball farther than his 9 year old athletic brother.
One week ago I did a pullup.
This week I walked over 3 miles per day.
Thank you.
I slowly rebuild our landscaping business as I improve. I still drill down on your and Garrett's sites. Tonight I ran across the last video you did with Garrett on November 4, 2022. One of your last topics was a caution on lutein, specifically in oats. You avoided them while I went all in.
Increasingly confident I had acute retinol and copper poisoning several times in last 45 years. This last episode hit me in November, 2022 when I was 62 - about 10 years older than when you started this experiment. I am a skinnier guy than you with similar tastes in endurance training. My first date with my wife was a 60 mile ride in 1985. We enjoyed a fairly healthy life. We experimented with various diets. In 2010, I started in on paleo / keto with one meal a day. I followed Weston Price paradigm since 1993. The last 3 years before my November, 2022 crash, I focused on nose to tail and studied up to try carnivore.
When I first talked with Garrett in December, 2022, I gathered my priorities needed to be a return to carbohydrates and reduced fat intake. Garrett pointed me toward slowly starting in on zinc, magnesium, soluble fiber and activated charcoal. My first carbs were apples. Then prunes and dates. It felt like a big risk to start oatmeal. I chose gluten free organic rolled oats, because I started paleo in 2010 to avoid problems I had noted with grains, especially wheat. Eventually I cooked my oats with charcoal.
So from June, 2023 until now, March 27, 2024, my mostly organic daily diet is-
2.5 cups rolled oats cooked with 1 heaping tablespoon charcoal 1 heaping tablespoon salt 9 cups water
1 to 2 pounds grass finished beef
2 apples
2 to 15 dates
2 to 6 prunes
occasional green kiwi
water to taste
As far as supplements, I take-
1 scoop sunfiber and 1 heaping tablespoon charcoal in water
nicotinic acid buffered with magnesium carbonate / potassium bicarbonate in water
1 mineral capsule with magnesium, selenium, molybdenum, zinc
These supplements are about 95% less than what I took before I found you.
Again. Thank you.
I think the main differences in our approaches (besides that I had coaches) is that -
I was ten years older at my start.
Your beans and rice to my oats and fruit.
And I ate more charcoal.
I am trying to grok how and why oatmeal has not triggered a detox setback.
As an aside, we keep chickens. I ate one egg in 2023. I ate plenty of eggs before 2023. I plan to try eggs again once I get our girls' feed depleted in copper and retinol. We need to make our own feed. I want white yolks. I used to feed our girls with Weston Pricein mind. Our dogs too. Now they all get retinol / copper depleting diet.
Until we kept chickens I supplemented choline / inositol. After we got chickens, I thought I no longer needed it. I enjoyed our steak and eggs most days.
I want to find a better carbohydrate source or understand my current source better.
I also wonder if charcoal is the key to preventing detox setbacks more so than choline.
Any further help is appreciated.
Thank you.
Joe
Powerful update, @joe. I’m excited for you, man! 😁
“I also wonder if charcoal is the key to preventing detox setbacks more so than choline.”
This is what I believe, 💯 % ‼️ Charcoal is as good an antidote as there is, imo. Also: Flaxseed, which also contains lutein, hasn’t caused a detox setback for me, perhaps because I need the fiber. I appreciate hearing about the diet you’re doing right now, thank you.
All the best to you in figuring out what you want to regarding the carbohydrate thing. Looking forward to the update in a year where you’re outcompeting the now 6-year-old neighbour in a pull-up contest. 😂
This is so great! Amazing results. Yes being able to stop supplements is huge!!
In my research on lutein it appears some people's immune system's react to lutein, some believe it is the cause of autism, so if you don't have autism then you should be good! I still think people should be aware that spinach and kale and collard greens are very high in lutein. Egg yolks are like a medium source I'd say depending on what they ate.
Quote from puddleduck on March 27, 2024, 4:51 amPowerful update, @joe. I’m excited for you, man!
“I also wonder if charcoal is the key to preventing detox setbacks more so than choline.”
This is what I believe,
%
Charcoal is as good an antidote as there is, imo. Also: Flaxseed, which also contains lutein, hasn’t caused a detox setback for me, perhaps because I need the fiber. I appreciate hearing about the diet you’re doing right now, thank you.
All the best to you in figuring out what you want to regarding the carbohydrate thing. Looking forward to the update in a year where you’re outcompeting the now 6-year-old neighbour in a pull-up contest.
Thank you PD,
Have had good experience with flaxseed as well. Always thought it was the lignans. Like Grant said, everything I thought I knew on nutrition is now suspect. More than suspect. I started eating flax seeds when I was desperate hunger college kid doing lacto/ovo. Bought those sesame / flax snack sticks in bulk at local co-op. Such hippies. Used to make flax crackers in oven. Think it was Braggs Aminos and flax seeds mixed and set out on cookie sheet oven dried to crunch. Too much of good thing.
I have not had flax since at least October, 2022. Might try them again, but no hurry. Current diet might seem boring. It is not. I love bowl of charcoal oatmeal with ground beef and salt. I could eat that a few times a day. I do.
Quote from Janelle525 on March 27, 2024, 6:09 amThis is so great! Amazing results. Yes being able to stop supplements is huge!!
In my research on lutein it appears some people's immune system's react to lutein, some believe it is the cause of autism, so if you don't have autism then you should be good! I still think people should be aware that spinach and kale and collard greens are very high in lutein. Egg yolks are like a medium source I'd say depending on what they ate.
Thank you. I had good coaching. Causes of autism comprises a long list. Am guessing down side risks come in other flavors with lutein as well. Probably noteworthy how many other toxins come in other lutein rich foods. Lutein in egg yolks is probably more problematic because of choline in egg yolks. The choline increases liver's storage of retinols taken in at same time. Probably does it for lutein too.
Quote from Joe on March 27, 2024, 12:15 amHi Grant,
I found you and Garrett through Judy Cho in December, 2022. I am more confident daily that I had isotretinoin induced sacroiliitis. Doing so much better now. Thank you.
Hi @joe,
Retinol is the alcohol (OH) form,
retinal is the aldehyde (COH) form, and
retinoic acid is the carboxylic acid (COOH) form,
As shown in the figure below (areas of difference are indicated by red). Among these different retinoids, retinol and retinal are fairly interchangeable. But, the one we are most interested in is RA with its COOH end group (since it is the "active form" of vA).
When carboxylic acid reacts with sodium bicarbonate solution carbon dioxide is evolved with a brisk effervescence along with sodium acetate is formed.
The chemical reaction is given below.
RCOOH + NaHCO3 → RCOONa + H2O + CO2↑ (brisk effervescence)
So, retinoic acid will definitely react with sodium bicarbonate.
Maybe the charcoal + the magnesium carbonate / potassium bicarbonate explains your not experiencing the detox setback.
I don't have any recommendations, other than keep on doing what works for you.
Thank you. Appreciate the reply.
I adhere to Garrett's post on "the order of adding stuff" list. Gradual changes going up or down on everything. I was already taking quite a bit of charcoal when I started working my way up on oats. Seemed easier and safer to combine half my charcoal with oats once I got my level of oats intake up. A few of my sempai on LYL were already eating that much oats in favor or beans. Before my keto decade I ate zone 40/30/30 diet 15 years and before that lacto ovo vegetarian 14 years.
I ate a lot of beans while vegetarian. Shy about repeating that. That first date I mentioned in 1985 was set up by our shared mentor - a triathlete. We were trying to follow Dave Scott's lead. In his first few Iron Man wins he ate 20k to 30k calories lacto ovo daily. Did I say I ate a lot of beans?
I catch grief on LYL for calling it a detox setback. I think their preferred term is bile dump. Both terms work. Either way, I experienced my share, just nothing that I cannot turn around in a day or so. Always by getting back to my protocol - soaking up and passing out bile. So far my worst times are like today. I got busy with work and forgot my morning meal until 4pm. Easy to do after one meal a day for a decade.
Started feeling down. So I slugged down my sunfiber and charcoal drink and started in on the black oats and beef. By 8pm my back started opening up again. Last 3 times I was down more than 4 hours it was from getting lost in work and forgetting to keep the black oats coming in. Feels like they keep bile going the right direction and absorbing adsorbing just enough bile.
It is funny on the lutein in oats. I am more concerned with oxalates and any other lectins or residual glyphosate in oats. I always considered egg yolks a much more concentrated source of lutein. Also the yolks' choline/inositol substantially increase the conversion and sequestration of animal and plant forms of retinol by the liver. My guess is that this is the chief manner that chronic symptoms are temporarily relieved by egg intake. The liver stops detox (and detox symptoms) while intoxing more copper and retinols from the yolks. That almost certainly leads to worse symptoms and longer detox later.
My reason for concern on oats was kidney stones. When I first found you and Garrett, I had a long list of symptoms to figure out before narrowing sacroiliitis as first, worst and root cause of pain. I was passing sand and 10 or so kidney stones the size of flax seeds daily. So my first guess in 12/2022 was kidney stones. I progressed through a few diagnoses before I considered similarities to my diet in 2022 and the arctic explorer issues with eating liver. That got me digging through past reading and then on to hypervitaminosis A. Which got me to Chris Masterjohn and thankfully on to Judy Cho.
After a month reading through you and Doc, I had to make leaps of faith that liver was at the core and everything else would resolve as I eased the liver's problems. I am forever grateful to the many-on-one guidance I got from Garrett, Nathan, Hope, Will, Pierre, Joe, Kelsey, Julie, Sarah, and others. So far the continued reading, study and experience confirmed that first leap of faith.
Your note on old guys brings another idea to mind. There is a distinct demographic that seems to setback less and shorter when they do experience setback. The old guys. My first thought is that, well yeh, we have had a lot more experience screwing ourselves up. There might be something to that. I think there is another bigger factor involved. I think these new paradigms are simpler and more aggressively grokked during acute attacks than long drawn out chronic issues. I have suffered through sacroiliitis and sciatica sporadically for decades with out feeling the imperative to learn as I did here.
We all perform differently when put into imperative mode with fewer options. Lots of analogies: gun to our head, hand in a vise, back against a wall, edge of a cliff, backed into a corner,.......
My pain from 11/22/2022 until 4/15/2023 brought full on imperative mode. I took zero effort to stay focused. Besides the SI Joint, I had peripheral neuropathy that gave me numb, burning, tingling, electrical pain and swelling from my elbows and knees outward. Pardon the keyboard diarrhea here - I find huge pleasure in typing at a decent rate again.
My point is that I think the acute stressors not only prompt aggressive research, trial and error. I think they also provide the single most fertile ground to test ideas. A couple months in to LYL conversations, Garrett introduced me to a couple people. He tried to describe me as too gung ho. I think the words he used were hyper compliant and a fan. I interrupted to clarify. I told them it hurts too much to not figure out ways to do what he suggested. It took 2 months to find ways to get potassium in without making things worse. First was topical, then small doses ingested. Each step provided small increments of relief. Even now, I feel it when I forget to keep potassium coming in. Call it hypercompliant if you wish. I call it removing pain that I can not hide. I felt sure the first time he suggested a potassium issue that I needed to find a way to bring more in. The pain made that search more certain.
The main reason I think that acute phase works in this circumstance is more than focus. It is also that our liver is dumping out toxins because it has no more means to store nor to package up toxins in safer forms like retinols bound in retinol binding protein. A liver depleted of needed detoxifying nutrients and no place to put toxins any more provides immeasurable and immediate feedback on every problem. My first experiment eating another egg in January, 2023 was excruciating.
Well that is my way of saying we made ourselves into better guinea pigs. Or call us the Chuck Yeagers of liver paradigm test pilots. Overall I do not have a good perspective on how well my protocol is working for me. From here it looks and feels like the least damaging and most healing paradigm I have tried.
A growing number of us have also tested the choline / inositol egg paradigm for retinol detox. So far we have all bumped our heads against that wall enough to back off eggs completely. I think the more acute the symptoms, the quicker and more obvious the feedback is on taking in more eggs (or any other source of retinols and copper).
The chemistry on the carbonates and bicarbonates interacting with retinol is interesting. The nicotinate rabbit hole seems more valuable for now. Not to dismiss the value of the buffers. They are probably helpful in a collateral manner. They are my newest addition to my protocol though. While adding buffered nicotinates is clearly a game changer, I only have a 3 months experience. I have 14 months experience with the charcoal. The few times I forgot my buffered nicotinate, I noticed no pain differences. Missing charcoal though is painful within 4 to 6 hours.
Kelsey Kenny, Doc and a few others of us are picking up where Bill Wilson and Abram Hoffer left off decades ago, albeit with a lot more chemical engineering history to draw on than Wilson and Hoffer did in the early days of AA. I look forward to you getting involved in some of those conversations on the Inner Circle.
I am also interested hearing you interact with them on parallels and intersections with retinoids and urushiol. I have a long history with urushiol and retinoid rashes. A growing number of us on LYL do as well. The rashes in 2023 were among my worst. You were the sempai who put me over the edge to use zinc creams on burning itching blistered rashes on my lower legs. Again, thank you. The structural and symptomatic similarities are too close to not be related.
Thank you for the time and all the help. You might be surprised at all the new young accutane refugees finding their way on LYL after reading your books. Great to see their progress. I think the next most successful demographic coming through the detox paradigm will be 20 to 40 year old accutane and nose to tail carnivore survivors. They are a determined group. Looking forward to seeing their resilience.
Thank you again and see you around.