Quote from Margo on July 28, 2023, 9:51 pm

2) Symptoms: 26 month update

I get symptoms from eating VA, starting or increasing supplements that detox VA, exposure to agitators (sunlight and exercise, right now; previously, hot water, hot air, and cold water) and other foods that can draw it out (oats, psyllium husk). A lot of the symptoms of each of these scenarios overlap, but they are not identical. The main distinguishing features are nuances in the type of headache I get. What feels like electric jolts going through my head is eating VA. A headache at the back of my head is mostly things that draw out VA (oats, psyllium). A behind-the-eye headache is eating VA or drawing it out (oats, psyllium) but not agitators or supplements. 

The detox setback for me was not the typical one - I did not get random dumping of VA into my system except on day 1 of my cycle. My body seems to do a good job at controlling my systemic VA levels and therefore my overt VA symptoms. Almost every time I get symptoms, I know why. However, what I have experienced along the way were significant nutrient deficiencies despite consuming more than the RDA for most nutrients. These nutrient deficiencies significantly impacted my quality of life for a while. The most bothersome effects were increased anxiety and post-exertional malaise in the form of neurological issues the day after exercising. The anxiety had improved, and the PEM is gone (I believe due to zinc supplementation). In general, I seem to be on top of the major deficiencies now that I am supplementing.

The word to I have seen to describe the detox enzymes is “greedy”, and that appears to be true, in my case. I appear to be getting rid of VA at a very fast rate, all while suffering symptoms of nutrient deficiencies in other body systems. Maybe the body sees VA floating around in the system as more risky and detrimental than these other effects from nutrient deficiencies. That is my best guess, at least.

Finally now in stage 4, my only new symptoms that have cropped up during detox that have yet to fully resolve are minor vertical nail ridges, minor onycholysis, and my hair isn’t growing back in as thickly as it used to (but my hair loss rate isn’t bad, and the existing strands grow quickly). I can live with all of those, for now.

 

————------------—VA symptoms—--------————————

*Symptoms that I had prior to detoxing and that I attribute at least in part to circulating VA directly. Some are multi-factorial.

——Dead-Ringers for VA——

• Minor white, flaky skin at the outer corners of my eyes
• One body twitch right before falling asleep (usually in the form of a leg twitch that moves my whole body). Lutein doesn’t seem to cause this, just other VA forms.
• Lurching feeling while falling asleep (especially caused by lutein) - almost like an electric jolt
• Waking up gasping for breath

——Symptoms organized by progress state——

*This is reflective of my current status i.e. stage 4 that I mention above. Some of the “Improved” category were in the “Completely gone” category during stage 2. This is also reflective of when I stick to the diet and supplements described herein. Some of the symptoms move down a category when things are off.

Completely gone

• Dreaming - dreaming is not a good sign for me. It only ever happens when something is off: I ate VA, started or increased a supplement or food that detoxes VA, etc. These aren’t necessarily nightmares - just dreams like anyone else has.
• Brain fog
• Memory issues
• Intracranial pressure/headache behind the eyes
• Headaches that felt like I had some weird electric jolt going through my head
• Feeling that my skull is changing shape for the worse
• Night terrors. These were pretty mild - essentially things like waking up in the middle of the night and thinking that a knife was flying out of the wall at me.
• One body twitch while falling asleep (usually in the form of a leg twitch that moves my whole body). Lutein doesn’t seem to cause this, just other VA forms.
• Lurching feeling while falling asleep (especially caused by lutein) - kind of like an electric jolt - different than the leg twitch
• Irregular period
• Low menstrual flow - I had begun to feel like it was not enough to support a healthy pregnancy one day. My flow is now at the level considered to be regular.
• Minor white, flaky skin at the outer corners of my eyes 
• Waking up in the middle of the night in general
• Waking up gasping for breath
• Bowel movements that are too dark
• Acne on my face and hips (back acne is improved but not resolved)
• Morning breath
• Occasional desire to binge eat, kinda like feeling snacky
• Graying hair/blonding at temples
• Sudden hair loss on top of head (hair loss from zinc deficiency seemed to be mostly back of head)
• Brittle hair
• Dizziness at night - like blood is swirling around in my head when I lay down
• Tingly lips
• Buggy-looking eyes
• Yellowish or red eyes (my eyes aren’t porcelain-like yet, but they’re not discolored enough to be noticeably different from other people)
• Joint pain: this is the one symptom that I associate with VA which I don’t remember having before I started detoxing, but now it comes back every time and only every time I ingest VA. It came on first after the large copper dump in late July 2021 post-covid.

Improved

*Some of these were completely gone in Stage 2 above, but they have come back in Stages 3 and 4, which I believe is because my body has the resources it needs to detox.

Mental/Emotional

• Being a “highly sensitive person” (I hate that term, but it fits) - i.e. being influenced by sensory inputs more than the average person
• Depression and anxiety
  • I was essentially a poster child for the unhealthy Enneagram Type 1 personality: *Sensitive to criticism*, self-critical nature, workaholic, obsession with rules, great fear of “getting in trouble”, easily annoyed, OCD, possessing an overactive conscience, etc. that disintegrated to the unhealthy 4 type: thinking that everything was pointless, overly emotional, feeling like no one could relate to me. Some of this stuff is completely gone - for example, I no longer internally judge others for how they spend their money. But my sensitivity to criticism is not yet at the level it was in stage 2, i.e. what I would assume is normal across the population.
• I find myself talking to myself less. Haha

Musculoskeletal

• Calves that are disproportionately small in comparison to the rest of my lower body and for the amount I exercise them
• Knee crackling when bending

Endocrine

• Body weight
• Puffy face, especially above my eyelids and on my nose and cheeks
• Ankle and foot edema
• Painful periods. I still do have VA symptoms on my period, especially Day 1. But it’s nowhere near like what it used to be. I am no longer tempted to take medication for it.
• Hirsutism
  • This one has improved, but appears to be pretty multi factorial (B6? Biotin? B2?)

Hair

• Hair stands up too tall on the top of my head
• Arm hair, which has always been darker than I wanted, is blonding on both arms, starting at the wrists and working its way backward
• Greasy hair
• Hair is growing faster (it never really grew slowly)

Skin

• Dark circles and fine lines under my eyes
• Forehead wrinkles (I have gone from 2 to a faint 1)
• Saggy looking skin on my cheeks near my mouth - probably the start of sagging jowls
• Red lines at the corners of my eyes - beginnings of eczema
• Back acne
• Little specks that look like sand under my eyes 
• Greasy t-zone

Eyes

• Red eyes is from VA of some sort - sunlight or other agitator, eating it, lactoferrin, etc. Also from low B2.
• Vascularization of the eyes
• Inflammation above the eyes. I used to have to pry the lids upward with my hands a few times a day.

Other

• Trouble falling asleep initially
• Armpit odor
• Ear wax
• Tolerance to less/worse sleep. This detox had resolved my inability to stay up late without nodding off. Explains why my whole life I’ve said I’m not a night person. And I am much more resilient to lack of sleep in the mornings if I didn’t get it 

Circulatory 

• Cold feet. My mom has commented since I was little on how cold my feet get.
• Exercise-induced asthma

No change or worse

• There are no symptoms that I associate directly with circulating VA that are the same level of intensity or worse now than when I started.

Other

I developed sub-clinical anorexia nervosa when I was 13 (I had taken Retin-A and Differin creams at that point and had just come off my first bout of unexplained intense depression). The anorexia went away about ~6 months after it started. It came back when I was 19, right around when I started college, and was accompanied by orthorexia that time around. I worked really hard to get rid of those in college. The anorexia was long gone by the time I got on this detox and has not returned, so I can’t say that these interventions cured that. However, I do think that both of my bouts of it were influenced by VA and its detrimental effects on the brain. The orthorexia was gone at the time I started the detox but *has* returned, not surprisingly. It’s been the least of my concerns thus far. I do little things to try to keep it in check, like intentionally getting the non-organic variety of animal crackers.

 

——--Non-VA: Caused by the detox process itself, not my diet————

I was consuming more than the RDA for each of these nutrients, some of them well above the RDA, and still ran into issues that supplementing with them resolved (or were only resolved by wheat bran/quinoa in the case of the low methyl groups). Before supplementing, I took care on some of them to make sure  that what I was getting from food was bioavailable (not leaving the B2 foods out in the light/sun for very long, if at all, being the most notable one), and that didn’t put a dent in the issues. Before the detox, I never had any known issues in these areas except for the mental health ones.

Low Methyl Groups - big deal

Can’t say this one for certain, as I did not use isolated supplements to do it, but I am confident in this statement.

Symptoms: 

• Did not feel good at all when I needed more of this.
• Felt very similar to low B12, and I think most of the symptoms of low B12 may have been because I didn’t have enough methyl groups to methylate the low B12. See the Low B12 section below for the symptoms that occur here, plus:
  • Started getting anxious after zinc, which is a sign of copper issues, and that only ever happened to me when I was low B12 itself post-COVID and/or low methyl groups
  • In-shower hair loss
  • POTS with a headache
  • Hard to breathe at night
  • Dysphagia - trouble initiating swallowing in my case - more due to B2 and zinc, but this does seem to contribute some

Solution: wheat bran

• Wheat bran and/or quinoa. I don’t do quinoa due to the carotenoids, but quinoa did fix these issues in the same way that wheat bran does. 
• I do 500 mg betaine in the form of wheat bran (so 10 TBSP) a day. 8 TBSP wheat bran was the last dose where I noticed effects, so I do 10 TBSP for good measure. I can skip a whole day now and not feel awful like I used to, but I will start getting some unpleasant effects the next day.

Low B1 - big deal

Symptoms: 

• Definitely 
  • Dysphagia -  trouble initiating swallowing in my case - again, more B2 and zinc, but this does seem to contribute some
  • ANS dysfunction - i.e. feeling lightheaded after eating, loss of muscle control, etc. - this is not the same as the post-exertional malaise that seems to be related to zinc; B1 did not fix that.
  • Feeling like I am without emotional support and all alone
  • POTS
  • Anxiety. Wow did this cause issues.
  • Strained breathing
• Maybe
  • Hair greasiness
  • Horizontal nail ridges
  • Cold feet

Solution: benfotiamine

• Currently taking 40 mg/day, after titrating up by 10 mg/day
• Brand: XPRS Nutra
• Benfotiamine
  • One time when I took 75 mg at once, I felt worse in terms of B1 issues, not better 
  • I think that benfotiamine is crossing the blood brain barrier, as it helped anxiety and other ANS issues so much in my case
  • It did stir up VA, but that effect went way eventually. It was not as bad of an effect as B2, zinc, and niacin had. 
  • Definitely seemed to induce B2 and zinc deficiencies when I first started taking it and as I upped my doses without upping the others in tandem. This happened multiple times.
  • May have made me feel better VA-wise. This + zinc are the only supplements that feel like an antidote i.e. where I actually feel better VA-wise with them in my routine.
• Thiamine HCL
  • Did nothing 
• Allithiamine
  • Benfotiamine went over better than allithiamine
  • It helped with B1 issues, but when I went up too high, it gave me very weird neurological stuff: anxiety of a different sort than the low B1 feeling was, pops in my head, decreased ability to focus, etc. Benfotiamine didn’t do that - I felt like when I took too much benfo, it actually just reversed the effects of the B1 (like gave me low b1 symptoms), but allithiamine gave me all new, weird symptoms. So, I wouldn’t go back on allithiamine.

Low B2 - big deal

• Chris Masterjohn says this can be destroyed by sunlight, and I have found that to be true. I get a depression that is similar to the low folate depression I have had before; the low B2 depression is fixed by taking more B2 after I go out in the sunlight.

Symptoms:

*I had all these issues before I started the zinc and the B1, so it was not the B1 supplement causing the problem to begin with. I do think the B1 supplements drove up my need for B2, and maybe vice versa.

• Definitely
  • Could feel the nerves pulsing in my ear. Not like your heartbeat - more like a pop. The telltale sign of B2 deficiency for me.
  • Anxiety (PTSD type) - tremendous impact here. Finally felt like a normal person again after getting on the supplement.
  • Depression (similar to low folate feeling, like an emptiness, not a poisoning) - big impact here - near-immediate impact when supplement is taken
  • Decreased eye brightness, and eyes not open as wide
  • Weird neurological stuff- just a feeling in my legs that things aren’t quite right - not pain, not cold, etc. just weird like tingly feeling almost
  • Strained breathing through nose
  • Vertical ridges on nails, lack of nail smoothness, and convex nails
  • General loss of vitality
• Maybe
  • Difficulty sleeping deeply
  • Onycholysis
  • Small lunula
  • Similar nerve pop as above, just this time in my brain - like a zap - though that one was more rare than the ear nerve ones
  • Difficultly catching breath after singing
  • Focus
  • Restless leg - a possibility, though not a strong correlation for me. 
  • Greasy hair
  • Hirsutism

Solution: Riboflavin 5 Phosphate 

• Currently taking 50 mg/day, after titrating up by 10 mg
• Brand: I was using Douglas Laboratories, but they discontinued theirs. I switched to Thorne and it seems to work just as well. No clear difference between the two.
• Have not tried other forms of riboflavin
• I think riboflavin works best in bigger doses as opposed to  spread out. Like I felt like 2x 10mg was better than 4 x 5mg
• B2 does kick up VA. Some nasty stuff from this one, but that went away within a few days of a new dose.

Low Zinc - big deal

Bloodwork

My serum zinc was at 96 mcg/dL in May 2023 - this was after having been on 30 ish mg a day from diet for 1 year, plus:

• 30 mg supplemental zinc picolinate for about 8 months
• 60 mg in April 2023, and 
• 75 mg for a week or two in May 2023 before the blood was drawn

All that to say - if this blood test is to be believed - I was not close to toxic levels of zinc despite high supplementation and dietary intake.

Symptoms

• Zinc deficiency was sneaky for me. There is no telltale sign of it for me. It shows up as stuff that can all be due to other nutrient deficiencies: tinea versicolor, emotional stuff, etc. but it is the absence of the telltale signs of the other nutrients that shows me that it’s zinc most of the time.
• Definitely
  • Hair loss at the back of my head
  • Overwhelmed, like it was much harder to tackle challenges
  • Emotional instability
  • Paranoia and sadness related to PTSD
  • Focus
  • Lack of fingernail smoothness
  • Onycholysis
  • Sensitivity to lutein (not the only cause)
  • Unsmooth hand skin and a weird, linear rash between my thumb and wrist
  • Tinea versicolor on my chest and back - (also comes from selenium)
    • Zinc deficiency, I think, seems to make the skin patches more red and filled in with a consistent color. Selenium deficiency seems to be more like pink and outlined darker. But there is overlap in their effects.
• Probably
  • Post-exertional malaise in the form of neurological dysfunction the day after exercise. This felt kind of like my blood pressure malfunctioning, like I couldn't get enough oxygen through, but it wasn't like the feeling when you're winded from a hard workout. Very hard to explain. Also felt like my arms were weak. This persisted for about 18 months until I got my zinc up. I'm pretty confident that it is the zinc that fixed it.
•  Maybe
  • Headache with a tight hairstyle
  • Out-of-shower hair loss
  • Increase in appetite in a bad way
  • Hirsutism
  • BO in armpits
  • Sensitivity to VA (Fixing zinc definitely did not cure this, but it may have helped it)
  • Energy
  • Greasy hair and dandruff
  • Was having some issues like insomnia and heart palpitations that both scallops (EPA/DHA) and zinc separately seemed to fix. I think part of what zinc does is allow for the conversion of EFAs to EPA and DHA - just a theory. Well, it is proven, but it’s just a theory that that is what happened in my case. 
  • Difficulty breathing through nose

Solution: Zinc Picolinate

• Currently taking 105 mg/day, taken in 7, 15 mg doses throughout the day, after titrating up by 15 mg
• Brand: Thorne
• This is the only form of zinc and brand that I have tried.
• Takes a day or two to notice improvement, but it is obvious once it’s there.
• Must be no more than 15 mg at a time. Doing 30 mg at a time gave me low zinc symptoms. Chris Masterjohn says you can only absorb 7 mg from a 10 mg supplement at a time. So, I spread out the doses as much as possible throughout the day. 
• I also make sure to take all my zinc for the day before eating any wheat bran. I suspect that it helps, but I haven’t experimented fully to know for sure.
• Reaction when I start a higher dose: It doesn’t feel like eating more VA. It feels like churning through it, like it’s similar symptoms, but not as bad. It’s like when I have hair that’s too tight. Just feels like VA and other junk is coming out of my cells with nowhere to go.
• 5-10 mg. supplement zinc + 1 lb. of beef a day seemed like enough to counter the reaction to 9 tbsp of wheat bran (lutein), but was not nearly enough to fix my other zinc deficiency symptoms.
• When I was increasing it to doses under 45 or so mg., it always kicked up my appetite (especially for meat) as well as made me more emotional. Over 45 or so mg, both of those effects stopped.
• Also zinc definitely stirs up VA. It is worse than the B2 actually. or at least what it stirs up feels more toxic. 
• I think the sweetness taste test is somewhat reliable for zinc picolinate. Not fool proof but approximately accurate.
• Definitely seemed to need more after a sunburn

Low Selenium - medium deal

*Maybe would have been a big deal had I not been supplementing it since September 2021, i.e. 3 months into detox

Bloodwork

My serum selenium was at 117 mcg/L in May 2023 - this was after having been on 

• 100 mcg a day supplemental from September 2021 - September 2022, 
• then 200 mcg a day from September 2022 - May 2023

So if this is to be believed, supplementation did not make me toxic.

Symptoms

• Definitely: 
  • Darker bowel movements (not in a good way)
  • Low mood (just like an emptiness, similar to low folate feeling, not like VA poisoning)
  • Less social; more in my head
  • Difficulty breathing through nose. When I am super deficient, the selenium supplement adds a clearness in the back of my mouth where my nasal passages connect. This improvement happens within a few hours when I appear to be really low in selenium. It happens within a few days when I am not as deficient.
  • Onycholysis
  • Tinea versicolor on my chest and back (also comes from zinc)
    • Zinc deficiency, I think, seems to make the skin patches more red and filled in with a consistent color. Selenium deficiency seems to be more like pink and outlined darker. But there is overlap in the effect
• Maybe
  • Weight gain
  • In-shower hair loss
  • Feeling that my worst-case-scenarios may come true

Solution: Selenium supplement

• Currently taking 300 mcg/day after titrating up by 50 mcg
• Going from 250 mcg to 300 mcg stirred up VA and improved my low selenium symptoms. I think I could stand to have more.
• Brand: Biotics Research Se-Zyme Forte
• Only other brand and form I tried was Now Supplements, and I wasn’t watching for any change in selenium status when I was using it for a few weeks, so I don’t know how well it works.
• Seemed to cause a bunch of liver spots to break out on my left hand when I first started taking it
• Does stir up VA
• Increasing selenium seemed to quickly and sharply increase my zinc needs. I am not surprised given how strong the initial stir up in VA symptoms can be.
• No adverse effects at all at the level I’m taking it, that I am aware of.

Low Magnesium - not that big of a deal

**Could have been a bigger deal had I not been supplementing it since the start of detox

Symptoms

• Eye twitches are a symptom. That’s pretty much the only one known to me
• I haven’t had eye twitches in a while even though i’ve missed a few nights over the last few months. I don’t think this one is super dire for me.

Solution: magnesium chloride

• I do a 50:50 ratio of mag chloride to hot water and mix them together to get magnesium oil. I rub it on my stomach and lower back each night. This makes it so that I don’t have to wash much off in the morning. It’s not greasy enough to be a problem if I don’t wipe it off.
• Magnesium chloride seemed to work better than magnesium sulfate
• I also tried magnesium lotion (prefer Nfuse brand; Life Flo was too greasy and hard to rub in). I started getting eye twitches after using mag lotion only and not mag oil. So I rely only on the mag oil now.

 

———Non-VA: Caused by my dietary/lifestyle choices while on the detox—————

Low Fat

• I went too low fat at approximately 12% of calorie intake. I was draining and rinsing the fat from my beef (still do that) with no added source of fat. I could have avoided some paranoia and experienced a much greater sense of calm along the way had I not gone so low. I suspect it was a fat deficiency in general more so than that of a specific fatty acid, but I could be wrong. 

Symptoms

• Definitely:
  • Paranoia-type anxiety
  • Difficulty falling asleep and sleeping deeply
  • Anxiety more so than depression. The low fat anxiety thoughts don’t go in a particular direction. Like it’s not PTSD. It’s just anxious - a feeling that something bad is going to happen in general. Fat helps me feel calmer and more stable.
  • More linear thinking, in a bad way
  • Lack of happiness. Adding/increasing fat seems to help anxiety on the day of and happiness on next day. I’ve thought for a few times now that some of its effects don’t show up until the day after. 
• Maybe
  • Hair loss 

Solution: refined coconut oil

• See the Food section for more

Low Vitamin C 

Symptoms

• I developed splinter hemorrhages on my fingernails eventually. In my experience, these have to grow out; they do not really fade.
• Depression (Vitamin C activates folate and protects folate once it’s activated, supposedly).

Solution: white potatoes

• Adding back in white potatoes at every meal cured the splinter hemorrhages and really helped the depression.

Low Biotin

Unavoidable without supplements, for me. Unless I gorged myself on walnuts, almonds, or sunflower seeds, I don’t know how I could get enough of this without supplementing given my current level of sensitivity to VA. 

Symptoms

• Definitely hair loss (but also definitely not a cure-all for that)
• Maybe energy

Solution: biotin supplement

• Currently taking 250 mcg/day
• Brand: The Vitamin Shoppe
• Have not tried other brands
• Chris Masterjohn says it’s needed for high protein diets. I don’t remember the conversion, but for someone eating 150g protein/day, he recommended somewhere around 250 mcg
• I take it away from meals so as not to compete with B5 for absorption
• Doesn’t feel essential to my vitality

Low Vitamin D

I am beginning to wonder if the VA detox is having more of an effect on my vitamin D status than I had given it credit for. Or, maybe it’s not the detox itself but instead the fact that I cut out fortified dairy when I started. Or, maybe I’ve always had issues with Vitamin D and never really known. My Vitamin D was ~21 the last time I had it checked (prior to summer, but not in the dead of winter, either). I’ve been working on it ever since.

Symptoms

• Definitely
  • Depression
• Maybe
  • Increased VA sensitivity
  • Unsmoothness of nails
  • Vertical nail ridges
  • Onycholysis
  • Out-of-shower hair loss

Solution: sunlight

• See the riboflavin section - I have to pay attention to timing of my riboflavin supplement w.r.t. sun exposure
• Also tried a supplement one time - 2000 mcg Vitamin D3:
  • No effects at all that I could tell
• Sperti lamp
  • I immediately got eye twitches after using this the first time this past winter. That was a good sign to me that I’m making vitamin D from it, since magnesium is required to activate vitamin D and do other stuff related to it, and eye twitches are my telltale low magnesium symptom.
  • I think it’s better than nothing but not nearly as effective as the sun, at least at my latitude (central Alabama)

 

——— Non-VA: Unknown Cause—————

Had before the detox:

• Dark, birthmark looking patches near my left ankle. This might be Schamberg’s/Hemosiderin staining. This showed up when I was a preteen, I would guess when I was taking the Differin or Retin-A creams.
• This cyst, acne thing on my chest - just one - that has been there for years, stays beneath the surface, and refills itself with pus. Gross but true.
• Runner’s trot. This comes and goes. It’s not as bad as it used to be, though. Definitely don’t have the cause nailed down.

Cropped up during the detox:

• During the winter of 2021 - 2022 - so the first one I was on the detox - I felt like my hands got much drier than normal. I don’t know why. 
• Super thick skin on my heels this past winter (gone now)
• One benign clogged breast duct (still there)
• Weakness after a hot shower (gone now)

 

——— Non-VA: Misc.—————

Notable multifactorial issues that cropped up during detox

• Onycholysis - seems to be related to:
  • Methylation: so low folate/methyl groups/B12
  • B2
  • Zinc
  • Selenium
  • Vitamin D
• Vertical nail ridges
  • Low B2
  • Zinc
  • Vitamin D

Too much circulating copper

• Can be from low B12 or methyl groups causing sensitivity to zinc
• Symptoms: irritable, muscle twitches, inability to sleep through through the night, wired, sneezing, smell/taste of blood/cooper, beating myself up easily. 
• Mees’ line

Low B12

*I no longer have to supplement.

Again, not caused by my diet. The low B12 itself was caused by catching COVID 3 weeks into detox and maybe my choices prior to the the detox. The only way the detox contributed to this was to use up my methyl groups so I couldn’t activate my B12, I believe.

Symptoms

• Coma-like feeling at night/can’t breathe at night/lightheaded/dizzy
• Small lunula
• Dysphagia - trouble initiating swallowing in my case
• Falling feeling at night
• Anxiety
• Depression
• PTSD
• Can’t breathe well when walking
• Onycholysis
• Vertical nail ridges
• Restless leg
• Word recall
• POTS
• Shortness of breath 
• Early waking insomnia
• Blood pressure dropped when eating sometimes
• PEM?
• Brain running through list of whatever/lyrics of one or two verses over and over
• Low folate seemed to cause hangnails also (but not always from low folate)

Solution: Sublingual adenosylcobalamin + methylfolate

• ***No longer having to supplement
• Brand: Country Life Dibencozide
• Also tried methylcobalamin and hydroxocobalamin
  • Was better than nothing, but did not ultimately fix my problem long-term and did cause side effects (nerve pain and paranoia for methylcobalamin and OCD with hydroxocobalamin)
• Took 1000 mcg methylfolate with it. No side effects from that that I could tell.
• I experimented so much with B12 - feel free to reach out with questions.

Quote from Margo on July 28, 2023, 10:07 pm

3) Food: 26 month update

 

Base daily diet

*Everything on this list is organic except the animal crackers

This is what I eat every day. 95% of my diet does not change.

• 100% grass-fed ground beef, either 85/15 or 95/5, fat drained, rinsed, and discarded; beef juices saved and consumed
  • 1 lb. per day
  • I cook this in the microwave, drain off the fat and juices, rinse it, and soak it in the hot water. Soaking in the water actually makes a difference - draining is not enough to get enough of the fat out. I then put it in the fridge, let the fat harden, then scoop out the fat, save the juices, and dump them in my meals. They taste so good. Someone else on this forum pointed out that the juices apparently have a lot of the minerals in them.
• Beans - pinto and navy - soaked before cooking, pinto juice sometimes saved and consumed
  • 1 cup pinto, 0.5 cup navy per day
  • I used to eat the canned variety, but when I switched to soaking and home-cooking, I felt like they gave me more folate and I didn’t have as many weird reactions, which I used to think were “bile dumping” but now think it may have been something else entirely. I will say though that canned navy beans taste way better than the home-cooked ones, in my opinion, but vice versa for the pintos.
  • One time, I soaked them for only 3 hours as opposed to the usual 8-12, and that whole week I felt like i was low in folate. Not certain on that, and I didn’t test it out again.
  • I found black beans hard to digest and thought that cannelini beans/butter beans without actual butter, especially if organic, tasted really bad. Chickpeas were a disaster, as they are deceptively high in VA for a bean.
  • I tried sprouting the beans at one point to see if it made me feel different folate-wise, as they supposedly contain methylfolate after sprouting. No conclusion on those.
  • Pinto beans helped regulate bowel movements a lot - I assume from the insoluble fiber.
  • I save the water that I cooked the pinto beans in and dump that in my meals too (the ones where I didn’t dump the beef drippings), because supposedly a lot of the folate leaches out into this water. The navy bean water is disgusting, so that goes down the drain.
• Peeled, white potatoes
  • About 3-4 palm-sized potatoes per day
  • I can get away with skipping 1 meal with these, but not 2 consecutive meals. Vitamin C is said to activate folate and protect it once it’s activated, and I get a low folate-type depression when I do not eat these (see the Symptoms section for more)
  • I get them at Publix, because they are the only retailer in my area that carries organic Russet/Idaho potatoes that are consistently whitish.
• Frozen white corn
  • 1.5 cups per day
  • I don’t know if this is essential for me to keep in, but it’s been in my lineup for so long that I am hesitant to remove it for fear that it has some unknown benefit to me.
  • I like the frozen packs at Whole Foods.
• White button mushrooms
  • 8 oz. per day
  • I initially added these for the B2, but that didn’t put a dent in my deficiency. Maybe these are left out on the shelves at the store for too long, destroying their B2 and rendering them useless in that regard. I don’t know. 
  • I don’t notice any obvious effects if I skip these, except for possible constipation. On paper, I think I might run into a B5 deficiency without them. I keep them in for their beta glucan, also.
• Wheat bran
  • Brand
  • 10 TBSP per day. I still need this much. 12 TBSP didn’t seem to benefit any more than 10.
  • It is very important.
  • See the Symptoms section for more information.
  • It definitely gives me minor lutein side effects - not enough to make me take it out right now, but eventually I would like to cut this down.
• Refined coconut oil
  • The Happy Belly brand is so buttery, soft, and good
  • To hunger/taste. This ends up being about 2-3 tablespoons a day
  • I do refined since the virgin coconut oil has more polyphenols which may slow ALDH. The polyphenol content isn’t excessively high in the virgin kind, but online sources say the polyphenols are “potent”.
  • I don’t think this leads to weight gain. In fact I may have lost some because of it.
  • Absolutely revved my hunger for a few days when I started it. Not “snacky” but just like I needed more food. 
  • Did not appear to block detox 
  • Definitely made my bowels churn when I ate it - more so than beef fat
  • May have led to more liquid bowel movements - not in a bad way. And lighter a little bit? Not for sure on this one.
  • I tried eating this away from meals like just at night to make sure that it didn’t aid in carotenoid absorption or interfere with B1 absorption via the remaining polyphenols in the refined variety, but I just kept craving coconut oil throughout the day when I did that, so I put it into my regular meals and moved on.
  • Felt like it might have made my other nutrient deficiencies better in the beginning. 
  • Also just a conjecture - but it may have helped my sugar sensitivity. Not sure on this one, but it was only B2 and coconut oil that were upped/added, respectively, during a period when my sugar sensitivity got better.
• Animal crackers
  • 3-5 per day
  • These are just a treat.
• White rice
  • To appetite -  some days I don’t have any; other days, it is a cup or two
  • I also always feel calm after eating white rice. Maybe not calm as much as happy. It’s basically the feeling that things are going to be okay. 
  • Seems to work even better when paired with coconut oil in the rice, not just in the same meal. No idea why, but this has happened multiple times over the span of multiple months.
• White flour
  • Brand
  • ~500 calories worth a day; I’m not eating it for the calories but for the selenium
  • When I had a B1 deficiency, this made me feel bad B1-wise. This was actually what tipped me off to my B1 deficiency. I’m not sure if it really depletes me of nutrients at this point. I suspect that it might, but not enough for me to cut it out.
  • The Arrowhead Mills’ Organic White Flour linked above is made without barley flour and is very white, which I found to be hard to find.
  • I mix 1 cup of flour with 1/3 cup water and some salt to make bread. Add a little more water if you want it to be soft.
  • I am pretty sure that when I eat the bread all at once and feel a little worse VA-wise (this happens sometimes), it is due to selenium kicking up VA.

 

Occasional additions

*I have maybe 1 serving of 1 of the things on this list every 2-3 weeks, on average.

• Go Macro Peanut Butter Bars
  • Whether or not I react to these negatively depends on the day. I assume it’s because of the sugar, or possibly the cocoa butter. These are very low VA (if you believe that cocoa butter is zero VA - there have been questions about that on this forum before), are great for emergencies, and taste pretty good.
• Snyder’s of Hanover Sourdough Nibblers
  • These do not contain malted barley flour.
  • They are the most reliable snack that can be found at most gas stations, airports, etc. which does not cause much of a reaction for me.
• Coconut water
  • 100 Coconuts’ is so good.
  • This used to make me feel slightly bad, like I overdid the sugar, but this didn’t happen the last time I had it. It was helpful for potassium when I was on B12 injections.
  • The brand I linked is heavenly. Some Publix stores in the southern U.S. carry it. You can find brands with less sugar, but this one is just so much better tasting, in my opinion.
• Almond milk/almond milk cream cheese 
  • No reaction, good or bad.
  • Mooala carries an organic and VA-free variety of almond milk
  • Kite Hill has a really convincing replacement for dairy cream cheese. Target carries it.
• Almonds/almond butter
  • These used to make me a little depressed, but not anymore.
  • I feel like I do put on some weight when eating these, though. It feels like I always gain weight on nuts- not for sure but something to look out for. 
  • May help with pre-shower hair loss, and possibly, just maybe, a little relief from depression. Those are the only things to report, and they’re light maybes.
• Scallops
  • I react very slightly to the VA in them. I was reacting very obviously to them ~6 months ago.
  • Helpful: 
    • Always makes my bowel movements more liquid
    • Sometimes makes me feel less indebted to negative thoughts
    • I don’t know why
  • I don’t know why exactly the good effects happen. I tried supplemental iodine, taurine, glycine, and choline, and those didn’t have the BM nor the mental health effects. I suspect that the mental health effect is from EPA/DHA, but I haven’t tested out fish oil or other ideas to try to confirm that. 
• Tilapia
  • No bad reaction.
  • May have had the same mental health effects as scallops, but not as strong. 
• Black coffee, decaf or regular
  • When I have this, it's just a few sips, so not enough to make me feel much either way. I have it for social purposes, not for health reasons or because I like it (I don't).
  • I am less sensitive to caffeine than I was before detox.
• Added sugar
  • Such as the GoMacro Bars above, 
  • Or this cake recipe with refined coconut oil subbed for the vegetable oil + this frosting recipe with almond milk cream cheese subbed for the regular cream cheese. Note that both the cake and the frosting are very high in sugar. If you make it, I would recommend you cut the sugar back - it was so sweet as to be detrimental to the flavor, and it also made me feel bad. Was well worth it on my last birthday, though - this tasted incredible.
  • I am not positive about this one, but I do think this causes me issues. Basically feels like my detox is being blocked. Or maybe that’s what I tell myself since that’s a theory I’ve heard. Regardless, the feeling is different from ingesting VA and different from when I have psyllium husk or oats and VA is presumably pulled out.
  • I don’t think it’s so much that I am so toxic that my body cannot handle any sugar at all like the 12 g or whatever is in the bars. I think it’s that my body hasn’t been used to dealing with the sugar. It’s been able to devote all of its ALDH resources consistently to detoxing the VA. So when it, all of the sudden, is hit by sugar that it hasn’t had to deal with in a while, the sugar becomes the priority. However,  the body doesn’t immediately respond by pushing out less VA from the tissues, so now you’ve got extra VA floating around in the blood that can’t be detoxed because the sugar is taking up the enzyme space and your body hasn’t had time to decrease VA pump-out or increase enzyme production.
• Oats
  • I tried these for the B1. They didn’t help like supplemental B1 did.
  • After I eat oats, I can nearly immediately feel my intestines churning, like it did with psyllium husk. This has happened multiple times on oats now.
• Pineberries
  • They taste great and seem to only be available in the summer. I had no negative reaction to them. They may have helped with my Vitamin C issues at the time. I would eat more of them if I could find them in an organic variety.
• White popcorn, white corn grits, and white corn polenta
  • No reaction, good or bad
• Macadamia nuts
  • I sometimes react to these, sometimes not. The reaction feels like it is blocked detox, not ingested VA. Maybe it’s the PUFAs doing that. But it’s not a consistent reaction.
  • When I wasn’t eating enough fat, these made me feel more sane.
  • Again, I always feel like I gain some weight on nuts.
  • Other than that, not much to report here either way.
• Brown rice/brown rice cakes
  • I got a few Mees’ lines from the cakes and the rice (even though it was soaked in charcoal beforehand) at one point, so I use for emergencies only. These arsenic reactions started cropping up in Stage 3 that I talk about above. Based on experiments, I think soaking the rice and/or cooking it in a lot of water really helps. Arsenic symptoms were a fluttering heartbeat, Mees’ lines, anxiety, difficulty falling asleep
• Egg whites
  • I tried them for the glycine. No reaction, good or bad.
• Gelatin
  • I tried it for the glycine. No reaction, good or bad.
• Blue Powerade Zero
  • Not much rhyme or reason to this. I just always loved these and drank one a few months ago when I had a stomach bug. I remembered what I had been missing 🙂 
• Dark chocolate made w/ coconut milk
  • I threw away the package on the brand that worked, so I don’t remember the brand. It was made with coconut milk, cocoa beans, cane sugar, and 1 more ingredient (don’t remember what it was). Not much to say about it since I ate so little of it per sitting.
  • The first brand I had was fine VA-wise; the second one did not seem to be. So it’s hit or miss on the chocolate 
• Peanut butter
  • The last time I tried it, I had the non-organic kind. I felt the same way I do when I eat non-organic potatoes, like blocked VA metabolism almost. But, I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t the peanut butter itself, and not the glyphosate.
• Parsnips
  • I did not have a problem with the parsnips themselves. However, the Whole Foods I was buying them at moved them to be on the bottom shelf below the leafy greens, where they sit in water that has dripped over all the vegetables, as well as collected a few specks of the greens themselves. After a few days of eating the parsnips after the move, I started feeling weird. So, I stopped eating them, and the symptoms went away. I can’t find them organic anywhere in my area besides Whole Foods. If I decide that I need to increase Vitamin C or Vitamin E, I might try again with these and just be more diligent to cut out the likely affected areas. 

 

Noteworthy food that has not worked for me:

• Beef fat drained off the 100% grass fed beef
  • I did react to the VA, almost for sure. It built up over time. I do not think it was the saturated fat kicking up detox that made me react, because I didn’t get these same reactions from coconut oil, and it was the distinctly “I ate VA” reaction.
  • It still tasted really good though, and it continued to sound good for a while after I had stopped it. Not sure why (don’t think it was choline since it’s only 6 mg in 1 TBSP).
  • The fat from the Aldi variety did look less yellow than the fat from the beef from another store that I got, for what it’s worth.
  • I don’t get a VA reaction to the beef when the fat is drained and rinsed.
  • Might have some calming benefits for paranoia that coconut oil does not
  • Makes my upper eyelids puffer than any other kind of VA
• Strawberries
  • This reaction has happened consistently each time I’ve tried it - maybe 5 or so. It’s an intense VA reaction. I don’t know why. Anthocyanins?
• Lemon juice
  • This should have, in theory, been okay based on the level of beta carotene and lutein I was consuming in other foods at the time. It was not. I have no clue why.
• Camu Camu powder
  • The dose I took was supposedly very low carotenoid. This did not work for me.
• Chickpeas
  • These were a disaster. They are so much higher in VA than I had realized.
• White quinoa
  • Gave me a bad ingested VA reaction. Maybe just too high in beta-carotene for me at the time - it was pretty yellow once cooked. I don’t think it was the lutein, because I was eating comparable amounts of lutein from the wheat bran at the time and was not having issues. I really don’t know why this was so bad. I don’t appear to have an oxalate problem.
• A green banana
  • This was early on (July 2021, right after I had COVID), 
  • I think the resistant starch wrecked me. This was the worst depression of my life for about 15 minutes, and then it was gone as suddenly as it came.

 

Nutrients of Concern

Per the list of nutrients in Chronometer, the only nutrients that this does not meet the RDA for are:

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Vitamin K
• Calcium
• Fat
• Omega 3
• Omega 6

I probably have deficiencies of Vitamin E, Vitamin K, and Vitamin D. I’m not sure about omega 3 and 6. I have no evidence of general fat, Vitamin C, or calcium deficiency at this point.

 

Food I want to add in eventually: 

Just for fun here - I would eventually like to be able to add back in:

• Maybe eggs for the biotin so that I can stop the biotin supplements. Then again, biotin seems like one of the lowest-risk supplements out there, so maybe I won’t do this.
• Maybe bone broth or gelatin
• Strawberries, bananas, more sugar, a low-ish VA meal at a restaurant, and the occasional cow’s milk cheese for enjoyment

Quote from Margo on July 28, 2023, 10:19 pm

4) Supplements: 26 month update

Supplements have helped me a lot, and I believe I would still be experiencing many issues (many of which were serious) from my detox setback without them.

A few of these help me feel relief from my VA symptoms: most notably, zinc seems to counter lutein, and B1 seems to counter VA in general. But mostly, they help my non-VA symptoms that I believe to have been brought on because my body is devoting its resources to detoxing VA instead of taking care of basic functions.  Of all the things that have gone wrong and are still wrong, what my body does seem to do a good job of doing is keeping detoxed VA from causing me too many symptoms (unless I get constipated - then, it’s as if I am ingesting VA again).

I had to increase B2, zinc, and selenium in tandem. For those three, the pattern goes: I add the supplement, the symptoms get better and the “stirred-up VA” feeling gets worse, then after 2-3 days, the VA feelings recede to just slight above baseline, while the symptom improvement also recedes somewhat but never close to the level before I started the new dose. Then, the new dose, after a few days, seems to upregulate my need for the other two supplements. Then, I up that supplement, and the cycle continues, until I finally reached my maximum doses of each of them (or at least the doses where I feel good enough to stop increasing them) at 50 mg B2, 105 mg zinc, and 300 mcg selenium. Essentially, I replenished one and then slightly depleted the others until I finally got enough of all 3 of them. This pattern could look like an addiction, when really it just seemed to be one nutrient upregulating processes that need to be carried out and thus upregulating the need for the other nutrients. The “stirred-up VA” feeling is a little different and much more tolerable than the VA feeling I get from eating VA or being constipated. 

I would be all in favor of getting nutrients from food alone. However, I do not think that is possible at my current rate if detox. Some say not to take supplements so that you don’t speed detox. The problem with that for me is that my basic nutritional needs for non-detox functions seem to be getting pushed to the back burner in favor of detox. The first supplement I took on the detox was selenium, and that had an immediate noticeable effect, suggesting I was already low in it. Maybe I could have gotten just enough from food and never would have needed other supplements. Maybe the selenium I took did kick up my need for everything else. I don’t believe that to be the case, but that could be true.

Part of what has taken so long to be able to rest is that I had to find the minimum supplement doses that will do the job. Finding the the right forms and doses was harder than identifying the needed vitamin itself.

Misc. thoughts:

• Figuring out the B vitamin supplements was tough.
• I noticed effects immediately from all the supplements I have in my routine (except molybdenum). In no way did I have to wait weeks or months for them to help; granted, I do appear to have gotten into serious deficiencies of most of them.

 

Current

Since my body seems to do a decent job of keeping VA from causing me symptoms when it’s being detoxed (not when it’s being eaten), I dosed these supplements by my other non-VA symptoms since I didn’t have many direct VA symptoms to go by. 

• • 300 mcg selenium
  • 300 mcg molybdenum
  • 105 mg zinc picolinate, spread out in 6, 15mg doses
  • 40 mg benfotiamine
  • 50 mg b2 riboflavin 5 phosphate
  • 250 mcg biotin
  • Magnesium chloride; in the form of homemade magnesium oil; enough to cover my stomach and lower back once a day

I still feel that this is a little low in selenium, but this is the best combo of selenium, zinc, and B2 thus far, and it is satisfying enough for me to take a break from tinkering with it.

See the section on Symptoms above for the entries on all the other current ones except molybdenum.

Molybdenum 

• I don’t remember any noticeable benefits occurring when I started molybdenum. I have no biofeedback on this at all. The only thing I know is that I am much less sensitive to caffeine than I was when I started this detox, but I am not sure what caused that.
• I am okay with this level of supplementation for the time being because it is so far below the upper limit and because my other nutrient needs for detoxing are very high. 
• I was taking 150 mcg from August 2021 to March 2022. Then, I went up to 300 mcg.
• I have no plans to increase this, since I don’t have any feedback on this one.

 

Not current, but tried

Since I got such great results from the first dose of most of the supplements that I am on, if a supplement didn’t help symptoms on the first or second dose, I dropped it and moved on to something else. Note that some of these I haven’t tried in close to 2 years, so the symptoms below were based on the state of health I was at when I tried them but do not necessarily reflect how they would make me feel at this stage 2+ years in.

Niacin (Nicotinic acid)

• Tested out 15 mg and 30 mg
• Reacted to both - they both kicked up VA. Seemed to take longer to stir up VA than the other supplements that do it
• Did seem to open my eyes up and make them more clear - just like B2
• Felt like it helped blood flow. 
• Did not budge my onycholysis
• Did not seem to help mental health, but it also didn’t give me anxiety like I thought it might
• Did not notice a flush from this
• May have made my bowel movements more firm, but also didn’t have a consistent effect there
• May have helped hair loss, but I am not confident at all in that
• This is the only one that strongly kicked up VA (alongside zinc and B2) that did not help me out that much with symptoms

B Complex

• Caused me nervousness and slight stuttering

Allithiamine/ Thiamin HCL

• See my Low B1 entry in the symptoms section for information on this. Benfotiamine sat well with me; allithiamine did not; thiamin HCL was neutral.

B6 (P5P)

• Took about 6.25 mg once or twice
• No firm conclusion on this one yet
• In some ways I felt like it improved mood (woke up in a “chipper” mood the next morning); in other ways, I felt like it raised anxiety (felt like my brain was running over and over lists of things, and had a hard time following thoughts through to conclusion). Not certain it was from the B6 there though. 
• Did not budge onycholysis

Methylfolate

• Had different effects at different stages. When I was taking B12, it for sure helped me with no noticeable negative effects. When I am not taking B12 and am eating wheat bran, it does nothing to me, good or bad.
• Would for sure take again if needed.

B12

• See B12 section above. 
• I no longer have to take this and haven’t in months.
• I do not think it was the detox itself that caused the actual B12 deficiency, though I do think the detox may have given me a problem with activating it (likely from increased methyl group use and/or B2 deficiency making me need more methyl groups).
• Sometimes (once every few months), I feel like I might be getting low B12 again, with POTS, getting out of breath after singing, and slight word recall issues. It usually goes away in less than a days, so I do nothing about it.

Vitamin K2

• I do have some low vitamin K symptoms - bruising somewhat easily, and bruises take a while to heal
• Just took this once so far: 500 mcg sublingual MK-4. May have:
  • Helped depression a little bit
  • Stirred up VA (kicked up detox) or blocked it - couldn’t tell which one and wasn’t 100% sure that the VA reaction I felt was from the Vitamin K itself, anyway
• No miraculous increase in vitality that I was looking for
• Will try it again in a few months

Vitamin E

• Hard to conclude on this one. 
• Similar reaction to Vitamin K2
• First time I took about 35 mg (225% of the RDA). Felt like it may have slightly kicked up VA and may have helped with depression. 
• The second time, I mistook it for a different supplement and took 270 mg by accident. It didn’t seem to stir up VA any more than the first time, but I woke up in a good mood the next day. 
• No noticeable effects outside of the possible kick up in VA and possible mood boost.
• Will try it again in a few months

Phosphatidylcholine

• 840 mg dose - took this once
• Felt nothing, good or bad

TMG 

• Took this before I was consistently eating wheat bran, so I don’t think I would notice effects from it anymore, since I presume based on experiments that the TMG in wheat bran is what is helping me
• Definitely gave me a mood boost. Felt great. 
• May have hurt my methylation pathway in other ways though? Not sure.
• Would definitely take again if I felt like it was right.

Iron Bisglycinate

• Definitely:
  • Stirred up VA
  • Had the same neurological effects as the glycine supplement (low B1 feeling): hard to breathe, anxiety, popping in my head, etc.

Heme Iron Polypeptide

• Took 10.5 mg
• Definitely:
  • Stirred up VA
  • Didn’t have the glycine/B1 neurological effects that the iron bisglycinate had
  • Did not budge my onycholysis
• May have: 
  • Decreased anxiety, the PTSD type
  • Led me to be more emotional - more like feeling like crying in a processing type way
  • Opened my eyes up like B2 does  

Iodine

• Tried nascent iodine on two different occasions
• Took 600 mg i.e. one drop
• It didn’t do anything noticeable to me, good or bad. Dr. Smith used to say it’s going to feel like rocket fuel if you need it.
• I experimented with fish a little bit, and they didn’t change my onycholysis (likely connected to hypothyroid)

Potassium Chloride powder

• Definitely made me feel brain-foggy and diluted

Taurine

• Tried 500 mg the first time and 1000 mg the second time, like 6 months later. 
• Didn’t make me feel better in any obvious way, but also didn’t have any bad side effects other than maybe a slight VA stir-up.
• Note that when I took these, I was not eating scallops - which are extremely high in taurine - regularly. So, I don’t think that a diet of beef and whatnot is necessarily that deficient in taurine, at least for me for right now.
• Did not change my bowel movements at all. 
• May have stirred up VA

Glycine

• Pretty sure that it replicated some of my low B1 symptoms (mainly, gasping/panic attack-type feeling after eating), both times I tried it
• Glycine did not have any amazing sleep benefits the second time I tried it. I actually had difficulty falling asleep 
• No obvious benefits 

Calcium 

• I don’t remember which form or dose
• Felt nothing, good or bad

Lactoferrin

• Tried both the Jarrow and Nutrition Detective Lactoferrin brands. Neither were worth keeping in for me. 
• Definitely:
  • Gave me VA symptoms, through whatever mechanism
  • Made bowel movements lighter and more regular 
  • Look fresh-faced
• May have: 
  • Made me lose weight
  • Decreased my hirsutism

Activated Charcoal

• Definitely gave me my VA symptoms (don’t remember if that was similar to eating VA, stirring it up from other supplements, etc.)

Psyllium Husk Powder

• Definitely gave me VA symptoms - the drawing it out kind
• Feels the same as eating oats

Quote from Margo on July 28, 2023, 10:22 pm

5) Other Topics: 26 month update

Going Cold Turkey

I went mostly cold turkey on low VA from day 1. The only things I remember having left in my diet in the beginning that I don’t eat now were iceberg lettuce, chicken, strawberries and grapes, more whole grains, and conventionally raised beef, which presumably had supplemental VA in it. So still pretty low VA, probably what most would call going cold turkey. I did not go cold turkey on eating organic. That took a few months. 

Maybe if I had not gone so low in VA, then I would have had an easier time because my nutrient needs wouldn’t have been as high. However, this didn’t seem like a viable option for me at the time I started the detox, as I was so sensitive to VA from the get-go. I still don’t know if not going super low VA would have been a good idea.

 

Remaining sensitivity to VA

• Diluting my soluble fiber (brown rice) and carotenoids (white corn) was very helpful in Stage 2 when I was extremely sensitive. If I ate either one on their own, I reacted slightly, but if they were combined with white rice and meat in a meal, I didn’t. I ate all of the white rice on its own first at every meal to make sure there was something in my stomach when the brown rice and white corn hit.
• I feel like at this point it’s not so much that my body is so toxic; it’s that I’ve been so low VA for so long and so strict that my body hasn’t had to had handle anything new coming in, so it doesn’t have the enzymes to handle new stuff. 
• I do think sunlight helps. Saturated fat was not the cure I had hoped it to be. I haven’t found anything that helps other than sunlight (and zinc for lutein), but I also haven’t gone looking very hard for an antidote.
• Whether or not I am going to react to VA in my borderline-okay foods seems to differ by the day. 
• At this stage, I am not confident that I will ever be able to eat a normal amount of VA again. Maybe I will. My body did seem to adjust to my increase in lutein intake when I instituted that at about the ~1 year mark. Maybe this can happen for retinol and the other carotenoids, as well.
• This post was illuminating, because it explained a lot to me - basically, how I could have been affected by VA my whole life but it took 24 years for things to really go south. How could I have gotten symptoms if my liver didn’t appear to be full until my mid-20s? This post made possible sense of it.

 

Cravings

The only food I consistently miss is cheese, especially if it's melted. I don’t know of a sufficient substitute. A few of my old favorites, like brownies and Texas Sheet Cake, usually sound good, too, but those desires went away when I had the low-VA cake I linked above. 

 

Eating Organic

I didn’t notice any detectable difference in health when cutting out glyphosate, but when I eat something non-organic now, I get slight VA symptoms, most notably greasy skin and an extra forehead wrinkle.

 

Agitators 

• Being outside in the cold really seemed to draw out VA this winter.
• Crying seems to strongly bring out VA, but that effect is getting better.
• I could eat seemingly limitless amounts of soluble fiber in the first 6.5 months. Then almost overnight - probably over the span of 4-5 days, I just started dumping VA like nobody’s business. So I took out the beans and eventually had to take out the potatoes. Around the time I became sensitive to soluble fiber, I stopped being able to take hot showers or even wash my hair with hot water. These effects seemed to correlate with B12 issues.

 

Exercise

• Stirs up VA for sure
• Exercise seems to help anxiety more than it helps happiness/joy
• Seemed to kick up need for B2
• Not sure on this one but just a theory - felt like my low zinc symptoms got better when I started exercising. No great evidence for this
• Moderate exercise (like an easy run) makes me detox but doesn’t give the burst of feel-good chemicals that a strenuous workout does. So I’m going to get an increase in VA symptoms the next day without the supportive improvement in mental health. So, I try to keep things easy (walking) or challenging (difficult run), but not in-between.
• Strenuous exercise seems to numb the emotional pain that comes when I have VA in my system. Some of it is still there, but a lot of it is not. It doesn’t take away the effects of VA in other body systems, but it does make me less  anxious about them.

 

The Love Your Liver Program

The short of it is that being in this program and doing Dr. Smith’s consultations helped me a lot, but I eventually had to leave, as being there kept me constantly dwelling on the harm that VA had caused me, and I wanted to move on.

 

Misc.

• For what it’s worth, I found Chris Masterjohn's information to be extremely valuable. It would have taken me so much longer to find anywhere else, if I ever found it at all.
• Day 1 of my period is pretty much the only time I get random dumping of VA without a manipulatable cause. I use how I feel on that day as a proxy for how much VA is left. Not foolproof, but it’s the best gauge I have.
• Different forms of VA seem to produce similar but distinguishable effects. 
• How the food is cooked seemed to be important for some of the things I eat. I did much better on home cooked beans vs. canned beans, for example.
• Just Say No to the pink lotion at nail salons. Learned that one the hard way 🙂

 

Mental Health

I do still have PTSD from prior to the detox, unfortunately. I have had to undergo CBT for that. This diet plus fixing ensuing nutrient deficiencies have helped tremendously, but they have not been enough to make the PTSD go away thus far. On the other hand, I think the CBT would have been close to useless if I was still consuming VA. Hopefully one day, I will be free of this. For now, I’m grateful that it’s not nearly like it used to be.

 

Thank you, Grant!

Just wanted to say thank you to @ggenereux. This work is life-changing, and I am so grateful to live in a time where this information can be disseminated. 

Quote from Ourania on July 29, 2023, 3:25 am

Thank you very much @margo for putting together all this information. I wish you well! I wonder what makes you think that zinc can speed up lutein detoxification. This is one of my remaining problems.

Quote from Orion on July 29, 2023, 6:05 am

@margo How much Benfotiamine did you work up to daily?

Reading about RRARF that brings back memories!

Quote from Margo on July 29, 2023, 6:30 am

@ourania thank you! I had consistent reactions to lutein, and I got those reactions when I added in wheat bran in summer 2021. I had to keep the wheat bran in, so I tested out zinc as a solution. I hadn't been supplementing zinc beforehand. It worked! But I haven't tested out if zinc would work for higher-lutein foods. I imagine that it's only effective up to a point. I wish you the best on your lutein issues.

Quote from Margo on July 29, 2023, 6:33 am

@orion I'm at 40 mg right now. I've been on that for a while (6 months?) despite having to increase other supplements in the meantime, so that dose feels pretty well settled, for the time being. RRARF the way some of us did it... yeah ... I'm glad it led here hahaha

Quote from puddleduck on July 29, 2023, 9:24 am

Haha, the places we’ve been...RRARF influenced me when I was doing my sweet-potatoes-at-every-meal diet...probably would’ve eaten less of them otherwise... 😝  But my choice of carbohydrate wasn’t Matt’s fault, of course.

ANYWAY, I was just wondering how you were doing the other day, Margo, and was so happy to see an update from you!!! 😊 It’s wonderful you have been feeling so well that you were ready to move on from focusing on this vitamin A stuff so much. 😁☀️

What you have written is so helpful; I’m sure I will refer back to it. Thank you for taking the time to record your detailed observations! It’s cool you’ve gotten a lot out of Chris Masterjohn’s work. I have, too.

Oh and it’s funny to read about your enneagram type...I’m the same one! That paragraph brought back memories of my early twenties...when I didn’t know I was severely VA poisoned. 😵  Crazy how much damage it can do...

But I’m glad you made it through, and have persisted in figuring out how to support your body through the detox process. It can be overwhelming for anyone, but that you did so while dealing with mental health challenges, PTSD, and then the symptoms of a B12 deficiency demonstrates remarkable determination. (Insert applause from a cheering crowd!)

The word to I have seen to describe the detox enzymes is “greedy”, and that appears to be true, in my case. I appear to be getting rid of VA at a very fast rate, all while suffering symptoms of nutrient deficiencies in other body systems. Maybe the body sees VA floating around in the system as more risky and detrimental than these other effects from nutrient deficiencies. That is my best guess, at least.

I agree with this, and everything else you wrote about the importance of supplementation during this process. It’s bizarre how much zinc I have needed to take, and still need to take. And last time I had blood drawn, even though I was supplementing 150 mg daily, I was still deficient in zinc. So it is being used up rapidly it appears.

The orthorexia was gone at the time I started the detox but *has* returned, not surprisingly. It’s been the least of my concerns thus far. I do little things to try to keep it in check, like intentionally getting the non-organic variety of animal crackers.

This made me LOL. 😂 So relatable. Been there, for sure.

Thanks again for starting a log and sharing what you’ve learned so far! I have subscribed to it, so I’ll be sure to get notified of any future updates. All the best as you continue to heal mind, body, heart, soul, and pursue whatever other hopes and dreams you’re embracing in life, @margo. 🙂🌻