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Margo's Log
@puddleduck thank you so much for your words - it really means a lot to have encouragement. Your posts always make me feel more positive about this process. I am glad this was helpful and hope that it continues to be 🙂
So interesting about your Enneagram type! I was suuuuuper into it a few years ago. This detox proved to be much more effective at combatting unhelpful personality traits vs. anything I'd tried before.
LOL about the animal crackers, too. Glad someone can relate!
So interesting that you need so much zinc, and especially after having been on the detox for years. How long has it been for you at this point? Over 4 years, right? I hope you are doing well and continuing to improve!
Thank you Margo, this was a very helpful update! I see you have been eating beans every day, and it seems the beans really are a big part of the healing too. Its like it is almost crucial, to have the old toxic bile transported out effectively.
I want to try wheat bran too now. I might slowly run into a little nutrient depletion because I have done heavy bean based nutrition and low vitamin A for half a year now and my nails have gotten softer kinda... and I feel like my hair also could need some support... Its so helpful to read about how the detox is greedy for minerals and vitamins. Its so easy to forget! I do include eggs too now so I hope that is going to help not being too nutrient depleted because i have not taken any supplement at all other than lactoferrin (for a year now already)
I just am so hesitant to start the hassle with trying to figure out what nutrients I would need or not... I am healing from trauma simultaneously and burnout... so I really try to limit all extra stressors. Getting it from food seems so much safer to me. Wheat bran sounds pretty safe 🙂
Do you drink coffee BTW? I cant remember reading about it in your post?
I stopped it 6 months ago starting the bean protocol, because it was not allowed and also I got headache from beans + coffee!
Now, 6 months later I started drinking coffee again because I felt so lethargic from the trauma work it started being too much... I just had to do some coffee again because it helped immediately! So strange! And now i dont get any headache at all from coffee and beans. So I am going to keep the coffee in for a little while and see where it leads me. I probably will stop drinking it comes fall though. And i try to keep only 1 cup/day. Grant has encouraged to keep coffee during the detox but I have forgotten why?
@margo It’ll be 5 years in December for me, yeah. 🙂 Looking back there was a personality shift at the point I started to feel well and truly poisoned, and as I continue to “get clearer” my memories of before are coming back and...how do I put it? I feel more connected to my “true self” I guess? It’s a relief to not feel so “stuck” emotionally anymore.
@inger I think Grant recommended coffee if it helps with keeping regular. But it contains a decent amount of B2, apparently. I can tolerate caffeine now much better than I used to, also.
Hi @inger! Thank you for saying all of that 🙂
It does seem like a lot of people have found benefit from the beans. I have had them there from the start for the folate, so I haven't attempted to take them out because I do not want to experience low folate again - haha. So I don't actually know what my detox would be like without them! Which varieties of beans do you like? I am always open to trying new kinds 🙂
That is wonderful that you are able to go through this process without supplements. That definitely sounds ideal. And glad to hear that adding eggs has gone well (or at least okay?) for you 🙂
Good question about the coffee. I just edited my post to reflect that I do have it (decaf or regular) occasionally. It's usually just a few sips, because I drink it for social purposes, not because I like it. I don't drink enough to notice any reaction, good or bad. I did try drinking a lot of it once a few months ago when I was constipated, and it didn't help, to my surprise. But it also did not keep me up that night like it used to.
I wish you the best in healing from trauma. Life can be so hard sometimes. I am thankful to have met like-minded people on the various vitamin A forums that are in that part of the healing together. Hoping you can feel that, too 🙂
@puddleduck so great to hear about your improvements in the way of personal peace. 5 years is no joke 🙂
Quote from Margo on July 31, 2023, 9:03 pmHi @inger! Thank you for saying all of that 🙂
It does seem like a lot of people have found benefit from the beans. I have had them there from the start for the folate, so I haven't attempted to take them out because I do not want to experience low folate again - haha. So I don't actually know what my detox would be like without them! Which varieties of beans do you like? I am always open to trying new kinds 🙂
That is wonderful that you are able to go through this process without supplements. That definitely sounds ideal. And glad to hear that adding eggs has gone well (or at least okay?) for you 🙂
Good question about the coffee. I just edited my post to reflect that I do have it (decaf or regular) occasionally. It's usually just a few sips, because I drink it for social purposes, not because I like it. I don't drink enough to notice any reaction, good or bad. I did try drinking a lot of it once a few months ago when I was constipated, and it didn't help, to my surprise. But it also did not keep me up that night like it used to.
I wish you the best in healing from trauma. Life can be so hard sometimes. I am thankful to have met like-minded people on the various vitamin A forums that are in that part of the healing together. Hoping you can feel that, too 🙂
@margo, well I do like any beans, but I mostly eat black and white beans because I seem to tolerate those best, and butter beans. Love those. I have not tried pinto beans yet but I will. Chickpeas I can not eat bigger amount of because they make me bloat.
I get this craving for beans really. Its so weird. Like my body loves and craves them. I sometimes wonder if this is good or bad..lol I am coming from a carnivorish nutrition so its kinda wrong to crave carbs. 😉 But, its not really the carbs I think, its the soothing effect they have on me, I wonder if its because they suck up the toxic bile. I think if you have trauma the bile is more toxic because our liver cant work properly under the inner tension trauma causes. And toxicity builds up.. bile don´t flow properly.. and when it starts flowing you feel bad... if you don´t mop it up 🙂 which is why the beans feel so soothing.
Yes its wonderful to be able to share your own pain with likeminded people and know they understand, that is already so healing in it self. The kindness, the understanding. The being accepted, as broken as you are <3
*Just 1 post in this 3 year update
Profile
27 y.o.
Started the detox in early June 2021, so this is my ~3 year update
Serum retinol:
- 26.9 mcg/dL in August 2021
- ~24 in March 2022
- 8.6 in May 2023
- 5.8 in August 2023
- 4.6 in October 2023
- 6.6 in December 2023
- 5.7 in April 2024
*Note that the value did not budge for the last 9 months of detox. I had no drastic changes to my diet or supplement routine during this time.
**Note also that the stabilization of my serum retinol starting in August 2023 coincided with night vision issues per the timeline below.
Summary since last post (July 2023)
I’m done! It worked. And I think that VA is essential. There really is light at the end of the tunnel 🙂
I started to develop minor vision issues soon after my last post (~August 2023). This would have been when my serum retinol was at about 6 mcg/dL. It started off with my eyes not adjusting to darkness as quickly after a car light would shine in them brightly at night. Then, I noticed that my eyes took much longer to adjust to darkness when I’d turn out the lights at night or after coming inside from bright daylight. My eyes would eventually adjust, and I could see almost as well as before this phase. This continued to get worse until early June 2024 when I started to eat VA again. In the interim, I experimented with adding more selenium, and that would usually budge the needle for about a day until the vision issues went back to baseline. By the last time I tried that (spring 2024), it didn’t help at all. So, I don’t think it was a selenium deficiency. Supplemental taurine also didn’t help. The problem has mostly (maybe completely) resolved since I reintroduced VA - and I had multiple things that suggested to me that the detox was essentially over by the time I reintroduced VA (see timeline below + stabilized serum retinol levels above) - so I don’t think that reintroduction of VA shut down detox for me. I didn’t want VA to be essential, but the data suggests to me that it is.
The time in the few months leading up to my reintroduction of VA when I felt really socially/emotionally supported were when I felt the most like I could handle VA.
Timeline
Up until June 2024, my diet and supplement routine stayed mostly the same as it was at the time of my 26 month post in this thread in July 2023.
- August 2023 ish - vision issues started
- August 2023 ish - felt like I could tolerate a little more VA than normal - physically as well as was just a lot less anxious about the thought of those foods.
- September 2023 ish - I finally got sick of eating the same foods for every meal that I had been eating for 2+ years. But for the most part I kept eating them in order to maintain purity of the experiment.
- November 2023 - got Bell’s Palsy after being sick for 10 days or so. I have no evidence that this is connected to VA or VA detox, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it here since it was so abnormal. This is 95% resolved, and I am the only one who can tell a difference anymore.
- March 2024 ish - I decided to stop the wheat bran, because I no longer felt like I needed it, and I was so over eating it. Taking it out went over fine.
- May 2024 - I felt really good on my cycle this month. This was a good sign to me that detox seemed to be ending, as how I felt during my cycle was always a great gauge for how much VA was being dumped into my system.
- Early June 2024 - felt good enough to try more VA again - again, physically as well as was much less anxious about those foods. It started with a turkey sandwich and potato chips one day, and a week or so later I was eating normally again. The adjustment happened very quickly.
- Early June 2024 - a week or so after introducing the VA foods, I stopped my supplements - except for biotin - cold turkey. That has been 3 weeks ago at this point, and I feel fine without them. I was feeling like I could have stopped them for a month or so prior to this. I don’t think it was the introduction of VA foods that allowed me to stop them - I think it was the ending of detox that did.
One notable thing about the timeline/narrative is that I continued to need high supplement doses for a while even after the night vision issues started in August 2023. Maybe I was detoxing a version of VA that the eyes couldn’t use? Not sure. But that was the order.
Foods
I wanted to link a few new foods that were so helpful to me when I was still having to be strict.
Van Leeuwen Vegan Ice Cream
- I use the store locator to buy them locally
- Ones that were fine for me VA-wise:
- Peanut Butter Brownie Honeycomb
- Mint Chip
- Double Chocolate Fudge Brownie
- Chocolate Cookie Dough Honeycomb
- Bars - Brown Sugar Honeycomb - these are sooo good
- I like the sourdough bagels and rustic sourdough bread. I think there’s more va in the English muffins than the bagels or sourdough bread.
Remaining Issues
My health is not perfect - there are things that I would change - but I feel better than I probably ever have in total. Most VA detox issues are gone. I don’t get most of my old ingested VA reactions, and when I do, they are of lesser intensity than previously.
In terms of issues that have cropped up during detox, my nails are still not smooth, my hair is still thinner than prior to detox, and I still have minor onycholysis. The last two issues would suggest potential thyroid issues. I haven’t had labs in a while. We will see if/when these things resolve. And I have my theories that these issues may not be related to VA for me.
I can eat mostly normally now. By normal I mean eating out, eating at others’ houses, etc. without much issue. I seem to have some of my old VA reactions at times, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a sensitivity. I haven’t pinned down what exactly the reactions are to, but it seems to be the plant-based forms as well as the supplemental forms (non-100% grass fed beef raised in the U.S. and therefore supplemented, for example). But I am probably still eating less VA than I was for most of my life - no more supplemented cereal and milk, no more supplements, and limited whole plant foods. I don’t have any idea why I was so sensitive to VA while on detox, nor do I know for sure why my sensitivity stopped.
Future
I am figuring out what normal eating looks like for me. I think avoiding VA supplements and high VA foods and using whole plant foods as garnishes instead of dishes will help prevent the problem from recurring. That seems to be a sustainable plan for me, too. I’m excited to be back to normal!
Thanks again for everyone’s contributions to this project!
You have been so calculated in this experiment and so strict with your diet it would have been great if you had isolated the vitamin A as being the thing that reversed the vision problem, as that would put everyone's mind at rest that it really is essential, because I'm sure for those who think it is a poison would say it was other things that could have helped. And this is very very needed experimentation if people are to cling to the idea it is a poison. But I'd say you did a good job documenting that your serum retinol wasn't going any lower and that easing up on your diet was the thing that helped the vision issues. Thanks for updating us!!
Thanks for posting this @margo! So your conclusion is that you got better when cutting down on vA, and that there is a fine balance between what is good for you and bad for you? Because you were already quite low when you started, right? Any more thoughts you have, would love to hear them!
Also wish @wavy was here to read this