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Margo's Log
@andrew-b thank you for the comment, Andrew. I have appreciated your thoughts, especially two years ago when I was getting my feet under me. And I'm really glad that the betaine info amounted to something for the cause. Especially given how nasty wheat bran is! Hahaha
@sand thank you! I appreciate the interest and am happy to answer questions. No offense taken 🙂 What is your current serum retinol level?
Let me answer your questions:
- “Can you explain why you think that you likely had more VA in your system than your first serum retinol measurement would suggest? You have no serum retinol tests to indicate this, because at no point do you have any tests that indicate that your body started to dump all this hypothetical excess vA. According to your serum retinol tests you started out on your journey where people hope to _end up_ after years of being strictly no vA (such as myself).”
When I say VA in my system I mean the whole body, liver included, not systemic circulation. Sorry, I should have been more precise with that one. The idea that I had more in my body than the 26.9 number would suggest stems from my theory that my liver was full of VA when I started low VA in June 2021.
- “You say: «My health deteriorated rapidly in the few months prior to me starting the detox, which is consistent with the idea that my liver had finally reached capacity». This is also consistent with 100s of other ideas. You could have been having issues with so many different things, and when starting on a strict diet, avoiding _so many_ different things, you got better. What am I missing in your line of reasoning here? It seems impossible to me to be able to attribute this to vA.”
Yes, it could have been other things. My line of thinking stems mainly from the fact that those newfound health issues that cropped up about 4 months prior to detoxing (white flaky skin by eyes, lurching feeling while falling asleep, waking up gasping for breath) came back consistently when I ate something with VA in it while on low VA but never came back when I altered my strict low VA diet in other ways (eating non-organic, etc.). So I felt confident in connecting those symptoms with VA. So the line of thinking was: VA in my body causes these specific symptoms —> I got these symptoms for the first time in my life 4 months prior to detoxing —> There must have been something go really south in terms of VA storage, metabolism, etc. around that time ——> My best guess as to what went wrong was that I got overloaded on VA. I am guessing this because 1) I had eaten a ton of VA in the few years prior 2) I hadn’t changed my diet in any meaningful way in about 2 years prior to detoxing, so I don’t have any evidence that the cause was some sort of metabolism shift as a result of a known external change, and 3) I needed a TON of supplements once I started detoxing, suggesting that I had a lot of VA to get rid of. It could have been something else that made my VA processing go awry in the few months prior to detoxing, but my liver being full is the best guess I have.
- “You have done a freaking awesome job for many years now, eating (what we here on this forum think is) a healthy low vA diet, which removes so many problematic foods, could it not just be that your body has healed and now is able to cope with both vA and other things? I’m curious how you retrospectively are able to say you always were sensitive to some vA foods, and now you can handle them, and that that means your liver was full of vA.”
Thank you! I agree that an explanation like that one would be reasonable. I am sure that the diet helped my liver in other ways than just being low VA, as you suggest. But I don’t draw my conclusion that my liver was full of VA from the fact that I couldn’t handle VA foods but now I can. If I suggested that, then I was in the wrong! I draw it from the line of reasoning above.
- “it seems to me that you can be considered a proof, with the same line of reasoning people use to say that vA is not a vitamin because one person is doing fine without it, that vA *is* a vitamin, because you were insanely low, and got eye issues. Do you agree with this? It seems to me that you are in a unique position to actually test this properly with avoiding vA again, and see if your eye issues came back, but I understand you don’t want to play with your health.”
I think that my experience strongly suggests that VA is essential for the eyes. But my experimentation with reintroduction of foods was not pure, unfortunately. Being able to eat VA again happened about a week before a 2-week trip for me, one week of which was out of the country, so I ate what I wanted during those few weeks with very little thought given to logic or science. Unfortunate timing, but at least my trip was better for it 🙂 The fact that VA is the only thing I was knowingly restricting before this bolstered my theory that it was VA reintroduction that fixed the problem.
I am glad you suggested re-experimenting; I will give it serious consideration. I had thought about being more measured in the types and amounts of VA I am eating now to see what happens, but I hadn’t thought about taking it nearly completely out again. I will see, after maybe a few more weeks’ break!
Do you eat much fiber now? Do you feel as though you don't need it anymore and can eat whatever?
@janelle525 I’m not eating very much fiber right now. I have strawberries and/or raspberries daily, but nothing else in the produce section sounds appetizing. I also am not really doing whole grains. My digestion is pretty good. It could be better but isn’t something I feel the need to force at the moment. I imagine that I’ll eventually add potatoes back to the mix, and that seems like it should be enough to fill the gap.
Do you think the night blindness is due to a deeper detox? The only time I’ve ever had it was after using retinA.
@margo Quite a while ago, I suffered from that lurching feeling you described when falling asleep. This was entirely resolved by heavy thiamine supplementation. This is a sign of dysautonomia, a form of chaos in the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses, due to thiamine deficiency.
Retinoids interfere with the transketolase enzyme necessary for thiamine to do its work. It is very possible that eating some vA or doing something that circulates retinoids could induce a bout of thiamine deficiency.
@nate-2 I don’t think it was due to a deeper detox. I don’t think I was in a state of deeper detox as the night vision issues continued to worsen, as these vision issues coincided with plateaued serum retinol levels and with me feeling better and having less overall VA symptoms. I think the strongest evidence for me though was that I still had the night vision issues in late May/early June 2024 but was able to get off my supplements (that I only needed after I started low VA) cold turkey in early June 2024, which suggested to me that by early June my detox was essentially over, even though I had very recently still had he vision issues.
Interesting about retin-a for you. I hope those don’t come back! I took that stuff in my early teens - it is nasty. Never again!
Quote from Margo on July 24, 2024, 11:56 am@nate-2 I don’t think it was due to a deeper detox. I don’t think I was in a state of deeper detox as the night vision issues continued to worsen, as these vision issues coincided with plateaued serum retinol levels and with me feeling better and having less overall VA symptoms. I think the strongest evidence for me though was that I still had the night vision issues in late May/early June 2024 but was able to get off my supplements (that I only needed after I started low VA) cold turkey in early June 2024, which suggested to me that by early June my detox was essentially over, even though I had very recently still had he vision issues.
Interesting about retin-a for you. I hope those don’t come back! I took that stuff in my early teens - it is nasty. Never again!
Interesting for sure. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone having vision issues on low vit a besides grant with his onion experiment. There’s plenty of people in garrets group, including garret himself who’ve been on it 5,6, and 7 years. But we are in uncharted territory. I’ll be interested to hear about your progress from here and what you decide to do, and what you think.
Thanks for tagging me last month re this thread.
I wasn't sure what to say.
Nobody that has a serum retinol level less than 30 mcg/dL should be on a low vitamin A diet.
Zinc deficiency can cause vitamin A dysregulation which could explain symptom relief from following a low vitamin A diet when serum retinol is less than 30.
If zinc deficiency is present serum retinol could be less than 30 when it would normally be higher. If that is suspected the logical approach would be to eat a balanced diet and take a zinc supplement then test serum retinol after a couple of months of zinc replenishment.