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Mike Fave YouTube Video
Quote from sand on July 31, 2024, 12:37 am1) You/Mike et al. made a video(s) with some claims
2) Grant responded to these claims
3) You come here and say there is a new video. This new video is not a response to Grant. I ask you: when you read Grant’s new response, which claims do you think he did not address? Instead of linking me a video, why don’t you give us at least one claim that Grant did not address?
- It's definitely not me making these claims and I am in no way affiliated with Mike Fave. I wasn't even aware Mike Fave existed until the day I made this thread.
- Yes Grant did respond to some of the points Mike raised, but there's more such as the ones in the video I linked.
- I am specifically talking about the most recent video I linked. One specific example (among many) in the video that has not been addressed is Mike's point #3: Grant claims the rats became toxic due to retinoic acid in the lard.
- At timestamp 27:11 this is discussed.
- At 29:30 he shows a study referenced by Grant showing .5-2 IU of VitA per gram of lard.
- Rats received 1.2g of lard per day which equals .6-2.4 IU of vitamin A at most.
- However there is another study showing rats who were given 165 IU of retinoic acid per day were fine.
- In addition to that the rats fed butter instead of lard regained their health however butter has 25 IU of vitamin A per gram as opposed to the ~2IU per gram of lard.
So how is the lard making these rats vitamin A toxic but the butter is not? In fact it appears the butter is doing the opposite. my thoughts are:
- My understanding of pig fat is that it's composition is highly dependent on the diet the pigs are fed. One study showing the vitamin A content of lard may not be applicable at all to a different set of pigs. So maybe the pigs in the original study had way more vitamin A in their lard. Still how would that explain the study where rats were given 165 IU of retinoic acid per day and were fine?
- I believe I heard/read Grant state that the retinoic acid form of Vitamin A is way more toxic than the the other forms with the hierarchy of toxicity basically being beta carotene>retinol>retinoic acid. Maybe this small amount of Vitamin A in lard that's being converted to retinoic acid in the heating process is making it way more toxic. Again though, how would that make sense in light of the study where rats were given 165 IU of retinoic acid per day and were fine?
- The human body is extremely complex and trying to discern health outcomes based on minute details down to the cellular level can have us missing a LOT of stuff that we are just blind/ignorant to. There may be a myriad of vital nutrients missing from the diets these rats were fed that led to them becoming sick and simply adding in one real whole food (butter) gave their bodies enough real nutrition to recover their health. It doesn't prove vitamin a is or isn't toxic, it just proves that nothing on this earth should be eating anything other than real whole unprocessed food and if given that the body can do remarkable things with very little.
Personally I lean towards #3. Humans aren't as smart as we think, we don't fully understand all of the complex interactions within the body, and we certainly aren't capable of accounting for how the human body interacts with whole food items that themselves are extremely complex. God packaged it all up in the required amounts for what our bodies need to process and utilize it and we should not be messing with it. If we follow that principle we probably solve greater than 90% of the western worlds chronic health issues.
That doesn't mean vitamin A may not be toxic either. Part of the reason it may be such a big problem is because we have been messing with the food by adding it to it and taking isolated forms of vitamins/nutrients/minerals via supplements. Most people would probably never encounter vitamin A toxicity before death if they weren't drinking cod liver oil they bought off amazon, taking liver tablets, and drinking fortified milk and Grant talks about this. This is why I am so against the widespread use of supplements when people try this low vitamin A diet as they may be (and probably are) just poisoning themselves from a different angle now.
Ultimately I find all of this stuff extremely confusing and just plan on eating whole unprocessed foods and hope that's good enough because I am mentally exhausted trying to figure out who is right between vegans, carnivores, low vitamin A proponents, Ray Peat followers, etc. Right now it's low vitamin A whole foods of brown rice, lean steak, and black beans. If my health takes a turn for the worse I will change what I am doing while still just eating whole unprocessed foods as the only thing I am certain of is processed food of any kind isn't the answer to health.
@ggenereux2014 would you be so kind to point us to where you have addressed this in the past?
@anon33 Say we discount all of Grant's remarks about this 1920's study and basically just ignore all discussion of these pre-WWII studies, particularly those feeding unusual diets to animals. Then where does that leave us? There is still that autopsy study that biopsied livers and found them stuffed with vitamin A. Then there is that Norwegian PhD dissertation showing some dose of vitamin A is toxic in animals. So we would know that some dose of vitamin A is toxic and that vitamin A can accumulate in human livers to seemingly unhealthy livers. And there are interesting phenomena like the WWII Commonwealth prisoners of war who ate only white rice and didn't develop vitamin A deficiency. Are these points together enough to say that vitamin A accumulates and is likely toxic if a large amount accumulates?
I don't know about rats but any pork like bacon, ham or lard in pie crust would make the skin on my hands crack. I never noticed that with butter, ice cream or greek yogurt.
Quote from Retinoicon on July 31, 2024, 4:37 am
@anon33 Are these points together enough to say that vitamin A accumulates and is likely toxic if a large amount accumulates?
You bring up some great points as there's more evidence for Vitamin A being toxic than just these old rat studies however I doubt any of it is definitive irrefutable proof. Personally I still think it likely is toxic and am trying to avoid it. I have had some serious health issues that align very well with everything Grant has laid out regarding the toxicity of Vitamin A and have seen benefits when eliminating it from my diet.
I just think we can't extrapolate rats to humans. They may have similar metabolisms, but they can literally eat anything including manure. We can't. Animals are not humans.
When I was researching all the old studies on vitamin A I came across this case report of an infant who was fed diluted fat free condensed milk:
https://sci-hub.scrongyao.com/10.1001/archpedi.1923.04120170042006
She became anorexic and was refusing feedings, in total she was only taking at most 10 ounces of diluted condensed milk per day, at 5 months old she was only 6.5 lbs, the cornea were dry and dull and had a ground glass appearance, the glands of the eyes and mouth were keratinized. She lived 18 days after admission, they had started giving her 1/16th of ounce of cod liver oil three times a day. Which would be 1530 mcg of retinol. The upper limit for a 1 yr old is 600 mcg. She did not get better, then passed away.
They noted all other cases they were fed on skim milk as well.
Sounds like extreme malnutrition to me.
We also have to remember there was a study revealing they had found infant livers containing ZERO mcg of retinol. Did they have the extreme changes in their body as a result of massive vitamin A deficiency?
And interesting discussion here about the cause of the malfunctioning glands:
"In the submaxillary and parotid glands, there were extensive lesions,
the most striking of these being the inflammatory reaction about the
ducts. In several places, there were also evidences of retrograde
changes. The latter were described by Mori. In only one instance
did we find a suggestion of cornification of the duct epithelium, which
Mori found in many cases.
The sublinguals in general showed little change ; but, in one small
area, there was a very definite inflammatory reaction. Mori believes
that, coincidently with "xerotic" (keratinizing) changes in the ducts
and in the parenchymal cells, the ducts are invaded by bacteria pro¬
ducing small abscesses in the gland.
Nuclear inclusion bodies in the epithelium lining the ducts of the
parotid and submaxillary glands were not mentioned by Mori. These
bodies are reminiscent of those described by Councilman, Magrath and
Brinckerhoff in cases of vaccinia and variola [smallpox]. They resemble even
more closely the "herpes bodies" described by Lipschultz s
in the lesions of herpes simplex and more recently mentioned by Fuchs and Landa,
Friedenwald and Goodpasture and Teague.
The eye changes in our cases were apparently similar to those
observed in the disease when experimentally produced. Stephenson
and Clark, working with rats, were unable, prior to bacterial invasion
of the eye, to demonstrate any histologic changes directly attributable
to dietary deficiency. In other words, the cornea appeared normal
until the onset of purulent inflammation. Mori feels that the lesions in the lachrymal glands are the most important in the pathologic
picture, and that the changes in the glands would seem to cause the
lesions in the cornea and conjunctiva."
So this is interesting... blindness from an apparent fat soluble deficiency occurs because of inflammation from a pathogen because it destroys the glands and ducts that are required to keep the eye moist.
I am going through dry eye right now which actually started when I started the beef beans and rice diet and if I keep them moist they are fine, so there is something going on with my glands but I don't know the cause as I was not deficient in vitamin A at any point of this journey (I was still eating dairy occasionally). I do know from looking on dry eye forums that people found vitamin A to be helpful for dry eye, but even if I eat dairy it doesn't get cured. There is an 'autoimmune' condition that can dry up the glands of the eyes and mouth. Where there is autoimmune what else do we usually see?
So this is interesting... blindness from an apparent fat soluble deficiency occurs because of inflammation from a pathogen because it destroys the glands and ducts that are required to keep the eye moist.
The pathogen component of the mechanism of causation could explain, if some are more susceptible than others, why.
Perhaps retinoic acid deficiency doesn't actually cause a significant reduction in lacrimal fluid directly. Lacrimal fluid contains various anti bacterial proteins, if production of those were affected then that could explain lack of observable pathology until infection occurred.
Quote from Jessica2 on July 31, 2024, 6:21 pm@janelle525 antihistamines may cause dry eyes. You said you were taking them?
I began spironolactone in early July, and what's interesting is that I've noticed my eyes have a lot more moisture and tears. Before I could yawn without tearing up but now I feel like it's too much tears when I yawn. Spiro also has effects on fluids and sodium and potassium, causing sodium excretion and potassium retention. Maybe you possibly need or could use more potassium?
I have only been taking the antihistamine for a few days, I took it last night and this morning I didn't even need eye drops this morning. Yesterday I had decided to consume much more salt than normal to stop a headache from forming which it did. And I also took a tiny bit of b vitamins. And a buffered niacin spray which has potassium and magnesium. I know it's not potassium I'm lacking because bananas don't do anything for me. I think it's sodium. My sodium was lower than it usually was on my blood test 6 months ago and in general since I eat barely any processed foods I'm getting less salt than I usually did. I have low blood pressure as well. Low being anything below 112/74.
That's interesting about the spiro. Do you typically not salt your food very much? High aldosterone could be from low sodium. Menstruating women typically need more salt because we lose it in bodily fluids.