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My crazy diet experiments (3+ years)
UPDATE: I have been on a low vitamin A diet for 45 days now.
First 20 days:
- Diet was white rice + lean beef + raw honey (3-4 meals a day). I didnt eat any extra fat. Then I later switched to venison, deer and sometimes boar, since I read that the vitamin A levels of beef might be pretty high if the animal was supplemented with vitamin A. Also there is glyphosate in conventional meat, that could intefere with vitamin A detoxification. Eating wild animals prevents the supplementation and glyphosate issue.
- Changes:
- Stuffed nose got worse. This always happens to me when I eat starch. I just produce so much mucus when I eat starch and my nose gets even more stuffed up.
- Because of all the mucus I started to cough a lot more.
- I started having a lot of dreams again. I usually never have any dreams that I can recall, which I read could be a sign of chronic vitamin A poisoning.
- Energy levels were very good because of the huge amount of carbs + calories (white rice).
- Vision: Eyes were a lot less dry. My vision got a lot better for sure. I could see better especially at night. I had the feeling my eyes wouldnt get tired so fast.
- Sebderm: This got really bad sadly
- Overall results: Some things got better. Some got worse. Could the worsening of my skin condition just be detox? I dont know. Really hard to know what is detox and what is not.
Next 25 days:
- I stopped eating white rice and ate low vitamin A fruit instead. Mostly berries and grapes. And I ate a lot more honey to get enough carbs in. Also I ate more meat and added extra fat (in the form of raw organic beef fat; animals didnt recieve any vitamin A supplements, I asked the farmer) to my diet again.
- Changes:
- As soons as I stopped eating the mucus creating starch (white rice) my nose and the cough got instantly better again.
- Energy levels got worse again, probably because I got more calories in with white rice. Still acceptable energy but I was feeling better with white rice.
- I stopped dreaming again. Zero dreams I could recall in 25 days.
- Vision/eyes got worse again. Eyes are dry again and get tired quickly.
- Sebderm: This got really GOOD. Honestly Im almost healed in just 25 days of this diet.
- Overall results: If I didnt have the problems with my eyes, I would be pretty happy with this diet. But having dry eyes is so annoying. No idea if I should continue this diet, because my eyes got worse for sure.
Both of the diets were low in Vitamin A. But the first one with the white rice was as low as it can get in my opinion.
Im pretty confused now to be honest. It just sucks that I cant find a diet that makes everything better. Always some things get better, some worse. I dont know what to do anymore.
I think if I was truely healthy, then white rice (always organic btw) shouldnt give me any problems. So maybe it was just detox, but how do I know that?
I think the short answer is there is hell to pay (?) :')
So I tried to reintroduce white rice again:
I cough more, my skin gets worse, I get itchy. This cant be good. Let me play devils advocate here for a second: I get worse with white rice (zero vitamin A) and do better with low vitamin A fruits and honey. Isnt this proof that my skin condition isnt caused by vitamin A toxicity? Because if vitamin A was the cause, then you would think I would get better the lower my vA intake would be. But this is clearly not the case for me.
Thank you for the link. Really interesting. I dont come from a low protein diet though, I was 8 months carnivore, than I was pretty much consuming the same amount of meat + vegetables and eggs for the next year. I am on a high animal protein diet for almost 2 years now.
Also I dont really think I experienced a detox setback with rice, I do feel much better with rice (energy wise), I just get symptoms that I cant ignore (like worse skin and coughing mucus).
Grant said something like:" If you increase both rice (glucose) consumption and protein consumption at the same time, there could be a detox setback." But when I eat rice I actually drop my protein consumption a little bit. I didnt increase it.
I dont know what to do anymore, because in my opinion the only way you can do a next to zero vA diet is with grains and I get worse skin from those and I start coughing. I dont believe this is detox, I always had this with grains even when I did a high vitamin A diet. And white potatoes dont work for me since they are too low in calories (I would need to eat pounds of them every day) and I think I also react to them if I eat them too much.
I would appreciate some advice, if someone has an idea what to do.
Basically my problem is that I cant eat grains (even white rice).
Quick update: I am on a low A diet for 85 days now.
I will be brutally honest here: I think nothing has changed. Still got sebderm, Still got dandruff. Didnt get worse, didnt get better.
Overall results: Im not too impressed to be honest. Grant did heal his severe eczema in 5 weeks on a low A diet. If it was working for me, like it did for him, I should have at least made some progress in my opinion.
The low A diet is like every other diet: Works for some, harms some, makes no differnce for some .
For example Ive read here from people that healed sebderm on a low A diet. But Ive also read on a blog that the low A diet caused the development of sebderm for a person. Its the same with vegan diets, carnivore diets and so on.
We have to realize that the people that dont make progress will likely never report back. Also most conditions always get a little better, or a little worse with time, and then they swing back to the status quo. So you think your diet might have done something, when you would have been on an upswing/downswing anyway. Because other factors like stress play a huge role as well. Also for skin conditions: weather and skin care routine can influence the condition a lot.
For example I made good progess on my low A fruit + meat diet. Then I got worse again with white rice. Now im on a low A fruit + meat diet again but I cant get same results that I got the first time. Even though Im on the same diet...
Have you ever tried antibiotics Max?
Thank you for your honest comment, Max. Your experience is interesting. I experienced something similar to yours. Even before I started a diet with low vitamin A, I empirically found that I feel better on a milk + sugar diet. However, when I recently tried to return low-fat cottage cheese to the diet, I seemed to experience symptoms of hypercalcemia and immediately finished. I also did not achieve any special results in 2 months. I have healed several scars and changed the color of my eyes, but I still have ADHD, various neurological problems and acne have not gone away. I have no idea why Grant succeeded so quickly. But judging by what people write here, it is not easy to exhaust the VA. Some people have a high serum level after 2 years of following the diet. Maybe you should get tested for VA?
Never, but why would I? They dont fix the cause. My skin problem is probably caused by deficiencies and/or toxicities. Antibiotics dont fix these.
The reason I ask is your reaction to rice and other carbs suggests some bacterial thing is going on. Fermentation can produce toxins and irritating substances that might explain some of the things you're experiencing.
I literally dont feel any different. I dont feel like my body is detoxing or working on something.
For acne: I found the only thing that helps me is either low fat high carb OR high fat low carb. Mixing carbs and fat leads to acne for me. Have you tried this?