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My diabetes type I recovery story
Thank you for sharing your amazing health story!
From your first post, you mentioned eating gluten and dairy free cookies, could you post the recipe for those cookies?
The quote from your first post:
"Finally, a lot of homemade gluten free, dairy free and sugar loaded cookies. Yup, sugar. Maybe this consumption of sugar together with white rice explain my possible “b1 deficiency”."
Quote from David on July 18, 2021, 5:48 am
Thank you for sharing your amazing health story!
From your first post, you mentioned eating gluten and dairy free cookies, could you post the recipe for those cookies?
The quote from your first post:
"Finally, a lot of homemade gluten free, dairy free and sugar loaded cookies. Yup, sugar. Maybe this consumption of sugar together with white rice explain my possible “b1 deficiency”."
Sorry for my late reply, but it has been a hell of a week.
The recipe:
- 250 g rice flour
- 50 g tapioca starch or other gluten free starch (like potato starch)
- 200 g white/brown sugar
- 50 ml olive oil (extra virgin)
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavour
- 1 pinch of salt
- 3 egg whites
- chocolate chips (optional)
- Just mix everything and make small cookies (use a spoon) to allow a good baking @180º Celsius for 15-20 mins.
All the best
Tiago
Thank you very much for the recipe!
I found the cookies tasty. I chose to have them longer in the oven to get a more brown color to them, which unfortunately only made them hard and dry. Soaking those too hard cookies in oat milk luckily fixed that.
Quote from zerocool on August 2, 2021, 11:07 am@tiago What an amazing story...fn doctors smh
My diet has not changed much. As I said before I'm now trying to introduce pork and potatoes but without much success. I don't have access to "home grown pork", so the fat profile and "retinoid acid" on the fat is impossible to "control" and that leads to swings in my glucose and blood pressure. With potatoes, the solanine makes some of my joints work like a drum, popping.
So, I use these two "foods" only in special occasions trying to use very lean cuts of pork. But as I said, very small amounts and only occasionally. The same with the use of sugar and fruit. Small amounts and occasionally. Beans, once in a while 🙂
On the other side, the dr. Londsale protocol seems to be working. My BP it's starting to give signs to have more "normal values": 120-140/80-90. I'm just waiting for a new "shipment" of B1 HCL to increase the dosage and see if it brings some added benefits.
And that's all,
All the best to you all,
Tiago
The major change was starting to use parboiled rice
Absolutely incredible story, @tiago! 😁 Happening across it for the first time today brightened my morning.
How did the thiamine hcl end up working out for you?
I hope you and your wife and daughter have been continuing to thrive, and that the three of you experiencing greater health now...two years later. 🙂
Hello @puddleduck
I was just thinking on making an update on my "progress" and your message is the perfect excuse to do it 🙂
Unfortunately, this will not be an update on the "good of the no VA diet" but instead on the "not so good on the no VA diet".
I will try to be very brief. So, since May 2021:
- me and my family took Thiamine HCL until Christmas of 2021 without any noticeable improvement. For my wife it served as a quick fix for low energy, but the effect waned with time.
- on the summer 2021, we discovered that my daughter had vision problems. Before the no VA diet, she had 100% vision. That summer we discovered she had developed myopia.
- in general, my wife and daughter were in a state of low energy and low mental focus/sharpness.
- Myself, the digestive problems continued and started to worsen and my "interest" for physical activity started to decline month after month
- Last summer, things started to become worse. First, on July 2023 I got an UTI that even with antibiotics took 4 months to vanish.
- Since then, my digestive problems started to worsen even more. Without any change in the diet as described in my first post, diarrhea and constipation started to be more and more frequent.
- The lack of mental focus and low energy started to be more prominent on my wife and daughter.
- I started to have more and more episodes of high glucose readings.
- Starting the new year was a nightmare. I was experiencing extreme fatigue, lack of mental focus (slow thinking, difficulty in finding words), troubles sleeping (waking up several times through the night), tooth pain, low libido and my hands and feet started to be always cold.
- The spikes on glycemia started to be more and more frequent.
- Suspecting a lack of potassium, me and my family introduced foods with potassium on March, and my wife, sick of the no VA diet went and bought everything with potassium, regardless of the VA content - papaya, oranges, potatoes, whatever. I focused only on potatoes concerned with the VA content on the other foods, but my wife/daughter went with VA foods. Outcome?
- In less than two days, the mental focus and clarity comeback for all of us and for my wife and daughter the low energy went away, and the digestive problems stopped. My daughter was always free of digestive problems. We continued for more 3-4 weeks on this regime (wife and daughter on potassium foods with VA and me only on potatoes)
- During this time my energy was still low, my libido not so good and I added 5 kgs on my waist without apparent reason. The caloric intake was similar. But something was not right since my wife and daughter were improving and myself not so much.
- By then, me and my wife started to check the post on the forum and come across the posts of @andrew-b on the role of eggs and choline in supporting the VA detox.
- And we decided to introduce VA. butter, cheese, eggs, tomatoes (oh, how missed them on pizza).
- Result?
- The vision of my daughter is improving
- Apart from some swelling on the face, the health of my wife is the best in the last 10-15 years. Good mood, good energy, good mental focus, good digestion, good "poop".
- My self? Recovered my energy levels and the will and interest to come back to do physical exercise. My libido has come back. My digestion is improving. Fewer episodes of diarrhea or constipation. The brain is again sharp and focused. Normal glycemia readings.
Conclusion?
I still believe that too much VA is not good, but based on my own experience (and the experience of my family) I can no longer say that we can live without VA. Well, at least, my family cannot leave without much of the food that contains VA.
It has become almost impossible to live without the foods that contain VA.
But you all may say "but you have cured your diabetes type I/III". Today I cannot really say that. I have been eating VA foods for 3 months now, I finished dinner 2 hours ago, and my glucose reading is at 103. Three months ago, I was having readings of 140-170.
Maybe in 2018 my diabetes was already in remission and the no VA only helped or it was an unhappy coincidence that convinced me and my family that we were in the right track.
Please, do not take this a disapproval for the excellent work done by @ggenereux2014. I still believe that too much VA is prejudicial (being from Accutane, overdoses on cod oil, liver, supplements) but we need to put this in perspective.
After a detox of 4 years, it is not very reasonable to say that I still have massive amounts of vitamin A in my body and that's the reason I was not still in perfect health. I followed a very restrictive diet like grant, with only a difference of not eating beans - but I was eating enough fiber on apples, bananas and other "white vegetables".
But there was no improvement – and the thought that the lack of all the foods with VA have induced some deficiencies along the last years remains... And that VA is probably in fact needed by our bodies. How much? I do not know. But it seems that the body, if supplied with the right "fuels" is capable to regulate by itself and ditching the things that are in excess.
So, for me, I do not see any advantage to avoid VA foods that are also nutrient dense foods and to be forced to supplement with extra "manufactured" minerals and vitamins to cope with "secondary effects".
And that's all.
I will continue to lurk on the forum, and I promise to update in a few months from now.
All the best to you all
@tiago Thank you so much for providing an update! 😁 I’m glad, with the help of Andrew’s posts, you were able to identify you were running into nutrient deficiencies. Such an important part of the story. Choline, folate, betaine, biotin, all the rest of the b vitamins, calcium, iodine, vitamin C, omega 3, vitamin K1...all are essential! (And white rice and sugar don’t offer enough, eh?)
Hoping the adjustments you and your family have made continue to improve your health. Looking forward to hearing from you in the future. 🙂
It really is an interesting thread. I just went back and re-read it. In my mind, Tiago and his family have benefitted from backing off of the VA, but probably have suffered from the perils of detoxing it. (It harms you going in, hanging round, and then leaving!).
My guess is they probably have some long-lasting damage from the VA. It is probably overly hopeful for anyone to think that just going low VA is going to completely heal serious problems back to the way the body was before. However, if we stop accumulating new auto-immune issues that is huge. I can see how, for example, my forehead is scarred from the rosacea. I'm sure our organs are too.
I think it is great that they have loosened up their diets. I'm not a big fan of heroic diets and I am a big fan of eating what makes your mouth water.
I am glad that Tiago has benefitted from eggs and dairy which I eat too. I still consider myself lower-VA than the rest of the world. Avoiding things like shots and being wary of med is also a smart idea.
I somewhat disagree that even though they have been at this a while that they don't still have VA hanging round. I think even twenty years down the line I will still have VA hanging round. It's woven into the cloth.