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My diabetes type I recovery story
I also worry about all of these infections I keep hearing about lately. Me with my ear infection, Sand had a bad infection and now Tiago.
Perhaps that topic deserves it's own thread.
Perhaps the immune system is swinging away from "over-active" over to "under-active" like a pendulum. Before it centers?
Is VA a weapon?
That infection really took the wind out of my sails this summer.
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".
why did you not include beans?
None of the fiber sources you mention has enough soluble fiber to make any big difference for clearing out toxic bile.....
I wonder if the leaving out beans was part of the issues slowly arising.... just a thought....
I am thinking more and more if the soluble fiber part (in bigger amounts, from beans or psyllium) are crucial for long time success detoxing vitamin A.
What I am also thinking about is, if vitamin A has a seasonal function, that we are ment to have some small amount of it during sun season. If we spend lot of time in the sun. At least that is when vitamin A is found in nature naturally, in berries and greens and eggs.
I am also thinking if screen time is doing something going awry with the vitamin A metabolism.... at least I know light and the eyes has a lot to do with it.
I personally am going to do a looser vitamin A protocol in summer including berries, a little greens, eggs etc.. some butter.. and in winter I want to go super strict meat and beans and some very low vitamin A veggies. That would also bring a seasonal shift in nutrition that maybe is beneficial for the body in some way. I hope 😉
@puddleduck
Next time I will add beef, fruits and some white vegetables. Thanks for the tip.
@inger
Every time me and family tried beans the secondary effects were not good. Digestive distress and for my wife, very low blood pressure that put her to bed. Beans are not a traditional food in Europe / Mediterranean so no surprise that this is not the most used food/appreciated in this part of the world and therefore lack of adaptation to beans is not uncommon.
The idea that we need fiber to detox is easily debunked by my own story - my blood serum levels of VA have been lowered in a diet without fiber. Oh, maybe the VA went from liver to fat tissue. Nope, I had lost body fat (before last summer I was 8-10% fat... So added adipose tissue to store the VA not able to go out in the bile is not so believable). But even so, if that worked in the beginning, in such a way that lowered my serum levels, and if in the meantime I have not consumed VA, why the breakdown? And even if the vegetables/fruits that I had consumed to not have "enough" fiber, well, less is better than none, right? So, along the time, what's the difference between 3-4 grams a day for 1 year or 1 gram during 3 or 4 years?
This forum is starting to become much similar to other ones where when the "miraculous diet" do not work it is not the fault of the "miraculous diet" (that it seems only to work for one or two persons without any reliable evidence) but always because the "sick person" do not follow the diet exactly. Really?
How many of you started this diet and are now in worse condition than when started? How many of you need to take supplements to strive? Or need to make "micromanagement" of what to eat + xx mg of whatever supplement to be able to function properly ? If something do not work for years, it is better to re think the strategy. For that, my thanks to @andrew-b and others that started to look at this VA topic with a different mindset.
To you all, the best in recovery.
well beans have been traditional food also in Europe very long, since neolithic times(I just googled it some time ago because I wondered how ancient food beans really are).. even up here in Finland beans have been traditional food for very long before potatoes came into picture.
I was not meaning to be mean or anything so I am sorry if it felt like that. It was a curious question only 🙂 I am sure there are also people whom beans are doing them more harm than good. And what do I know after all. I have been eating beans only for 6 months. Its a test I do like many other things I have tested. I will know more in a couple of years :). I still wonder though, how important soluble fibers in larger amounts are.... like i cant get that wondering out of my head...lol
Hi. Maybe this isnt too useful for you guys but I want to throw in two comments on the previous two points. I definately understand what you mean with the " oh you are not doing it right" thing - I had the same experience with my failure for 7-8 years as a vegetarian. BUT I also tend to think this is actually the case here. What if we really have to be superstrict. I see almost nobody doing superstrict Grant-like diet for years without supplements and failing. I was thinking about this a while ago and I havent heard about a single person doing that consistantly for years and still having no progress. Im not blaming anyone but it makes it hard to not feel it might be the truth. And about the beans. maybe some people can do them and others cant. but from an evolutionary point of view the neolithic is 5 minutes ago. That said they have actually quite recently found charred remains of I think it was 80.000 year old veggie-burgers made by neanderthals in the middle-east. And they contained legumes in decent amount. So I might be wrong, but still for most of the time we had modern humans, and definetaly most of the species Homo duration (roughly 2mill years) we obviously have not had any legumes. Mostly because for most of the time in euraisa during this time there didnt grow any - partly due to iceages or just the general latitude. I think therefore that we A) cant say a couple of thousand years tells us much about a million years of humanity and B) that we might have been much more restrictive in our MAIN food sources historically.
Quote from BodeFofinho on July 31, 2023, 6:31 am@puddleduck
Next time I will add beef, fruits and some white vegetables. Thanks for the tip.@inger
Every time me and family tried beans the secondary effects were not good. Digestive distress and for my wife, very low blood pressure that put her to bed. Beans are not a traditional food in Europe / Mediterranean so no surprise that this is not the most used food/appreciated in this part of the world and therefore lack of adaptation to beans is not uncommon.
The idea that we need fiber to detox is easily debunked by my own story - my blood serum levels of VA have been lowered in a diet without fiber. Oh, maybe the VA went from liver to fat tissue. Nope, I had lost body fat (before last summer I was 8-10% fat... So added adipose tissue to store the VA not able to go out in the bile is not so believable). But even so, if that worked in the beginning, in such a way that lowered my serum levels, and if in the meantime I have not consumed VA, why the breakdown? And even if the vegetables/fruits that I had consumed to not have "enough" fiber, well, less is better than none, right? So, along the time, what's the difference between 3-4 grams a day for 1 year or 1 gram during 3 or 4 years?This forum is starting to become much similar to other ones where when the "miraculous diet" do not work it is not the fault of the "miraculous diet" (that it seems only to work for one or two persons without any reliable evidence) but always because the "sick person" do not follow the diet exactly. Really?
How many of you started this diet and are now in worse condition than when started? How many of you need to take supplements to strive? Or need to make "micromanagement" of what to eat + xx mg of whatever supplement to be able to function properly ? If something do not work for years, it is better to re think the strategy. For that, my thanks to @andrew-b and others that started to look at this VA topic with a different mindset.To you all, the best in recovery.
@tiago do you have more than the two blood serum tests you posted in the beginning? I can’t seem to find anything more. Apologies if this comes out harsh, I’m just curious and trying to think critically, but it seems to me that you conclude very strongly on a some things, both in your first post, where you conclude VA was bad and you’d never eat it again in your life, and now, you switched position and embrace eggs. Your wife still has swelling in her face, you still have diarrhea. It seems to me that your health has been bad for a very long time, and maybe still is, so I feel many of your conclusions are somewhat speculative. Now you embrace eggs, but maybe that won’t work after some weeks? You seem to have embraced a lot of things throughout.
Have you asked yourself if maybe your problem wasn’t VA-related to begin with? Maybe you getting diabetes had nothing to do with VA?
This might piss you off, but just enlighten me! Thanks!
Quoting YODA "wonder not, do". Load your self with "soluble fiber" and probably you will discover why beans are only used when you do not have access to animal protein - it has been like that for centuries. My grandparents and their grandparents have been farmers all their lives and the "beans" were a thing that was used only to "thick" the soups and nothing more. For you to have an idea, in a family of 7, the harvest of beans was no bigger than 10 kg/year. So, definitely not the "main" food.
The thought that our diet in the "beginning of ages" were even more restrict can be an interesting thing to discuss by the fire in a cool winter, eating a nice ice cream, but pointless. But to say that the human species has not been able to adapt in the last 2 millions years to strive in a way that we have been able to become what is today is to neglect reality. Now, with the proliferation of chemicals use in the food industry, the vaccines, the medicines and so on is not easy to understand what in reality is happening. But if we look to 50-70 years ago, or even 100-150 years ago, what do you have? Hundreds / thousands of "populations" around the world with the most varied diets that you can imagine, and in all of that, healthy people - the illness normally occur with low caloric intake, aka, famine.
Yes, I have more blood work results:
- on Nov 2020 were 0.75 mg/L and Vit D was 16,20 ng/mol.
- on April 2021 were 0.41mg/L and Vit D was 7,6 ng/mol.
- on October 2021, 0.34mg/L
- On April 2022, 0.28 mg/L
- On July, urinary infection
- On October 2022, 0.46 mg/L (no clue why the levels raised, the diet was the same)
I am almost certain that my Diabetes was not VA related. As the solving of the diabetes occurred when i was in a no VA diet, the correlation seemed too obvious, but as I have already said, probably it was only an unhappy coincidence. By the time I have my fistula problem (2012) and I need a surgical procedure I need to to do two "general" anesthetics procedures. Maybe that was the trigger. Who knows?
The swelling on my wife face is reducing day by day. My digestive problems are solving. The few episodes of diarrhea that i still experience are becoming far and between, and are definitely better that the continuous streaming of smelly and yellow "diarrhea" that me and my wife were experiencing in the last years. February this year I was almost "dead". No energy, sleep problems, no mental clarity, no stamina, no libido, constant diarrhea.
And you all are saying that it was because I was not restrictive enough? Because I have not eating beans? I was probable one the ones that was more restrictive in this forum. My blood results shows that the soluble fiber thing is a "wishful thinking" and that you do not need beans to reduce VA serum levels.
This reminds me a traditional joke in my country about a man that was training his horse to not eat too much. And the training has paid off. One day the horse only eat a little, the day after, the horse refused to eat. The man was happy. Three days latter the horse died.
I wish you all the best in your recoveries and never forget that the blind is not the one that do not see, but the one that refuses to see.