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My Story
A bit of anecdotal evidence about the relationship of fat and iron from a comment under yesterday's Nutrition With Judy video.
The lady mentioned that she ate a very low fat and high protein diet... Quote: "Almost a year. I ate mostly fish, poultry, egg whites, pork tenderloin and beef filets...only very lean meats. I did get leaner but also ended up with iron deficiency anemia and chronic dehydration causing poor kidney numbers. When Judy advised me to lower my protein and increase my fat, all my health issues reversed but I did gain gain back a LOT of weight, which I can't get off again."
So low fat leads to reduced iron uptake as a protection mechanism of the body.
My guess is that she became insulin resistant on the low fat high protein diet and that's the reason why she can't seem to lose the weight (yet). The body needs time to adjust after prolonged periods of either high carb or high protein and low fat.
Bit of an update here.
Since the summer I've been in generally good health. There have been some setbacks but also some interesting things.
No change in veins or eye floaters. They haven't worsened, but given that (I believe) they are part of the same collagen issue, and a deep structural one, I wasn't that hopeful. I stopped taking bromelain, it did nothing at all.
Sleep has been very much up and down. I got Covid not long after my previous post (first time, non-vaxed), and while it really gave me only mild flu symptoms, it did thoroughly destroy my ability to sleep. I had full blown insomnia for three nights, where I did not sleep at all, and barely a wink the night after that. It was honestly torture. Anyway (and this is an aside) I happened upon a paper that had only just been published on the link between Covid and GABA - that is, Covid has a tendency to destroy GABA production essentially. I managed to restore sleep somewhat with Oolong tea (known to aid in GABA production) and I find drinking tea generally good for sleep (despite the caffeine). I'll come back to this in a moment. But I thought, there are probably some very interesting connections between magnesium, GABA and sleep, and Covid. Many causal connections are possible there.
Hair shedding has practically stopped completely. I now just shed the normal amount.
Skin heals normally. Still scars but I do not get infections anymore.
I haven't really had diarrhoea in months. I used to get it quite regularly, and now it is very rare. And stools are not the light brown colour they once were.
Leg twitching gone. When I suddenly realised this recently it really blew my mind - it has completely gone and it was near constant when I first realised my health was in trouble.
Heart palpitations stopped. Honestly can't remember the last time I had one.
No kidney pain any more, if that is what it was.
Eyes seem to have improved in terms of focussing, but they do tend to have their moments. It's as if I get these very small periods where a few symptoms appear just a little at once before tailing off again, so I am fairly convinced that detoxing is not a linear process. It doesn't feel cyclic to me however.
In my diet, I stopped being too strict and essentially kept to the following: zero carrots, sweet potato, orange veg, kale and related veg, eggs. Everything else in moderation (including coffee and alcohol), but keeping anything with a good level of VA/BC in it low. It was much easier to manage and things continued to improve. Also I have been drinking a lot of mineral water (San Pellegrino), as it is just an easy way to get magnesium, extra potassium and whatnot. I actively crave it now every day, which to me speaks volumes about the quality of water we consume. I'm not taking any other supplements at all now. The only other thing I will be adjusting is trying to avoid PUFA as much as possible, not that I took much in anyway.
Now, this was working fine until October 22, when I developed something akin to seb derm on my cheeks, and a worsening dandruff. It drove me mad trying to figure this thing out - constant experiments with adding zinc or niacin and taking away foods. Nothing worked. I hadn't been on the forums here for a while and thought I'd check in one day, and read about the egg debate. So only a week ago I decided to see what happens introducing eggs, and so far the seb derm problem has greatly improved, and so has sleep. So I am currently on Team Egg for the moment, staying clear of the super orange yolked ones, to see what happens, whether the seb derm returns etc.
In addition to the above, I have been also engaging in lymph massage. Perry Nickelston has some interesting things to say about the order in which it should be done. Personally I've mixed feelings about whether I feel it works or not - perhaps it was helpful for a period but am curious to see what others have done with lymph. It would be absolutely key to dealing with VA toxicity.
Just an update, soon to be one year and I feel like things are going very well - I am just so happy not to be feeling unwell, and am absolutely certain VA was the cause of the problems. Will continue to update and wade into the egg debate - thanks @andrew-b for the insights on this, it's very interesting and has so far been helpful to me.
Another update, as some interesting things happened.
I was on two eggs a day and after a few days began to get bile acid in my stool. I then realised I had had this happen before, and I think it may have been a few months ago when I had some eggs randomly and ate them - but I didn't connect the two.
In any case, there was also the commonly reported cramping (no diarrhoea though). This happened for two or three days, and I noticed my skin started producing much more oil than normal (and hair too, also oily). This to me was most likely an effect of the choline. Oddly this then abated for a day or two, and now seems to be returning (the skin oil at least). But no change in egg quantity consumption. The question is then why the pause - what caused the face to became dry suddenly and this bile to stop?
In any case something is definitely happening, and will see where it goes.
How did you conclude that it was bile acid in your stool?
Did it burn during evacuation? Did you notice any color (orange/yellow/green) in the stool?
The areas around my eyes, particularly the upper eyelids, became very oily when I first adopted a low Vitamin A diet, and they still appear to be more oily than normal after 2.5 years on the depletion diet. My hair has also been quite oily at times. The odd thing that I believe helps link these symptoms to Vitamin A is that, despite the extra oils in those areas of skin, they also have the sensation of being very dry. Early on, my upper eyelids actually cracked and bled overnight while I was sleeping, and during the daytime they burned like there was something caustic on them. When I run a comb through my hair lately, I get insane amounts of skin flakes coming off my scalp despite the hair being oily. It seems like the oil production gets ramped up in response to the body perceiving dryness as a consequence of local Vitamin A metabolism and cell turnover.
My experience is that there is not much rhyme or reason to the pulses of Vitamin A coming out of peripheral storage, or where symptoms show up. I've had a hyperkeratotic patch of skin on the top of one big toe for years that worsens and improves, worsens and improves. Also a patch of skin in the middle of my back that gets flaky sometimes and then stops. Why those particular spots? I don't have a clue, they're not injury sites that I'm aware of.
Much of this process seems quite mysterious!
Yes, it was orangey liquid around perfectly otherwise compact stool. Really very unusual for me.
I also found that my cheeks feel the same as how you describe - sometimes as if burning from, well, acid (which is what is happening, if Grant is correct in his books). Personally I feel there are probably some mechanical differences in individuals at least partially contributing to such different outcomes, hence why I became quite interested in lymph channels and how their flow could be improved. I think it's worth looking into. There is a very big connection between lymph and liver of course, and if Nickelston is to be believed then nothing is really going to improve if you have blockages in that system, no matter the diet. And of course, calcification of parts of that system is also possible due to effects of high VA, so any problems there might be worse than realised.
Hmmm, I've got an ongoing debate about how to interpret these different colors in the stool. I've had pretty much all the colors described by folks on these forums - normal dark brown, dark green, pale/light brown, bright yellow, and orange-tinted. Early on after removing Vitamin A from my diet, I had chronic watery diarrhea that was often bright yellow and burned. However, I also saw bright yellow leaching out of dark brown solid stools that did not burn. I couldn't decide if that was bile acid or Vitamin A, but I leaned towards Vitamin A because I figured if it was bile acid it would only have been associated with diarrhea and would have burned every time. After maybe 1.5 years, I mostly stopped getting that yellow color, and have since often been seeing an orange or orange-brown color (I think I did have some orange earlier on, but the yellow was more overwhelming in my memory). I've been wondering if this could be a different form of Vitamin A (beta carotene or retinol possibly appearing orange vs retinoic acid appearing more yellow).
Then again, web pages like this one suggest that green, orange, and yellow in the stool are all associated with bile acid malabsorption. My experience with Vitamin A has made me wonder how many people with BAM may actually have Vitamin A toxicity as an underlying cause, and whether certain colors are due to Vitamin A in the stool rather than bile acids. I haven't seen any indication that they've looked for Vitamin A in the stools of people with BAM.