Quote from mmb3664 on May 29, 2022, 2:58 am

Week 4 Update

Short daily notes:

Sunday – Not sure why this keeps happening, but I have not been hungry on Sunday mornings, so I end up fasting…I did an unplanned 20 hour fast that ended with a fatty beef ribeye for dinner (my high fat meal for the week). I did 1.5 hours of walking outside, used the vD lamp for 10 minutes, used the sauna for 30 minutes, and did 12 minutes of breathing exercises.

Monday – meat (venison) and rice day, got lazy and did nothing but 5 minutes of breathing exercises

Tuesday – all rice day, did 12 minutes of breathing exercises, used the sauna for 25 minutes, and walked outside for 60 minutes

Wednesday – meat (bison, elk) and rice day, did 15 minutes of breathing exercises and used the vD lamp for 15 minutes

Thursday – all rice day, did 14 minutes of breathing exercises, got 15 minutes using the vD lamp, and used the sauna for 25 minutes

Friday – meat (bison) and rice day, did 13 minutes of breathing exercises, used the vD lamp for 15 minutes, had a 30 minute walk, and used the sauna for 25 minutes

Saturday –did my weekly 24 hour fast, ate a loaf of white rice/white rice flour bread for dinner; got a 1.5 massage, walked outside for a little over 2 hours, used the sauna for 30 minutes, did 20 minutes of Wim Hof breathing, and used the vD lamp for 15 minutes. The Wim Hof session this day was intense again.

Summary: Overall, this week was rather uneventful, similar to last week and definitely nothing like the first two weeks. There are only three more days of this experiment, but I will wait until the weekend to post the three day summary in addition to my thoughts on the overall experiment. Other than that, I have nothing really to report, unfortunately, so I will keep the post short.

 

Quote from mmb3664 on June 5, 2022, 4:35 am

The Final Stretch

Short daily notes:

Sunday – Same as the past few weeks, where I am not hungry during the day and end up doing a shorter (20 hour or so) fast. As I did last week, I ate a fatty beef ribeye for dinner as my high fat meal for the week. I did a little over 1 hour of walking outside, 1 hour of tanning outside plus some time sitting out in the sun while clothed (shorts and tee shirt), and 12 minutes of Wim Hof breathing

Monday – meat (bison) and rice day; had the day off, so I was able to get a little over 1.5 hours of walking outside, 2 hours of tanning, and 12 minutes of breathing exercises

Tuesday – all rice day, did 10 minutes of breathing exercises and walked outside for a little over an hour

Summary: I am waiting to receive my recent bloodwork back to post my closing thoughts/overall summary of this experiment where I plan to outline my thoughts on how effective I perceived this to be, what I liked/want to keep in my life, and recommendations to others if they wanted to try this out.  It will likely be next Sunday when I have time to post.

Thanks for following along!

Quote from mmb3664 on June 16, 2022, 3:38 pm

Closing Thoughts

Overall, this experiment was interesting at the beginning and then became unremarkable about half way through. The first two weeks were fairly rough for me between the muscle spasms/cramps during heavy lifts and the unexpected bouts of diarrhea. After thinking through what I experienced, I hate to say that the only conclusion I could draw is that these symptoms were basically due to “detox” or what Dr. Smith would attribute to massive bile dumps. I may very well be wrong and naively hopeful; maybe it was all just the placebo effect. Regardless, below, I outline my thoughts on how effective I perceived this to be, what I liked/want to keep in my life, and recommendations to others if they wanted to try this out.  

“RESULTS”

In regard to “results”, I got blood tests on Tuesday, 31 May, which was on the last day of the experiment and also 30 days after I began the experiment. My most recent serum vitamin A levels before those taken on Tuesday were 32.7 ug/dL (measured April 7) and the blood drawn on Tuesday measured serum vitamin A levels at 34.5 ug/dL. I did not expect the number to change much within less than 2 months and understand that there are a lot of factors that could cause variation in the measurements, so I would not use serum vitamin A levels to say this experiment was a success or not. Things I did not like about my blood results after the experiment include a higher Hemoglobin A1c than before and a low BUN-to-creatinine ratio. I did increase my vitamin D levels, however (both 25-Hydroxy and calcitriol).

Overall, I do not think a comparison of any two “before and after” blood measurements I had taken are sufficient to say this “worked” or did not “work”. I think that, if you want to fast-track vitamin A depletion, running this “program”/experiment could potentially help, but I would not recommend doing it for more than 3 consecutive months at a time. If anything, maybe “pulsing” this would be better, i.e. doing this for a month, then doing a less restrictive low vitamin A diet for 2 months, then doing this again for month, etc.

Ultimately, I hate to say this, but if inducing a massive bile dump and then having a bowel movement to eliminate everything is the fastest way to “detox”, then theoretically, something like coffee enemas 1-2 times per week might be the fastest way to detox. I personally do not want to do coffee enemas, but based on the theory of “dump bile then excrete immediately”, coffee enemas seem like a feasible solution to this detox process unless I am misunderstanding something. That is not to say that I recommend or suggest someone start doing coffee enemas, nor do I believe there are no potential negative side effects of performing coffee enemas on a regular basis, especially over a long period of time. However, I did want to throw this thought out there in case anyone had any opinions one way or the other.

WHAT I’D LIKE TO KEEP FROM THIS EXPERIMENT

Going forward, there are a few things I want to keep in my lifestyle and diet from this experiment. From a dietary perspective, I see no reason to consume large amounts of vitamin A and therefore, I will keep dietary intake of vitamin A low to “none”. With the hot weather and time spent outdoors, the carbonated water has been more satisfying than just plain water, so I plan to continue consuming it as long as I feel it is tasty. If it becomes unenjoyable or my body begins to “reject” it, I will stop drinking it. I also plan to continue using the Fiji water for the next 6 months or so, as I think the silica in the water may potentially be helpful with detoxifying aluminum and other heavy metals, though I have no evidence to support this. Because of this lack of evidence, I do not plan to drink Fiji after this year is over, as it is expensive and may also contain unwanted minerals itself. Basically, I am limiting my intake to a single 1.5 liter bottle per day until the end of the year and will not purchase it again except under random occasions/circumstances. Finally, in terms of food, I am sick of rice and will not be eating it for a while. I also have concerns of consuming so much rice as a main source of energy in the diet; see my recommendations below where I outline some concerns with the spikes in blood glucose eating this way.

In terms of lifestyle, I do enjoy, and always have enjoyed, tanning and spending time outdoors. This experiment motivated me to go on walks more often and spend more time outdoors in general; I want to keep that going, especially while the weather is nice. This experiment also opened my eyes to the fact that breathing is an important and overlooked part of living and general well-being. Performing conscious breathing exercises is something I want to continue doing, ideally on a daily basis. I learned that the lungs are also a detoxification organ and while learning to breathe properly or use the breath for “detoxing” is not panacea by any means, I believe I have experienced benefits from daily practice of breathing exercises, some of which have translated to my exercise and mood. I am also willing to admit that any benefits I experienced, or believe I experienced, can be due to the placebo effect. However, I think there is no harm in others trying 5-10 minutes of daily breath work to see if they benefit; it is free and takes little time and effort to introduce it into your current lifestyle.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS

I now want to provide some recommendations and things to consider if you plan on trying this experiment for yourself.

1. Do not try this if you are new to vitamin A detox. I have been doing a low vitamin A diet and working with Dr. Smith for over 3 years and the first two weeks of this more or less kicked my butt. I imagine that someone new to the detox would experience more severe symptoms for a longer period of time than two weeks. I would not consider this a “beginner” level experiment to try.
2. I do not recommend trying this if you are diabetic, as it would be highly contraindicated. Following the dietary guidelines outlined for this experiment, you will be running purely on a glucose metabolism and will spike blood glucose levels no matter what you do. I consider myself to be a fairly insulin sensitive and metabolically flexible individual and even I was shocked by some of the blood glucose spikes I experienced on this diet, as measured by a CGM. I did not have any noticeable side effects from the blood sugar spikes, but still do not consider it healthy for these large glucose spikes to occur multiple times on a daily basis, as, based on my understanding, large spikes in glucose trigger a release of cortisol. I was only eating two meals a day, so spreading out meals may have helped, but I have my doubts. As mentioned previously, my Hemoglobin A1c went up (into a pre-diabetic range...yikes!).
3. Be cautious with the coconut water? As I mentioned, the first two weeks of this experiment were rough because of the diarrhea and muscle cramps/spasms I experienced. Things seemed to get better with time, but also when I lowered the amount of coconut water I consumed. To my knowledge, there is nothing about coconut water that should have caused these issues. I realize high amounts of potassium can cause electrolyte imbalances and also cause diarrhea, but the time of injuries/pain and diarrhea did not seem to correlate directly to coconut water consumption nor is coconut water an isolated source of potassium, as it has other electrolytes as well; if I were taking potassium chloride, for example, I’d be more inclined to believe that these negative effects were due to too large doses of potassium. Notably, there were times that I could drink/eat a liter of coconut water in a sitting with my rice only meal and feel fine and other times where I did the same thing, but got an upset stomach and even diarrhea within an hour of eating. The time of injuries also did not align with when I drank coconut water, so while I originally linked my troubles to coconut water, I do not feel that I can conclusively blame coconut water for my bad reactions in the first two weeks. However, I would suggest that, if someone tries this, that they work up to drinking 2 L of coconut water a day rather than starting with that amount as I did. The coconut water is also the most expensive thing in this experiment, so I get if one would want to not use it all.

FINAL SUMMARY

That summarizes my thoughts on this experiment. Note that I do not claim to be a scientist, doctor, nutritionist, subject matter expert, etc. in any way; I just wanted to try something out and document the experience. If anything I said above based on my perceived understanding of things is false, please feel free to call it out; the goal of posting my notes was to help others if they chose to run a similar experiment, so if anything above is factually false, I’d like to correct it so that others are not lead astray by some random person on the internet.

Quote from wavygravygadzooks on June 16, 2022, 4:28 pm

@mmb3664

Thanks for detailing your experiment for everyone.

So, considering that you had been doing low Vitamin A for 3 years prior to this experiment, and yet you still experienced diarrhea early on in the experiment (likely due to some sort of detox), do you think your way of eating/supplementing before this experiment was not optimal?

I'm forever trying to sort out what exactly fiber is doing to people who are actively attempting to detox.  The fact that Smith and so many of his clients still have health problems after pounding fiber for years and doing all this mineral supplementing reinforces my belief that fiber/plants are doing no one a favor, and that supplements may not be helping anything either, at least not compared to getting nutrients from meat.

Curious to hear your overall assessment of what seems to have sped up the detox process over your entire low Vitamin A experience.

Quote from mmb3664 on June 17, 2022, 8:09 am

Quote from wavygravygadzooks on June 16, 2022, 4:28 pm

So, considering that you had been doing low Vitamin A for 3 years prior to this experiment, and yet you still experienced diarrhea early on in the experiment (likely due to some sort of detox), do you think your way of eating/supplementing before this experiment was not optimal?

I'm forever trying to sort out what exactly fiber is doing to people who are actively attempting to detox.  The fact that Smith and so many of his clients still have health problems after pounding fiber for years and doing all this mineral supplementing reinforces my belief that fiber/plants are doing no one a favor, and that supplements may not be helping anything either, at least not compared to getting nutrients from meat.

Curious to hear your overall assessment of what seems to have sped up the detox process over your entire low Vitamin A experience.

To be honest, I am not sure what caused the diarrhea at the beginning of the experiment. I think the removal of fiber did play a role, maybe due to a sudden shift in the gut microbiome or maybe because fiber is actually impeding the detox process to some degree. I also removed coffee, cauliflower, and onion at the same time, all of which supposedly slow down the ALDH pathway. Maybe it was a combination of simultaneously removing these remaining foods and the associated fiber that did me in? I cannot say conclusively, but it seemed to be a short-term problem; I have not experienced any diarrhea like that since it happened over a month ago.

One thing to note is that I ate mainly rice, beans, and other whole grains for the first 1.5 years of my vitamin A detox and I think these foods ultimately had a negative effect on my gut health. I came to the low vitamin A diet from a Ray Peat background, so my carbs before the low vitamin A days came from fruit, which digest differently than starches and tend to have less anti-nutrients. I believe I got a mild case of candida eating beans and a lot of fiber from whole grains. I also found out that I am sensitive to oxalates, which were likely building up from eating beans in addition to having some green and black tea, brown rice, buckwheat, parsnips, turnips, etc. from time to time while doing the initial low vitamin A diet outlined by Dr. Smith. During that first 1.5 years of low vitamin A, I ended up with month-long periods of random constipation that were not related to any notable dietary changes. I also had a back spasm, which I now believe was related to excessive oxalate intake, that would not relax for 3 months (not a typo, 3 months!). I attributed all of these things (and other random aches and pains) to vitamin A detox, but now just think it was plant toxins and excessive fiber. I also think that the high fiber diet decreases the absorption of some of the supplements that people are taking, even when taken away from the supplements, which is why I believe some of Dr. Smith's clients are taking way over 30 mg of zinc daily without seeing drastic increases in serum zinc levels. 

I am now experimenting with a high fat (70-80% of energy), muscle meat only carnivore diet without any supplements except electrolytes and, despite that I may not have a bowel movement every day, I never feel constipated like I used to when eating beans. I am still in the adaptation period of my carnivore diet, but the only negative I can point out so far is how weak I feel when lifting heavy weights. If I was not training with heavy weights, I would say I feel the same as or better than on the high carb, low fat diet I was eating roughly three weeks ago. I am curious to see if my serum vitamin A levels drop any faster now that a) I am 3+ years into this low vitamin A diet and b) I am not eating any fiber, but lots of fat (which Smith recommends against). Assuming I stick with this carnivore diet for 6 months, I want to get blood tests to see what happens, as I have tests to compare to after months of following about 90% of the things in Dr. Smith's recommended approach. 

Overall, I am of the belief that removal of plant toxins and fiber did help speed up the detox process to some degree, which is why I am so curious about the carnivore diet. Again, this is just my take on it. Even if removing plants and fiber did not speed up anything, I do feel better without them. 

Quote from Carnivore on June 19, 2022, 10:03 am

Quote from mmb3664 on June 17, 2022, 8:09 am

I am now experimenting with a high fat (70-80% of energy), muscle meat only carnivore diet without any supplements except electrolytes and, despite that I may not have a bowel movement every day, I never feel constipated like I used to when eating beans. I am still in the adaptation period of my carnivore diet, but the only negative I can point out so far is how weak I feel when lifting heavy weights. If I was not training with heavy weights, I would say I feel the same as or better than on the high carb, low fat diet I was eating roughly three weeks ago. 

Overall, I am of the belief that removal of plant toxins and fiber did help speed up the detox process to some degree, which is why I am so curious about the carnivore diet. Again, this is just my take on it. Even if removing plants and fiber did not speed up anything, I do feel better without them. 

Same here, although I did not do a VA detox before going carnivore, since I only just came across Grant's books a week ago.

What surprised me when reading the various posts on the forum is a fact that quickly became glaringly obvious to me but that many seem to be missing here. Any plant food in the diet will inevitably dampen and prolong the detoxification process, because the body needs to detox the plant food first before starting to remove any stored toxins.

I do not supplement anything on a 100% muscle meat carnivore diet because there is no need for that. Muscle twitches and spasms are signs of VA detox just like anything else and will go away on their own. If POWs subsisted on a cup of rice per day and didn't develop any deficiencies besides protein and fat to build tissue and create energy then it stands to reason that a diet of muscle meat and animal fat will include everything the body requires. Don't be afraid to keep it simple! Adding supplements will only throw the body out of homeostasis and cause unnecessary problems.

Detoxification can be hard. We all pay the price for decades of indulging on drugs (this is what plants are, besides poison). I for one want to get rid of any and all stored plant toxins as quickly as possible, so my days of eating any plant foods are over once and for all. My health is too precious to give it away for some short term carb intoxication.

Quote from Retinoicon on June 19, 2022, 10:20 am

I have been a strict carnivore for five years. I just dropped salt again and I haven't had issues so I wonder if salt is a dubious supplement. Amber O'Hearn will give a talk this summer at the Ancestral Health Symposium on salt. Super long term carnivore The Bear didn't use salt.

I only poop once a week, which is not unusual for carnivores. I do worry that it is not enough for detox as pooping is the most obvious way to remove toxins from your body. 19th century carnivores James Salisbury and, particularly, Elma Stuart did advocate that carnivores doing what we call detox need to take laxatives to poop once a day. 

Thanks to Judy Cho's promotion of mold illness to the carnivore community, I got diagnosed with a biotoxin illness likely caused by mold in my house. Cho also turned me on to vitamin A toxicity. I am now on a mold sabbatical in the California desert. If I can get away from mold for a sustained period of time (difficult to do), I will see how my overall pooping frequency changes. If the frequency does not increase, I will look into enemas or some other approach that would be easy on the liver. 

 

Quote from wavygravygadzooks on June 19, 2022, 11:42 am

@jeremy

Salt intake is an interesting topic in the carnivore world.  On the one hand, it seems like most people's bodies can get rid of excess sodium without much issue, whereas the consequences of having too little are dire.  On the other hand, there are enough long-term carnivores who have no/minimal salt intake to indicate that it is often not needed, Tim Noakes' work (in Waterlogged) shows that the human body excels at conserving sodium, and where the hell were most inland humans before civilization going to be getting salt anyway?!  Maybe some of them found trace amounts, but nothing like the tablespoons that are being recommended by some.  It seems like most advocates for salt consumption don't understand that any increase in requirements when transitioning onto carnivore should be extremely temporary...you should actually require less salt on a carnivore diet than a carb-based diet.  It's the herbivores that seek out salt licks, not carnivores.

It continues to blow my mind how people both inside and outside of the carnivore community cannot see that even when a relatively small number of people have long-term success eating a certain way, that is sufficient to disprove the blanket requirement for a certain thing.  If people on carnivore can feel great without salt, then it's quite clear that you shouldn't need extra salt once your body has balanced itself.  If people on carnivore can feel great on just muscle meat, then clearly you don't need organ meats, and you sure as hell don't need carbs.  If people on carnivore feel great eating cooked meat, then clearly you don't need to eat meat raw to get the necessary nutrients from it.

I don't doubt that salt consumption when it isn't necessary can cause unwanted problems...usually your body wastes something useful when trying to get rid of an excess of something it doesn't need.  With salt, it might be calcium or potassium loss.

I find that I can be quite happy eating a steak without salt, but ground beef (cooked to 150-160 F for safety) is so bland I always find myself loading it with salt...not good.

Quote from Carnivore on June 20, 2022, 5:10 am

I think the longer people are on a carnivore diet the less salt their bodies will want or need. It's probably best to listen to one's body rather than other people. For now, I'm doing well on salt, but I've only just returned to a Carnivore way of eating.

I followed the Primal Diet of Aajonus Vonderplanitz for about half a year back in 2012/13 but dropped out of it for various reasons that in hindsight I recognize as either mistakes of this diet or detox symptoms. Anyway, according to Vonderplanitz people who are on such a diet should stay away from salt and also shouldn't drink much water, if any. His reasoning behind this was that indigenous people would not drink water either, but would eat lots of fat and occasionally drink the juice of fruits.

On a side-note, the Youtuber sverige follows pretty much the same diet that Vonderplanitz recommended back in the day, with primarily raw or aged ("high") meat, plenty of organ meats, and also fruits, raw milk, raw butter and raw honey...so basically everything raw. That in itself is certainly good, but as I've come to realize thanks to the work of Grant obviously neither the plants as such are any good, nor the organs which basically just store the plants' chemicals that are toxic to the human body. Better to stay away from all that and keep it as simple as possible.