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New to low vitamin A diet(Tobacco)
@to nicotine alone is far less dangerous than smoking for sure, but still it is substance that shouldn't be in your body let alone you having addiction on it.. Just the fact you have addiction tome some substance is bad for your mental state and vise versa when you overcome addictions like smoking and you know that your are mentally strong and you don't need stuff like that. It is huge..
Wow Jiri, you've become a stoic philosopher! 🙂
@to I go the moderate route, and using intuition, (say, following urges) (And I do fear rocking the boat when things are going well.) But there is the other side of the coin, here at this site! I think that if Grant were posting on this thread he might not agree with me and the other moderates and he might say, "good for you, To!" Just guessing though! And curious to see how things progress.
@chilik There are many valuable insights on this forum if you dig into its distant past (start at the beginning). I myself am slowly working backward from the end. Now it is a forum run by people who believe in deficiencies of vitamins, and don't want you getting the dread scurvy (which doesn't exist). If you read the books like I did, and the logic registered with you, as it did with I, do not allow FUD to steal your precious insight away from you.
I also am a smoker of hand rolled cigarettes, though I easily double your number every day. Nobody is perfect after all. I am reminded of a song by Morphine. It's called "Sharks Patrol These Waters"
Sharks patrol these waters
Sharks patrol these waters
Don't let your fingers dangle in the water
And don't you worry about the day-glow orange life preserver
It won't save you
It won't save you
Swim for the shores just as fast as you're able
Swim like a motherfucker, swim!
The ever glorious "now"; the ever-present . . . "now."
Drenched in flour and deep-fat-fried
And cooled on paper towels and then devoured
You know, I spent 15 years in a life raft
15 years in a life raft, and now I got something to say
Stay in your life boats people
Stay in your life boats people
It's murder out there, murder out there
Sharks patrol these waters
Sharks patrol these waters, hey!
It won't save you
It won't save you
Swim for the shores just as fast as you're able, swim!
Thank you very much guys!
I'm going to disagree with most of the above posters in this thread, chilik. I think Grant Genereux hit it out of the park with his research and I have no problem following his guidelines to the letter, and recommend the same to anyone else. My diet these days is
- beef steak or ground beef (no organs)
- White rice (non enriched)
- Black beans
- Beef fat
- Coconut aminos (coconut shreds and salt)
- Coffee
- Cashews (mostly cashew milk for coffee)
- Almonds
I eat the same thing every day and don't suffer ingredient fatigue. Also, notice something about the ingredients? Look them all up on Google with "vitamin a content". It's 0 micrograms.
I also use nicotine frequently, but I stopped cigarettes a long time ago. I'm an abc guy, anything-but-cigarettes. I will have the occasional cigar, so long as it's outdoor or the room is well ventilated. That's not strictly healthy, but it mitigates the harm greatly.
I've posted and so have others about the potential benefits of non food items in combatting vitamin a. Nicotine would seem to be the best, as it has been shown to lower vitamin a levels, but coffee does as well. I've also done small amounts of alcohol before plasma draws at it would seem to promote vitamin a release from the liver "bile dumping", so I like to increase the concentration before I evacuate it through blood draw.
If you want to see the effects of low vitamin a and think you have toxic vitamin a already, I would strongly urge against even limited vitamin a intake. Remember back to Genereuxs writings, this would seem not to be an ongoing exposure problem, but a capacity threshold problem. That is, our livers capture and store vitamin a until they are full, then further vitamin a circulates freely, leading to problems.
The only sensible cure at the moment is what Grant advocates, zero vitamin a. That allows your liver to slowly release the vitamin a and excrete it (this is sped up through plasma donation). Then when your bloodstream is consistently clean of vitamin a, your cells, which are also contaminated, can turn over on their individual reproduction cycles in a clean environment.
That took Grant 9 years. I'm hoping it takes me less. Until such time as we can find a potent antidote to vitamin a, or engineer vitamin a free plants and animals to consume, strict adherence is the only logical route.
Many on here call for eating of eggs, dairy, and fish, but that directly contravenes the research on the blog. I think it's quite ironic that people like jiri would talk about willpower and stoicism while telling you to give up on going vitamin a free in a "HELLO VITAMIN A IS TOXIC" forum. I think it's just lousy human nature, every other diet forum I've been on was chock full of people talking about their cheat schedules.
@joseph-5 that person doesn't have any history of ingesting excess of vit A let alone animal retinol + he said "I feel good"
So when I see this my experience after decades of constantly thinking and researching diets related stuff tells me that starting with some very restrictive diet, because "I fell good, but I want to feel even better" is a reason why many people started developing health issues.. I clearly said that having in mind that vit A can be problematic and so it is not a good idea to eat stuff high in vit A, because most people on the internet say they are superfoods or do some stupid stuff like juicing carrots (like I did) etc.. or whatever, but that doesn't mean they should avoid even some salad because it has small amount of beta carotene from green vegetables or some egg or some dairy here and there which would still give that person much lower intake than RDA. So in my opinion safe amount of vit A for most healthy people. Because if you were thinking about it for a second vit A is not the only one potentially toxic stuff in food. So that person could end up not eating anything basically, because I can find you issues with any food. Like for example your almonds, cashews that are LOADED with oxalates. year later you will write about oxalate toxicity and low oxalate diet I assume..
Anyways if someone had clear history and most importantly symptoms of vit A overload for sure I would not recommend that person keep eating eggs, dairy etc.. I did basically zero vit A for at least 1 year as well and I also had zero cravings outside of my restrictive diet. But once there is no longer any clear sign of detox happening and you start to crave for example some green veggies after years of very strict diet. I think you should listen to your body. I am on low vit A 7 years or so now and I am really not afraid that after eating some green peas or egg it will kick me back into vit A toxicity that I had 7 years ago..
That is my experience and opinion. You can have yours but you don't have to attack others for theirs. Especially when you clearly don't have those years under your belt..
I don't think it's a case of "years under your belt" granting you license to be more of an expert on advice. I also don't think I'm eating zero (ZERO, not LOW) vitamin a to free up liver space for a future where I eat vitamin a again.
Once again, this is a website started by a man who did, imo, world-changing research on the destructive effects of one chemical. He advocates a strict avoidance of that chemical as the best practice. I follow that advice and would pass it on to anyone here. I don't have a problem eating in a narrow lane for the rest of my life, and I don't think getting a craving for something justifies falling off the wagon.
Grant is less likely to wade into things like tobacco, though he has acknowledged here and there the role some non-nutritious foods like tobacco (or plain nicotine), caffeine, alcohol can affect vitamin a in a way we might exploit to our benefit.
I will reiterate to Chilik, if he still visits this thread, I have had great success with zero vitamin a as a strict rule. I would not recommend cigarettes to anyone, ever. I do enjoy the occasional cigar but consider them a health negative, and if you really want the (plausible) health benefits of nicotine in lowering your vitamin a levels, the healthiest way would be a tobacco free nicotine delivery system.
@joseph-5 "I don't think it's a case of "years under your belt" granting you license to be more of an expert on advice. I also don't think I'm eating zero (ZERO, not LOW) vitamin a to free up liver space for a future where I eat vitamin a again. "
Well from what I can tell you really don't have any deep knowledge on nutrition apart from reading some stuff about this vitamin A issue. Your views(at least for now) are extremely myopic. I was somewhat the same when I started with low vit A diet. But then I learned that not poisoning myself with excess of vit A is a great thing, but it is just one piece of the puzzle and that if you push it to the extreme you will create issues elsewhere down the road(those can be even mental not just physical. Coming from someone who had no issues eating nothing but chicken breasts, white rice, oats, whey protein for decade+ even on christmas dinners etc..) Not to mention Grant is also just a guy. Not some holy entity that knows everything the best and therefore we have to do exactly what he does or thinks, because we know it will be always 100% true. Yes he is right about vit A is not so innocent vitamin that we can eat as much as we want like most health world people think and have no issues from it. He did great job to show us that, but that's it. It doesn't mean that he will be right about everything he says. So if he thinks(maybe I don't know) that everyone on this planet should eat just some muscle meat and some grain low in vit A and nothing else for the rest of their lives. I will be the first person to say that it is a BS.(with all due respect) Because just because you avoid vit A doesn't mean you will not create issues, disbalances with other micronutrients. Everyone has completely different needs due to their genetics, environment they live in, life style etc..
In terms of your last statement where you already know that you will eat ZERO vit A diet for the rest of your life(laughable). Like I said before come back in 10 years and tell me that again.. You will have different view on it.. Because you will learn that it is not an answer to everything and that small amount of vit A here and there is nothing to worry about(after detoxing for years if you even had some vit A issue in a first place) Me myself I am not going back to eating liver, carrots, vit A supplements, cod liver oils, high amounts of yolks and full fat dairy daily etc.. That's for sure, but that doesn't mean that after many years of very strict diet and after detoxing what I needed to detox=no longer any clear vit A toxicity symptoms. I will not eat for example some meal that was prepared for me because it has 1 egg yolk in it or some green veggies etc.. Because 1. the amount is negligible 2. there were more factors of why I accumulated so much retinol in the liver not just the amounts I ingested..
Again like I said if someone has clear vit A toxicity(symptoms and diet history) I am also the first one who will tell that person that he has at least couple years of no vit A diet ahead of him. That is not changing at all.
I never said that people should go back to their old diet after they spend years detoxing vit A. That is just ridiculous. I said that if someone no longer has vit A toxicity issues I don't see any issues to start eating more varied diet that will cover more micronutrients even if it has small amount of vit A where you are still well under RDA for vit A. After 7 years I started eating some green veggies, some egg here and there or whatever. It is still far from a diet that could again result in vit A toxicity that I had before where I would consume at least 5 times RDA easily on low vit A day..
But again that is not the case of a guy who started your reaction on my comment.. So I simply can't just blindly suggest to everyone(like you said you will do) to eat very restrictive diet that will not result in better health in long term if it's simply not ideal for them and I will point that out. So again you make your comment I will make my comment. If that is a problem and Grant or moderator will decide that they don't want my comments on this site then I have no problem accepting that I can't post here. I would be actually glad if that would be the case, because I wouldn't be a part of some cult where people don't think for themselves and just do something because someone else does that. That's stone age mindset(that damaged many people including me when I blindly followed all kinds of different people) if you ask me..
Everyone gets to choose what to put in their mouths.
On one hand, maybe the choice is more important than most realize.
On the other, you could be hit by a truck tomorow.
Fiddling with my diet too much is one of my life's little regrets. That is why I'm moderate.
No one has perfect health and no one gets out of this alive.