Quote from lil chick on October 11, 2019, 6:18 pm

Sorry Sarabeth!  I hope you got a moment to relax today after your bad night. 

What seems to get me lately is GAS.  (and usually about fiber)  (kraut or beans for instance)

Also, I spent one of these weeks with gut pain, and it turned out to be (I think) because I felt so well that I overdid --playing frisbee --and pulled a muscle.

Quote from Sarabeth on December 21, 2019, 3:53 pm

Hi Everybody,

So on New Year's Day my family will have been at this Low A experiment for 6 months. Major improvements include:

--For the first time in my child's life, this child eats enough calories at almost every meal WITHOUT spoon feeding! This is huge, because NOTHING, not GAPS or Walsh protocol nor eating disorder therapy-type-help, NOTHING could get enough calories in before. This same child has had great improvement in behavior (many fewer tantrums and meltdowns, reduced anxiety and obsessiveness) and is pleasant to be around much of the time. This is truly fantastic and amazing, and definitely supports the idea that I was inadvertantly poisoning my kiddos with all the liver and egg yolks and greens and sweet potatoes I was making them eat for so many years.

--For the first time in my other child's life, chronic and painful diarrhea and associated tantrums (I mean, wouldn't you want to scream if your poop burned you several times per day?!) are almost entirely gone.

--My periods and moods relating to same have normalized to an amazing degree.

--Smaller improvements: better skin, nicer nails (stronger, less brittle, shiny), a gradual decrease in nighttime peeing (frequency and volume; not perfect, but it's much better), improved energy.

One family member has noticed absolutely no difference in symptoms over six months - this person's main symptoms are CFS-type fatigue, insomnia, IBS, etc.

One month ago, as per Garrett Smith's theories to improve Vitamin A detox, we removed most of the remaining vegetables we'd been eating (along with supplemented vitamin C). That means that almost all our meals have consisted of meat, rice, and a bit of veggies or fruit, including the following foods:

Meats - beef, chicken, turkey, lamb.

Starches: rice (mostly white; brown only as flour in long-fermented sourdough bread), tapioca, arrowroot.

Egg whites occasionally.

Vegetables - celery, cucumber (peeled), mushrooms of all kinds (except shiitake), iceberg lettuce, peeled zucchini, some lacto-fermented green beans.

Fruit - Apples, grapes, pomegranates, occasionally bananas, cherries, blueberries

Nuts - some macadamias, very occasionally pine nuts or walnuts.

Sweeteners - lighter honey, maple syrup

Fat - refined coconut oil, refined avocado oil, butter and ghee (max. 2 tbsp. per day of these two)

Herbs/spices/seasonings - bay leaf, rosemary, turmeric, dill, peppermint, ceylon cinnamon, coriander seed, cumin, ginger, vanilla,  capers, lemon/lime juice, iodized salt, tamari.

As we approach the six-month mark, I am increasingly worried - not about vitamin A deficiency, which I'm convinced is quite difficult to induce, but about the possibility of deficiencies of other nutrients on such a limited diet, and the ways that it could be tempting to call symptoms of such deficiencies "Vitamin A Detox." (We used to do that with GAPS. For years. "It's die off!" we'd say...even when after three years of no starch, it was likely we were starting to starve from lack of glucose, among many other possible issues with long-term adherence to a short-term protocol like that... I don't want to make those mistakes again, or at least I want to be very careful. My kids have spent most of their lives on various special dietary protocols, and the gains we are FINALLY making are so precious! I don't want to overstay our time in Restricted Eating Territory.)

Right around Thanksgiving, we got that horrible flu that's been going around. Everyone was sick for a week or two except for my husband, whose symptoms only lasted a few days. My kids had no appetite, and behavioral symptoms returned in full force, although they are feeling much better now. My increasing worry is that _I_ am still sick, after a month. I haven't been this sick in fifteen years, or at least I should say I haven't STAYED sick for this long since just after my oldest child was born. The flu started as headache and fever, then I got "better." Five days later, the fever suddenly came back and I was definitely not better; symptoms moved to the gastrointestinal tract, and since then have progressed through a terrible sinus infection, and now this week my lungs feel like they're "full" and I can't stop coughing, and I can't take deep breaths. I am exhausted, to boot.

It's easy to doubt the course when one is feeling so rotten, but I also don't want to disregard my body's signals, and I really don't want to move us into deficiency territory. For reasons of possible celiac sensitivity in one family member, we don't eat wheat or gluten. For reasons of oxalates (bedwetting and kidney stuff), we don't eat potatoes or most root veggies. And for reasons of needing to eat something in the way of carbohydrates, we eat a LOT of rice on this diet (white rice mostly, because properly prepared brown rice tastes yucky unless it's in bread, which is delicious)! Garrett Smith believes that white rice is a primary driver of B1 (and other B vitamins) deficiency, especially on Low A detox diet, and I am inclined to believe him. I just feel like we are missing things, eating just meat and rice. I don't want to increase our consumption of high A foods, but...just FOODS overall!

I should clarify that it's not just this flu that makes me wary of banging the Low A hammer for too long. There are a few issues that haven't improved at ALL over the past six moths, which makes me wonder if they are related to A...and if not, whether this is the wrong path for long-term treatment of same: one of my children's symptoms of brain fog and ADHD; the aforementioned CFS and fatigue/insomnia suffered by one family member; a tendency toward constipation in three family members (can't be helped by all this white rice, can it?!).

Last month I posted an analysis of our diet, as it relates to most major micronutrients (is that an oxymoron?!), and came to the same conclusion as Smith regarding B1 and B vits in general; it also appeared to me that most of the nutrients we are kinda lacking exist in legumes/beans (I will post this analysis below, as a separate comment). Because of this, I started soaking and including beans in our meals over the last month, maybe 2-3 times per week. But I don't think this is enough to ward off deficiencies, and not all family members do well with beans (although they're doing better with smaller amounts). I am playing with the theory that Grant's inclusion of beans on a daily basis is one of the reasons that his low A diet was as successful as it was, for as long as he's been doing it, while potentially meeting his nutritional needs. I just don't think that beef and rice alone is a good long-term strategy, although I wish it was!

I am not totally clear about the lectins/phytic acid in beans, and whether they are as bad as some Food Gurus think they are in terms of negating their total nutrient contribution to a diet.

Quote from Sarabeth on December 21, 2019, 3:54 pm

Vitamins and Minerals - Potential deficiencies on this diet.

Below I’ve listed each nutrient, plus the best low-A sources of it, and whether I personally feel that my family might be at risk of deficiency on a Low A diet.

(I have humbly borrowed tons of info from Chris Masterjohn’s very informative Vitamins and Minerals series. I think he has fascinating things to say…just not about Vitamin A at this point!)

—-

B1 Thiamin:

Whole grains and beans.

Liver Diseases, coincidentally, hurt thiamin storage. Might folks with A toxicity qualify for such a definition?

(My family doesn’t eat beans or many whole grains at all, so POSSIBLY DEFICIENT if we don’t supplement.)

——

B2 Riboflavin

Almonds, red meat, mushrooms, sesame, wheat germ and bran.

(My family eats red meat and mushrooms, so POSSIBLY OKAY.)

——

B3 Niacin

Most lean meats, sesame seeds and tahini, pumpkin and squash seeds, pine nuts, almonds, chestnuts, many mushrooms (white, portabella, shiitake, oyster, crimini).

(My family eats meat and mushrooms nearly daily, so PROBABLY OKAY.)

——

B5 Pantothenic Acid

Roasted Sunflower seeds, shiitake mushrooms, White or portabella mushrooms, some muscle meats (but requires many servings per day).

According to Masterjohn, “Pantothenic acid is harder to extract from food than other B vitamins. A healthy person may only extract half the B5 from food, and someone with poor digestion might get even less.” Also: “A lot of B5 gets destroyed by heat, processing, and storage. So it's VERY important never to use values for raw foods in a nutritional database unless the food is fresh (not canned or frozen) and you're eating it raw.”

(Here’s hoping that my family’s high meat and mushroom consumption will carry us through on this one! POSSIBLY DEFICIENT without supplements.)

——

B6

Small amounts can be found in chicken and turkey breast, many lean cuts of meat, chestnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, walnuts, corn, white rice, and bananas. One might have to eat several pounds of these foods each day to get enough.

Masterjohn says: “…most plants have a lot of their B6 bound to sugars that make it hard to absorb. We can get, at best, only half the B6 from these sugar-bound forms. At worst, we might not get any. As a result, you should NEVER trust the values for B6 in a nutritional database when looking at plant foods.

“Cooking presents another important issue. Cooking makes B6 bind to the protein in the food. This doesn't just destroy the B6. It actually turns it into a B6 antagonist! …Overall, you can expect cooked animal food to have 25-30% less B6 activity than the raw version, and 40% less for plant foods. It depends how much you cook them though.”

(My family is PROBABLY DEFICIENT based on our symptoms when we don’t supplement.)

——

Biotin

If you don’t eat liver or egg yolks, this is difficult to get from food. Masterjohn sez: “…Meanwhile, egg WHITES have a substance that binds biotin and prevents its absorption. Therefore, consuming egg whites without the yolks creates the greatest risk of biotin deficiency. In fact, before we knew what biotin was, we called its deficiency "egg white injury." The fact that "egg white injury" could be cured by eating liver led to the eventual discovery of biotin!

“Thankfully, cooking egg whites helps destroy their biotin-binding substance. However, it depends how you cook the egg:
* Poaching does very little, leaving behind 71% of the anti-biotin activity.
* Frying is better, but it still leaves behind 33% of the anti-biotin activity.
* Boiling for four minutes destroys most of it, leaving behind 5-10%. Boiling for six minutes destroys nearly all of it.”

Masterjohn’s insights:
* 100 grams of whole eggs has 21.4 micrograms (mcg).
* Meats are variable, but have only about 20% as much.
* Sunflower seeds have only 36%.
* Almonds have 20%.
* Walnuts have 12%
* Pecans and canned mushrooms have 10%.

(My family is PROBABLY DEFICIENT without supplements.)

——

B9 Folate

Chickpeas, kidney beans, limas, soy, mung beans, black beans, and pinto beans.

(My family eats few beans, so PROBABLY DEFICIENT.)

——

B12

300 grams of meat, poultry or fish.

Most B12 deficiencies also have to do with poor absorption.

(My family is PROBABLY OKAY.)

——

Choline

These foods are equivalent to one egg yolk, which in turn (according to Masterjohn) means you need roughly FOUR servings per day:

Nuts and seeds, measured dried or roasted: 200 grams of flaxseed, pistachios, pumpkin, squash, or cashews; 250 grams of pine, sunflower, or almonds; 300 grams of hazelnuts or macadamia; 400 of walnuts; 450 of Brazil nuts; 500 of sesame. Meat and fish: 9-12 ounces, measured before cooking. 100-200 grams of beans, measured before cooking.

(My family eats a lot of meat, but possibly not enough to give us adequate choline: POSSIBLY DEFICIENT.)

——

Vitamin C

Strawberries, asparagus, potatoes, radish, turnips, rutabagas, raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries, limes

(My family occasionally eats asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and limes, but probably not in high enough quantities. Yet Garrett Smith advises against supplementing. We’re PROBABLY DEFICIENT in vitamin C.)

——

Vitamin D

Sunlight on our skin! Also: some mushrooms that have been exposed to ultraviolet light (brown, Italian, crimini, portabella, maitake) (but these contain D2). Turkey and chicken fat.

(My family lives in the desert and is PROBABLY OKAY due to all the sunlight, although recent tests prior to our Vitamin A detox showed that our status was fairly low.)

——

Calcium

Equivalent to an 8-oz glass of milk (measured after cooking):

430 g white beans
700 g pinto beans
90 g napa cabbage

Also, mineral water might be a good source.

(My family eats none of these regularly, so we’re LIKELY DEFICIENT.)

——

Phosphorus

If we assume a need for ~700mg day, it’s very hard to get deficient. 2000 calories of any of these food groups on its own would provide:

Meat, poultry, or fish: 1700 mg.
Legumes, nuts, or seeds: 1600 mg.
Veggies 1100 mg.
Grains: 1050 mg.
Fruits: 608 mg.

(My family is PROBABLY OKAY.)

——

Vitamin E

Nuts and seeds, grass-fed red meat.

(I don’t know how much is needed, but I’m hoping my family is LIKELY OKAY.)

——

Vitamin K

Three servings per day of:
57 g dark chicken meat, 4 g natto made from black beans, 97 g ghee from pasture-raised cows, 110 g goose leg, 160 g butter or lard

(My family does eat butter, but in much smaller amounts than 160 grams per day! We do eat lots of chicken, but not every day. We are POSSIBLY DEFICIENT.)

——

Copper

The food content of copper varies DRAMATICALLY depending on where and how it is grown. Two low-A sources:

20 g shiitake mushrooms
25 g sesame seeds

(My family doesn’t eat much of these, but we have also (three of us) tested very high for copper and low for zinc so I do not worry about copper consumption at this point while we’re still supplementing to lower its levels in our blood. We’re CURRENTLY OKAY.)

——

Iodine

It’s complicated.

Iodized salt is the simplest source on our Low A diet.

(My family now uses iodized salt, so we’re POSSIBLY OKAY.)

——

Iron

White beans, black turtle beans, the seeds of sesame, pumpkin, and squash; and wheat or rice bran. Many cuts of beef, and also many other beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds.

(My family is PROBABLY OKAY on iron consumption due to all the beef we eat.)

——

Magnesium

Sesame seeds and sesame products, sunflower seeds, almonds and almond products, Brazil and pine nuts. Brown rice, wheat, and these beans: fava, white, great northern, mung, French, baby lima, small white, pink, winged, pinto, navy, black, black turtle, kidney, cranberry, soy, and adzuki). Macadamia nuts and pecans.

(My family does not many of these on a regular basis, and we are LIKELY DEFICIENT without supplementing.)

——

Manganese

Brown rice, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds, and squash seeds, pink or red lentils, mothbeans, white beans, adzuki beans. Also, almonds and almond butter, cashews, sunflower seed kernels, chestnuts, sesame seeds, raspberries, blackberries, white rice, white (wheat) flour, lentils, and the following beans: great northern, navy, pink, yellow, small white, young lima, French, pinto, kidney, black, mung, black turtle, cranberry, and fava.

(My family is PROBABLY OKAY.)

——

Molybdenum

5 grams of (g) lima beans, 10 g small white beans, 23 g red beans, 45 g pinto beans, 75 g string beans, 120 g pasta, 155 g rice, 225 g asparagus.

(We eat a LOT of rice, so here’s hoping that we’re PROBABLY OKAY.)

——

Potassium:

Beans, including small white, black turtle, kidney, black, pink, lima, pinto, great northern, cranberry, French, adzuki, mung, hyacinth, mothbean, and navy. Several raw nuts (pistachio, almonds, and hazelnuts); several dry-roasted nuts (pistachios, hazelnuts, and almonds), plus almond butter, roasted pumpkin and squash seeds, roasted sunflower seed kernels, and raisins.

If you eat a lot of these foods, also: chestnuts, oil-roasted or blanched almonds, blanched hazelnuts, roasted cashews and pecans, and dry-roasted walnuts, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, walnuts, cashew butter and tahini, toasted sesame seeds, roasted sunflower seeds, some mushrooms, and some cuts of meat (especially when the juices are consumed (as in soups or stews).

(My family is LIKELY A BIT DEFICIENT due to eating very few of the items on this list.)

——

Selenium

This nutrient is notoriously variable depending on the soil in which plants have grown. In GENERAL, good sources include:

Wheat products, including germ, bran, whole-grain flour, sprouted wheat, vital wheat gluten, bread flour, semolina, durum, hard red winter and spring, and most pasta and noodles. Also, “depending”, Brazil nuts, dried sesame seed kernels, dried or toasted sunflower seed kernels, most cuts of beef, and white rice.

(My family sure eats a lot of beef and white rice, but I have no idea at all what the actual selenium content of these foods is. Nor do I know whether we get enough without supplements to balance out the zinc supplements that three of us take. POSSIBLY OKAY once we stop supplementing with zinc.)

——

Zinc:

Most beef and lam; adzuki, soy, black, cranberry, navy, and white beans; sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, and squash seeds; cashews, pine nuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts.

(My family should be TOTALLY OKAY on zinc, but without supplements, and prior to our Vitamin A detox, three of us had very low zinc levels without massive supplementation. I am curious whether we can wean off these in time, as our A stores diminish.)

Quote from Sarabeth on December 21, 2019, 6:09 pm

I forgot to add - based on above, these are Potential Deficiencies of greatest concern for my family:

B1, B5, B6, Biotin, Folate (B9), Choline, Calcium, Vitamin K, Magnesium, Potassium

Quote from Orion on December 22, 2019, 7:37 am

Quote from Sarabeth on December 21, 2019, 6:09 pm

I forgot to add - based on above, these are Potential Deficiencies of greatest concern for my family:

B1, B5, B6, Biotin, Folate (B9), Choline, Calcium, Vitamin K, Magnesium, Potassium

Garrett has mentioned that running the VA detox for long amounts of time will induce deficiencies in:

zinc, selenium, molybdenum, B1, B2, B3, Vitamin E

You might have to experiment with stuff to get the DH systems up and running smoothly.  This is where beans/legumes or whole grains prepared properly could help.  organic buckwheat, sprouted wheat, black beans, steel cut oats, etc...

 

Quote from tim on December 22, 2019, 12:55 pm

I've included low fat yoghurt in my diet recently even though Im not totally sold on dairy. It is an important source of b2, molybdenum and calcium. Calcium intake is strongly positively correlated with height in children.

Quote from Sarabeth on December 22, 2019, 10:01 pm

Action Plan for My Family:

My present goal is to assume that a Low A Detox is going to allow my family to tolerate MORE foods than before, and I'm planning to methodically bring in certain foods to try to prevent further deficiencies from developing, further assuming that our guts are healing along the way and might be able to digest these things.

Right now, I'm bringing in well-soaked/pressure cooked beans, which are currently working out a lot better than they did last June (prior to starting our Detox; various family members were in agony and begged me to stop cooking them. Over the past few weeks, nobody has had any major gut issues from beans).

Next, I'm going to try to diversify our starches, to dilute the White Rice White Rice White Rice syndrome. I'm getting some organic steel cut oats to start.

I tried long-fermented sourdough wheat bread three months ago, with obvious gut reactions from one of us, and possibly neurological reactions from two of us. Maybe I'll try again in a month or two.

Organic peeled white potatoes seem like another Next Step.

I'm going to offer soaked/dehydrated nuts and seeds more frequently, along with tahini. I guess we'll see whether oxalates are less of an issue now than they were three months ago.

Of all the high A foods that seem like they would be useful to include in our diet sooner than later, egg yolks top the list. Not in the dozens-per-week quantities we used to eat them, but one per person every other day or so.

Thanks for the ideas and thoughts! And happy Winter, everyone. 🙂

Quote from Sarabeth on December 29, 2019, 8:51 pm

Here's my plan of foods to add to our diet, to increase/diversify nutrients while remaining low-ish Vitamin A for the forseeable future (thanks to all of you for the useful suggestions and experiments you've been sharing! It helps me come up with ideas for my family).

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to continue serving soaked legumes and more soaked whole grain rice; next, a trial of white potatoes, then soaked steel cut oats; after that, I'll experiment with 1 egg per person every other or every day, low fat yogurt every OTHER other day, and finally I'll reintroduce resistant starches (cassava), and eventually I'll trial sourdough wheat bread again.

 

Quote from Jenny on December 30, 2019, 3:45 am

Sounds like a good plan. I’d gone totally white rice due to the arsenic problem but I’m going to alternate with organic brown now I think. I’ve always tried to keep the diversity in my diet & have favoured that over totally low vA, however, now I think it’s even more important. Individual experimentation must be the way to go.