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Perspectives from TCM
I am ethnically Chinese and from S.E. Asia. I have been into naturopathic health and self-learning TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) for the past few years. When I read Grant's theory and review the food to eat and avoid, some patterns strikes me as interesting and I thought I'll share it here.
TCM is very different from western allopathic medicine, one of the key difference pointed out is that western medicine lacks the idea of "warmth/cold". There is a concept of "Yin"(negative) and "Yang"(positive) that is fundamental to many things in Chinese science. Over the years, the food that we eat has also been identified with their "warming" and "cooling" effect.
While traditionally, a balance between the "Yin" and "Yang" was considered the desired healthy state to be in, there are people who argue that the "Yang"(positive) is the core life-force and depletion of this energy slowly move us towards death.
Food wise, traditional Chinese way will tell you to avoid "Raw" and "Cold". Cold can be in terms of temperature and the cooling effect of the food itself. Always cook the food to reduce the burden on your body.
How does this tie in with low A? If we look at the list of "warm/cold" classification of food according to TCM, it is very obvious that all leafy greens are considered "cooling", in fact there are very few fruits and vegetables that are considered "warming". Off the top of my head, some examples are :
Veg/roots: Ginger, garlic, chives. (Sorry, can't remember much and I can't locate that book which listed these)
Fruits: Durian, Longan, Lychee, Cherry, Peach, Mango. (Not encouraged to eat much since they still are considered "Raw" and over consumption can cause flare-up's)
In terms of meat, traditionally:
Warm : Beef, Mutton, Chicken; Neutral : Pork; Cool : Duck
Again, not encouraged to eat a lot, rich people (in the past) who eat meat daily tend to have chronic disease.
TCM has a long history and most of the "Classical Text" dates back to the Han dynasty almost 2,000 years ago. There were already description and treatment for diseases that resembles Heart Attack, Diabetes and Depression long ago. Over the years, the efficacy of TCM has dropped, leading to some practitioner to question themselves. This questioning leads to a revival or "return to classic" when they begin to use the formulas and methods from the "Classics", namely "ShangHanLun" and "JingGui" and experienced greater success in their practice.
The symptoms that indicate low "Yang" energy or sometimes call "Yang Deficiency" include (obviously) low energy (chronic fatigue?) , cold hands and feet (hypothyroid? reynauds?). When it gets to the point that it affect your digestive system, loose stool and undigested food in your stool.
Traditionally, "Yang deficiency" patients are treated with "High Warmth" herbs with specific formulas according to their symptoms, these typically include: Raw Ginger, Dried Ginger, Cinnamon, FuZi (Wolfbane root), Ma Huang (Ephehydra).
FuZi (Wolfbane root) is known to be highly toxic, but also a critical herb that can bring people back from the brink of death in chinese medicine. It is also important in treating Arthritis. However, due to its highly toxic nature, very few practitioner dare to use it in their practices for fear of inadvertent poisoning in their patient. https://www.poison.org/articles/why-is-monkshood-considered-a-poison--174
I better stop here. If there is more interest, I can share a bit more from the perspective of TCM.
How do you think it links to Grant theory ???
Looking from the big picture, I see some similarities, but it will not be a hand-in-a-glove fit (just as I don't expect vit A to be all that is to cause all the myriads of auto-immune diseases). The similarities in the food that we should not eat in Grant's theory are food that good Chinese Medicine practitioners advises against as well.
For example:
- Don't eat dark leafy greens and fruits, especially if raw => This is very cooling on your body (drains your positive energy). If you cook them, it's less harmful. In Grant's negative A world, that may translate to "If you cook them, some of the 'vitamins' are lost and they are less toxic."
- Don't take dairy and eggs and (too much) pork => They tend to cause phlegm and mucous or dampness in your body.This phlegm or dampness impede your body energy flow and over time results in diseases.
We know that human has limited positive energy, if you continually pile on the "Yin/Cold/Negative" energy by your "High A diet", you reach a tipping point when your fell into diseased state.
The question is how do we get back into the healthy state? While Grant's escape from hell is impressive, I sometimes wonder if he has fully recovered if he is still so sensitive after all these years. Maybe he is still at the brink after all these years because the low A diet cannot push him in the other direction back into full health?
What I am proposing is that, maybe a good Chinese Doctor with the aid of "Yang/Warm/Positive" energy chinese medicine can help make the "recovery/vit A detox" faster or better?
For example, there is this TCM Doctor from Taiwan who pioneered the "Original Point Therapy" and shared it with the world for free. You can google this easily yourself and and there are currently sufficient information translated into English as well. His view is that all diseases are caused by Cold and Yin energy, to counter it he uses massaging techniques to loosen taut tendons in specific regions he discovered. When this does not work, you have to take it to the next level by increasing your internal and external heat source. Internal heat source = boiling and drinking ginger soup, external heat source = warm heated bean bags over your body. This method has spread far and wide into southeast asia, China, Australia and other western country. Many with chronic diseases have been healed. My aunt used to have heart palpitation, dizzy spells, cold sweat and frequent respiratory infection followed this method and returned to good health. She have not needed to see any doctors for the past five years and she still faithfully boils her ginger soup everyday.
So, if we take inspiration from that, maybe we can add boiled ginger soup to the low A diet? It's just a suggestion , I doubt many can do it, as the amount they use is probably too spicy for westerners, it will literally burn a path to your stomach. I have seen some testimonies where they used minced ginger on their eczema to speed recovery.
To a good TCM doctor (not the acupuncture type), autoimmune diseases are not difficult to cure if a patient is cooperative and comes early before toxic drugs do irreversible damage. However, this I have to stress, it is very difficult to find such a good TCM doctor.
That's good to know. Ginger tea has low vitamin A anyway
Science > TCM > Corrupt Western government nutritional guidance > Wacky internet nutritional gurus
I have read about TCM dietary ideas and I find it interesting. TCM was great for the pre scientific age.
TCM didn't identify foods high in Poison A as likely to be toxic though. TCM doesn't see carrots and sweet potato as dangerous foods. Liver is also seen as a good food in moderate amounts.
Because of my understanding of VA I will never eat these "foods" again.
TCM is more than two thousand years old and Poison A is a modern man-made catastrophe. Besides, orange carrot is a foreign import and Chinese version of carrot is the white radish. A wise Chinese TCM practitioner in Florida used to say "Do not confuse Technology with Science". Technology has advanced tremendously, for example, using MRI technology we can see inside the human body with such details, but are we able to heal more people with those technology? Apparently not. This Chinese practitioner has since passed away but I'd like to share a case of Auto-immune disease treated by his apprentice.
The above blog post by Dr. Andy Lee in San Francisco is in Mandarin, but I'm sure Google translate can help those who are not cannot read Chinese. I'll just re-iterate the main points here.
The patient, a 55yo Chinese lady was presented with severe arthritis all over including neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers, knees, ankle, feet and toes (top to toe destruction!). Her fingers are severely deformed in a W shape, bending inward, outward and inward at the joints. In constant pain and rely on large dose of painkiller to get a few hours of sleep. Her eyes and mouth are very dry.
According to the lady, she was diagnosed with Sjogren's a few years ago. Later she developed double vision, the doctors were alarmed and suggested MRI which did not find anything. However she started to have joint pain after the MRI (she was informed prior to the MRI that the contrasting agent used in MRI can cause joint pain in a some people). She deteriorated quickly and after six months she has arthritis all over the body (usually it take 10 years to get that bad). At first, she continued to rely on mainstream medicine, when that failed, she seek treatment from 2 other Chinese TCM practitioner over a period of 2 years with no apparent relief.
I came across this post and I was very interested because the symptoms matches what Grant described in Vit A poisoning, from the dry eyes and mouth to double vision to the cascading effect seen in the systemic arthritis in reaction to the foreign invaders (contrasting agent).
Dr. Lee reported that after 6 months of treatment, she is off her painkillers and could sleep 6-7 hours. The joints are no longer in pain and the stiffness has improved, the dryness in the eyes and mouth has improved in various degree. Overall the systemic inflammation seems to be under control. He reported that it was a difficult battle, having to use all the "High Warmth/Toxic" herb I mentioned above.
I would say that's pretty impressive, as most mainstream doctors can only prescribe steroid and painkiller in progressively large dose. Of course, as low A believers, we wonder if the recovery could have been faster if she had gone on a low A diet.
Well, maybe I'll need to see if I can find any research to support this theory of "high warmth" herb removing poison A. A simple search Google only show that Cinnamon and Ginger reduces RBP and helps against diabetes.
That recovery fits the philosophy I've developed as I read various healing therapies in that autoimmune and other degenerative diseases mainly happen when the body can't keep up with the inflammation/damage it faces everyday. When this happens, the body can't keep hormones, sugar... in a balanced state and anything can start to falter.
That's interesting. What about burdock root in chinese medicine? It's supposed to be a blood purifier and liver aid. I wonder if it's useful for vitamin a detox
Hello,
How is it then that many people reverse their disease by adopting cold adaptation methods? I personally take cold showers since a few years and go outside in shorts almost the whole year whatever the wheather and I am never ill.
A friend of mine has dramatically improved his health by swimming every day in a lake here (water can drop as low as 3-4-5°).
I see it from another angle: inflammation = too much heat so going "cold" will balance the whole thing. The best way to get cold adapted is to take very cold baths, go outside in shorts, drink very cold water, etc.
Another example of this (using breathwork as help to get quickly cold adapted) is the Wim Hof method.
The whole thing doesn't fit with your "heat" theory except that cold adaptation leads to higher heat "within" (see Tibetan Tummo).
Best Regards,
Dino
Also, just to complete my previous post, I believe that "heat" is not what is missing nowadays as we basically live in an eternal summer. Winter (ie cold and darkness) is missing from our lives as we cheat with Winter by heating our homes, heating our cars, heating our water, etc. and by having "lights on" all year round even during december nights. This is not natural. Getting the "cold" and the "dark" back in our lives is a big part of the health equation in my opinion and so far it has worked well for me.
All the best,
Dino