Quote from "A"Student on October 1, 2023, 5:00 pm

Hello Everyone,

I discovered Grant's theory early last December, read his books, and have been lurking on this forum trying to figure out what it all means, and what to do. I feel like I know a lot of you already, so I thought I should join and share my experience with "moderate Vitamin A." It'll be a long post. But as I have benefited from other people's experiences here, hopefully some will benefit from our experiences.

To start, I am not the person most afflicted in my family, it is my husband, who has been losing weight for several years. He has asthma and related illnesses, and was diagnosed / given inhalers and was good for a while, but declining slowly, until he started having exacerbations in the spring of 2021 and 2022. 2022 was really bad, he had been prescribed a Flouroquinine antibiotic (Dr said "it couldn't hurt" and it seemed to be a reaction to it. His main comment before freaking out and demanding an ambulance was "my lungs feel like they're on f#@&ing fire!" More on this in a bit.

Our diet was not all that extreme, we cook at home a lot, but did try to eat our vegetables. Sweet potatoes once or twice a week, sautéed greens, spaghetti, the occasional carrot apple beet juice. Multi vitamin or chlorella. We tried fish oil and liver caps but they didn't stick. Also, as hubby was losing weight, he was drinking various weight gainers, which are fortified.

We also avoided "seed oils" for cooking, using olive oil or butter. Though we did eat potato chips, baked goods, occasionally French fries. In NYC we eat takeout once or twice a week. As you do. 

For the past few years hubby has been feeling weaker and weaker. Pulmonologist says that his lungs are stable, so it's a mystery. Exercise more, drink Ensures, is the advice we're given.

When the big exacerbation happened in Spring 22, I noticed that magnesium calmed everything down, so that was my first rabbit hole. We've been supplementing magnesium since, and after a month or so there was some improvement, at least for panic attacks which started after the hospitalization. But he could not gain weight or build better stamina.

Then in early December 22, I saw on Twitter/X a mention of Grant, who had resolved his eczema on a low A diet. Both of us get patches of excess in the winter, and my curiosity was piqued. I read Grant's books and wondered if hubby's comments about "his lungs being on f#@&ing fire" were a kind of eczema in itself. I decided to do an audit of the Vitamin A we were consuming in our regular diet, and told hubby about this. He was definitely not going on any severe diet, but I figured if we could drop any supplements and superfoods, we would know if this crazy idea was valid.

So we started. We are still eating eggs/dairy, but no supplements and no sweet potatoes or kale/greens. We don't worry so much if there are a few carrots in a chicken soup. 

Over the winter, we still had small patches of eczema but they were manageable. But what was very noticeable was that hubby's lungs did not seize up (in the way that cold air "freezes" them) from the cold once. The winter before he could barely go five feet outside without that happening. It was a mild winter but still, that was a big thing. 

In the Spring, he could feel his pollen allergies, but there were no exacerbations. And he did not go to the hospital, or even have a close scare. 

As for me, I lost some internal head pressure and aches in my hips. And my earwax, which I had not thought about, went from orangeish and oily to white. I haven't lost any weight, which I'd like to, but I've been eating a fair amount of sugar in the past year, so I'm not judging the Vit A for that.

Over the summer we took in sun when we could, including a couple weeks at the beach. My skin got a little leathery and inflamed but it calmed down a few days later. 

Then I thought it was time for phase two. I'm not in Dr Smith's bro cult, but I do follow him on Twitter/X and have read his articles. So I figured it was time to up the fiber. Or something to keep the improvements coming, since they were stalled.

But then I stumbled onto the Omega 6 thread here. I looked into Peskin's theory about Omega 6's and once again I realized that our diet, while not extreme, may be screwing both of us up in that regard. So for the past couple weeks we have been taking one capsule of the SUN supplements, along with a spoonful of homemade walnut/flaxseed/sesame butter, to test this other crazy idea. I will wait for at least a month to report in full about that but I can say I am already seeing and feeling improvements for myself, and seeing some in hubby as well. 

Mostly I am sharing this so there is an account from someone without a true Low A diet. We're probably below RDA, but not a lot lower than that. The Omega 6 might factor in more greatly than for someone like Grant, though I suspect that people with disciplined diets have fewer issues than those of us who "mostly" avoid seed oils but then cheat with the most oxidized ones.