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Rachel-2 my vitamin D
@tim-2 chicken skin on baked chicken is not high in fat.. I am buying chicken/turkey thighs without skin and bones and there is a lot of fat. So I just cook it in the water and once all that fat melts off the meat I rinse it in the water.. It is really interesting how I get that almost niacin like flush from eating chicken/turkey breast meat. It is bad idea anyway to eat pure muscle meat without any glycine/gelatin rich cuts of meat.. Which I did for so many years eating even 1kg of breast a day lol.. Now I eat only thighs from poultry there is a lot of connective tissue and ground beef for red meat where is also a lot of gelatinous cuts in it.. It is important to balance methionine with glycine.. I think it is the biggest reason why bodybuilders age so fast and get injured so easily. ALl that methionine from muscle meat is depleting glycine in their bodies..
Before i go read all the links Josh posted, I'm going to ask some more questions. Thanks to all who are responding!
"detoxifying A uses the D among other things." - @dino
Ok, so I might need MORE D to get rid of A?
"if you are deficient or borderline deficient in its cofactors (magnesium, boron, zinc, etc.) you may end up worse." - @dino
I have been taking minerals for awhile. I decided to STOP Pure Encapsulations Mineral 650 because it has calcium in it and I just don't think I need calcium (I'm a wild guesser). I will continue with selenium (I don't know if I need 200mcg or 400mcg), Jarrow Zinc Balance (1 mg copper and I just got rid of my copper-only IUD--that is a copper and plastic device with no chemical hormones), various forms of magnesium and magnesium sulfate (I try not to ignore sulfur i.e. I eat some daikon radish and onions and garlic and will continue with cauliflower, I think), Trace Minerals drops in my water, Redmond and Himalayan sea salt and I do salt my food as much as I want. I'm not plant-free and since my health is much better than it was I'm currently feeling like I can do a "soft" version of a low A diet which to me means lowering as much A as I possibly can without losing my mind. I think this means giving up egg yolks (duh!) but I know/believe that I will still need a source of choline (for sure!)
*If anyone knows a multi-mineral without calcium, please let me know
This means that I'm not likely to be low CURRENTLY in any minerals, but by losing the Pure Encaps Mineral 650 I could go low in some of those micro minerals.
I am going to TRY to get more sun and will do the tanning salon with UV and infrared this winter.
I am also taking Seeking Health B Minus which is a B complex I take because Riboflavin helps with MTHFR; also B6 since so many of my symptoms seems to need that and I haven't been eating grains. So, I'm getting Thiamin.
I just started eating white rice from the Himalayas and have been eating white potatoes this week. Should I stick with potatoes (no skin) on my "soft" low A diet?
I have been taking 5,000 iu per day. There are times when I take higher dose, but for several months I stuck with 5,000 because it was summer in Colorado and because I decided to do that so I could TEST my D. I'm thinking that I should test it RIGHT NOW while I'm at the very beginning of this experiment.
@tim-2 So, as you see above, I'm not getting a huge amount of calcium. I just realized I was drinking sparkling water that had calcium in it, so I've cut that down drastically. I am still eating sheep's milk yogurt and cheese (and I do NOT see any palmitate added to those. The yogurt has nothing added and the cheese is from Spain. Do I need to consider getting rid of these in order to go low A? Those are my biggest sources of calcium.)
@jiri
**I have the VDR SNP (Single-nucleotide polymorphism)**
"I've been somewhat convinced by arguments that it's more about VDR availability more than 25(OH)D levels. I don't have much evidence to back this up but if vA is interfering with VDRs then it could possibly lead to elevated 1,25(OH)2D levels as a compensatory mechanism which would be harmful. I haven't seen evidence for vD depleting vA in the liver? vA definitely antagonizes vD though."
1. I don't have high levels of D in blood. I've always tested low unless taking high doses of Vit D.
So, if I follow Jiri, our need for Vit D supplement should go down after we deplete stored A.
@tim-2 It sounds like Eric Levinson is above my pay grade. Not sure I should go there.
"Aldehydes are more relevant with regard to pectin rather than vA."
Alde-what? I haven't studied that at all. Pectin - is there something I should know about apples? I'm still eating those. Should I eliminate them on my "soft" low A plan?
Jiri and Tim - would you guys take Cal-D-Glucarate for lowering estrogen? What I'm told by ND is that it doesn't act like calcium. It doesn't go into blood, it just binds with estrogen in the gut and eliminates. However, my memory may be fading on this one because I thought that she also said that it makes "estrogen go down the healthy path" and not become the bad estrogen. Maybe that's because it gets eliminated first. In any case, what are your thoughts on that?
If N.D. type practictioners in Functional Medicine (and are clearly the TYPE of people who are willing to consider ideas that are contrary to popular opinion) are recommending that the level on a blood test be at about 60 ng/ml... then I am now wondering if that's because the majority of people who go to them are like *me* who are already sick, kind of like the description found at the beginning of this article (which is making me see that there's not a linear connection to my Vit D test level and my actual health problem) https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence
After reading all of your comments, here's what I'm thinking today:
1. I've just found another reason for ME to do a low A diet. I have the VDR SNP, so maybe for me it is a receptor problem (receptors clogged or just receptors not working as well). And, what I've been doing is flooding my blood with D3 and that increases availability on my VDRs. But, this is only one of the many types of Vit D. I can get a lot more types by going in the sun.
2. So, I will work much harder on getting my whole family into the sun. I will work harder to get some UV lights into my house or pay for tanning membership. (They don't allow children under age 18). I will work harder to get everyone lots of sun during the summer months.
3. I will REDUCE my Vit D3 supplement. This will give me SOME to work with during winter months. Will probably move the supplement to my bathroom and at bedtime take it that day if I didn't get into UV light. I take Thorne Research D3 + K2* drops sublingually.
Does anyone have tips for a redhead like me where I am prone to age spots / brown / freckles? What can I do to increase tanning rather than mottling?
Could we also be thinking about applying lanolin to our skin?
*Where do we get most of our Vitamin K? (It seems that maybe our gut flora is responsible for most of this?) Do we have to feed our gut flora *something?* in order to get Vitamin K?
@tim-2 "On a low vA diet it's only dairy fats that need to be avoided."
I have to go back over to my post about sheep's milk (yogurt and cheese). Do you know much about the Vit A content of these? If we were to leave all sheep, goat and cow milk natural and not add and Vitamin A to it ever, would the typical North American end up with toxic A in body? Do I have to avoid these 2 products in order to detox my own storage of A? (I've never had any eczema, but I have been under the assumption that I have "leaky gut" as interpreted by ND on a Genova Diagnostics Intestinal Permeability test). I am no longer having problem with histamine from foods - either I am creating enough DAO enzyme or I have reduce some bad flora in my gut so that I'm not getting as much histamine that way. I took Megasporebiotic and it seems to be the thing that cured my histamine intolerance.
Keep looking at zinc, magnesium, sulfur/sulfate, boron, selenium--- Mineral testing... is it time for me to finally do that?
@josh "Sometimes bacterial infections can block the vitamin D receptors (so-called vitamin D receptor ligands such as mycoplasma I believe), which causes the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency but all that is needed is to take some concentrated rosemary to clear the receptors."
WHOA! Um, given the gut comments I made above, !?!? But, with my VDR SNP, should I use rosemary maybe more often? Got any references for this? How much, how do I do it? I have rosemary essential oil on hand and will start right away while I also drastically lower my D3 intake.
Thanks, Everyone! This has been really enlightening and I'm encouraged to stick around and try to learn this.
Hi Rachel-2 in Colorado,
I have found that using a nutritional calculator helps to determine what vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, etc. are lacking in my diet. I go to nutritionvalue.org and use the "nutrition calculator" for individual foods or the whole daily meal.
Eating full fat dairy products will slow down or completely stop vA depletion. A small amount of low fat dairy is fine from a vA depletion perspective. I consume little dairy myself because I feel I'm somewhat intolerant to all forms. As vA gets depleted and VDR activity improves I would say calcium absorption will improve significantly.
My understanding is that the estrogen content of animal products is small compared with the production in our body. Dairy products are a major source in our diet though.
Aldehydes: retinaldehyde is formed from retinol, formaldehyde is formed from methanol, acetaldehyde is formed from ethanol. Pectin is the main source of methanol is our diet. Fruits, vegetables and legumes contain pectin. I have a video about it on my YT channel.
Yeah I don't minimize chicken skin because of the fat, it's to reduce vA intake.
It makes a lot of sense to consume gelatin because of all the collagen in our body. Is the methionine and glycine idea just another Peatism or does it have actual evidence behind it? Pottenger showed that gelatin made cooked food hydrophilic, not sure how valid that one is either.
@tim-2 I have this methionine/glycine thing mainly from Weston Price/Chris Masterjohn and also from Joel Brind. He was even selling interesting product with glycine as sweetner sweetamine. Glycine is cheap amino acid. So I have 1kg bag and take at least 3-5g before bed...
Yeah glycine and proline supplementation would likely have a protein sparing effect as well. Drinking organic chicken stock through the day would probably be the best way to get plenty of gelatin and electrolytes.
I couldn't find any real data backing up the claim about high levels of glyphosate in gelatin. I'd be keen to get to the bottom of that issue because I don't really want to be consuming more glyphosate than necessary...
Pigs ears cut up in ribbons cooked in my black beans. We take a cup every two three days.