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Short story
I had a slew of problems when I was in my twenties, and I managed to escape most of them, by the time I was forty I mostly felt way better than in my 'prime'.
But there were a couple of things that started in my late thirties and nothing I knew seemed to touch them. One was a sinus problem that started when I had an accident involving damage there and another was my skin seemed to get red patches all the time, I had a lot of dermatitis, which I felt looked awful.
The Dermatitis was inconvenient, but the sinus thing was ruining my life. By itself it could get very painful and would give me headaches that would paralyse me, on some days it seemed to reach down into my upper jaw and I'd feel like I must have some horrible infection. The doctor prescribed cortisol, but I was apprehensive of the long range effects of that so didn't use it, particularly in light of the fact he actually didn't know for certain it wasn't an infection. I was getting worried about my eyes too by now, they were getting vascular around the sinus and sore all the time. Interestingly cow's liver made that much worse early, but pate from chicken or pigs liver didn't. I thought maybe it was the iron or copper in the ruminant liver early on, but now I think different...
Things waxed and waned, but I did notice that using a retinol supplement was worsening my teeth, so I cut it out. I wasn't certain but I figured I just had too much and the 'bone remodelling' aspects of it were being too aggressively expressed. I'd already knocked by orange juice habit for the same symptoms but hadn't connected it with retinol, in hindsight that seems stupid but there we are.
I've always liked an odd theory and when I came across Grant's story I wasn't actually hugely stunned by what he was saying. I already knew the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industries were killing people, I just didn't know about this particular mechinism. Nonetheless, I was very intrigued. Having read his books like just scanning through them, I could see this was someone who, right or wrong, wasn't an idiot, he was making rational statements based on the evidence he was presenting. I'm a software developer, I know what logic looks like. He'd clearly been looking at multiple angles, the stuff about POWs is to my mind, amazing. He'd built a coherent picture out of cross linking threads.
So I trialled removing all vitamin A. I managed it for about two weeks, but during that time, my sinus problems went away and my skin cleared up. And my eyes went from being bloodshot, sore and tired looking to that marble white look in the sclera, which I prefere. Not being in discomfort, I started to relax my vitamin A avoidance. I kept it low, and that seemed okay. But eventually I started getting a bit more reckless. Not going to lie, I don't find a boring diet easy to stick too and I miss egg yolks and cheese, but anything is better than those sinus problems. I can't describe how invasive that discomfort is, it's right where I live.
So now I'm doing avoidance again. I intend to keep strict for a long time, but first weeks, same as last time. Pain cleared up. There's still some scar of something functionally odd there, I think some structural damage, but no pain. I got a fever and a cold this time, I feel it was related to some vitamin A detox type thing, not sure.
The only thing I cheat on this time round is a drop of milk in tea and coffee. I will probably switch to no fat milk soon as they don't fortify where I am.
Oh there was one other symptom, I had from my teens developed some crunch funk around my scapula. There were two bits where they'd occasionally flair up, it became particularly easy to set it off after a car accident had given me whiplash. On my first pass of vitamin A avoidance, those things dissolved and my scapula feel much more 'clean'.
I've put off trying to collate this all into some sort of narrative because there's a lot I'd like to say but I've elided for clarity. I hope someone finds this useful and I will try to update on any changes.
All I can say so far, is thanks Grant.
Hayfever. Gone, just gone.
Nothing this year, even driving past agricultural fields of sneeze producing crops. Usually it's the grass stuff that gets me about this time of year. Ok. I think I've sneezed about twice, but given it would have normally been twice a minute most of this time of year I'm quite surprised.