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So what's up with Grant?
Some here still seem to think that A is essential. So for those people, why do you think is Grant doing so well after 5 years plus of very little A as in about as low as you can go in A? He survived his death sentence of CKD because of his diet and reversed (or at least partly reversed) all of his health conditions. From his accounts he made some rapid improvements and then some slower ones that seem to continue.
I am forseeing some answers to my question above is that because he lives in Canada that he doesn't get much D. Or he doesn't have much D because he is deficient in other nutrients. Doesn't matter much for this question since both lead to low D. So wouldn't he have worsening health conditions if he wasn't getting enough of D too? Tim said D was the antidote of A. Maybe the roles of both A and D are just to cancel each other out and nothing else.
editing to add that maybe it does matter how Grant might be deficient in D. There are many nutrients such as magnesium that are important for making D from the sun. I don't think his diet provides much magnesium. So he is a white guy, that doesn't mean he can make the max amount of D from the sun.
When I started to study Grant's work, the first thing that caught my attention was how quickly his main symptoms disappeared - brain fog and fatigue (these are my main symptoms of VA toxicity) only after 3-4 weeks of this diet. So I was looking forward to having some similar experience. Eight months on this diet and I still have brain fog and fatigue (and I am not aware of other health problems, only the first three months I had a problem with oxalates), yes many symptoms are improved but not so dramatically and I have to balance some nutrients to continue with VA detox - and it seems that Grant didn't have to do that, only diet and sporadically some supplements as zinc. I think there can be very big differences in how toxic people are, how long were they toxic and where the VA is mainly stored. And maybe people who have a "predisposition" to VA toxicity - problems with liver, other toxicities, diseases... are recovering more slowly. And then I think that Grant overall has a fairly robust health and probably doesn't have any other health problems besides VA toxicity.
If I evaluate someone's health I should always consider how he feels. The clinical picture and symptoms are always in the first place. I will mention Anika here, she feels very well and healthy with her VA diet now... maybe her body was able to eliminate VA very quickly, she is a former vegan - so she had no VA sources in her diet in the past, she overdosed VA for a few months and stabilized quickly again. But some people think she did not finish vitamin A detox and she will feel bad again... such speculations are pointless if is she is doing very well, she feels healthy, she can work, doing sport, exercise, mentally she feels ok. The mistake Anika makes she thinks that her approach will work equally for other people, she does not accept that some people can really be serious VA toxic and she thinks that it is dangerous to run out of VA reserves in the liver. But her experience is also valuable to me and I think it can happen to some people, for me VA is an essential nutrient.
If Grant feels very well so probably his vitamin D is sufficient for him - because if it wasn't, he wouldn't feel so well. I know how one feels when he is vitamin D deficient - it is very far from feeling healthy.The greatest progress in his health he has made the first six months on this diet and then "the slowly route" worked for the other minor health problems. Maybe if Grant supplemented some nutrients including vitamin D or more sunbathing, his body would get rid of VA even faster - but he wasn't really forced to do that because he felt very good after a couple of weeks on this diet.
Grant's recovery timeline:
At ~3-4 Weeks: Chronic fatigue lifted – never returned (he wrote in another place that brain fog lifted at the same time as chronic fatigue)
At ~3-4 Weeks: Joint pain and stiffness vastly improved – has only gotten better
At ~ 1 Month: deeper sleep, started dreaming again – this has remained the same since then
At ~3-4 Months: big drop in overall body inflammation, significant improvement in skin
At ~ 6 Months: vision improved a lot, not at all 100% - it has slowly continued to improve. I still have some vascularization of the sclera.
At ~ 1 Year: Overall general health was quite good, not perfect, yet it was nothing to complain about.
Maybe people who "manage" to eliminate the vast majority of their vitamin A in the first months, they feel very well and then their VA detox slows down considerably - but it doesn't play that much for them. Perhaps something similar happened to Grant, his detox slowed down and continues very slowly for the next years. It is only problem for people who are more toxic - they need to support continualy VA detox until VA is reduced enough to feel very well, they have to make their detox more sophisticated, they need to be more strict about their diet, avoid some foods, to support detoxifying enzymes, liver, they have to balance some nutrients.... I have seen a similar scenario many times with other toxicities like mercury, copper, some people with copper toxicity feel very well only after 3-4 months and only with the low copper diet and some not after three years - with liver, adrenal support, nutritional balancing, protocol for ceruloplasmine increasing, coffee enemas....
Black beans are high in oxalates so withdrawn post.
Interesting thread!
I've been talking offline with another "Generoozer" and she and I think that our men seem to have less complaints just in general. Even though they are probably similarly toxic.
I blame it on the fact that women have more "inward turned" nerves... 🙂 But really I think we do. That makes us better at hatching out new humans.
Men are built to ignore their bodies and fight dinos and interloping tribes. 🙂
Seriously though, and this may vary among men, but some men have to be half dead to realize they are ill. But once they do, they are then incapacitated! They just lay down to die hahaha
Apologizing for a very non-PC post! hahaha
Edited to add: In the olden days of mercury-based medicines, women also got more ill from them-- their delicate ballet of hormones makes them canaries in the coal mine.
Hi @bludicka,
Although I did experience these early improvements, I wasn’t at all fully recovered. By far the one aspect of my health to take the longest to fully heal was the skin on the backs of my fingers. That really took 3+ years, and even today there are small spots where it is dry and not completely normal. These locations are where I had most heavily used the steroid creams, so maybe that treatment has permanently damaged the skin there.
And, even after 4 years of being on this diet my overall health is still slowly improving. I’ve attached my lab work from 2018, and 2019 so that people can see this is not just a subjective self-analysis. My cholesterol and triglyceride levels continue to drop. As does my blood pressure and resting heart rate. The ALT and Ferritin levels have both dropped in the last year too. I think that indicates that my liver health is still slowly improving. The CRP number is now below detection limits. Regarding the note on vitamin C: I don’t know where that vitamin C is coming from because I don’t supplement at all; I just occasionally eat peeled apples.
My vision remains to be quite good, but it also seems to fluctuate somewhat from day to day, and it even changes from morning to night. I’m assuming that’s just due to light exposure and typically working on a computer all day long.
Therefore, getting back into complete health is a long slow haul at least for someone around my age. The real timeframe for making a full and complete recovery could be 4+ years. Of course, it is going to be a very individual thing.
Uploaded files:
You are in peak form Grant 😀 I’m a similar age to you so I’m probably looking at a longer time. From memory you’ve also had 2 serum retinol tests showing a very low amount & normal vD?? You are the poster child for vA being unnecessary unless only tiny amounts are required (which is possible). You are solid evidence!
Thanks for your answer and input. I understand that you are still improving on this diet, I read your improvements and it's fascinating for me, the VA detox works! But symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, memory problems are for me more limiting. I also have many less severe symptoms but I do not pay attention to them at this moment.
" Therefore, getting back into complete health is a long slow haul at least for someone around my age. The real timeframe for making a full and complete recovery could be 4+ years. Of course, it is going to be a very individual thing. "
So this is what I am most worried about ...and much more now than at the beginning. Because according to my health improvement rate, my prognosis is not very good, my detox will probably last more than 5 years... with my brain toxicity. And who knows how the brain can regenerate at all. These are symptoms I still have: sometimes pressure headaches, memory problems, brain fog, inability to concentrate, sometimes anxiety, depressions, demotivation, mental fatigue, paresthesia, problems with fine motor skills, handwriting, frozen shoulder, numbness in the right part of the body, speech problems, stuttering, parkinson like symptoms - sometimes tremor - these symptoms have worsened over the last three years (VA supplementation, cod liver oil...) and some of them I have for many years.
