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So what's up with Grant?
Hi @bludicka,
I’m sorry, but I don’t have a good explanation as to why people are responding so differently to this diet. There are just so many factors, and I don’t know which ones are the most important.
Grant
So if the liver can store that much A (5 years or more -WOW!), it doesn't seem very essential, particulilary given how many "edibles" have it and how easily it can be come toxic.
Yes, Grant's diet is not zero A. That would be really impossible in order to get enough of needed nutrients. But it is as close to zero as possible as I pointed out. Research says he should be suffering/dead, not getting better with the ridicuously small amounts according to the RDA he does consume .
Thank you so much Grant for continuing your experiment! I hope at the 10 year mark that more people will believe that you don't need A.
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/teen-goes-blind-from-kfc-coke/
It took 6 years for a child that started with low A stores and was continuously eating a low VA diet to get VAD symptoms. It could take an adult 10+ years easily. People can live without B12 for years before getting symptoms but Vitamin A takes the prize for being the most plentiful, dangerous and well stored vitamin.
The current state of science would indicate that Grant is at a high risk for developing xeropthalmia but that is about it. Xeropthalmia normally happens slowly so Grant would hopefully have plenty of time to reevaluate his position on Vitamin A before any permanent damage occurred.
@tim that’s interesting. It makes me think that people worrying about VAD in the Western world are nuts. It’s just not going to happen unless the diet is deliberately extraordinary for a really prolonged time. I think that Grant is amazingly disciplined keeping this diet up & all respect to him. I shall sit on the fence until the evidence is in. I just focus on the fact that too much is most certainly not good - of that I am sure & having too much in the body is common not rare imo.
Quote from bludicka on December 9, 2019, 1:12 pmThanks 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.
@bludicka Do you have a progress thread?
I don't have here. But I have been writing everything for years - symptoms, supplements, improvements, deteriorations - almost every day, it's very helpful to me. So I clearly see improvements on this diet, e.g. at the beginning I slept 14 hours a day and now only 8, I no longer have gut pains and intestinal problems, liver pains.... The problem is my brain, maybe when the liver and body VA reserves are more depleted, the brain starts to clean up faster - actually this is happening because some symptoms are getting worse now. Because the body always cleans the more accessible places first and the brain is the last - so it worked with heavy metals and copper.
I have been noticing the same thing, @bludicka, so that makes sense... For whatever reason, It feels like the brain is the last to heal for me, while digestion improved the most quickly. I’m in month 11, and the brain-related symptoms have gotten especially worse for maybe the past 3 months.
Ah, so you were dealing with layers of toxicities (heavy metals), too. Wow. Sounds like it’s been a difficult, and slow journey for you.
I don't have any problems with heavy metals anymore, I finished chelation two years ago, I have no reactions to ALA, DMSA, DMPS. So I know that my brain problems are related to vitamin A toxicity. BUT I think that because I have had problems with heavy metals in my brain in the past, I have a predisposition to store VA there. The brain is my "weak spot", heavy metals, oxalates are attracted to old injury places or where the inflammation in body is, infections. Or when the body capacity is exceeded or poisoning is chronic and longterm, the body starts to move the toxins and metals into the brain, the brain is 60% fat and has a strong affinity e.g. for mercury. This mechanism is also documented in Wilson's disease, copper is stored in the liver and if the liver capacity is exceeded, the body starts to move copper into the brain and therefore many people with this disease have various neurological disorders.
And people with mercury, heavy metals problems also have problems with oxalates, candida, mold, infections. Because they often also have depleted detoxifying enzymes, low immune system, mineral and nutrient deficits, mercury directly weakens ADH and ALDH enzymes and certainly they have problems with VA metabolism too. And various toxins, infections, yeasts, parasites form layers, biofilms in the body, therefore it is so difficult to treat chronic diseases.
I think that if someone has serious VA toxicity - it may not only be related to excessive VA consumption, but may also have other problems and toxicities in the body. E.g. sulfite sensitivity, one doctor said that sulfur issues are as the ‘canary in the coalmine’ and these people have toxicity issues in general.
But people who have VA toxicity only from excessive consumption or supplementation, these respond to the low VA diet probably the fastest. And the healthier a person is, the faster his body can get rid of VA or other toxins. The people who have copper toxicity only from excessive copper consumption, they respond very fast to low copper diet. But if the copper toxicity is caused by weak adrenal glands, metabolic problems, mercury, detox can last for three years, because they also have to treat adrenal glands and various mineral imbalances in the body.
Quote from JAJ on December 10, 2019, 6:02 am@tim that’s interesting. It makes me think that people worrying about VAD in the Western world are nuts. It’s just not going to happen unless the diet is deliberately extraordinary for a really prolonged time. I think that Grant is amazingly disciplined keeping this diet up & all respect to him. I shall sit on the fence until the evidence is in. I just focus on the fact that too much is most certainly not good - of that I am sure & having too much in the body is common not rare imo.
Yeah it's just ignorance of the science. In a study 5% of obese US adults had outright hypervitaminosis A yet almost nobody has VAD (NHANES) yet food in the US is fortified with VA... :-/ Yep I agree, all respect to Grant. I do think we need it until it's proven otherwise but that it is needed in smaller amounts than currently believed.
Seems to me that the research on what is the best amount of A is for people is way off and that the toxicity of A is widely not recognized when in actuality is affecting many, many people. Given that that research is bad, it isn't a stretch that the research saying that is essential is not valid either. Grant and others have pointed out the flaws in much of it already. I have seen much of this research supporting that it is essential and it is not good research. So no, to me it hasn't been proven to be essential and therefore doesn't need to be proven that it is not essential.
And maybe the research on B12 is not very good either, but an important distinction that should be emphasized, is that B12 has a very low potential to become toxic and as far as I know cases of its excess are from supplements. I just have a hard time believing that something so essential is so hard for the body to balance and can become too easily harmed by. As a child I had A toxicity symptoms and I never took CLO, or supplements. I did try liver once and that was it for me because it was so disgusting. I just ate a normal diet and did normal kid activities including playing outside and doing yard work.