Quote from tim on August 26, 2023, 6:35 pm

For the NO issues, Weak Therefore Strong has talked quite a bit about it on her channel. Obviously NO is useful, but it appears to be a Goldilocks situation, especially during high rates of Vitamin A detox periods.

Honestly, it's a new idea to me, but it does make logical sense. Honestly, I don't know if the elevation in NO is that big of a deal from sun exposure. It's probably a bigger thing for NO inducers.

You're talking about NO in the liver. I'm talking about NO in the endothelium.

Agreed on the Vitamin D3 associations / correlations. It's more likely that the outcomes people with higher Vitamin D3 levels in the blood have are due to the sun exposure, and not to the actions of Vitamin D3 directly. In addition, the sun exposure method of Vitamin D3 involves a complex interplay with the kidneys outside of the liver's involvement. Taking Vitamin D3 directly impacts the liver, and from what I can see in the intervention studies, it negatively impacts the liver.

Yeah I also think obtaining D3 via food or supplementation may not be as optimal as via the sun. The fact is though is that calcitriol is by far the most biologically active form and all that's really needed is enough vitamin D from food OR sun. Most people with Hypervitaminosis A probably have elevated levels of calcitriol because the body elevates calcitriol to compete with retinoic acid at nuclear receptors. Often chronically ill people have higher levels of calcitriol and use up vitamin D faster as a result. I don't think vitamin D deficiency is common. True vitamin D deficiency is when calcidiol levels are so low that calcitriol levels drop. How common was rickets in the 90s before the vitamin D supplementation buzz took off? Vitamin D was already solved as a public health problem back then. Where are the positive results of all the vitamin D supplementation since then?

Auto-immunity reduction. I feel that it more comes from the ability to manage levels of retinoids inside the cells. This may come about from reduced peripheral levels, increase in RBP levels, and clear(er) ALDH, etc. pathways. When this occurs, less cell apoptosis and tissue disruption occurs, and that is what reduces the need for the immune system to intervene.

But, the jury is still out on the direct causes of auto-immunity. So, we all get to hypothesis.

Well if you want to talk biological mechanisms that's not going to be a short conversation but things that deplete vitamin A tend to reduce autoimmunity. When we understand that more vitamin D doesn't reduce autoimmunity retinoid depletion from sun exposure starts to become an important contender for why sun exposure significantly reduces autoimmunity.

My previous model came from incomplete breakdown of proteins in the diet causing runt peptides, to which the body made antibodies to destroy. And, the antibodies cross-matched with protein sequences in our tissues. Who knows, maybe that is a factor, as well.

I will watch the Ted talk. I have also listened to a lot of information from multi-sources that point to sun exposure as VERY helpful. I am both on the prowl looking for ways to "mitigate" my current situation, but currently believing I need to tamp down on it until Year 2 of the detox. (and, maybe till Year 3...depending on my progress)

Looking back, I started having sun exposure issues about 18 months before I became aware of Hypervitaminosis A. I have a feeling my peripheral levels of Vitamin A are a few notches above many, putting me more at risk. BUT, I could be horribly wrong. I wish there was some way to measure...

Near IR / IR has a lot of studies showing the benefits. It helps create "structured" water for capillary movement and cell boundary function, it definitely upregulates collagen formation, and so on.

Yeah I don't doubt that IR has many benefits.

I have a heat-lamp based sauna at home that I use for this purpose. Though, there is also something to say for the pulsed and squarer waves LEDs can make (and which some of the wavelength-based studies use).

A good deal of the suns wave's power is in the Near IR / IR area. A lot of that IR / Near IR is still coming in after the sun's UVB rays are nearly gone.

For most of human history people sat next to a fire for hours each day absorbing IR and inhaling wood smoke that depleted vitamin A.

A separate note, but earlier in the year and in the Winter when I stopped Vit D3 low-dose supplementation, I got a Sperti UVB lamp (which still has UVA, but peaks in UVB). I had the worst dizziness and upticks in tinnitus from it later in the day and early evening. I have a sense the UVA / UVB power far exceeds the sun's UVA / UVB power. I didn't correlate the two at the time. I just thought it was a byproduct of a phase of Vit A detox...

I prefer the Sperti Fiji lamp, I think it is 25% UVB from memory. Lamps do have different percentages of UVB at each specific UVB frequency band compared to sunlight. Many here have had problems like that from sun exposure though.