I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Sunbathing, UV, IR and agitation
All the research on plant foods "improving" microbiome diversity assumes that the diversity they're measuring is actually conveying health benefits, and they are not comparing a plant-heavy diet to a carnivore diet. Paul Saladino rants about this in almost every one of his videos, if you're interested you should go watch some. Basically, it sounds like a researcher named Ancel Keys found higher diversity of microbes in Africans who were also healthier than Americans and incorrectly attributed their health and gut diversity to fiber consumption, which led to decades of people harping on fiber consumption without any studies of people eating a carnivore or near-carnivore diet. Eating fibrous whole plants foods leads to a healthier gut than eating a bunch of processed foods, but eating a diet high in healthy animal foods without any processed foods also leads to a healthy gut, and nobody's bothered to study it.
Extreme is a relative term. Normality is based on a frequency distribution where most of the population falls within some bounds, and anything outside those bounds is considered extreme. The carnivore diet is extreme relative to what is considered a normal diet today only because most of the population does not eat a carnivore diet. A vegan or vegetarian diet is also extreme, although so many people are mistakenly adopting these diets that the "normal" diet is creeping in that direction. Normalcy says nothing about optimization or health. I'd rather eat an "extreme" carnivore diet that our body is built for than a "normal" diet that destroys our body.
We should certainly be concerned about diarrhea, it is a sign that something is wrong! In this case, what's wrong is that there's a pile of Vitamin A that needs out of the body ASAP and diarrhea looks to be part of that process sometimes. Toxicity of any sort is often accompanied by diarrhea. The absence of diarrhea when we were all loading up on Vitamin A didn't mean we were doing the right thing, did it? Now, I don't know if it's better to try to mitigate the diarrhea because it might be inflammatory or is a sign of an inflammatory process, but if it really is a result of the body trying to get Vitamin A out, then I'd rather not obstruct that process even if it's an unpleasant process. Give the body what it needs and let it do its thing.
@wavygravygadzooks you seem to have made up your mind. This is fair enough if it works for you, but remember that what suits one person does not suit another.
@jaj I've made up my mind until there is better evidence for a different position.
I'm a scientist. I'm prepared to acknowledge that the paradigm I'm currently championing is wrong if there is sufficient evidence to oppose it. If the evidence was in support of veganism, I would probably try to be a vegan. I've said before that I tried a variety of dietary approaches in the past 10 years, including a very plant-heavy diet. From everything I can gather, the plants destroyed me, which is backed by the myriad evidence from a variety of scientific fields indicating what humans are best adapted to eat.
While I agree that there is probably no one diet that is going to work for every individual at every moment (due mainly to injury to the body over the course of a life lived), I think that the carnivore diet represents the most widely acceptable baseline diet for people. I think our differences lie mainly in our tolerance for plants. Moreover, I think if children were raised on an animal-based diet, they would maintain a higher tolerance for the few plant foods they did eat throughout their lives.
It's ironic that I hadn't heard of the carnivore diet until one of my naturopath's scoffed at it, asking me if I was going to try it. Before I read anything about the science behind it, I thought it sounded crazy, and I told her of course I wasn't going to do that. In retrospect, that naturopath didn't help my problems one little bit, but the "crazy extreme" carnivore diet did. None of the doctors I've seen helped me because they were all promoting plant foods.
It still blows my mind that there is all this blatant physiological evidence we've had in front of us for a century, showing us that we are meat eaters, and yet hardly anybody has been vocal about it until recently. Our arm musculature specialized for throwing, propensity for running, extremely acidic stomach, long small intestine and short colon, flattened ribcage, all the energetics involved in obtaining calories...the list goes on and on.
I recently started doing a lot of sunbathing because I found out that vitamin D increases muscle growth directly and lowers myostatin which also increases muscle growth. Sunlight also depletes vA very effectively, increases nitric oxide production, and provides other benefits from infrared and certain light spectrums. It's the only way we are supposed to get vitamin D and I would think that taking vitamin D perhaps bypasses many subtle physiological processes that are initiated with sunlight exposure and vitamin D production.
I am so much more resistant to sun burn now it's amazing.
I can definitely relate to people that experience a flare up of symptoms though. After over 3 years on a low vA diet I have been healed of my seb derm (oily eczema) however with this recent sunbathing I have had a small flare up, much less than what I experienced in the past but definitely a mild flare up of it.
Sunlight helps kill the yeast that plays a role in seb derm but experiencing this flare up after sunbathing (which is known to cause vitamin A detox symptoms in people) is giving me further evidence of retinoic acid's role in seb derm.
My hypothesis is that in some people with elevated levels of retinoic acid (which is used for skin peels), retinoic acid is excreted through the skin or builds up in certain areas hence the patchy distribution of seb derm (some areas with high sebum production are unaffected or less affected). This then kills skin cells which the yeast feeds on.
Yes I do think the sun brings the bad to the surface.
Also, sweating.
I agree with you @lil-chick; I tend to get headaches when I sweat too much and/or spend too much time outside in the sun. I believe it has to do with stirring up vA and/or causing a general bile dump, which is what I believe Dr. Smith says is why some people do not feel well after excessive sun or heat exposure.
The efficacy of phototherapy in managing chronic kidney disease-associated pruritus (CKDaP) has been a subject of interest and research. Studies have shown that NB-UVB phototherapy can significantly reduce pruritus in CKD patients, offering them much-needed relief.
(CKD = Chronic kidney disease. Pruritus = debilitating itching)
I suffer from itching and I wonder if I should try this. I also wonder about the red light that Ourania mentioned yesterday, LLT.
( Low-level laser therapy, cold laser therapy, photobiomodulation or red light therapy is a form of medicine that applies low-level lasers or light-emitting diodes to the surface of the body.)
This itching makes me think of Grant with his fires of hell, except I have no rash! It often occurs in the night after a day in which I sweated. The itching also makes me wonder if I have kidney damage. It seems to happen in areas where there is little meat between the bones and the skin. Ribs, wings, sternum.
I think of it as detox and perhaps from the bones. "Could kidney disease itching be VA detox" should probably be a thread of it's own.
If it is about histamines, perhaps vitamin C would help. And it might be interesting to note if the itchiness rises with pollen count and attic cleaning attempts. My last bout does co-incide with buying, and trying to clean, an antique carpet while the goldenrod blooms in my un-farmed field.
I carefully sunbathed (about 1.5 minutes on each of my 4 sides at noon) and had no itching, and slept LIKE A BRICK, even slept an extra half hour. So at the very least I think I can say that sunbathing doesn't cause the itching, and probably does help me (anyone else's mileage may vary!). My sleep got much better after dropping the daily alcohol drink, and my occasional itching nights seem to be the only thing standing between me and a good night's sleep. Great for the mood and the mental health!