Quote from sand on June 10, 2023, 7:25 am

One should not eat eggs because they are a high-VA food. We are here to get rid of VA.

Quote from puddleduck on June 10, 2023, 7:26 am

I was thinking of you when I posted that, @rachel, and almost tagged you in case you hadn’t come across it before either. Glad you saw it. 🙂  Was going to post it to your log if you didn’t.

Good point, I agree! This relative doesn’t drink soda or coffee. It’s water, or herbal teas, and V8 tomato juice only on special occasions. 😂 Always has fresh fruit on the counter, and dried fruit, nuts and seeds available for snacking. Foods with B vitamins and fiber!

A much sadder case study: an individual who was a close family friend just recently passed away from cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, and dementia in his early 60s. For breakfast he consumed Vector Cereal (one of the only cereals fortified with retinyl palmitate in Canada) with fortified milk every morning, and a low-fiber diet the rest of the day.

It’s kind of cruel, to think that such an innocently chosen daily habit could, over decades, potentially contribute to such enormous suffering...

My relative’s oatmeal/banana/fortified soyamilk breakfast:
(800 calories)
21 grams fiber + 8 mg thiamine + 80 mg choline + 60 mcg Retinol Activity Equivalents (9% of the RDA)

My friend’s vector cereal/fortified 2% milk breakfast:
(680 calories) 
6.6 grams fiber + 8 mg thiamine (supplemented) + 80 mg choline + 720 mcg Retinol Activity Equivalents (slightly above the RDA)

It was interesting to me their choline and thiamine intakes were equal, but fiber wasn’t.

Quote from puddleduck on June 10, 2023, 8:11 am

Quote from sand on June 10, 2023, 7:25 am

One should not eat eggs because they are a high-VA food. We are here to get rid of VA.

Yeah, and it is probably one of the most absorbable forms of it, too...

The further distance I put between myself and eggs, the better I feel.

Wish it weren’t so, but that’s how it do be.

To expand on your argument, we don’t even necessarily know how much vitamin A is in factory farmed eggs:

“Feeding high levels of vitamins to laying hens can effectively enrich the vitamin component of conventional chicken eggs. Depending on the base supplementation rate, fat soluble vitamins A and K can be increased four- to sixfold...”

— Nelson E. Ward, Chapter 20 of “Egg Innovations and Strategies for Improvements” 

Quote from puddleduck on June 10, 2023, 12:42 pm

Reading a book by a doctor named Martin J. Blaster, called “Missing Microbes,” and in it he writes:

“The antibiotics themselves arrive in our food, particularly in meats, milk, cheeses, and eggs.” (pg. 84, 1st Canada Edition)

“Surveys in the 1980s and 1990s showed that legal limits [for antibiotics] were exceeded 9 percent of the time in meets, milk, and eggs.” (pg. 85, 1st Canada Edition)

Quote from Donald on June 10, 2023, 1:50 pm

Quote from puddleduck on June 10, 2023, 12:42 pm

Reading a book by a doctor named Martin J. Blaster, called “Missing Microbes,” and in it he writes:

“The antibiotics themselves arrive in our food, particularly in meats, milk, cheeses, and eggs.” (pg. 84, 1st Canada Edition)

“Surveys in the 1980s and 1990s showed that legal limits [for antibiotics] were exceeded 9 percent of the time in meets, milk, and eggs.” (pg. 85, 1st Canada Edition)

And those legal limits are probably way too high as is. I'm still looking for a good source of probiotics that permanently stick around, or a good source of poop for a fecal matter transplant (which is risky and expensive). But honestly this is a poisoning for profits moment... first they make us sick, then they sell us the cure.

Quote from puddleduck on June 13, 2023, 5:14 am

In another thread, @joe said:

“[directed towards myself and a few others] it sounds like your detox was going too fast and the eggs helped slow it down... [Dr. Smith] advised to use them as a brake as needed and to know what we are doing by taking them in.  Long term, there is an increased price to pay in detox.”

It kinda sounds like Dr. Smith is less hostile to eggsperimenting at this point? 😂 I figured he’d come around eventually...

Nah, my detox wasn’t going too fast. For 4 years it had been surprisingly steady, but fairly slow, I think? I’m at the point now where I see that as a good thing. (Btw, I’ve never followed Dr. Smith’s dietary suggestions, like at all. Even though I’m still grateful to him for helping me with my zinc deficiency, I haven’t watched his livestreams for a couple of years now.)

Consuming eggs for three months this year significantly worsened my CFS/POTS, gave me nasty rashes on my legs, re-activated the hemangioma in my eye, and negatively affected my mental health, sleep, digestion, and mensuration experience (lol). So I stopped.

Andrew’s perspective:

“Eggs contrary to what the weird Doctor has told us definitely do not slow down the detox. It gets stronger and stronger as the choline is replenished and/or the bile flows better with the phosphatidylcholine.”

This has seemed plausible to me from the day I first read Andrew’s and Jessica’s threads.

But since I’ve chosen to participate in the free-speech zone, I don’t wanna fall into reactionary “anti-garret” groupthink (that is not to invalidate anyone’s negative feelings towards him, of course), no matter how convincing I might find the arguments against his perspective!

This is why I’d like to see more dialectical thinking applied to Andrew’s assertion in bold. The possibility remains that Dr. Smith is correct in some contexts and not in others, or even correct for the wrong reasons.

Myself as a case study: I was raised without eggs (or refined sugars, or dairy, and refined starches were limited), until teenagehood.

From 2005 to 2018, I consumed eggs under the influence of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Part of that time, I drank “banana nog” every morning (raw whole milk + raw egg yolks + two bananas with no added sugar) and I was still super sick from 2006 onwards.

Eggs didn’t protect me from developing chronic hypervitaminosis A. It’s possible they even contributed to my toxicity in the first place.

That’s how I feel about them right for myself, but I recognize there’s merit in the “well you must’ve had a choline deficiency from childhood” argument (despite all the legumes and whole grains and beef I consumed), which is partly why I persisted in following the WAPF’s recommendations for so long afterwards... I don’t wish to repeat that same mistake now. 😅😓 

That said, I don’t doubt those who’ve had a positive eggsperience. Maybe some people are better at detoxing the increased vitamin A intake than I am.

My WAPF-approved banana nog breakfast:
(603 calories)
3.5 grams fiber + 0.1 mg thiamine + 286 mg choline + 356 mcg Retinol Activity Equivalents (50% of the RDA)

Quote from Tommy on June 13, 2023, 5:24 am

I’ve got nothing against eggs, they’re highly nutritious and there’s nothing better to me than fried eggs in the morning.

I just find it difficult to reconcile the idea that you can eat up to 4 eggs per day and still reduce the amount the overall amount of retinol in your body and liver (if you’re not in an insanely high acute toxicity state).

Also @puddleduck, eggs are a known allergen and common trigger for autoimmune disease, could explain why you react to them, may not necessarily be the VA content.

Quote from puddleduck on June 13, 2023, 5:35 am

An excerpt from a comment Grant posted in Andrew’s thread here:

“Conversely, I don’t think eating 3-4 eggs per day is a good diet either. My opinion is that doing so is no longer following a low vA diet.

“I know your opinion on it is that the benefit of the additional choline outweighs the negative of the additional vA and beta carotene intake. However, that’s yet to be determined in the long term, as with many other variables here. So, at this time, I sure can’t agree to regularly eating whole eggs. As I’ve said before, I think it would be safer to get the additional choline from a supplement.

“But, we don’t know right now. So, until that’s really proven out one way or the other, people need to be very careful and determine what’s best for them.”

I am getting increasingly supplement shy, but am curious to see what would happen if I took a choline supplement with a more controlled dosage than lecithin offers. This one, perhaps?

https://www.pureencapsulationspro.com/phosphatidylcholine.html

Has anyone else tried supplementing choline? What form did you take, and what happened?

Quote from puddleduck on June 13, 2023, 5:43 am

Quote from Tommy on June 13, 2023, 5:24 am

I’ve got nothing against eggs, they’re highly nutritious and there’s nothing better to me than fried eggs in the morning.

I just find it difficult to reconcile the idea that you can eat up to 4 eggs per day and still reduce the amount the overall amount of retinol in your body and liver (if you’re not in an insanely high acute toxicity state).

Also @puddleduck, eggs are a known allergen and common trigger for autoimmune disease, could explain why you react to them, may not necessarily be the VA content.

I agree.

Well, I can eat handfuls of coconut macaroons made with egg whites and a muffin containing 1/12 of an egg with no issue whatsoever. An egg allergy is the one factor I’ve pretty much ruled out in my case.