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The false carotenoid conversion factors for vitamin A
I posted this systematic review for Hermes in another thread, but I thought I should put it here, too: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30655101/
“High fat and high SFA diets can exert unfavorable effects on the gut microbiota and are associated with an unhealthy metabolic state. Also high MUFA diets may negatively affect gut microbiota whereas PUFA do not seem to negatively affect the gut microbiota or metabolic health outcomes.”
In the “antidote” thread, I posted an excerpt from an article explaining why the idea PUFAs (at least unadulterated, plant-based “Parent Essential Oils” as Peskin calls them) lead to excessive, uncontrollable, pathological inflammation doesn’t hold up in the real world (this is a link to that post):
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/antidote/?part=12#postid-22661
Human stories—our experiences—are so much more interesting to me than petri dish experiments. Though valuable, such controlled scientific experiments provide fragments of knowledge detached from context. Without context you do not have reality.
So I want to start by listening to the human stories with humility, and then see what the scientists say second.
This approach has been challenging one of my most persistent beliefs throughout my entire “health journey,” which is: “saturated fats are one of the healthiest foods you can eat.” I am not so sure about that anymore... Context is everything.
When I consumed a low-calorie diet of primarily medium ground beef, sweet potatoes, and coconut oil for several months, I lost my mind (severe paranoia, insomnia, manic-depressive episodes). But now I wonder...What would have happened had I consumed adequate calories, legumes instead of fatty beef, and flaxseed and hemp hearts instead of coconut oil? I am curious...Maybe I’ll try it briefly at some point.
@puddleduck I don’t think the type of fat would have made a difference for your symptoms, for example the month leading up to me developing severe Vit A toxicity I was trying my own version of a Dr L Wilson inspired diet of 8-10 carrots a day with butternut squash and celery, swede with chicken breast and some nut butter.
The thing that would have been causing you those issues would have been eating the fat with the carotenoids which increases the absorption. Towards the end when I ate any kind of fat with carrots I really didn’t feel good at all. Saturated fat is much better than PUFA for maintaining NAD levels so likely PUFA would have made it worse (I was eating PUFA fats with the carotenoids).
If you look at the people who follow Dr Wilson’s development programme they all look terrible. Very yellow, slim face . And that will be largely to do with the high carotenoid consumption on the programme with the addition of the suggested almond butter, Vit D Supps, Vit A in the endomet multivits.
Bellow is someone who followed Dr Wilson’s development diet for two years, before she learnt about Vit A toxicity. If you look at pics of Karen Hurd who also consumes a lot of PUFA and carotenoids she also looks slightly similar.
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@alexm Oh how horrifying that women in their 60s with average western bone-structure look their age in photographs taken under bad lighting conditions! 😂
Karen Hurd has far more energy than I do, has raised healthy children, and has helped many sick people regain their health. So, I won’t dismiss her experienced perspective based upon one physical attribute (which is not unimportant to consider, don’t get me wrong, but also there are many examples of people who consume sesame oil who have beautiful skin...look to Asia). 🙂
That said, I am more interested in the PUFAs from whole foods and cold-pressed oils than the heat-processed supermarket oils, which Karen does consume.
I do very much appreciate hearing your perspective and your experience, though! I’m not keen on over-eating carotenoids again, that’s for sure (lol) and I am not convinced saturated fats ought to be minimized in the diet...just challenging my biases! 🧐
Yes, I’m aware that fats enhance absorption of carotenoids, and that is what I always kinda figured happened in my case.
But at that point in time, I had been on a low-PUFA diet for about 7 years... So I’m now wondering if there might be anything to @pattycake’s antidote idea... That the retinoic acid damage to my brain was worse than it might’ve otherwise been due to an EFA deficiency.
Did you develop any mental health symptoms on your modified Dr. Wilson diet? How long did you do it for? It’s just fascinating what horrors we put ourselves through... 😬
Saturated fat is much better than PUFA for maintaining NAD levels so likely PUFA would have made it worse (I was eating PUFA fats with the carotenoids).
What is the evidence on which you are basing that statement?
Udo Erasmus promotes a whole organic raw food diet as well. He mentions consuming 2-4 TBSB of his 3-6-9 blend oil daily, whatever the amount necessary to prevent dry skin. Wouldn't that diet be high in VA? IMO he looks his age, but does not act it.
Well the first woman was on GS’s network, she was yellow and didn’t look good from 2 years of Dr Wilson’s programme but now looks better after doing low Vit A. I also saw gbolduev/Helen guy say that everyone he saw on Dr Wilson’s programme looked really bad and unhealthy too. Karen Hurd I know she is slightly old but she doesn’t look great considering she is supposed to be a health expert/advocate. Her diet is actually quite similar to Dr Wilson’s just less beta carotene vegetables. She is similar to my parents are her age and my dad older then her, but they look better than her and they are not following any health protocol. If you have a healthy metabolism, good NAD levels, good ATP levels, good iron metabolism then at Karen’s age you should look a lot better.
Sure Karen may have energy, but do you know people can actually get their energy from inflammation. I’ve seen how Karen functions she gives off crazy cat lady energy. She seems like she has high stress to me.
To answer your question, on my version of Dr L Wilson’s diet I felt the best I had ever felt, and I believe this was because my body was finally get the bioavailable potassium it needed from all the cooked vegetables and the folate too probably helped (my potassium on HTMAs was always low before this). I did this diet for a month before developing bad Vit A toxicity. I had also cut out all toxic foods such as rice which is high in arsenic. Before Dr Wilson’s diet I never ate cooked veg I only ever ate raw veg, I used to just eat rice, meat, eggs, raw veg and fruit before I tried eating the Dr Wilson way. The trouble on Dr Wilson’s diet was that I was turning orange and yellow, I now had serious diabetes symptoms from eating sugar or fructose, fat also started causing me bad symptoms too. One day after a meal of carrots and squash I took TUDCA and nattokinase with my meal and I felt terrible after, my stomach severely inflamed felt very fragile, nerve pain and I couldn’t really eat the high Vit A foods without issues after that. So I found about Vitamin A toxicity and went low Vit A, but then I got hit with a whole load of extreme symptoms which were a million times more worse and damaging than the original symptoms I had while eating the high Vit A. This was like extreme autistic symptoms, very bad depersonalisation outside (things didn’t look normal), bad anxiety, headaches, rashes, nerve pain, abdominal pain it was like someone had unleashed the fires of hell upon my body.
^Here is the evidence about PUFA lowering NAD levels and saturated fat increasing it if you scroll down to near the bottom of the post.
Thanks so much for the link to that blog post, @alexm! Super interesting references, too. Really loved reading them (what I could access and understand). The presented hypothesis didn’t convince me to stop my sunflower seeds and hemp hearts, but I see where you’re coming from, for sure.
Some study on seed oils, I can’t recall the details now, indicated soyabean as more harmful than the rest...is it higher in aldehydes when used in frying than the others are or something? It has been a few years since I was reading about all that stuff, but I should find the studies and post them in the EFA thread.
Ugg, sorry I misread your earlier post. I thought the first woman was Dr. Wilson. 🙃 (Apparently he is a man. Ahem.) I’m glad this individual is detoxing vitamin A and feeling better! 😁
Unique Hammond offers health coaching utilizing Karen’s principles, and is...more chill. Lol. I like Karen, but I do see what you mean about her somewhat wired energy. Unique jokes about it. Not sure if neurodivergent people can totally like...chill to a neurotypical level...ever, even on their ideal diet. But we can improve a lot, no doubt. Even though I still hate my autism often, I am way more chill than I used to be.
Oh wow, that sounds brutal. Thank you for sharing more details about your experience. Must’ve been terrible. Quite similar to my experience, really. But my symptoms hit during as well. It still amazes me how much damage can be done by carrots...Carrots, for goodness sake?! Carrot juice powder (and other vegetable juice powders) consumption in childhood set the stage for my problems in teenagehood, it does appear...
Interesting Wilson and Hurd are both anti-sugar/fruit, seeing as the vegetables gave you blood-sugar issues. 🤨 Maybe they’ve seen similar reactions, and misinterpreted the results?
I find fruits and sugars super calming. Giving them up doesn’t go well for me.
So, do you blame the beta carotene more than the oxalates for your response to Dr. Wilson’s diet? Do you think the oxalate played any role in your symptoms?
Hope you’ve been doing well, Alex! It’s still crazy to me we both got so poisoned so young (you’re pretty young still, right)? When I did the dumb sweet potato thing I was in my early 20s (feels like a lifetime ago now).
Glad you realized you needed to stop and that you’re now bouncing back.
*To clarify, since you’ve already posted a bit about this in my log re-reading it, why do you think you were susceptible to vitamin A and oxalate poisoning in the first place? Having a messed up gut microbiome?