I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Tips on how do you slow down the detox.
-
Never start it. Maintain Vitamin A and carotenoids at low levels possibly about 1,000 IUs to 2,000 IUs per day.
-
Increase choline rich foods if low like beef, chicken, eggs and pork. Eggs are a very good source of phosphatidylcholine which helps reduce bile flow toxicity. Find the level that works for you between 1-4 eggs a day.
-
Increase betaine foods like wheat or spelt (75-150 grams a day), quinoa and beetroot. For those with oxalate issues quinoa and beetroot might cause issues but intake can be quite low at about 20-30 grams a day.
-
Reduce very high protein levels to more moderate levels say about 75 grams a day.
-
Reduce high fibre levels in the short term at the start to about 15 grams total a day. Returning to a balanced varied diet with higher fibre will be the objective but for now slow it down.
-
Reduce high fat sources like nuts, seeds, organ meats, meat and even the eggs if nearer 4 a day.
-
Reduce high zinc, molybdenum and selenium supplements if possible to stop promoting the detox. Choline will eventually help absorption and a good varied diet relatively high in beef will help zinc levels. Eggs help selenium and beans help molybdenum.
-
Reduce high zinc sources in diet. Switch high beef consumption from beef to chicken or pork.
-
A bit more fruit and moderate carbohydrates might help to slow it down if other measures don't work.
-
Work on the blocks in the detox pathways. Often eggs or phospatidylcholine supplements help but for some it will be more complicated.
-
Reduce detox promotion activities like being out all day in the sunshine, extreme exercising or heavy work like landscape gardening or digging for long spells.
- Some people in severe joint pain have used Vitamin D orally for a short period and relieved the pain. This I would suggest isnt a long term solution.
- Increase Vitamin C. I favour foods but it's questionable whether 200 mgs in foods would be enough. Taking more potentially causes the detox to slow down for too long. This seemed to happen with the early experimenters.
- Increasing moderate Vitamin A and moderate carotenoid foods if possible. This is the last resort. It might sabotage the detox depending on how long you depend on it. The other tips would be preferable.
2000iu per day! How is that low?
Surely this is being taken too far. At this stage what is even the point of Grant’s work if people are going to be intentionally consuming 2000iu of vitamin A per day.
Grant's work is invaluable. We don't need much Vitamin A. Most people are getting way more than 2,500 IUs because they are adding supplements and liver, sweet potatoes and other high carotenoid foods. I'm at about 1,000 IUs at the moment. I would suggest people don't trigger a strong detox therefore in the beginning it might be safer to be at 2,000 IUs. If you follow liver detoxification and the patents re retinoic acid then small amounts of choline, betaine, inositol, biotin and methionine are very helpful in detoxing the liver.
So just because Grant has proven we dont need very much it doesnt mean we throw everything else about detoxification out the window. When detoxing it's best to build yourself with nutrients rather than removing all sources of Vitamin A. Some people might need 4-5 eggs a day to replenish their choline and that takes you to 1,250 IUs before any small dairy intake and small amount of carotenoids. Because of the choline and biotin it's perfectly possible to start detoxing vitamin A from a moderate intake of it. This has been proven in the limited number studies we've seen. Practitioners use eggs and there's still some Vitamin A in the diet. Improve detoxification pathways first so you actually eliminate the toxicity you trigger by reducing intake severely. Triggering a strong detox before you are stronger has proven disastrous for some of my friends doing the detox.
Shocking argument. How many people are on Accutane and have never had dealt with chronic issues as a result? Plenty. Does this mean Accutane is safe in moderation?
Same argument can be made for alcohol and just about any toxin out there.
If people here are struggling to detox VA, then adding 2000iu per day isn’t going to help the situation.
Also Grant (the guy who hosts this site and wrote the books that have all drawn us here) does in fact make the bold claim that VA is at the root cause of modern autoimmune diseases…
Also the obsession with Garrett Smith over here is ridiculous, who cares, just let him cry in his bubble.
I never heard of the guy until I started reading this forum. I was drawn to this forum after reading the books written by Grant, not some random doctor. On that note I do get the sense that there are people here that haven’t actually read the books…
I don't think Andrew is saying to add 2,000 IUs per day, more to maintain a low level and not too low just in case it promotes too strong of a detox, and if detox pathways are not in good shape or overwhelmed (like mine) it will cause an excess of toxicity circulating around causing even more damage. Why dump more than the body can get rid of at any one time?
I am someone who went very low VA, in part because my food choices are very narrow and in part because I'm the type to be all or nothing. I am now 4 years down the line and have made v little progress.
I believe that this is because my system was so poorly nurished to begin with (many years eating disordered and vegan diet are just two causes) that the actual process of my body releasing the stored VA has caused me no end of damage. I do NOT believe that reducing VA and getting those high levels out is bad, quite the contrary. However, I did not have the ability to detox the VA safely.
If I could do it all over again, I would do exactly what Andrew is suggesting. I would not rush to lower my VA intake but rather I would make sure I was supplying my body with the nutrients needed to detox first. I would make sure my detox pathways weren't under performing first. Once that was in place, I would then have lowered my VA intake slowly and not so far knowing that my body would be in a much better position to rid itself of the VA whilst causing minimal damage.
I can't turn the clock back and know for a certainty that I would have seem better progress and outcomes had I followed Andrew's advice but I can say for sure that doing it the way I have has not been helpful.
Hi @andrew-b,
Let me chime in on this.
I don’t think people will make much progress at all by maintaining vitamin A and carotenoids at 1,000 IUs to 2,000 IUs per day. To me those levels should be much lower.
Other thoughts are:
No matter what diet you follow, be it low vA, carnivore, Keto, etc, never, ever, and like for the rest of your life, consume organs. Be aware that kidneys can have both high levels of vA and retinoic acid.
For the first one or two years on a low vA diet:
Be extremely careful with all supplements, especially anything (such as lactoferrin) that promotes increased bile production.
Do not take a B multivitamin. If you want to take B vitamins, be much more selective. B3, niacin, acts much like lactoferrin and promotes bile dumping. Some people have reported that taking biotin has caused them to become zitty… I don’t know what that indicates. Is the skin just detoxifying more aggressively? Is it a good thing or not? I don’t know. Just be aware and be careful to self-monitor your progress.
Do not take on any strenuous exercise, daily walking would be great.
Stay warm, get moderate amounts of sunshine if you can.
Live as low stress as best you can.
If you currently drink coffee, then DON'T stop it at this time.
If you currently smoke, then DON'T stop it at this time.
Vitamin D is quite literally used as a rat poison. Don’t take it, get sunshine instead.
Vitamin D only “works” by blocking the vA receptors, but is just less toxic than vA, so in the short term it appears to work. But, both are clearly toxins. Vit D acts very similar to corticosteroids; it offers short term gains for long term pain.
We need to move away from doing a zero Vitamin A diet. That point has been convincingly made by @ggenereux2014 : it doesnt look like we need much Vitamin A at all. And reducing it really helps liver health and certainly for me has reversed decades of so called aging diseases. We are now doing a liver detoxification based on the idea we dont need much Vitamin A. But in the process some of us have realised that the antidotes to Vitamin A poisoning: choline, betaine, methionine, inositol and biotin are far more powerful than the Vitamin A.
One principle or piece of wisdom I've learnt from the best liver detoxers and nutritionists over 24 years reading and doing experiments is that the detox happens when you are healthy. What we dont want to do is trigger this Vitamin A dump by going extremely low when a person is already ill. That's why the detox setback has resulted in poorer health for a few of us and a bit of improvement and some downsides for some. I only escaped my own decline by going back to the principles I learnt before from Xandria Williams in The Liver Detox Plan. Help detox pathways as well.
The most successful of us have tended to stick to a balanced varied diet with some amounts of Vitamin A and carotenoids in it. The eggs if tolerated can gain great improvements to the liver even with small amounts of vitamin A even up to 4,000 IUs of it. So I suggest at first you dont trigger a Vitamin A detox. You remove the liver and high carotenoids to achieve a moderate Vitamin A consumption and then let the antidotes do their work of improving absorption, improving reaction to fibre and helping resolve the liver problems. Great progress can still be made on a low to moderate Vitamin A intake.
I'm not an outlier with this practice. It's what the best practitioners do. My friend @Meredith is a dietician and she said yesterday she gives fatty liver patients eggs. And you're going to have small amounts of Vitamin A 250IUs per egg and some might benefit from 4 or 5 eggs initially to rescue them from severe liver problems or severe malnutrition. That's you at 1,000-1,250 IUs straight away. I've replenished choline which may be a crucial step for many and now my Vitamin A intake on 2.5 eggs a day and some carotenoids is probably 1,000 IUs so you can get to a low Vitamin A eventually if you want but you dont start off with an extremely low Vitamin A when a person is ill. The repercussions of detox setback, lutein sensitivity, Vitamin A sensitivity, seizures and glutamate problems are not worth it. We can't make people worse. Or be uncertain about it.
If you want to slow down detox then eat a high retinol food, like egg yolks or liver. Your detox symptoms will stop, you'll stop detoxing, and if you do it regularly you'll never recover from hypervitaminosuis A.
Quote from salt on April 4, 2023, 11:00 amIf you want to slow down detox then eat a high retinol food, like egg yolks or liver. Your detox symptoms will stop, you'll stop detoxing, and if you do i regularly you'll never recover from hypervitaminosuis A.
I strongly believe, based on my current symptoms and certain patterns I've been observing for 4 years, that I am detoxing MORE since adding in 1 egg a day... based on my bowel movements, based on my thumb experience (which I updated on another thread)... ofc I am not 100% certain of anything, not at all, I am letting my body guide me and it feels like whatever is in eggs has increased my detox symptoms. Maybe the eggs are increasing vitamin A to come out of storage and shoving it into my liver... I guess right now the eggs are an experiment I am willing to try bc I have not been getting better...