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VA as a weapon
Well if (god forbid) Dr Ben Lynch or his family come down with a mysterious auto-immune ailment, I suppose that will be more fuel for the fire. I don't wish it on them, though.
He will join a long line of nutrition gurus who didn't end up healthier. Several WAPF gurus (high VA diet) have had some early deaths... (Dr Ron, Ramiel Nagel and others... https://www.davidgumpert.com/those-ticking-time-bombs-going-off-are-wapf-people-dying-too-young) Does anyone also remember that the low-carb guru (Dr Atkins) keeled over from a heat attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension (often low-carb is high VA). And the vegan guru (Lierr Keith) had degenerative spine disease, depression, anxiety (vegan diet is often low in protein and high in beta carotene). And then Butter Bob (the low-carb, intermittent fasting guru) came down with vertigo (his name says it all)...
SIGH.
I personally would bet the farm that I arrived here (after 15 years of WAPF'ing) at Grant's experiment with overly high vitamin A status. (I estimate that I was getting about 3 times the RDA daily). And my health was only getting worse every year, not better. (This would be my particular implementation, each WAPF'er I'm sure has a slightly different menu!) So the logic overwhelmed my current desire to never be on another special diet again in my life, LOL. I feel that I'm unwinding mistakes.
I can totally see how when a person finally stops inputting VA and has detox symptoms, that they might call those symptoms "Vitamin A deficiency symptoms" (especially if they are unaware of the big picture). And that's how the lists become messy and intertwined.
The studies of actual MD-diagnosed VA-toxic individuals (several have been posted here on this board) almost always show a long and difficult path of detox. It's hard to get rid of! (and real damage is done)
Perhaps if an individual's tolerance is high it is almost impossible to understand why other people might have problems with VA! As the video that Bludika posted shows, VA probably is a very good weapon!
I wonder if high-tolerance people actually NEED MORE VA (in order to have a weapon handy) and low-tolerance people have it stored and can't get rid of it! So it's not like we are UNARMED. We are actually heavily armed. Our immune system is armed to the teeth, 24/7 and we're suffering friendly fire!
Haha @lil-chick that’s one way of describing it - friendly fire - like it.
i don’t know about vA as a weapon as I’ve not read up on it. I’m totally sure that having too much stored in your body is a very bad idea for your health. I cannot see that being wrong. Although anything is possible...
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The other A-bomb! Dark humor from the dark web...
Here is a metaphor.
Let's say you dye your long hair purple. Then you want to go back to your normal color.
At first you will have a distinct line as the hair grows out, but over time (each hair is on it's own schedule of growth, rest, shedding and replacement), the line will blur. You will see the blurred line move down the head, and get blurrier. As time goes on, the very ends will eventually just look vaguely purple. (ask me how I know this!).
Besides shedding, each tiny trim also reduces the purple load.
One day (at which time you've almost forgotten the purple episode) all traces of purple are actually gone.
Is this a good metaphor for vitamin A detox?
The growth/rest/shedding/regrowth of liver and fat cells perhaps causes slow house cleaning.
Perhaps fighting infection works almost as a "trim" of the ends. (as VA leaves in mucus or pus etc)
IMO, We shouldn't forget that a zero-A diet is a grand experiment (none of our ancestors were ever zero A), and perhaps it is important to realize WHEN your purple hare is entirely GONE. Would that be an un-lucky situation?
I woke up with this idea in my head, it's a common one for me, haha you know something that I live by ... and that is
All natural medicines are double-edged swords.
One of the first things my naturopath taught me (and a good naturopath is a teacher of sorts)... he asked "what plant has no herbal usage?" and of course, this is a trick question. They all do: from the most toxic to the most gentle.
Just because weapons are dangerous, doesn't mean you don't want one around when things go south.
But, sometimes I do worry when I hear of someone taking herbs for a long time, or dosing themselves hard to get rid of chronic issues. Ditto for minerals, vities, exercize,sunshine even water etc etc. And now ditto for vit A foods.
I think a possible reason VA overload looks like an over-reactive immune system is because we have an over-ful weapon's closet and we are dying from our own friendly fire.
On another thread, I posted this as an example of my thinking:
"Let's say for some reason your body decides it needs to fight an infection in the pancreas. (I know not everyone believes what follows). If you have a ton of VA in storage, maybe your body sends a huge flood of it. Now your pancreas suffers from the onslaught, but the infection is conquered. However, friendly fire killed off the cells that make insulin. Now you are out of status-quo-land. This isn't "acute toxicity" this is damage. This person might benefit from clearing their their detox pathways in order for the pancreas to clear the VA around the pancreas properly. And the pancreas may fix up slowly. As long as we are on this side of the dirt there is always hope."
Joe2 answered: "Not sure on that pancreatic model that portrays the liver as the body's friendly oncologist sending chemo where it likes."
Personally I get that lots of people here don't worry about this, like Joe2. Tim doesn't either. And yet he has posted about flu symptoms being VA toxicity.
To me this is my biggest caveat when it comes to VA reduction. To me this is a super-important question to answer. If VA a WEAPON can we lower it too far at our peril? But then again, we swim in a world of VA and there has never been a person, even Grant, who has been able to avoid it. We can EASILY have a full load of it ready to use. But could we run out in the midst of a lengthy battle with an infection, such as with bed sores?
Do we benefit from realizing that we are going to need to step up our detox abilities during infection when VA will be circulating in higher amounts?
In the olden days, recuperating patients were given coddled eggs... And of course chicken soup with the shmaltz on top would help replenish a bit of VA...if the stores of it had been lowered...
There is an old saying (about diseases like flu): if it doesn't kill you, it'll cure you. Does the body occasionally take on a flu or infection just to get rid of VA?
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/the-covid-19-vitamin-a-theory-is-going-mainstream/
this thread talks about how covid looks like endogenous VA poisoning
Quote from lil chick on September 16, 2024, 7:02 amI think a possible reason VA overload looks like an over-reactive immune system is because we have an over-ful weapon's closet and we are dying from our own friendly fire.
On another thread, I posted this as an example of my thinking:
"Let's say for some reason your body decides it needs to fight an infection in the pancreas. (I know not everyone believes what follows). If you have a ton of VA in storage, maybe your body sends a huge flood of it. Now your pancreas suffers from the onslaught, but the infection is conquered. However, friendly fire killed off the cells that make insulin. Now you are out of status-quo-land. This isn't "acute toxicity" this is damage. This person might benefit from clearing their their detox pathways in order for the pancreas to clear the VA around the pancreas properly. And the pancreas may fix up slowly. As long as we are on this side of the dirt there is always hope."
Joe2 answered: "Not sure on that pancreatic model that portrays the liver as the body's friendly oncologist sending chemo where it likes."
Personally I get that lots of people here don't worry about this, like Joe2. Tim doesn't either. And yet he has posted about flu symptoms being VA toxicity.
To me this is my biggest caveat when it comes to VA reduction. To me this is a super-important question to answer. If VA a WEAPON can we lower it too far at our peril? But then again, we swim in a world of VA and there has never been a person, even Grant, who has been able to avoid it. We can EASILY have a full load of it ready to use. But could we run out in the midst of a lengthy battle with an infection, such as with bed sores?
Do we benefit from realizing that we are going to need to step up our detox abilities during infection when VA will be circulating in higher amounts?
In the olden days, recuperating patients were given coddled eggs... And of course chicken soup with the shmaltz on top would help replenish a bit of VA...if the stores of it had been lowered...
There is an old saying (about diseases like flu): if it doesn't kill you, it'll cure you. Does the body occasionally take on a flu or infection just to get rid of VA?
Interesting theory. Instead of making me question if retinols are a useful weapon/tool for our body to have that we need to carefully avoid getting too little of it, it makes me question the entire idea of an infection being caused by contact with pathogens.
In '93 I ran out of tolerance for antibiotics. After years of cysts/boils similar to what @griffin described and years of antibiotics to stop the worst ones, my antibiotics no longer worked. I was sleeping 22 hours a day while taking 3 different oral antibiotics. I gave up on my clinic's doctors. At my appointment with Dept Chair of Immunology at the University my family were alumni of, he told me my boils, respiratory infections, all of it were iatrogenic. He wanted to know what I had eaten and done for years. Told him about 3 to 5 hours of sleep and 90 plus hour work weeks, gobs of fast food lacto ovo vegetarian and falling back on antibiotics many times each year.
He told me that many infections mimic allergic reactions and vice versa. He said in fact there is no way to tell them apart and he wonders if they are not the same thing. He also said I should never take antibiotics again. Hooked me up with a local doc in my area who was his student. That guy held my hand during the 3 months I got off antibiotics.
In last 50 years I worked 15 in health care, almost all in front line full contact jobs. I never hesitated to go full contact when ppe were not available. Sure I avoided getting sneezed in my face. I was also careful to not stick myself while accessing someone else's vein. And I washed well and as soon as I could when splashed with blood, puke, sputum, whatever. Usually with alcohol. In all those incidents, the people I saw get the worst cases of what they considered infections spread from patients were the people who were cautious to the point they offended patients and coworkers constantly with their paranoia. I can not count how many times I have heard words muttered from coworkers "she needs to get a different job."
In all this time too, I can not count how many times I got horrific infections without any possible point of contamination. Unfortunately I only learned 30 years ago to stop treating everything like an infection from some dread pathogen. More and more I feel and think we have been purposely and universally mislead to believe pathogens are insanely more responsible than they can be. There are two teams that are supposed to be sent out by CDC whenever outbreaks of disease occur. One is the contagious disease team. They focus on bacteria, virii and molds. The other team is the environmental toxin team. They work with hazmats mostly in OSHA environments - factories using / making chemicals. The usage and funding of CDC's pathogen teams are insanely high. The chem teams are laughable.
Remember at coophid's height, a small village in India had an outbreak? Over night some 400 guys got sick, overran local medical care and I think some died. US media took off with details about a new strain of coophid. Within a day they had names and acronyms for the new viral strain. CDC dispatched their pathogen team. Before the plane landed, local docs narrowed it down. All 400 guys worked in the same factory exposed to the same chemicals. They were poisoned. Good thing local docs got on it. If CDC could have conflated it into a virus, they would have as they have repeatedly for decades. It is always in the favor of wealthy factory owners to have a pathogen to blame when chemically exposed workers get poisoned.
Remember when DDT came out and was sprayed everywhere, even directly on people? About the same time tin cans for food storage came out. Curious that polio was a wealthy persons disease the first few years. Only the wealthy folk could afford food from tin cans or to spray their living areas with DDT the first few years of these new technologies. Curious how toxicity symptoms have always been the same as pathogenic symptoms.
And yeh, when I quit antibiotics in '93 it sent me running rabbit holes in healthcare. Got my 6 year old mercury amalgam fillings out around '96. The dentist in my family who installed them insisted they were not toxic. He watched while I had a another dentist well versed in their removal and replacement do the work. By then I had given him books on mercury toxicity. The closest he came to admitting mercury fillings were the problem was to say "well yeh if you are allergic to them."
I had terse words for him. Told him I was allergic to arsenic and cyanide too. Allergy has always been the fall back from pathogen claims when almost admitting to toxicity. Just as that head of immunology told me that allergies and infections are pretty much the same thing. Autoimmunity much?
How bout simplifying our math before we try to factor? How bout poisons in our environment and sometimes poisons received intergenerationally?
Oh yeh and look out for conflations about genetics being a key factor too. Just like that dentist in my family tried to pull on me after I shut him down on his allergy claims for mercury. After I laughed in his face on allergies to a poison, he claimed I probably had a genetic predisposition to mercury. Asked him to look up the definition of poison.
Ok, time to go to work. Thank you for giving me a place to rant about these conflated decades if not centuries old lies.