Quote from Viktor on April 7, 2024, 11:24 pm

Yesterday evening I finally decided to give liver a try and ate aroung two huge (!) tablespoons of store-bought liver spread (ingredients are pork liver/chicken liver/butter/oils and spices) on top of a bun with cheese in the morning. The cheese didn't do me harm and I even had a short but productive workout later in the afternoon.

After the liver patte, I first felt kinna tired and maybe a bit brain-fogged but I don't know if a magnesium pill taken at the same time could have something to do with it as I tend to have this reaction to magnesium most times. Anyway, half an hour or an hour later I was pretty much back to normal and didn't experience any symptoms of vit A toxicity at all - no brain heaviness, no dry eyes, no feeling I was going to pass out.

I'm not sure if I'm 100% recovered as I still have bad reactions to goitrogens sometimes but the mere fact that I could eat something extremely high in retinol gave me renewed hope.

I'm planning on retesting my vitamin D levels at the end of April (as long as the lab nearby offers a discount), and will continue to take 30,000-50,0000 weekly.

Quote from lil chick on April 8, 2024, 7:14 am

There is a doc we have all chatted about who suggests a child-sized portion once a week and seems to be getting good results with her clients.   I would guess your experiment is similar.   I don't think anyone argues that liver does have some other good, hard-to-get, nutrients.  

I kind of hate liver although I did like chicken liver pate.   It was mostly mushrooms and onions!  

It might be best to look at the liver you intend to eat, make sure it is purple, young liver.  Not yellow, old liver from an older animal.   That could help tilt the benefits vs draw-backs scale in your favor.

Sautee some small chunks with mushrooms, onions and salt and grind in the food processor.   Chill and then serve with crackers.

I've got some very healthy liver in my freezer but I'm still afraid of it.

Quote from lil chick on April 8, 2024, 7:22 am

What I have found, in the past, that VA toxicity reactions (such as my everything-must-go nights) come as a result of the additive effects of more than one meal, in fact, most probably at the end of several weeks of over-eating VA.

I think as I got more over-all toxic that "window" of time in which I'd be working my way toward a migraine or something got smaller and smaller.  And so I went from 1 attack per year, to 6 attacks a year, to 12 etc.

I've heard of some people whose window got as small as one day, however.    Horrible.

My guess is that as we cut back on VA and detox that window gets larger again.   

The one "quick" symptom I recognize is that sometimes carotenes itch on the way out.

Quote from Viktor on April 8, 2024, 8:42 am

Quote from lil chick on April 8, 2024, 7:14 am

There is a doc we have all chatted about who suggests a child-sized portion once a week and seems to be getting good results with her clients.   I would guess your experiment is similar.   I don't think anyone argues that liver does have some other good, hard-to-get, nutrients.  

I kind of hate liver although I did like chicken liver pate.   It was mostly mushrooms and onions!  

It might be best to look at the liver you intend to eat, make sure it is purple, young liver.  Not yellow, old liver from an older animal.   That could help tilt the benefits vs draw-backs scale in your favor.

Sautee some small chunks with mushrooms, onions and salt and grind in the food processor.   Chill and then serve with crackers.

I've got some very healthy liver in my freezer but I'm still afraid of it.

Thanks for your reply! I don't actually think that liver spread was made with the best and youngest liver possible as almost nobody gives a damn about where food is coming from if it's not cooked from scratch. It has carrot and onions among the ingredients as well, but no mushrooms. Actually, I did seem to notice a few side effects - my heartrate was up for most of the night, though I hadn't exercised too vigorously and normally my heartbeat is fine come night except after the most killer leg workouts. And later in the morning and afternoon next day I felt kinda groggy, anxious and lightheaded. 

I remember when I was getting severely toxic around 4 years ago, one morning I made a canned cod liver sandwich, took a couple of bites and then started to feel as if I was dying - heart racing, blurry vision, extreme panic and difficulty breathing - for a moment I though it was an allergic reaction, which it wasn't and in fact was a response to the very high amount of retinol in the liver. 

I hope I don't fall into this vitamin A trap again as today I've just eaten another tablespoon of the liver spread. In any case, I'm seeing how good (or bad) my reaction will be and stopping it tomorrow lest I get toxic again despite my adequate vitamin D status this time.

I totally agree about the retinol "window". I believe most people here can have small or even moderate amounts of vitamin A one day, but that wouldn't mean they can repeate the same diet several days in a row (myself included, of course).

Quote from Viktor on April 12, 2024, 11:47 pm

So I was eating 2 large tablespoons a day of pork/chicken liver patte (spread) over 4 days this week. Last week I probably took up 70,000 IU of D3 in total, and this week it's been 30,000 IU and magnesium every day.

The first two days on liver I felt great. And I mean I felt amazing, especially by late afternoon: lots of energy, positive thoughts, clear mind, willingness to go outside, to work, to read and to workout. It was some kind of euphoria, but not the bad overstimulated kind. I felt really good and knew that my body was finally working as it should. So, one thing confirmed to me at least - vitamin D in high doses needs quite a lot of vitamin A, even if said vitamin D is taken to combat vitamin A toxicity in the first place. I wouldn't call 70,000 IU D3 weekly (10,000 daily) as a very high dose, though, but it's much higher that the typical 1000-2000 IU a day recommendation by the docs (which still gave me good results at first, by the way).

The next two days it went downhill - I became weaker, more toxic, and my bladder felt irritated (the typical IC symptoms without a real infection). The morning after that I did a blood test to check iron levels and found my ferritin to be 28 (within range but kinda low) and transferrin saturation almost 50%. As a person with a heterozygous c282y mutation and a confirmed tendency to overload iron sometimes, liver wasn't probably the wisest choice of vitamin A due to its high iron content. Now I'm starting to feel more like my normal self, not having eaten liver in 2.5 days.

So, some good news for me is that I actually can eat high retinol foods if accompanied by D3 (I'd say, high blood 25-OH specifically). I'm not worried about eggs and cheese any more and will probably test some beta-carotene soon.

Bad news is that I haven't figured out a way to take 50,000-70,000 D3 weekly without some crashes here and there. It's not only a  vitamin A issue (I could try cod liver for an iron-free retinol source) but magnesium as well. It requires too much magnesium, and magnesium still makes me weirdly indifferent and apathetic at times, accompanied by GI upset.

For now, I'll continue sticking to 30,000 IU weekly and daily eggs with cheese. I will try liver patte again for a day or two and see how it goes. I will also re-test my D3/calcium/B12 and Iron by the end of April.

Quote from Deleted user on April 14, 2024, 8:43 pm

Quote from Viktor on February 15, 2024, 3:33 am

Hi everyone! I've been posting on this forum for some time now, but I've never put my whole story here. So, if anyone is interested, here it is. Also, thanks again to Grant and all members for keeping this place alive and their endless support!

My severe vitamin A toxicity wasn't caused by supplements but from dietary sources alone.

Around 2019 I started eating fried beef or chicken liver several times a week. I don't know why I did that - probably because I'd read how healthy it was and I somehow liked the taste of fried liver with onions. On top of that, I ate canned cod liver sometimes as well.

I guess my first noticeable heath issues were dry eyes and mild stomach inflammation. I didn't connect the dots, but instead started googling and found that dry eyes can actually be caused by... well, vitamin A deficiency. Some part of my brain responsible for logical thinking wasn't working, I guess, otherwise I would calculate that I was already getting multiple times the RDA for vitamin A, combined with dairy, eggs and beta-carotene vegetables. I tried gluten/dairy/sugar-free diets later on. which didn't help. It got worse.

By then I could no longer tolerate livers, which would cause me severe fatigue and brain fod. Still not knowing what was causing my problems, I decided to "eat the rainbow" by including even more beta-carotene rich foods, carrots in particular. Huge mistake!

My skin turned yellow over several weeks, and the list of my woes included:

• debilitating fatigue
• mood swings and anger
• brain fog
• dry eyes
• dry skin, dandruff, painful cracks on heels
• low thyroid, freezing cold, borderline low free T3 and T4 despite normal TSH
• high blood sugar
• high cholesterol
• gastririts, colon inflammation
• blepharitis (eye discharge)
• brain heaviness, inescapable sick feeling inside my skull
• low WBC on multiple blood tests

It was horrible. On a vitamin A toxicity scale of 1 to 10, when 10 is literally lying and waiting to die, I'd put my state back then at a solid 9.5. Sometimes I didn't even remember how I got home from somewhere, so bad it was.

Another one of my mistake was dealing will all those issues separately. I went to a dermatologist for my dandruff, I saw an ophthalmologist for the eye stuff, and went to the gastro doc for gastritis and colon inflammation, etc. I was given PPIs, which made me feel even worse (I didn't really think that was possible lol). Nothing helped much.

Around summer of 2021 I finally went a few days without carrots and already felt the difference. I felt kinda good for the first time in years. I gave up all high carotene foods and was okay for several months. My skin color turned normal again.

Then it all started to come back. I became very sensitive to cheese, then eggs and then a whole lot of other foods I could tolerate until then. I was quite miserable for almost two years despite being on a low A diet - until recently.

What I've tried and what helped:

• low vitamin A diet. In my opinion, it definitely works but with one caveat - while ditching obvious offenders, such as livers, carrots, pumpkin and leafy greens, the extent and dedication of going low A beyond that isn't much compared to the effect of proper vitamin A detox. In other words, if some butter, eggs and dairy cause you symptoms, then go without them for some time. However, the low A diet alone doesn't fix the whole picture;
• beans. Those didn't work for me. Beans caused me uncomfortable gut sensations and didn't do much for detox despite their high fiber content. Maybe it's just not my kind of food.
• mushrooms - those finally worked for my bowel movements and really improved my overall well-being, including vitamin A sensitivity. There's no need to gorge on mushrooms (or on any food, for that matter), and a small portion will do for starters.
• fasting, fermented foods, gut health. By fasting I really mean giving your migrating complex some time to work - let it growl between meals, - and not eating 2-3 hours after waking up and before bed. For probiotics, the acidophiline drink works best for me, but in moderation.
• vitamin D3 supplements. And finally the game changer. Nothing of the above really worked alone until I started to supplement with D3. Also, around the time I first got my vitamin A toxicity symptoms, I'd never taken D3 and my levels were at an abysmal 12 ng/mL. I then started taking it, raised my levels a bit to 40 ng/mL but continued to eat high A. Shortly after that, my stomach could no longer tolerate any supplements and I ditched D3. I take a total of 50k IU a week now, and will lower my dose after I re-test at 50+ ng/mL. Lower doses worked as well, but the result wasn't that obvious. I have lots of mutations related to insufficient vitamin D status. I mean, really almost all the SNPs that have been discovered so far. I take magnesium on most days and specifically on those when I take D3. I eat a diet pretty high in calcium from dairy and I eat cheese for K2 and calcium as well (oh yeah, I never thought I'd be able to eat cheese again). In my opinion, living in a country with almost no sun for much of the year and the only opportunity to get it naturally being during a few summer months (when the shadow is shorter than the height), without D3 supplementation my vitamin A toxicity was a ticking bomb waiting to go off at any moment. There's been researched linking low vit D status to vitamin A toxicity, as well as multiple anecdotal accounts from people whose vitamin A tolerance greatly improves with their vitamin D status. Once again, in my case, vitamin D3 supplementation is the groundwork for all the other steps above. None of them worked alone or in any combination and were effective compared to after starting vitamin D3.

Of course, this is only my personal experience. I'm not 100.00% free of vitamin A toxicity now. Getting enough vitamin D won't deplete all the excess retinol stores overnight. But I can tolerate almost all full-fat dairy, as well as eggs and orange vegetables in moderate amounts and I feel good.

Wow.  You reached the acute phase well beyond the chronic phase of liver toxicity.  Similar diet and toxicity.  I liked canned cod liver on my steaks for a change of pace from eggs, or salmon roe on my steaks.  

Oral vitamin D was the last supplement I held out quitting.  While the liver overflows with vitamin A, it can keep taking in oral vitamin D for some time.  This will lead quickly to calcification of a variety of tissue - aka turning to stone.  It hurts.  In January, 2023, I stopped all vitamin D supplements and bought a Sperti uvb lamp.  Well worth it.  My arthritis and edema has dropped steadily.  My typing speed is back up where it was 20 years ago sometimes faster.  Everything works better.  I can feel the difference in all my tissue when I have not had UVB on my skin for too long.  

Hope you do better and that reading this helps.  Thank you.

https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/lutein/

Quote from Jiří on April 14, 2024, 10:59 pm

@viktor I read your posts and I don't understand why you think that you need to eat so much vit A and "balance" it with a lot of oral vit D? It's like you don't know anything about fat soluble "vitamins"... In my view the only thing I would take is vit K2 and maybe here and there some vit E if I had some meal where was a lot of PUFA oils.. Vit D ONLY from the sun... I don't know what you want to accomplish, but it can't end well..

Quote from Viktor on April 15, 2024, 1:30 am

Quote from Jiří on April 14, 2024, 10:59 pm

@viktor I read your posts and I don't understand why you think that you need to eat so much vit A and "balance" it with a lot of oral vit D? It's like you don't know anything about fat soluble "vitamins"... In my view the only thing I would take is vit K2 and maybe here and there some vit E if I had some meal where was a lot of PUFA oils.. Vit D ONLY from the sun... I don't know what you want to accomplish, but it can't end well..

We don't get much sun where I live, and I tend to burn after 20+ minutes of sun exposure in the summer. I tested severely deficient in vitamin d before supplementation, and I'd probably been that way for most of my life apart from periods of summer vacations.

Starting with D3 supplements was the only thing that made me feel better last year, and has continued to do so. I can eat 3 or more large eggs daily now, which I couldn't even dream of 2 years ago. I just need to watch my iron intake and will retest vitamin d and calcium in a couple weeks to make sure I'm not overdosing.

Quote from Jiří on April 15, 2024, 6:39 am

@viktor I would use solarium if I didn't have sun exposure even in the spring and summer. Also like I said you don't talk about vit K2 at all. That is essential if you take D3. Which I wouldn't take anyways..